The Social Psychology of Change Management

Foreword

This book is about human beings, being social and organizational beings. And change. Following John Rijsman (1997) we see human beings in social contexts, socii, as subjects, that is, as (co-) producers of knowledge and understanding and thereby meaning, and not as the products or objects of it. As a consequence, we aim at positioning the human being as on the one hand an individual being and on the other hand as a social being, in a prudent and balanced, yet clear and structured way. Reconciliation, Fons Trompenaars’ way, is the preferred way; it’s neither ‘or-or’, nor ‘and-and’, but ‘through-through’. Several thinkers have recognized the duality of man, being an individual and social being. In 1956 William H. Whyte wrote ‘The Organization ...