Change: Yes, But What?

Our organisations need to undergo a profound and continual process of change if they want to adapt to a world which has revolutionised them in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Every day, management literature produces an impressive catalogue of ‘new organisations’, new structures, new concepts that illustrate the variety of initiatives introduced virtually across the board in order to face up to the multitude of challenges. Even companies in the ‘new economy’ have not been able to escape this movement – between 1999 and 2000, eBay, Amazon.com and AOL were all to announce fundamental restructuring programmes, intended to adapt their organisations to a market that was undergoing profound change. From ‘communities of practice’ to cooperation, presented as the key factor in reducing costs and continually improving quality, not a day goes past without the appearance, on the marketplace for ideas and practices, of some new suggestion in terms of organisation. Such consensus and such proliferation help to explain both the pressures placed on organisations and the hesitations in the responses that are made. There is no longer, as in the good old days of mass production or even, more recently, of triumphant Toyotism, a dominant model that can assert itself and provide a key that guarantees performance under optimal conditions.