case study of management of change

Change Management

Whether balancing budgets, reorganizing an agency, or implementing social programs, public sector leaders frequently encounter the complexity of change. The teaching cases in this section allow students to discuss outcomes and engage in problem solving in situations where protagonists wish to enact change or must guide their colleagues or constituents through change that is already occurring.

Charting a Course for Boston: Organizing for Change

Publication Date: March 5, 2024

Boston Mayor-elect Michelle Wu was elected on the promise of systemic change. Four days after her November 2021 victory—and just eleven days before taking office—she considered how to get started delivering on her sweeping agenda. Wu...

Mayor Curtatone’s Culture of Curiosity: Building Data Capabilities at Somerville City Hall Epilogue

Publication Date: February 21, 2024

This epilogue accompanies HKS Case 2255.0. A practitioner guide, HKS Case 2255.4, accompanies this case. For sixteen years, longer than any mayor in the city’s history, Mayor Joseph Curtatone has led his hometown of Somerville,...

Mayor Curtatone’s Culture of Curiosity: Building Data Capabilities at Somerville City Hall Practitioner Guide

This practitioner guide accompanies HKS Case 2255.0. An epilogue, HKS Case 2255.1, follows this case. For sixteen years, longer than any mayor in the city’s history, Mayor Joseph Curtatone has led his hometown of Somerville,...

Mayoral Transitions: How Three Mayors Stepped into the Role, in Their Own Words

Publication Date: February 29, 2024

New mayors face distinct challenges as they assume office. In these vignettes depicting three types of mayoral transitions, explore how new leaders can make the most of their first one hundred days by asserting their authority and...

Mayor Curtatone’s Culture of Curiosity: Building Data Capabilities at Somerville City Hall

For sixteen years, longer than any mayor in the city’s history, Mayor Joseph Curtatone has led his hometown of Somerville, Massachusetts. The case begins in January 2020 when the mayor is looking ahead at his recently won,...

Confronting Constraints: Shashi Verma & Transport for London Tackle a Tough Contract Sequel

Publication Date: December 19. 2023

This sequel accompanies HKS Case 2275.0, "Conflicting Constraints: Shashi Verma &Transport for London Tackle a Tough Contract."  The case introduces Shashi Verma (MPP 97) in 2006, soon after he has received a plum appointment: Director...

Confronting Constraints: Shashi Verma & Transport for London Tackle a Tough Contract

The case introduces Shashi Verma (MPP 97) in 2006, soon after he has received a plum appointment: Director of Fares and Ticketing for London's super agency, Transport for London. The centerpiece of the agency's ticketing operation was the Oyster...

Shoring Up Child Protection in Massachusetts: Commissioner Spears & the Push to Go Fast

Publication Date: July 13, 2023

 In January 2015, when incoming Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker chose Linda Spears as his new Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, he was looking for a reformer. Following the grizzly death of a child under DCF...

Evelyn Diop

Publication Date: May 30, 2023

 Evelyn is a seasoned nonprofit fundraising professional with roots in the corporate world, who thrives when faced with a strategic challenge. While she had been successfully leading change as a chief development officer (CDO) at...

Confronting the Unequal Toll of Highway Expansion: Oni Blair, LINK Houston, & the Texas I-45 Debate (A)

Publication Date: April 6, 2023

 In this political strategy case, Oni K. Blair, newly appointed executive director of a Houston nonprofit advocating for more equitable transportation resources, faces a challenge: how to persuade a Texas state agency to substantially...

Confronting the Unequal Toll of Highway Expansion: Oni Blair, LINK Houston, & the Texas I-45 Debate (B)

Architect, Pilot, Scale, Improve: A Framework and Toolkit for Policy Implementation

Publication Date: May 12, 2021

Successful implementation is essential for achieving policymakers’ goals and must be considered during both design and delivery. The mission of this monograph is to provide you with a framework and set of tools to achieve success. The...

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Home » Change Management » Amazon: The Ultimate Change Management Case Study

Amazon: The Ultimate Change Management Case Study

Amazon’s innovations have helped it become extremely successful, making it an excellent change management case study.

Since it was formed, Amazon has innovated across countless areas and industries, including:

• Warehouse automation
• The web server industry
• Streaming video and on-demand media
• Electronic books

Considering that Amazon started as an online bookstore, these accomplishments are quite impressive.

Examining Amazon as a change management highlights a few important business lessons:

• Innovation fuels success, especially in today’s digital economy
• Speed is the ultimate weapon
• Those who resist organizational change can easily get left behind

Below, we’ll examine some of Amazon’s changes … and hopefully discover a few reasons why it has become so successful.

Let’s get started.

Below are 10 ways Amazon has changed its business, transforming itself far beyond a mere online bookseller.

In no particular order…

1. Amazon Web Services

When Amazon Web Services (AWS) started out, most developers didn’t take it seriously.

A decade later, it was the go-to cloud server company in the world.

In fact, Bezos has even said that AWS was the biggest part of the company.

Since it has more capacity than its nearest 14 competitors combined, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

2. Whole Foods

After acquiring Whole Foods , Amazon began making changes to the grocery store chain.

A few of these include:

• Adding Amazon products to the shelves
• Integrating Whole Foods and Amazon Prime
• Internal restructuring

Other programs include food delivery from Whole Foods, rewards for customers using Amazon credit cards, and discounts for Prime members.

3. Delivery

Amazon has drastically innovated product delivery.

For instance, customers with Prime memberships can enjoy free two-day delivery.

In certain cities , Prime members can also get free same-day or one-day delivery.

And with its drone delivery program on the horizon, customers may be able to receive orders in 30 minutes or less .

4. Warehouse Automation

Amazon warehouses have undergone major technological transformations.

Currently, Amazon warehouses uses robots to collect and transport many of its products.

In coming years, though, even more of the company’s 200,000+ warehouse workers could be replaced by robots .

In 2016 alone, it increased robot workers by 50% .

5. TV and Prime Video

Another innovation of the former bookseller is its foray into TV, movies, and video.

Amazon began by selling videos and DVDs. Now it streams, rents, and sells digital copies of videos.

On top of that, the company has joined YouTube, Netflix, and other tech giants by producing its own movies and TV shows.

6. Amazon in Other Countries

Change managers would also be interested in how Amazon adapts itself to other countries’ economies.

In India, for instance, Amazon has been forced to adopt unique measures.

These include:

• Using mom-n-pop stores as delivery locations
• Hiring bicycle or motorcycle couriers for last-mile deliveries
• Creating mobile tea carts that serve tea and teach business owners about e-commerce

These types of innovations are necessary to succeed in other countries.

Failure to adapt to these changes often proves disastrous, which is a major reason why Google China failed .

7. Amazon Go

Amazon isn’t just an online retailer … it has now opened up physical grocery stores.

However, as with all of its business ventures, it aims to disrupt, transform, and dominate retail grocery stores.

In this case, Amazon wants to create grocery stores with zero clerks .

Amazon Go is a venture that promises no checkout lines, no hassle, and ultra-convenience.

8. Kindle and E-Books

Everyone knows that Kindle has been one of Amazon’s biggest innovations.

This product has single-handedly revolutionized the book publishing industry.

For better or for worse, Kindle has changed the way books are read, sold, and distributed.

Some estimates have placed Kindle e-book revenue at over half a billion dollars per year.

9. Affiliate Marketing

Early on in Amazon’s career, it opened its doors to online sales associates.

Members of Amazon Associates can earn revenue by sending web visitors to the sales giant.

According to Amazon, there are over 900,000 global members – all working to promote the company’s products and online presence.

10. Blue Origin

Technically speaking, Blue Origin is a different company from Amazon.

However, it’s worth noting that Amazon and Jeff Bezos can hardly be separated.

Without the famous founder’s extreme drive and vision, Amazon wouldn’t be what it is today.

And without his willingness to innovate, he never would have founded Blue Origin.

Like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Blue Origin literally aims for the stars.

Its mission and goal – “millions of people living and working in space.”

Conclusion: Amazon Proves that Change Drives Success

It’s safe to say that Amazon’s defining trait has been its willingness to change.

What started as an online bookstore has become a multi-industry behemoth.

It has crushed companies that don’t innovate … it has revolutionized several industries … and it shows no signs of slowing.

The biggest lesson from this change management case study?

Innovation and change drive success .

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Managing Change in Uncertain Times: A Case Study

Change management, defined as the methods and processes by which a company effects and adapts to change, has long been vital to the functioning of successful organizations. As John C. Maxwell said , “change is inevitable, growth is optional.” All organizations undergo changes during their lifespans, but not all organizations are able to effectively respond to change or harness it for success. 

This fact was made painfully apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. After businesses were forced to shut down in-person operations, many suffered catastrophic losses. The airline industry, travel and leisure industry, oil and gas industry, and restaurant industry were among the hardest hit . Thousands of businesses were forced to close for good, and thousands more suffered through significant profit loss, layoffs and downsizing. Still, some businesses made vital adaptations that carried them through the worst of the pandemic. Many restaurants, for example, shifted from traditional, in-person service and poured resources into curbside, takeout and delivery services, using technology to communicate with their customers and remain up and running. These adaptations built on services that the restaurants already offered, making the changes easier to implement and accept.

A Case Study in Change: Delta Airlines

Unlike restaurants, airlines did not have much existing infrastructure to carry them through a global pandemic. Airlines profit based on the tickets they book, and if nobody is willing to fly, airlines can’t just pivot to a “take-out” travel option. After the pandemic hit, airlines were faced with a crucial ultimatum: find an innovative solution or suffer catastrophic losses. Delta Airlines, one of the oldest and largest airlines in the country, decided to tackle the change head-on and immediately started working on a change management plan.

Delta structured changes to its operations around what would make customers more comfortable and ultimately found that customers were willing to pay for some extra peace of mind. Implementing the change was made easier by quick and effective communication across all levels of operation. Flight attendants, gate staffers and corporate communications professionals were given the tools they needed to communicate the company’s safety plan to prospective passengers and execute the new seating rules. As the immediate changes took effect and began yielding results, Delta worked on making the changes more efficient and seamless, refining its process every step of the way.

