A Change and Constancy Research and Management Framework for IT-related Organisational Change

Abstract

In Africa, and globally, organisations and Information Technology (IT) are pervasive and, hence, impact and influence millions of African livelihoods every day. Thus, facilitating successful IT and organisational structuring is paramount for organisational success and the interrelated and interdependent improvement of African livelihoods. The paper develops a research and management framework for IT-related organisational change, based on the explicit ontological position that change and constancy exist in cohesion, to facilitate successful IT and organisational structuring. The research problem is the absence of this ontological view in prominent IT-related organisational change theories. The paper is appropriately theoretical in nature and proceeds with discourse, reason and argumentation based on the academic literature. The paper analysed and evaluated the essential features of the developed framework in relation to prominent theories applicable to IT-related organisational change, which demonstrated that the framework augments each for further knowledge development and insight. The framework would assist managers to acknowledge, identify, analyse and address relevant aspects of change and constancy relating the external environment and the internal organisational environment, including people, IT systems and tasks. Recognizing what is changing and constant and what should be changed and kept constant is vital for researching and managing these environments.