Abstract
Permanent organizations, such as companies, divisions, profit, and cost centres, as well as temporary organizations, i.e. projects and programmes, change. Reasons for changes might be new values of organizations such as transparency, empowerment, stakeholder participation, risk-orientation, etc., which are values on which sustainable development is based. Different change types, namely organizational learning, further developing, transforming, and radical re-positioning can be identified and can be described by specific chains of processes. For performing change processes of permanent organizations projects and programmes can be applied. The processes for managing the different changes of projects, in which the principles of SD might be considered, are described. The focus is on the management of transforming a project. The case study: Transforming the Project Hospital North is based on a comprehensive analysis of this project transformation in the book Project Management & Sustainable Development Principles by Roland Gareis, Martina Huemann, and André Martinuzzi (all WU Vienna) published by PMI (Gareis et al. 2013).
TopManagement Of Changes Of Permanent Organizations
The term “change” relates to an important and basic development. Changes are of different intensity and speed, and can occur at the individual, the group, the organizational, or the societal level (Kasper/Mayrhofer 2002). Change has a strategic dimension, as it is “the movement of a company away from its present state toward some desired future state to increase its competitive advantage“(Hill/Jones 2001: 486). Different change types, namely learning, further developing, transforming, and radical new-positioning, which are requiring a different change management approaches, can be differentiated.
Change management is the management of a change. Change management tasks are to
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Define the change type, the change object and the change dimensions.
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Define the required change process.
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Design the change organization (change roles, communication structures, etc.) and culture.
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Plan and control the change processes and the change methods to be applied.
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Manage the transitions between the processes in a chain of change processes.
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Perform the change communication with internal and external stakeholders.