The Science of Change Management

Delta’s quick and effective response to a major change in business operations helped usher it through the worst of the pandemic without suffering bigger losses. Innovative research on best practices in change management is poised to help other businesses do the same. According to the Change Management Review , using technological and organizational tools to manage “the human side of change” is particularly important. Consider, many businesses were forced to move their operations online after the start of COVID-19, and this change affected employees most of all. The businesses who fared best after moving online were the ones who assisted their employees in adapting to the change by providing opportunities for virtual team building, socialization, and mental wellness checkups, for instance. By considering the effects of change on their employees, these businesses took a proactive approach to getting their teams through a daunting and sudden transition. 

David Michels and Kevin Murphy, two industry experts who research change management, have helped quantify what exactly makes some organizations excel at handling change. According to their study , there are nine organizational elements that contribute to an organization’s ability to manage change:

• Purpose and direction – the qualities that help organizations lead change.
• Connection, capacity, and choreography – the qualities that help organizations accelerate change.
• And scaling, development, action, and flexibility – the qualities that help organizations organize change.

Michels and Murphy also developed categories identifying the challenges many organizations face when dealing with change. They determined that organizations struggling with change were either:

• In search of focus, meaning they struggle to lead change, identify ambitions and map agendas.
• Stuck and skeptical, meaning they struggle to move beyond small-level changes and avoid big decision making.
• Aligned but constrained, meaning they struggle with change because of organizational barriers.
• And struggling to keep up, meaning they struggle with organizational fatigue and burnout. 

This kind of change management research gives organizations the opportunity to critically evaluate their responses to change and map effective plans for dealing with change in the future. Even without the pandemic factor, being able to change and grow is of primary importance in a world of fast-paced technological advancement and global communication. Change management specialists are in high demand in every industry, with 12% projected job growth (U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics) and a median salary of $128,992 (Salary.com). 

Purdue Prepares Project Managers to Master Change

Purdue University’s 100% online Master of Science in IT Project Management prepares students for project management careers in the fast-growing information technology field. Students develop mastery of project management processes and procedures using program materials included in the Body of Knowledge developed by the Project Management Institute (PMI®). Courses are taught by industry experts in high-demand specialization areas such as change management,  risk management and security management.

Since the program is entirely online, working professionals can arrange their plan of study around their busy schedules and take classes from anywhere. The program is specifically tailored to industry-experienced go-getters who want to break into the IT field or advance their careers by developing project management expertise.

Professionals who want to grow their expertise without committing to a master’s degree can choose to complete a four-course graduate certificate in Managing Information Technology Projects. The credits from the graduate certificate can be applied towards the master’s degree if a student chooses to pursue the master’s after completing the certificate.

Learn more about the program and graduate certificate on the course’s website .

About the author.

Rachel (RM) Barton

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Explore the Levels of Change Management

Example Business Case for Enterprise Change Management

Written by Tim Creasey

Updated: January 9, 2024

Published: November 11, 2021

This sample business case outline can help your present the clear rationale and approach for building organizational change management capability—what we call ECM or enterprise change management. Although the outline is not exhaustive, it provides a starting point and format you can customize and use when you present your need for organizational change management capability to senior leaders.

The Business Case for Enterprise Change Management (ECM)

Executive summary.

In the coming years, no core competency will be more important than the ability to effectively implement change. With increasing internal and external pressures, our organization will only undertake more projects and initiatives. Our ability to achieve expected benefits and outcomes will be tied directly to how effectively we engage employees in these upcoming changes, as return on investment depends on employee adoption and usage. By building an organizational change management capability with the ECM Project, we will realize greater return on the initiatives we launch and position ourselves for success in the present and the future.

Situational assessment and problem statement

The time to build an organizational capability in change management is now. In upcoming years, we will face more change than ever before. We are already suffering the consequences of change saturation, and a change management capability can help increase our capacity to handle new change. Industry data suggests that 70% of change initiatives fail to deliver. One key source of this failure is that we do not pay adequate attention to employee adoption and usage. We have experienced the costs of not managing change and cannot afford to put at risk the changes we are about to embark upon.

Business Case for Enterprise Change Management Template

Use our step-by-step guidance and examples to begin constructing your case with supporting data and Prosci research.

Download Template

Additionally, data suggests that there is a direct correlation between project success rates and effective change management. Projects with excellent change management are seven times more likely to meet objectives than those with poor change management (see below), and they are more likely to be completed on time and on budget as well. As an organization that values our employees and considers them one of our most important assets, it is paramount that we embed an employee focus in our change efforts.

Our ability as an organization to realize benefits and create value through change depends on our internal change management capabilities.

Project description

The project is called Enterprise Change Management (ECM). The project entails understanding how change is managed today (our current state), defining what a change capability will look like (our future state) and developing a plan to embed change management and grow change management competencies (our transition state).

The project scope is twofold:

• Increase the application and use of change management on projects and initiatives
• Build individual change leadership competencies throughout the organization (from the CEO to front-line employees)

The objective of project ECM is to improve our organizational maturity in change management, increase our change capability, and improve the success rates of our projects and initiatives.

Solution description

The solution for Project ECM will involve two work streams: a technical side solution for institutionalizing and embedding change management and a people side solution for building the necessary buy-in and commitment to change management across the organization. These two work streams are necessary to ensure that we fully realize a change management capability. On the technical side, the Prosci ECM Strategy Map will guide the development of specific tactics that address:

• Project application of change management that is intentional, triggered and structured
• Skill development in change management with a robust curriculum for all levels of the organization
• Structure supporting change management including a Change Management Office and change management job roles
• Process integration into our existing project management methodology and improvement disciplines (including our Continuous Process Improvement, Business Process Management, Lean, Six Sigma and Strategic Planning disciplines)

On the people side, we will:

• Engage employees in change management to ensure that the approach is embraced, adopted and used
• We will demonstrate why change management is needed on our projects, what is at risk if we do not manage change, and why this capability is critical right now
• Show the organizational and individual benefits of becoming more adept at change

Cost-benefit analysis

The cost components of Project ECM include:

• Procuring a Prosci site license that grants access to integrate and customize the Prosci methodology, research and toolset
• Developing internal trainers through the Prosci   Train-the-Trainer Program
• Delivering change management training for all levels in the organization
• Creating job aids and continuing education opportunities
• Assigning staff to the Change Management Office and to change management job roles
• Allocating budget and resources for change management on each project and initiative.

While the cost figure may seem large at first glance, it is quite small when compared to the overall capital and budget being invested in projects and initiatives; a Prosci site license equates to a rounding error on our largest project.

The benefit of building the change capability is first and foremost the achievement of expected results and outcomes of the capital and budget being invested in projects and initiatives, increasing likelihood of success six-fold. In addition, the organizational change management capability can:

• Increase change capacity
• Reduce change saturation
• Improve sustainment of change impacts
• Serve as a competitive differentiator

Implementation timeline

Project ECM will take place in three phases:

Phase 1: Select pilot projects and procure change management site license

We will strategically select specific pilot projects. These projects will have fully resourced and budgeted change management, including training for the project teams and impacted leaders, managers and supervisors. Additionally, we will begin work to develop internal trainers and to procure the necessary Prosci site license to fully integrate change management into the project management methodology and other improvement disciplines.

Phase 2: Increase change management training and integration

We will increase the number of projects applying change management, build out a robust curriculum so that change leadership becomes a competency of all members of the organization (even weaving change management concepts into existing leadership development programs), and integrate change management into the project management methodology and other improvement disciplines. In addition, we will create and charter a Change Management Office.

Phase 3: Launch change management office and deliver organizational-wide training

During Phase 3, we will extend change management to all projects and initiatives and will include change management in the project launch and funding processes. The Change Management Office will be fully functional and will support the application of change management and the building of individual change management competencies. We will also deliver training to all employees, along with continuous education opportunities, and we will add change leadership to the performance management system.

A specific timeline with dates will be built around the three phases.

Critical assumptions and risk assessment

The primary critical assumption is that this effort will have the necessary and sufficient support by senior leaders. The effort will not be successful if change management is seen as optional. The effort must have senior leaders demonstrating their commitment to building an organizational capability. This support must be active, visible and sustained for the effort to gain the necessary traction and momentum.

A primary risk to the effort would be attempting to create an organizational capability simply through training. It is necessary but not sufficient to train members of the organization in change management. However, change management must also be attached to projects, and its impact must be made visible. It must become commonplace and viewed as a "must have" rather than a "nice to have." To achieve this, we must integrate change management in how projects are governed, including funding decisions, progress reviews, measurements, and resourcing and budgeting exercises. Project leaders must know that their sponsors expect change management on each initiative they fund.

Conclusions and recommendations

Building an organizational capability in change management is not free, will not happen overnight, and will take energy and commitment. However, with the velocity of change and the importance of realizing expected benefits from the numerous projects and initiatives our organization is undertaking, it is an essential move that we must make. To begin, we suggest formally chartering Project Enterprise Change Management, assigning an Enterprise Change Management lead, and creating a team or task force to begin developing the solutions and plans that will increase our adaptability, agility and change capability. 

Tim Creasey

Tim Creasey é o Chief Innovation Officerda Prosci e um líder reconhecido globalmente em Gestão de Mudanças. Seu trabalho forma a base do maior conjunto de conhecimentos do mundo sobre como gerenciar o lado humano da mudança para fornecer resultados organizacionais.

See all posts from Tim Creasey

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Case study: examining failure in change management

Journal of Organizational Change Management

ISSN : 0953-4814

Article publication date: 21 February 2020

Issue publication date: 22 April 2020

This case study aims to shed light on what went wrong with the introduction of new surgical suture in a Dutch hospital operating theatre following a tender. Transition to working with new surgical suture was organized in accordance with legal and contractual provisions, and basic principles of change management were applied, but resistance from surgeons led to cancellation of supplies of the new suture.

Design/methodology/approach

Researchers had access to all documents relevant to the tendering procedure and crucial correspondence between stakeholders. Seventeen in-depth, 1 h interviews were conducted with key informants who were targeted through maximum variation sampling. Patients were not interviewed. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed by discourse analysis. A trial session and workshop were participatively observed. A cultural psychological perspective was adopted to gain an understanding of why certain practices appear to be resistant to change.

