The paper applies the work of management educators on organisational change to Higher Education. It begins by outlining the shift from organisational development approaches to contextual-processual (CP) models of change, drawing out the key elements of the CP models. The paper then considers three change issues in HE which seem particularly apposite to key elements of the new paradigm. It focuses initially on the ‘not invented here’ syndrome and initiatives launched to address the contextual barriers thought to make up the syndrome. Next it turns to processual elements focussing on peer-based initiatives (peer observation of teaching, mentoring and teaching circles) and the related question of the ‘ownership of change’. The political dimension – ‘winning the turf game’ (Buchanan and Badham 1999) is identified as a critical element in HE. Assessment of these elements in their specific HE context suggests that the failure to recognise and address explicitly the political element is a key weakness in the work of academic developers. The paper reviews the lessons for the role, preparation and training of academic developers and argues for enhanced preparation, incorporating informal learning processes. A conclusion suggests that thinking about and managing change in HE may be further advanced by considering the change literature in other disciplines and through the pursuit of theoretically informed empirical research. work, preparation and training of academic developers. The apparent lessons for academic change agents are drawn out and the conclusion considers how the framework and thinking about change in HE may be further advanced. Organisation Development (OD) The theoretical foundations of OD can be traced to the work of Lewin (1958), where organisational change is seen as involving a movement from one fixed state to another through a series of planned steps: ‘unfreezing’, ‘changing’, ‘refreezing’. The three main early schools of thought which contributed to the development of OD and became embedded within it to a lesser or greater extent, depending on which OD theorist one is considering, were the individual perspective, group dynamics and open systems. The former includes the Behaviourists (in order to change behaviour it is necessary to change the conditions which have caused it; see Skinner, 1974) and the Gestalt–Field psychologists, where the interest is not only in actions and responses but also the interpretations which people place upon them, (Burnes 1996,174). Thus, the behaviourists attempt to create change through modifying the external stimuli to which people are subject, whilst the Gestalt-Field theorists