For the cardiothoracic surgeons, suture was more than just stitching material. Suture as a tactile element in their day-to-day work environment is embedded within a social arrangement that ties elements of professional accountability, risk avoidance and direct patient care together in a way that makes sense and feels secure. This arrangement is not to be fumbled with by outsiders.

Practical implications

By understanding the practical and emotional stakes that medical professionals have in their work, lessons can be learned to prevent failure of future change initiatives.

Originality/value

The cultural psychological perspective adopted in this study has never been applied to understanding failed change in a hospital setting.

• Operating theatre
• Cultural psychological perspective
• Failed change
• Surgical suture

Graamans, E. , Aij, K. , Vonk, A. and ten Have, W. (2020), "Case study: examining failure in change management", Journal of Organizational Change Management , Vol. 33 No. 2, pp. 319-330. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-06-2019-0204

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Ernst Graamans, Kjeld Aij, Alexander Vonk and Wouter ten Have

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode .

Introduction

In the Netherlands, and more broadly in Europe, the cost of health care is rising and is expected to continue to rise ( Jenkner and Leive, 2010 ; Mot et al. , 2016 ). In light of this development, the challenge for those managing healthcare institutions is to spend smartly and cut costs where possible, while at the same time meeting changing patient demands (e.g. Dent and Pahor, 2015 ; Thistlethwaite and Spencer, 2008 ). The fact that managing the work and practices of medical professionals has always been difficult (e.g. Andri and Kyriakidou, 2014 ; Kennerley, 1993 ; Kirkpatrick et al. , 2005 ) adds to the complexity of meeting this challenge. Furthermore, health workers increasingly are held accountable for and are expected to be transparent about the outcomes of their work (e.g. Exworthy et al. , 2019 ; Genovese et al. , 2017 ). Although this trend is generally expected to lead to improved results, for medical professionals it also creates a sense of being under constant scrutiny. The emotions and feelings that are triggered in these kinds of processes have a substantial impact, which is acknowledged by both management practitioners and social scientists working in health care (e.g. Kent, 2006 ; Mark, 2005 ; Sebrant, 2014 ). In this case study, emotions and feelings are addressed by adopting a specific cultural psychological perspective. Cultural psychologists Paul Voestermans and Theo Verheggen (2013) call for more detailed psychological investigations into how people acquire embodied skills and mannerisms that are in line with professional demands, preferences and tastes. When emotions and feelings are felt or displayed, this is seen as an indication that something “real” is at stake that deeply involves professionals into their group, department or speciality. This paper demonstrates that this deep involvement can affect the success or failure of a change initiative, in this case the introduction of new surgical suture material in the operating theatre. This affective aspect may be underestimated in change management or only addressed in rather abstract fashion; by prematurely explaining resistance to change with the help of notions as professional autonomy, entitlement, stubbornness, culture and so on. The epistemological problem of discursively turning a descriptive label into an explanation or operational determinant of behaviour has been addressed particularly by discursive psychologists (e.g. Potter and Wetherell, 1987 , 1995a ) and cultural psychologists (e.g. Valsiner, 2014 ; Verheggen, 2005 ; Verheggen and Baerveldt, 2007 ). Although the concerns in this paper are practical and empirical, they can be traced back to the same problem. In management practice, and especially in the management of medical professionals, certain abstract characterizations of behaviour and change resistance can become problematic when they are no longer just employed as general, imprecise descriptions, but are reified and employed as stopgaps. As such, they preclude deeper and more detailed investigations into what is at stake for the people behind these abstractions. The added value of the approach adopted in this case study is that it does not need the reification and superimposition of notions such as shared values, culture or even professional autonomy, but allows for more holistic, or contextualized investigations into the social patterning of behaviour within professional groups or specialities. Truly delving into the tenacity of certain medical professional practices goes further than positing professional autonomy or entitlement as a cause, for instance. Earlier, this particular cultural psychological approach has successfully been adopted to describe psychological dynamics within the boardroom of a large healthcare organization ( Graamans et al. , 2014 ) and, more recently, to better understand and contribute to more effective interventions against the culturally embedded practice of female circumcision ( Graamans et al. , 2019a , 2019b ).

The case: resistance to new surgical suture in the operating theatre of a Dutch hospital

At the end of 2014, a large university hospital in the Netherlands launched a procurement tender exercise for surgical suture material. The rationale for hospital management to initiate this procedure was cost-cutting and standardization. The award criteria were focussed on the most economically advantageous tender. There were different suppliers on the market that were able to produce and deliver high-quality surgical suture material for a lower price than was currently being paid. Consequently, the tender was awarded to a new supplier. The top managers and purchasing manager who initiated the tender trod carefully and implemented this relatively small-scale change initiative according to some basic change management principles (e.g. Kotter, 2012 ): they built a guiding coalition that incorporated renowned medical specialists, they consulted department heads and they communicated the change to surgeons through different channels. Furthermore, it was recorded in the tender that the new supplier should provide value-adding services such as e-learning modules for surgeons, facilitate lengthy trial-use periods and offer workshops and support to the operating theatre. Hospital management conceived this first initiative as a test case for more extensive cost-cutting operations that were to follow. This project was supposed to be relatively easy, both in scale and in complexity. However, in the preparations ahead of the trial phase, a concern was raised by the cardiac surgeons to one part of the tender package involving sutures specifically used for cardiac surgery. Nevertheless, surgeons were forced to participate in testing the products supplied in the whole tender, including those products used in their specific specialities. Meanwhile, the initiators of the project felt that careful preparations of the testing phase had been made.

So, what went wrong? In mid-2015 – when this research project started – hospital management eventually met with fierce resistance from some of the hospital's cardiothoracic surgeons. They adamantly refused to work with the new suture material. The resistance took the form of surgeons expressing anger at management, stockpiling their own supplies of surgical suture, refusing to operate, holding managers accountable for patient deaths that could arise from use of the new suture and threatening to go to the press if such a thing indeed were to happen. Hospital management had anticipated some resistance, but not of this intensity. The end result was that the contract was eventually cancelled for sutures specifically used in cardiac surgery.

This research paper sets out to answer the following question: why are some medical professional practices so difficult to change, and what can we learn from this failed test case?

Theoretical background

As mentioned earlier, to better understand the entrenched nature of professional practices and the emotional stakes involved, we adopted a particular cultural psychological perspective. Following Voestermans' and Verheggen's approach ( 2013 ), we explicitly take the position that people are embodied and expressive beings who over time attune their emotions, feelings, preferences and tastes to the groups they belong to. People naturally feel more compelled to act in accordance with these preferences than to act upon abstract ideas, rules and protocols superimposed upon them from outside their group. Evidently, medical professionals are not exempt from feeling more compelled to act in accordance with these preferences just because they are a highly educated group of people. To the contrary, as a result of being members of their professional group for so long – through medical school, surgical residency, PhD studies and so on – they have learned to coordinate their actions on the basis of complex sets of agreements, conventions and arrangements that characterize their professional group.

Whereas agreements are easy to articulate, such as taking an oath, Voestermans and Verheggen (2013) reserve the term “arrangement” for the way members of exclusive and often elite groups coordinate their behaviour almost automatically within their own specifically cultivated environments, following deeply embodied patterns. These patterns and practices are group-typical due to the mutual attunement of emotions, feelings, preferences and taste that has taken place over time. The resulting automaticity makes that they do not need articulation, whereas practices based on agreements do. Evidently, medical professionals have practices founded on highly specialized scholarship and evidence-based research. But it is a mistake to think of their work as a purely cognitive, rather mechanistic affair. These practices are enacted and reenacted in the minutest interactions on an ongoing basis, and get more refined over time, until at one point they are felt and experienced more than that they are talked about . It is predicted that groups formed on the basis of such arrangements are particularly difficult to change. The apprehension that is triggered by attempts to change even the smallest element of such an arrangement is immediately felt.

Data collection

Data collection took place in a year starting from mid-2015. In total, 17 in-depth interviews were conducted that each lasted approximately 1 h. The respondents were targeted through maximum variation sampling until saturation was achieved and are listed in Table I . Patients were excluded beforehand. The interviews were audio-recorded after verbal consent was given. All but one interviewee agreed to be audio-recorded. This interviewee was comfortable, though, with the interviewer (EG) taking notes. The interviews were transcribed and anonymized. Apart from formal interviewing, extensive informal conversations on the topic took place with surgeons from different medical specialities.

Field notes were made on the observations of a trial session and a workshop facilitated by the new supplier. These notes were divided into four categories: observational notes, theoretical notes, methodological notes and reflective notes ( Baarda et al. , 2013 ).

Data analysis

To gain an understanding of the different positions people can take up in relation to the introduction of new surgical suture and underlying social arrangements, the interview transcripts were analysed by means of discourse analysis following the example and guidelines of critical psychologist Carla Willig (1998 , 2008) . Her particular approach to discourse analysis was chosen because it allows for a discursive psychological reading of the interview transcripts whereby interviewees as active agents justify, blame, excuse, request or obfuscate to achieve some objective: the “action orientation” of talking ( Edwards and Potter, 1992 , 2001 ; Potter and Wetherell, 1995b ). Her approach also allows for a more Foucauldian, or post-structuralist reading whereby inferences are made on how the discourses interviewees draw upon delimit and facilitate behavioural opportunities and experience ( Davies and Harré, 1990 , 1999 ; Henriques et al. , 1984 ; Parker, 1992 ). The latter approach assumes that discourses, on the one hand, and practices, on the other, are closely tied and reinforce each other. Discourse from this perspective is not so much a matter of talking about things, but is conceived as an expressive practice in itself. Conceptualized as such discourses can hint at underlying social arrangements in which certain practices, such as operating with tangible surgical suture material, are performed. To come to such a conclusion with a greater amount of certainty, we contend, the inferences made on the basis of discourse analysis must always be triangulated with data from participant observations and cross-checked with key informants.

In October 2017, the findings were tentatively fed back to the management board in a plenary session and to department heads in several individual conversations. Extensive peer debriefing sessions within our multi-disciplinary research team in which both the medical professional and managerial perspectives were represented by its members took place to help with cross-checking and interpreting the data.

Conducting discourse analysis ( Willig, 2008 ) on the interview transcripts revealed several discourses that interviewees drew upon when they talked about the transition to working with the new surgical suture and surgical suture more generally. The main constructions, discourses and implications in relation to the interviewees themselves – in discourse analytic terms called “subject positions” – are summarized in Table II .

Economic/managerial discourse

We are confronted with an enormous challenge. We have to drastically cut costs. This was an important test case, because more and bigger cuts are pending. This appeared to us as an easy win. However, … [1] . (Head of operating theatres)

Not only with surgical suture, but in general medical specialists resist change. That is because these suppliers have a powerful and very effective sales force. It is what we call vendor lock-in . (Purchasing manager)

I get that those boys [cardiothoracic surgeons] … what they are doing is very precise and technical. And surgical suture and needles are of crucial importance. On the other hand, there are always these sentiments. I mean, there are many medical centres, also abroad, where cardiothoracic surgeons suture with XXX [brand name of new supplier] and it is not turned into a complicated affair. But you cannot take away these sentiments just like that. We took note of these feelings, and nudged our staff to give it [the new surgical suture] a try and comply as much as possible. But to be honest, according to me at cardiac surgery there is a lot of emotion involved surrounding suture, … and it is not working for me. (Department head, surgery)

The initiator – the manager that came up with the idea to supposedly cut costs – does not know that suture curls and curls more-or-less depending on the brand. He does not know whether needles are round or angular. And he doesn't care. But for my work this is very relevant. It has nothing to do with professional autonomy. (Cardiothoracic surgeon)

One might argue with this cardiothoracic surgeon that this is exactly what the notion of professional autonomy refers to; in this case, the autonomy to decide for yourself, as a medical professional, which materials to work with. But that is not the point this cardiothoracic surgeon is making per se . Apparently, in the daily jargon of healthcare managers, the notion of professional autonomy is employed as a stopgap explanation for resistance so often that this surgeon anticipated its negative connotation related to changing surgical suture and change more general. For him at least, the superimposition of professional autonomy as an explanation does not do justice to how he relates to the issue of changing surgical suture. For him it is not an abstract affair, but genuinely felt, both in a tactile and in an emotional sense. Also note that academic definitions of professional autonomy (conceptual) do not always correspond to how such notions are employed in daily usage (performative). The cardiothoracic surgeons spoken to frequently drew upon a competitive/professional discourse in relation to surgical suture, enriched with examples and in far less abstract manner than those that posited professional autonomy as the main cause of change resistance.

Competitive/professional discourse

He [Roger Federer] goes down in the history books as the best professional tennis player ever. And that is because he has spent endless hours on the court practising and refining his skills. His tennis racket has become a natural extension of his arm. His tennis racket is his instrument. My instrument is my suture … suture and needles. (Cardiothoracic surgeon)

I didn't just go to medical school. After that I have done my residency, with a Ph.D., et cetera . All in all an extra 10 years. Everything that you are supposed to do, I did that, to become the best possible professional and to be able to deliver the best possible care for the patient. This is not some quick course. This is really … six years of medical school and then postgraduate for another six years. That isn't nothing. You have to be motivated, driven and persistent. And you hope to end up working for an institution that enables you to profess your passion. (Cardiothoracic surgeon)

It is important to note that the cardiothoracic surgeons quoted here did not exclusively drew upon this competitive/professional discourse that implies sacrifice, persistence and drive. But when they did, they challenged the economic/managerial discourse without actually talking about finances. In a way, to put it bluntly, money from this perspective should not be an object, or, at least, it should never be a priority.

Discourse on patient care

Let's say … I am going to operate your father with XXX [brand name of new supplier], but I am not used to working with that suture. It curls more and the needles go blunt quicker and the needles are square and therefore more difficult to position in the needle holder. So I need to focus more and I need to stress … I need to work [with the utmost precision]. Well, I am curious whether that manager would let me operate on his father. (Cardiothoracic surgeon)

Surgical suture was constructed as a lifeline on which the cardiothoracic surgeon relies on behalf of the patient. Replacing surgical suture is perceived as an unacceptable potential cause of failure. So whereas the competitive/professional discourse places the concerns and aspirations of the medical professional front and centre, this discourse on patient care places the concerns of the patient front and centre by means of the medical professional as his advocate. Implicit in both discourses, though, is that money should not be an object. As such, these discourses are counter-discourses to the economic/managerial discourse that legitimizes replacing surgical suture by that of a cheaper brand.

Discourse on safety and quality

So many things can go wrong. So changing surgical suture presents an additional risk. We prefer to operate a patient's heart only once and then never again. (Cardiothoracic surgeon)

If medical specialists use the argument of safety, patient safety, then you are finished. As an executive it is over. You start thinking, what if he is right; and I force him to work with this suture and something goes horribly wrong. He only has to say: “I told you it wasn't safe!” And then you, as an executive, are gone. Of course, you have to challenge and not be naive, but ultimately it is a show stopper … that safety argument. Another factor was, that my colleague in the Executive Board and I are not [cardiothoracic] surgeons. So we could not weigh in from our own experience. (Chairman of the Board)

The best of the best: being part of an elite professional group

Those boys [cardiothoracic surgeons] – or men I should say – are so bloody good in what they do. And you [as a nurse operating theatre] also want to be part of that, to pass cum laude . They stand for their profession, each time they give it a hundred and ten percent. And they perform procedures that no one else dares to perform. For us it is a joy to assist them. You share in the pride and get into that special workflow. (Nurse, operating theatre)

Well, our group of cardiac surgeons consists of individuals with a unique history at this hospital. They are not known to be particularly dynamic or flexible. Let's keep it at that. So, to get them on board with our plans requires some extra effort on our part. (Chairman of the Board)

I have studied and practiced endlessly. And we [other cardiothoracic specialists] frequently consult one another. But sometimes when I have to decide fast, during a very complex operation, medicine is almost more like an art-form. I feel when something might go wrong and I anticipate what to do. And when someone later asks me: “Why did you do this or that?”, of course I will formulate an answer, but in reality I acted upon the experience I have and on what I have learned from my mentors. In these moments everyone in my team knows what to do. I do not even have to tell them. However, I cannot accept that someone who has no idea what we are doing, decides that I have to work with that suture. (Cardiothoracic surgeon)

The prediction that deeply embodied practices that are learned over time through mentorship, explicit instruction and implicit attunement of the senses are not to be changed by outsiders in a pick-and-choose manner (e.g. Voestermans and Verheggen, 2013 ) is confirmed by this surgeon.

As Willig noted: “It is important to examine the relationship between a source's and a recipient's discursive frames in order to understand the impact of a message” ( 1998 , p. 385). This paper is not intended as a reproach to either hospital management or those working within the cardiac surgery department. On the one hand, hospital management was faced with the challenge of cutting costs and making the provision of good health care sustainable. On the other hand, cardiothoracic surgeons were trying to keep the environment of the operation room as controlled and predictable as possible. They do not want any additional risks, especially if they feel that the risks have been imposed upon them. Just the fact that the new surgical suture had slightly different qualities – on which everyone agreed – made it an unacceptable change for the surgeons. Both perspectives make sense and, surprisingly, almost all research participants were able to eloquently elaborate on the opposing perspectives. However, it appeared as if the emotions and feelings that were immediately triggered within particular arrangements prevented the research participants from acting upon those insights. The result was a power struggle, and eventually management gave in to the cardiac surgeons by accepting a different supplier.

The failure described probably could have been prevented if those who initiated the change and implemented the transition had accounted for the particular social arrangements in which surgeons from different specialities operate. It could probably also have been prevented if the emotions and feelings that were expressed were acted upon in a timely manner, instead of being dismissed by implicitly juxtaposing emotional expression against rational decision-making. Cardiothoracic surgeons constitute a group with a distinct history and responsibility and to whom surgical suture is a crucial tool. Suture as a tactile element in their day-to-day work environment is embedded within a complex social arrangement that ties elements of risk avoidance, professional accountability and direct patient care together in a way that feels secure. The feelings triggered within this arrangement are genuinely felt and, therefore, are as real as the financial cost of surgical suture and evidence-based standards of its quality. These feelings need to be accounted for with the same managerial fervour. For hospital management this means that in planning a consistent overall approach to change in their institution, they must consider exceptions to that approach. It might be an uncomfortable message, but managers here to some extent reached the limits of changeability; the thinnest of sutures used to operate on people's hearts are beyond their reach, so to speak.

There are other aspects that need to be accounted for, that fall beyond the immediate scope of this research, but which nonetheless need to be mentioned to give a more complete picture. First, the main channel by which hospital management communicated about the tendering procedure, the verification process, the actual introduction, trial sessions and workshops was by email. One surgeon confided that he was too busy to systematically go through his emails and, due to a recent reorganization, had lost his personal secretary. The annoyances arising from different cost-cutting operations were thus accumulating. Secondly, although hospital management assumed that it had adequately communicated about and during the transition to new suture, some surgeons felt being presented with a fait accompli . Management had failed to ensure that the surgeons had received the necessary communications, and the surgeons did not acknowledge that they had indeed received them. This led to miscommunication and to further polarization. This was especially relevant because cardiothoracic surgeons had previously mentioned their concerns about the use of specific cardiac surgical sutures and were nevertheless then confronted with the new suture. The surgeons felt overpowered and had the impression of not being listened to. This resulted in some cardiothoracic surgeons deciding to present hospital management with a fait accompli in return by framing suture as a life-or-death matter and making the management responsible for the possibility of bad results that could be related to the sutures. Lastly, because of this escalation, emotions ran even higher, and interviewees on both sides frequently blamed each other for not having their facts straight. Change practitioners would do well to acknowledge these emotions and feelings, without dismissing them or juxtaposing them against reason and facts. It is a big mistake to view addressing feelings and emotions as simply the “soft” side of change management (see also: Steigenberger, 2015 ) or to superimpose labels on them too quickly.

In conclusion, we have demonstrated that even if all basic principles of change management have been applied in the usual way, procedures may escalate to an emotional level, eventually leading to a counterproductive deadlock. These emotions and feelings should be anticipated by thorough communication between all parties involved. Should they still arise, these emotions need to be accounted for and acted upon bilaterally in a non-judgemental and empathic manner to make informed decisions about pushing forward with a change initiative and, if so, guide its further implementation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Respondents targeted through maximum variation sampling

Summary discursive constructions, discourses and subject positions

The quotations are translated as the interviews were conducted in Dutch.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all research subjects, on both sides of the aisle, for their participation in this case study on a topic that involves them deeply into their professional groups. Also, we thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback on an earlier draft.

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Evolution of vegetation cover and impacts of climate change and human activities in arid regions of Northwest China: a Mu Us Sandy Land case

• Published: 18 March 2024

Cite this article

• Jing Lin 1 ,
• Wenhao Bo 1 ,
• Xinping Dong 1 ,
• Ruiwan Zhang 1 ,
• Junping Yan 2 &
• Tao Chen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9162-4078 1 , 3  

Studying the vegetation dynamics and driving mechanisms in ecologically fragile areas is crucial for understanding the process of ecosystem evolution and achieving sustainable development. This study focused on the entire Mu Us Sandy Land (MUSL) and utilized the variation coefficient, trend analysis, and Hurst index to investigate the spatio-temporal variation in fractional vegetation cover (FVC) and its sustainability characteristic from 2000 to 2020. Meanwhile, residual analysis was employed to separate the impact of climatic factors such as temperature and precipitation, as well as anthropogenic factors, on FVC change. The results showed that FVC of MUSL was lower in the northwest and higher in the southeast. Over the past 21 years, the average annual FVC value increased from a low of 0.3486 in 2000 to a high of 0.6186 in 2018, with a growth rate of 0.0996/10a. Overall, the vegetation condition of MUSL has improved, with about 70.10% of the region having a significant increase in FVC, mainly concentrated in the southeast, while FVC decrease mainly occurred in the northwest. However, the majority of these FVC changes exhibited an anti-persistence characteristic, indicating that future FVC growth in many regions was fraught with uncertainty. Human activities accounted for 70.71% of FVC change, while climate factors contributed only 29.29%, indicating that the former dominated this ecological process. In this arid and fragile area, precipitation had a greater impact on FVC than temperature. This study illustrates the dominant role of ecological engineering in vegetation greening in MUSL, while also pointing out the unsustainable risk of the restoration mode, which provides a theoretical basis for adjusting and optimizing future management strategies.

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This research was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [2452018143].

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Lin, J., Bo, W., Dong, X. et al. Evolution of vegetation cover and impacts of climate change and human activities in arid regions of Northwest China: a Mu Us Sandy Land case. Environ Dev Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-024-04704-4

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Change Management: From Theory to Practice

Jeffrey phillips.

1 University Libraries, Florida State University, 116 Honors Way, Tallahassee, FL 32306 USA

James D. Klein

2 Department of Educational Psychology & Learning Systems, College of Education, Florida State University, Stone Building-3205F, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4453 USA

This article presents a set of change management strategies found across several models and frameworks and identifies how frequently change management practitioners implement these strategies in practice. We searched the literature to identify 15 common strategies found in 16 different change management models and frameworks. We also created a questionnaire based on the literature and distributed it to change management practitioners. Findings suggest that strategies related to communication, stakeholder involvement, encouragement, organizational culture, vision, and mission should be used when implementing organizational change.

Organizations must change to survive. There are many approaches to influence change; these differences require change managers to consider various strategies that increase acceptance and reduce barriers. A change manager is responsible for planning, developing, leading, evaluating, assessing, supporting, and sustaining a change implementation. Change management consists of models and strategies to help employees accept new organizational developments.

Change management practitioners and academic researchers view organizational change differently (Hughes, 2007 ; Pollack & Pollack, 2015 ). Saka ( 2003 ) states, “there is a gap between what the rational-linear change management approach prescribes and what change agents do” (p. 483). This disconnect may make it difficult to determine the suitability and appropriateness of using different techniques to promote change (Pollack & Pollack, 2015 ). Hughes ( 2007 ) thinks that practitioners and academics may have trouble communicating because they use different terms. Whereas academics use the terms, models, theories, and concepts, practitioners use tools and techniques. A tool is a stand-alone application, and a technique is an integrated approach (Dale & McQuater, 1998 ). Hughes ( 2007 ) expresses that classifying change management tools and techniques can help academics identify what practitioners do in the field and evaluate the effectiveness of practitioners’ implementations.

There is little empirical evidence that supports a preferred change management model (Hallencreutz & Turner, 2011 ). However, there are many similar strategies found across change management models (Raineri, 2011 ). Bamford and Forrester’s ( 2003 ) case study showed that “[change] managers in a company generally ignored the popular change literature” (p. 560). The authors followed Pettigrew’s ( 1987 ) suggestions that change managers should not use abstract theories; instead, they should relate change theories to the context of the change. Neves’ ( 2009 ) exploratory factor analysis of employees experiencing the implementation of a new performance appraisal system at a public university suggested that (a) change appropriateness (if the employee felt the change was beneficial to the organization) was positively related with affective commitment (how much the employee liked their job), and (b) affective commitment mediated the relationship between change appropriateness and individual change (how much the employee shifted to the new system). It is unlikely that there is a universal change management approach that works in all settings (Saka, 2003 ). Because change is chaotic, one specific model or framework may not be useful in multiple contexts (Buchanan & Boddy, 1992 ; Pettigrew & Whipp, 1991 ). This requires change managers to consider various approaches for different implementations (Pettigrew, 1987 ). Change managers may face uncertainties that cannot be addressed by a planned sequence of steps (Carnall, 2007 ; Pettigrew & Whipp, 1991 ). Different stakeholders within an organization may complete steps at different times (Pollack & Pollack, 2015 ). Although there may not be one perspective change management approach, many models and frameworks consist of similar change management strategies.

Anderson and Ackerman Anderson ( 2001 ) discuss the differences between change frameworks and change process models. They state that a change framework identifies topics that are relevant to the change and explains the procedures that organizations should acknowledge during the change. However, the framework does not provide details about how to accomplish the steps of the change or the sequence in which the change manager should perform the steps. Additionally, Anderson and Ackerman Anderson ( 2001 ) explain that change process models describe what actions are necessary to accomplish the change and the order in which to facilitate the actions. Whereas frameworks may identify variables or theories required to promote change, models focus on the specific processes that lead to change. Based on the literature, we define a change strategy as a process or action from a model or framework. Multiple models and frameworks contain similar strategies. Change managers use models and frameworks contextually; some change management strategies may be used across numerous models and frameworks.

The purpose of this article is to present a common set of change management strategies found across numerous models and frameworks and identify how frequently change management practitioners implement these common strategies in practice. We also compare current practice with models and frameworks from the literature. Some change management models and frameworks have been around for decades and others are more recent. This comparison may assist practitioners and theorists to consider different strategies that fall outside a specific model.

Common Strategies in the Change Management Literature

We examined highly-cited publications ( n  > 1000 citations) from the last 20 years, business websites, and university websites to select organizational change management models and frameworks. First, we searched two indexes—Google Scholar and Web of Science’s Social Science Citation Index. We used the following keywords in both indexes: “change management” OR “organizational change” OR “organizational development” AND (models or frameworks). Additionally, we used the same search terms in a Google search to identify models mentioned on university and business websites. This helped us identify change management models that had less presence in popular research. We only included models and frameworks from our search results that were mentioned on multiple websites. We reached saturation when multiple publications stopped identifying new models and frameworks.

After we identified the models and frameworks, we analyzed the original publications by the authors to identify observable strategies included in the models and frameworks. We coded the strategies by comparing new strategies with our previously coded strategies, and we combined similar strategies or created a new strategy. Our list of strategies was not exhaustive, but we included the most common strategies found in the publications. Finally, we omitted publications that did not provide details about the change management strategies. Although many of these publications were highly cited and identified change implementation processes or phases, the authors did not identify a specific strategy.

Table ​ Table1 1 shows the 16 models and frameworks that we analyzed and the 15 common strategies that we identified from this analysis. Ackerman-Anderson and Anderson ( 2001 ) believe that it is important for process models to consider organizational imperatives as well as human dynamics and needs. Therefore, the list of strategies considers organizational imperatives such as create a vision for the change that aligns with the organization’s mission and strategies regarding human dynamics and needs such as listen to employees’ concerns about the change. We have presented the strategies in order of how frequently the strategies appear in the models and frameworks. Table ​ Table1 1 only includes strategies found in at least six of the models or frameworks.

Common strategies in the change management literature

A = ADKAR (Hiatt, 2006 ); AA = Ackerman Anderson and Anderson ( 2001 ); B = Bridges ( 1991 ); BB = Buchanan and Boddy ( 1992 ); BH = Beckhard and Harris ( 1987 ); C = Carnall ( 2007 ); CW = Cummings and Worley ( 1993 ); FB = French and Bell ( 1999 ); GE = GE CAP model (Neri et al., 2008 ; Polk, 2011 ); K = Kotter ( 2012 ); KSJ = Kanter et al. ( 1992 ); L = Lewin’s Three-step model (Bakari et al., 2017 ; Lewin, 1951 ); LK = Luecke ( 2003 ); M = McKinsey’s 7-S framework (Cox et al., 2019 ; Waterman et al., 1980 ); N = Nadler and Tushman ( 1997 ); PW = Pettigrew and Whipp (1993)

Strategies Used by Change Managers

We developed an online questionnaire to determine how frequently change managers used the strategies identified in our review of the literature. The Qualtrics-hosted survey consisted of 28 questions including sliding-scale, multiple-choice, and Likert-type items. Demographic questions focused on (a) how long the participant had been involved in the practice of change management, (b) how many change projects the participant had led, (c) the types of industries in which the participant led change implementations, (d) what percentage of job responsibilities involved working as a change manager and a project manager, and (e) where the participant learned to conduct change management. Twenty-one Likert-type items asked how often the participant used the strategies identified by our review of common change management models and frameworks. Participants could select never, sometimes, most of the time, and always. The Cronbach’s Alpha of the Likert-scale questions was 0.86.

The procedures for the questionnaire followed the steps suggested by Gall et al. ( 2003 ). The first steps were to define the research objectives, select the sample, and design the questionnaire format. The fourth step was to pretest the questionnaire. We conducted cognitive laboratory interviews by sending the questionnaire and interview questions to one person who was in the field of change management, one person who was in the field of performance improvement, and one person who was in the field of survey development (Fowler, 2014 ). We met with the reviewers through Zoom to evaluate the questionnaire by asking them to read the directions and each item for clarity. Then, reviewers were directed to point out mistakes or areas of confusion. Having multiple people review the survey instruments improved the reliability of the responses (Fowler, 2014 ).

We used purposeful sampling to distribute the online questionnaire throughout the following organizations: the Association for Talent Development (ATD), Change Management Institute (CMI), and the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI). We also launched a call for participation to department chairs of United States universities who had Instructional Systems Design graduate programs with a focus on Performance Improvement. We used snowball sampling to gain participants by requesting that the department chairs forward the questionnaire to practitioners who had led at least one organizational change.

Table ​ Table2 2 provides a summary of the characteristics of the 49 participants who completed the questionnaire. Most had over ten years of experience practicing change management ( n  = 37) and had completed over ten change projects ( n  = 32). The participants learned how to conduct change management on-the-job ( n  = 47), through books ( n  = 31), through academic journal articles ( n  = 22), and from college or university courses ( n  = 20). The participants had worked in 13 different industries.

Characteristics of participants

( n  = 49)

Table ​ Table3 3 shows how frequently participants indicated that they used the change management strategies included on the questionnaire. Forty or more participants said they used the following strategies most often or always: (1) Asked members of senior leadership to support the change; (2) Listened to managers’ concerns about the change; (3) Aligned an intended change with an organization’s mission; (4) Listened to employees’ concerns about the change; (5) Aligned an intended change with an organization’s vision; (6) Created measurable short-term goals; (7) Asked managers for feedback to improve the change, and (8) Focused on organizational culture.

Strategies used by change managers

Table ​ Table4 4 identifies how frequently the strategies appeared in the models and frameworks and the rate at which practitioners indicated they used the strategies most often or always. The strategies found in the top 25% of both ( n  > 36 for practitioner use and n  > 11 in models and frameworks) focused on communication, including senior leadership and the employees in change decisions, aligning the change with the vision and mission of the organization, and focusing on organizational culture. Practitioners used several strategies more commonly than the literature suggested, especially concerning the topic of middle management. Practitioners focused on listening to middle managers’ concerns about the change, asking managers for feedback to improve the change, and ensuring that managers were trained to promote the change. Meanwhile, practitioners did not engage in the following strategies as often as the models and frameworks suggested that they should: provide all members of the organization with clear communication about the change, distinguish the differences between leadership and management, reward new behavior, and include employees in change decisions.

A comparison of the strategies used by practitioners to the strategies found in the literature

Common Strategies Used by Practitioners and Found in the Literature

The purpose of this article was to present a common set of change management strategies found across numerous models and frameworks and to identify how frequently change management practitioners implement these common strategies in practice. The five common change management strategies were the following: communicate about the change, involve stakeholders at all levels of the organization, focus on organizational culture, consider the organization’s mission and vision, and provide encouragement and incentives to change. Below we discuss our findings with an eye toward presenting a few key recommendations for change management.

Communicate About the Change

Communication is an umbrella term that can include messaging, networking, and negotiating (Buchanan & Boddy, 1992 ). Our findings revealed that communication is essential for change management. All the models and frameworks we examined suggested that change managers should provide members of the organization with clear communication about the change. It is interesting that approximately 33% of questionnaire respondents indicated that they sometimes, rather than always or most of the time, notified all members of the organization about the change. This may be the result of change managers communicating through organizational leaders. Instead of communicating directly with everyone in the organization, some participants may have used senior leadership, middle management, or subgroups to communicate the change. Messages sent to employees from leaders can effectively promote change. Regardless of who is responsible for communication, someone in the organization should explain why the change is happening (Connor et al., 2003 ; Doyle & Brady, 2018 ; Hiatt, 2006 ; Kotter, 2012 ) and provide clear communication throughout the entire change implementation (McKinsey & Company, 2008 ; Mento et al., 2002 ).

Involve Stakeholders at All Levels of the Organization

Our results indicate that change managers should involve senior leaders, managers, as well as employees during a change initiative. The items on the questionnaire were based on a review of common change management models and frameworks and many related to some form of stakeholder involvement. Of these strategies, over half were used often by 50% or more respondents. They focused on actions like gaining support from leaders, listening to and getting feedback from managers and employees, and adjusting strategies based on stakeholder input.

Whereas the models and frameworks often identified strategies regarding senior leadership and employees, it is interesting that questionnaire respondents indicated that they often implemented strategies involving middle management in a change implementation. This aligns with Bamford and Forrester’s ( 2003 ) research describing how middle managers are important communicators of change and provide an organization with the direction for the change. However, the participants did not develop managers into leaders as often as the literature proposed. Burnes and By ( 2012 ) expressed that leadership is essential to promote change and mention how the change management field has failed to focus on leadership as much as it should.

Focus on Organizational Culture

All but one of the models and frameworks we analyzed indicated that change managers should focus on changing the culture of an organization and more than 75% of questionnaire respondents revealed that they implemented this strategy always or most of the time. Organizational culture affects the acceptance of change. Changing the organizational culture can prevent employees from returning to the previous status quo (Bullock & Batten, 1985 ; Kotter, 2012 ; Mento et al., 2002 ). Some authors have different views on how to change an organization’s culture. For example, Burnes ( 2000 ) thinks that change managers should focus on employees who were resistant to the change while Hiatt ( 2006 ) suggests that change managers should replicate what strategies they used in the past to change the culture. Change managers require open support and commitment from managers to lead a culture change (Phillips, 2021 ).

In addition, Pless and Maak ( 2004 ) describe the importance of creating a culture of inclusion where diverse viewpoints help an organization reach its organizational objectives. Yet less than half of the participants indicated that they often focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Change managers should consider diverse viewpoints when implementing change, especially for organizations whose vision promotes a diverse and inclusive workforce.

Consider the Organization’s Mission and Vision

Several of the models and frameworks we examined mentioned that change managers should consider the mission and vision of the organization (Cummings & Worley, 1993 ; Hiatt, 2006 ; Kotter, 2012 ; Polk, 2011 ). Furthermore, aligning the change with the organization’s mission and vision were among the strategies most often implemented by participants. This was the second most common strategy both used by participants and found in the models and frameworks. A mission of an organization may include its beliefs, values, priorities, strengths, and desired public image (Cummings & Worley, 1993 ). Leaders are expected to adhere to a company’s values and mission (Strebel, 1996 ).

Provide Encouragement and Incentives to Change

Most of the change management models and frameworks suggested that organizations should reward new behavior, yet most respondents said they did not provide incentives to change. About 75% of participants did indicate that they frequently gave encouragement to employees about the change. The questionnaire may have confused participants by suggesting that they provide incentives before the change occurs. Additionally, respondents may have associated incentives with monetary compensation. Employee training can be considered an incentive, and many participants confirmed that they provided employees and managers with training. More information is needed to determine why the participants did not provide incentives and what the participants defined as rewards.

Future Conversations Between Practitioners and Researchers

Table ​ Table4 4 identified five strategies that practitioners used more often than the models and frameworks suggested and four strategies that were suggested more often by the models and frameworks than used by practitioners. One strategy that showed the largest difference was provided employees with incentives to implement the change. Although 81% of the selected models and frameworks suggested that practitioners should provide employees with incentives, only 25% of the practitioners identified that they provided incentives always and most of the time. Conversations between theorists and practitioners could determine if these differences occur because each group uses different terms (Hughes, 2007 ) or if practitioners just implement change differently than theorists suggest (Saka, 2003 ).

Additionally, conversations between theorists and practitioners may help promote improvements in the field of change management. For example, practitioners were split on how often they promoted DEI, and the selected models and frameworks did not focus on DEI in change implementations. Conversations between the two groups would help theorists understand what practitioners are doing to advance the field of change management. These conversations may encourage theorists to modify their models and frameworks to include modern approaches to change.

Limitations

The models and frameworks included in this systematic review were found through academic research and websites on the topic of change management. We did not include strategies contained on websites from change management organizations. Therefore, the identified strategies could skew towards approaches favored by theorists instead of practitioners. Additionally, we used specific publications to identify the strategies found in the models and frameworks. Any amendments to the cited models or frameworks found in future publications could not be included in this research.

We distributed this questionnaire in August 2020. Several participants mentioned that they were not currently conducting change management implementations because of global lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because it can take years to complete a change management implementation (Phillips, 2021 ), this research does not describe how COVID-19 altered the strategies used by the participants. Furthermore, participants were not provided with definitions of the strategies. Their interpretations of the strategies may differ from the definitions found in the academic literature.

Future Research

Future research should expand upon what strategies the practitioners use to determine (a) how the practitioners use the strategies, and (b) the reasons why practitioners use certain strategies. Participants identified several strategies that they did not use as often as the literature suggested (e.g., provide employees with incentives and adjust the change implementation because of reactions from employees). Future research should investigate why practitioners are not implementing these strategies often.

Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic may have changed how practitioners implemented change management strategies. Future research should investigate if practitioners have added new strategies or changed the frequency in which they identified using the strategies found in this research.

Our aim was to identify a common set of change management strategies found across several models and frameworks and to identify how frequently change management practitioners implement these strategies in practice. While our findings relate to specific models, frameworks, and strategies, we caution readers to consider the environment and situation where the change will occur. Therefore, strategies should not be selected for implementation based on their inclusion in highly cited models and frameworks. Our study identified strategies found in the literature and used by change managers, but it does not predict that specific strategies are more likely to promote a successful organizational change. Although we have presented several strategies, we do not suggest combining these strategies to create a new framework. Instead, these strategies should be used to promote conversation between practitioners and theorists. Additionally, we do not suggest that one model or framework is superior to others because it contains more strategies currently used by practitioners. Evaluating the effectiveness of a model or framework by how many common strategies it contains gives an advantage to models and frameworks that contain the most strategies. Instead, this research identifies what practitioners are doing in the field to steer change management literature towards the strategies that are most used to promote change.

Declarations

This research does not represent conflicting interests or competing interests. The research was not funded by an outside agency and does not represent the interests of an outside party.

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Contributor Information

Jeffrey Phillips, Email: ude.usf@spillihpbj .

James D. Klein, Email: ude.usf@nielkj .

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Amazon Change Management Case Study

Change is an essential component of any successful organization, and in today’s rapidly evolving business environment, the ability to manage change effectively is more critical than ever. 

One company that has demonstrated exceptional change management skills is Amazon, which has undergone numerous transformations in its nearly three decades of operation. 

From its early days as an online bookseller to its current status as a global technology and retail giant, Amazon has had to adapt to changing market conditions and customer demands. 

In this blog post, we will examine Amazon’s change management practices and explore a case study of the company’s acquisition of Whole Foods to understand how Amazon manages change on a large scale. 

By analyzing Amazon’s change management strategies, we hope to provide insights that can help other organizations navigate change and remain competitive in today’s dynamic business environment.

Overview of Amazon History and Growth 

Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos as an online bookstore in Seattle, Washington. Initially, the company operated out of Bezos’ garage and was primarily focused on selling books online. However, Amazon quickly expanded its offerings to include a wide range of products, including electronics, toys, clothing, and more.

In 1997, Amazon went public, and by the end of the year, it had grown to serve customers in all 50 US states and more than 160 countries. Throughout the 2000s, Amazon continued to expand its business, launching new services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2006 and the Amazon Kindle e-reader in 2007.

By 2010, Amazon had become the world’s largest online retailer, offering millions of products to customers around the world. In recent years, Amazon has continued to grow and diversify its business, expanding into new markets like groceries, healthcare, and entertainment. Today, Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, with a market capitalization of over $1.5 trillion and a workforce of more than 1.3 million employees.

Need of Change Management at Amazon 

As Amazon has grown and evolved over the years, the need for effective change management has become increasingly important. Amazon operates in a fast-paced, rapidly changing industry, and the company must continually adapt to new technologies, shifting customer needs, and changing market conditions. Without effective change management, Amazon could struggle to keep pace with these changes and risk falling behind competitors.

Additionally, Amazon’s size and scale can make change management particularly challenging. With more than 1.3 million employees and operations in numerous countries around the world, implementing changes across the organization can be complex and time-consuming. Effective change management processes are essential to ensure that changes are communicated clearly and effectively to all stakeholders, and that the changes are implemented in a way that minimizes disruption to the business.

Overall, the need for change management at Amazon is driven by the company’s growth and the fast-paced, ever-changing nature of the business environment in which it operates. By effectively managing change, Amazon can continue to stay ahead of the curve and remain a leader in the global marketplace.

Amazon’s Acquisition of Whole Food

In 2017, Amazon announced its acquisition of Whole Foods, a high-end grocery store chain known for its focus on organic and locally-sourced products. The $13.7 billion acquisition marked Amazon’s entry into the grocery market, a move that was seen as a potential game-changer in the industry.

The acquisition was met with mixed reactions from investors, analysts, and industry experts. Some saw the move as a smart strategic play that would give Amazon a foothold in the lucrative grocery market, while others were skeptical of the challenges that Amazon would face in managing a physical retail operation.

Despite the challenges, Amazon moved forward with the acquisition, and in August 2017, the deal was completed. Amazon quickly began to integrate Whole Foods into its business operations, including implementing changes to the store’s pricing, product offerings, and supply chain. The acquisition also paved the way for new innovations in the grocery industry, such as the launch of Amazon Go, a cashierless convenience store that uses AI and computer vision technology to track purchases.

Analysis of change management process used by Amazon 

Amazon’s change management process during the acquisition of Whole Foods was thorough, well-planned, and executed effectively. By emphasizing communication, training, cultural integration, and flexibility, Amazon was able to successfully integrate Whole Foods into its business and begin to innovate in the grocery industry.

1. Planning: Amazon spent a significant amount of time planning for the acquisition and identifying the key changes that would need to be made to integrate Whole Foods into its business. This included identifying potential synergies, determining how to integrate supply chains and pricing strategies, and assessing the impact of the acquisition on employees and customers.

2. Communication: Effective communication was a critical component of the change management process. Amazon made a concerted effort to communicate the changes to all stakeholders, including employees, customers, and investors. The company emphasized its commitment to maintaining Whole Foods’ brand identity and values, while also highlighting the potential benefits of the acquisition for customers and employees.

3. Training and education: To ensure that employees were prepared for the changes, Amazon provided extensive training and education programs to Whole Foods employees. This included training on new technology, changes to store operations, and other aspects of the integration process.

4. Flexibility and agility: Amazon was able to be flexible and agile in its approach to the change management process. The company made adjustments as needed, based on feedback from employees and customers, and was willing to pivot its strategies when necessary

5. Cultural integration: Amazon recognized the importance of cultural integration in the change management process. The company worked to integrate the cultures of the two organizations and to ensure that Whole Foods employees felt valued and supported during the transition.

Success of change management process 

The change management process used by Amazon during the acquisition of Whole Foods was largely successful. The following are some indicators of the success of the change management process:

1. Smooth integration: Amazon was able to integrate Whole Foods into its business smoothly and quickly, with minimal disruptions to store operations or customer experience. The company was able to implement changes to pricing, supply chain, and product offerings without significant negative impacts.

2. Employee satisfaction : Amazon prioritized the needs and concerns of Whole Foods employees during the integration process, providing extensive training and education, and working to integrate the cultures of the two organizations. This approach contributed to high levels of employee satisfaction and engagement, and helped to maintain employee loyalty to the Whole Foods brand.

3. Innovation: The acquisition of Whole Foods paved the way for new innovations in the grocery industry, such as the launch of Amazon Go and the expansion of Amazon Fresh. These innovations have helped to position Amazon as a major player in the grocery market and have contributed to the company’s overall growth.

4. Financial success: The acquisition of Whole Foods has been a financial success for Amazon, with the company seeing significant growth in its grocery business in the years since the acquisition. This financial success is a strong indicator of the effectiveness of the change management process.

These indicators suggest that Amazon’s change management process was effective in managing the challenges of integrating a large and complex organization into its business and positioning the company for continued growth in the grocery industry

Final Words  

The success of Amazon’s change management process during the acquisition of Whole Foods highlights the importance of effective change management in modern business. With technology and the competitive landscape changing rapidly, businesses must be able to adapt quickly to stay relevant and competitive. Effective change management is essential for ensuring that organizations can manage the challenges of change and position themselves for success in a rapidly changing business environment.

Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods serves as a valuable case study on the importance of effective change management in modern business. By emphasizing planning, communication, training, cultural integration, and flexibility, Amazon was able to successfully integrate Whole Foods into its business and position itself for continued growth in the grocery industry. The lessons learned from this case study can serve as a valuable guide for future change management efforts in both Amazon and other organizations.

About The Author

Tahir Abbas

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How generative AI can help banks manage risk and compliance

Generative AI (gen AI) is poised to become a catalyst for the next wave of productivity gains  across industries, with financial services very much among them. From modeling analytics to automating manual tasks to synthesizing unstructured content, the technology is already changing how banking functions operate, including how financial institutions manage risks and stay compliant with regulations.

It’s imperative for risk and compliance functions to put guardrails around gen AI’s use in an organization. However, the tech can help the functions themselves improve efficiency and effectiveness. In this article, we discuss how banks can build a flexible, powerful approach to using gen AI in risk and compliance management and identify some crucial topics that function leaders should consider.

Seizing the promise of gen AI

Gen AI has the potential to revolutionize the way that banks manage risks over the next three to five years. It could allow functions to move away from task-oriented activities toward partnering with business lines on strategic risk prevention and having controls at the outset in new customer journeys, often referred to as a “ shift left ”  approach . That, in turn, would free up risk professionals to advise businesses on new product development and strategic business decisions, explore emerging risk trends and scenarios, strengthen resilience, and improve risk and control processes proactively.

These advances could lead to the creation of AI- and gen-AI-powered risk intelligence centers that serve all lines of defense  (LODs): business and operations, the compliance and risk functions, and audits. Such a center would provide automated reporting, improved risk transparency, higher efficiency in risk-related decision making, and partial automation in drafting and updating policies and procedures to reflect changing regulatory requirements. It would act as a reliable and efficient source of information, enabling risk managers to make informed decisions swiftly and accurately.

For instance, McKinsey has developed a  gen AI virtual expert  that can provide tailored answers based on the firm’s proprietary information and assets. Banks’ risk functions and their stakeholders can develop similar tools that scan transactions with other banks, potential red flags, market news, asset prices, and more to influence risk decisions. These virtual experts can also collect data and evaluate climate risk assessments to answer counterparty questions.

Finally, gen AI could facilitate better coordination between the first and second LODs in the organization while maintaining the governance structure across all three. The improved coordination would enable enhanced monitoring and control mechanisms, thereby strengthening the organization’s risk management framework.

Emerging applications of gen AI in risk and compliance

Of the many promising applications of gen AI for financial institutions, there’s a set of candidates that banks are exploring for a first wave of adoption: regulatory compliance, financial crime, credit risk, modeling and data analytics, cyber risk, and climate risk. Overall, we see applications of gen AI across risk and compliance functions through three use case archetypes.

Through a virtual expert , a user can ask a question and receive a generated summary answer that’s built from long-form documents and unstructured data. With manual process automation , gen AI performs time-consuming tasks. With code acceleration , gen AI updates or translates old code or writes entirely new code. All these archetypes can have roles in the key responsibilities of risk and compliance:

• Regulatory compliance . Enterprises are using gen AI as a virtual regulatory and policy expert by training it to answer questions about regulations, company policies, and guidelines. The tech can also compare policies, regulations, and operating procedures. As a code accelerator, it can check code for compliance misalignment and gaps. It can automate checking of regulatory compliance and provide alerts for potential breaches.
• Financial crime . Gen AI can generate suspicious-activity reports based on customer and transaction information. It can also automate the creation and update of customers’ risk ratings based on changes in know-your-customer attributes. By generating and improving code to detect suspicious activity and analyze transactions, the tech can improve transaction monitoring.
• Credit risk . By summarizing customer information (for example, transactions with other banks) to inform credit decisions, gen AI can help accelerate banks’ end-to-end credit process. Following a credit decision, it can draft the credit memo and contract. Financial institutions are using the tech to generate credit risk reports and extract customer insights from credit memos. Gen AI can generate code to source and analyze credit data to gain a view into customers’ risk profiles and generate default and loss probability estimates through models.
• Modeling and data analytics . Gen AI can accelerate the migration of legacy programming languages, such as the switch from SAS and COBOL to Python. It can also automate the monitoring of model performance and generate alerts if metrics fall outside tolerance levels. Companies are also using gen AI to draft model documentation and validation reports.
• Cyber risk . By checking cybersecurity vulnerabilities, gen AI can use natural language to generate code for detection rules and accelerate secure code development. It can be useful in “red teaming” (simulating adversarial strategies and testing attack scenarios). The tech can also serve as a virtual expert for investigating security data. It can make risk detection smarter by speeding and aggregating security insights and trends from security events and behavior anomalies.
• Climate risk . As a code accelerator, gen AI can suggest code snippets, facilitate unit testing, and assist physical-risk visualization with high-resolution maps. It can automate data collection for counterparty transition risk assessments and generate early-warning signals based on trigger events. As a virtual expert, gen AI can automatically generate reports on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) topics and sustainability sections of annual reports (see sidebar, “How generative AI can speed financial institutions’ climate risk assessments”).

How generative AI can speed financial institutions’ climate risk assessments

Risk functions can benefit from generative AI (gen AI) across a variety of analyses. In the case of climate risk assessments, the technology—via tools based on generative pretrained transformers—can instantaneously draw from multiple, lengthy reports and distill answers from source materials (exhibit).

In addition, gen AI can provide support to relationship managers to accelerate the assessment of climate risk for their counterparties. It can automatically generate syntheses of counterparty transition plans and compare them against actual emissions to evaluate progress toward goals.

Beyond measurement, gen AI can aid climate impact analysis by ultimately automating reporting on environmental, social, and governance topics. It can aid risk by automating climate risk drafts, and it can spur growth by using customer data to personalize green financial products.

Consider the benefits of gen AI automation in helping customers move to net zero. The tech can identify market trends and environmental impact from years of company reports. In turn, financial institutions can use that new information to find investment opportunities.

Once companies have embedded gen AI in these roles and functions, they have seen a second wave of emerging use cases across other aspects of risk management. Gen AI can streamline enterprise risk by synthesizing enterprise-risk-management summaries from existing data and reports. It can help accelerate the internal capital adequacy assessment process and model capital adequacy by sourcing relevant data. Banks can also use it to summarize risk positions and draft risk reports and executive briefings for senior management.

Another area in which gen AI can play an important role is operational risk. Banks can use it for operational automation of controls, monitoring, and incident detection. It can also automatically draft risk and control self-assessments or evaluate existing ones for quality.

Key considerations in gen AI adoption

While several compelling use cases exist in which gen AI can propel productivity, prioritizing them is critical to realizing value while adopting the tech responsibly and sustainably. We see three critical dimensions that risk leaders can assess to determine prioritization of use cases and maximize impact (exhibit).

Chief risk officers can base their decisions on assessments across qualitative and quantitative dimensions of impact, risk, and feasibility. This process includes aligning with their banks’ overall visions for gen AI and associated guardrails, understanding relevant regulations (such as the EU AI Act), and assessing data sensitivity. All leaders need to be aware of the novel risks associated with this new tech. These risks can be broadly divided into eight categories:

• impaired fairness, when the output of a gen AI model may be inherently biased against a particular group of users
• intellectual property infringement, such as copyright violations and plagiarism incidents, as foundation models typically leverage internet-based data
• privacy concerns, such as unauthorized public disclosure of personal or sensitive information
• malicious use, such as dissemination of false content and use of gen AI by criminals to create false identities, orchestrate phishing attacks, or scam customers
• security threats, when vulnerabilities within gen AI systems can be breached or exploited
• performance and “explainability” risks, such as models providing factually incorrect answers and outdated information
• strategic risks through noncompliance with ESG standards or regulations, creating societal or reputational risks
• third-party risks, such as leakage of proprietary data to the public realm through the use of third-party tools

Winning strategies for planning a gen AI journey

Organizations that can extract value from gen AI should use a focused, top-down approach to start the journey. Given the scarcity of talent to scale gen AI capabilities, organizations should start with three to five high-priority risk and compliance use cases that align with their strategic priorities. They can execute these use cases in three to six months, followed by an estimation of business impact. Scaling the applications will require the development of a gen AI ecosystem that focuses on seven areas:

• a catalog of production-ready, reusable gen AI services and solutions (use cases) that can be easily plugged into a range of business scenarios and applications across the banking value chain
• a secure, gen-AI-ready tech stack that supports hybrid-cloud deployments to enable support for unstructured data, vector embedding, machine learning training, execution, and pre- and postlaunch processing
• integration with enterprise-grade foundation models and tools to enable fit-for-purpose selection and orchestration across open and proprietary models
• automation of supporting tools, including MLOps (machine learning operations), data, and processing pipelines, to accelerate the development, release, and maintenance of gen AI solutions
• governance and talent models that readily deploy cross-functional expertise empowered to collaborate and exchange knowledge (such as language, natural-language processing, and reinforcement learning from human feedback, prompt engineers, cloud experts, AI product leaders, and legal and regulatory experts)
• process alignment for building gen AI to support the rapid and safe end-to-end experimentation, validation, and deployment of solutions
• a road map detailing the timeline for when various capabilities and solutions will be launched and scaled that aligns with the organization’s broader business strategy

At a time when companies in all sectors are experimenting with gen AI, organizations that fail to harness the tech’s potential are risking falling behind in efficiency, creativity, and customer engagement. At the outset, banks should keep in mind that the move from pilot to production takes significantly longer for gen AI than for classical AI and machine learning. In selecting use cases, risk and compliance functions may be tempted to use a siloed approach. Instead, they should align with an entire organization’s gen AI strategy and goals.

For gen AI adoption by risk and compliance groups to be effective and responsible, it is critical that these groups understand the need for new risk management and controls, the importance of data and tech demands, and the new talent and operating-model requirements.

Risk management and controls

With gen AI, a new level of risk management and control is necessary. Winning responsibly requires both defensive and offensive strategies. All organizations face inbound risks from gen AI, in addition to the risks from developing gen AI use cases and embedding gen AI into standard workplace tools. So banks will need to evolve their risk mitigation capabilities accordingly.

The first wave heavily focuses on human-in-the-loop reviews to ensure the accuracy of model responses. Using gen AI to check itself, such as through source citations and risk scores, can make human reviews more efficient. By moving gen AI guardrails to real time and doing away with human-in-the-loop reviews, some companies are already putting gen AI directly in front of their customers. To make this move, risk and compliance professionals can work with development team members to set the guardrails and create controls from the start.

Risk functions need to be vigilant to manage gen AI risks at the enterprise level. They can fulfill that obligation by taking the following steps:

• Ensure that everyone across the organization is aware of the risks inherent in gen AI, publishing dos and don’ts and setting risk guardrails.
• Update model identification criteria and model risk policy (in line with regulations such as the EU AI Act) to enable the identification and classification of gen AI models, and have an appropriate risk assessment and control framework in place.
• Develop gen AI risk and compliance experts who can work directly with frontline development teams on new products and customer journeys.
• Revisit existing know-your-customer, anti–money laundering, fraud, and cyber controls to ensure that they are still effective in a gen-AI-enabled world.

Data and tech demands

Banks shouldn’t underestimate the data and tech demands related to a gen AI system, which requires enormous amounts of both. Why? For one, the process of context embedding is crucial to ensure the accuracy and relevance of results. That process requires the input of appropriate data and addressing data quality issues. Moreover, the data on hand may be insufficient. Organizations may need to build or invest in labeled data sets to quantify, measure, and track the performance of gen AI applications based on task and use.

Data will serve as a competitive advantage in extracting value from gen AI. An organization looking to automate customer engagement using gen AI must have up-to-date, accurate data. Organizations with advanced data platforms will be the most effective at harnessing gen AI capabilities.

Talent and operating-model requirements

Since gen AI is a transformational technology requiring an organizational shift, organizations will need to understand the related talent requirements. Banks can embed operating-model changes into their culture and business-as-usual processes. They can train new users not only on how to use gen AI but also on its limitations and strengths. Assembling a team of “gen AI champions” can help shape, build, and scale adoption of this new tech.

We expect gen AI to empower banks’ entire risk and compliance functions in the future. This implies a profound culture change that will require all risk professionals to be conversant with the new tech, its capabilities, its limitations, and how to mitigate those limitations. Using gen AI will be a significant shift for all organizations, but those that navigate the delicate balance of harnessing the technology’s powers while managing the risks it poses can achieve significant productivity gains.

Rahul Agarwal is an associate partner in McKinsey’s New Jersey office, Andreas Kremer is a partner in the Berlin office, Ida Kristensen is a senior partner in the New York office, and Angela Luget is a partner in the London office.

The authors wish to thank Adrija Banerjee, Stephan Beitz, Adrian Foerster, Yilin Li, Anke Raufuss, Ibtesam Siddiqui, and Claudia Satrústegui for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by David Weidner, a senior editor in the Bay Area office.

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Research Roundup: How the Pandemic Changed Management

• Mark C. Bolino,
• Jacob M. Whitney,
• Sarah E. Henry

Lessons from 69 articles published in top management and applied psychology journals.

Researchers recently reviewed 69 articles focused on the management implications of the Covid-19 pandemic that were published between March 2020 and July 2023 in top journals in management and applied psychology. The review highlights the numerous ways in which employees, teams, leaders, organizations, and societies were impacted and offers lessons for managing through future pandemics or other events of mass disruption.

The recent pandemic disrupted life as we know it, including for employees and organizations around the world. To understand such changes, we recently reviewed 69 articles focused on the management implications of the Covid-19 pandemic. These papers were published between March 2020 and July 2023 in top journals in management and applied psychology.

• Mark C. Bolino is the David L. Boren Professor and the Michael F. Price Chair in International Business at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business. His research focuses on understanding how an organization can inspire its employees to go the extra mile without compromising their personal well-being.
• JW Jacob M. Whitney is a doctoral candidate in management at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business and an incoming assistant professor at Kennesaw State University. His research interests include leadership, teams, and organizational citizenship behavior.
• SH Sarah E. Henry is a doctoral candidate in management at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business and an incoming assistant professor at the University of South Florida. Her research interests include organizational citizenship behaviors, workplace interpersonal dynamics, and international management.

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