6.1 Introduction

Change management does not constitute an “ever-settled” scientific field so that there are clear and strictly defined thematic boundaries and methodological prerequisites; there are no “generally accepted principles” on the subject. In contrast, change management theory and practice arise through the convergence and interconnection of various social sciences disciplines and interdisciplinary conceptual traditions (Augsburg, 2010; Frodeman et al., 2019; Hacklin & Wallin, 2013). Although this is its strength and charm, tracing its theoretical foundations and perspectives is still a significant challenge (Burnes, 2009). On top of that, the multitude of related disciplines studying the subject—management, business strategy, economics, sociology, social psychology, and other related fields—makes it even more challenging to summarise the fundamental theoretical background, as this has been shaped in recent decades.

6.1.1 Purpose

With these remarks on the cross-disciplinary nature of change management in mind, this chapter aims to examine fundamental corresponding approaches that the widely exercised practice appears to assign value. This aim will be accomplished by their distinguished contribution and accentuating their potential drawbacks. In this context, our research question is: Where do some cardinal change management analytical schemes seem to focus? Is a theoretical layout synthesising the explicative dimensions of strategy, technology, and management comparatively more fertile? We advocate that the dialectical conception that interweaves these three spheres seems to fabricate a structure that appears imperative for advancing today’s business research in innovation and change management (Vlados, 2021). To this end, we examine how this recalibrated explanatory approach in Stra.Tech.Man terms can readjust and fertilise the current change management comprehensions and practices.

6.1.2 Methods

This theory-building article will elliptically examine notable change management viewpoints to offer an overview of relatively recent developments on the subject, intending to arrive at a new, repositioned theoretical framework (Mohajan, 2018; Snyder, 2019). In the second section, significant perspectives of change management are presented, which have been widely accepted in today’s business practice and scholarly literature (learning organisation and systems thinking, organisation’s reinvention, paradigm-shift and change in the organisation’s mind, maintaining balance and results-based change management, leading change, and doing business in the age of chaos). In the third section, a critical review of the modern change management approaches is attempted (Grant & Booth, 2009). The fourth concluding section suggests a new perspective of organisational innovation and change in the synthesis of strategy, technology, and management.

6.2 Literature Review

P. Senge’s work follows a similar research orientation to the Japanese philosophical approach to management, specifically in the “fifth discipline” (Senge, 1990). According to this perspective, the term five disciplines is an expression of new learning skills that appear in modern organisations. These dexterities refer to having a purpose and creating commonly accepted visions. Also, they are concerned with the ability to conceive broader patterns and their interdependency by developing systems thinking. Finally, new learning skills are the outcome of augmented reflective capabilities so that people can be increasingly aware of their assumptions (Gibson, 1998).

For Senge, the concept of systems is crucial to the “dance of change,” which becomes faster and more challenging nowadays (Senge, 1999). A system is anything that acquires substantiality through its parts’ underlying interactions, including all organisations across the planet. Systems are defined by the fact that their elements have a shared purpose and behave in ordinary ways precisely because they relate to that purpose. According to Senge, four primary challenges exist in the initiation of any change: a) an interest in change, b) the right time for change has arrived, c) there is help to support the change, and d) as the obstacles to a change are removed, no unfamiliar problems deriving from this process will become unbearable. It is further argued that business organisations are institutions that help us realise the global systems perspective. As interdependence and interconnectivity proliferate globally, the business organisation becomes more complex and dynamic, imposing a radical overhaul on how we have traditionally learned to see things—an immediate transition to a “new paradigm” (Thakkar, 2021). Senge also notes that the reason for not introducing changes into an organisation stems from the fact that some persons pose questions and resist change, requiring thus additional time (Senge, 2008). Therefore, only a few traditional organisations will manage to survive this delicate transition that inevitably arises. Those who successfully carry out this process will maintain a unique competitive advantage, using human imagination and intelligence in ways no traditional and authoritarian organisation can (Ghannay & Mamlouk, 2012). To this end, and according to Jacques (2006), people in various hierarchical levels are differentiated according to how far they can see in the future. Thus, hierarchy is legitimised because it can see more clearly the possible impact of decisions than the people closely related to the actual process of daily implementation.

To reinforce an organisation’s change management capabilities, its people should start participating fully in the planning process; they must treat this participation as a learning procedure, which refers to continuous cultural development that improves all mental models in decision-making (Andrikopoulos, 2009; O’Donovan, 2008). Overall, Senge’s work appears open to understanding modern challenges of managing change—to the extent that it offers a systems-based approach that underlines the significance of radically transforming the way organisations perceive reality. It helps to avoid simplification in change management because business transformation does not merely require accelerating the process or intensifying past and inadequate forms of organisation (Jones & Recardo, 2013). The following subsections investigate similar systemic considerations in change management, developed in the context of different scientific traditions and interpretative approaches.

6.2.1 Change and the Risk of Reinventing the Organisation

According to Goss et al. (1993), managers seeking a more radical change in their organisation’s capabilities must not just improve; they must reinvent the organisation. When a decision for reinvention is taken, this must uncover and then change the invisible assumptions on which decisions and actions are based. This challenging task of reinvention involves bringing together critical groups of actors who will create a sense of urgency, deal with conflicts, and reveal weaknesses. Contemporary reality raises the standards for effective leadership at an unprecedented height. Building competitive advantage is a challenging process that increasingly leads to blaming the company’s administration for inefficiency, poor handling, and inadequate strategic programs. Besides leadership, this problem is rooted in the foundational organisational competencies, in how organisations can create and manage subtle or significant changes. It seems that most organisations must change what they are and discover what they are not (Leavy, 2014; McKenzie & Aitken, 2012).

According to the approach of organisational reinvention, everything is about context. The context changes what everyone in the organisation sees, and executives often do not dare to eliminate the ineffective framework they created. To this end, a refreshing vision must remind everybody that old certainties and routines must be continuously questioned. The manager oriented towards reinvention must overcome the past, venturing on an unknown journey and not that “gentle.” Inventing a healthy future is critical because this change manager must not describe a prospect based on existing beliefs about how things already work in the business or focus on situations impossible to be diffused and implemented. Pragmatism is needed; otherwise, communicating such a “reinvention” may reinforce the path towards an uncertain future. In this context, a new declaration must be well formulated and simple, while a vision must offer an extensive description of the desired situation, considering how the organisation functions at all levels (Kantabutra & Avery, 2010; Kirkpatrick, 2016).

Overall, perseverance and flexibility are significant features for all activities required for reinventing an organisation (Englehardt & Simmons, 2002). This approach is invaluable for understanding change management and further implications since it underlines the inherent risk in any new organisational framework, attributing significance to past developments and today’s competitive survival (Gill, 2002; Grote & Künzler, 2000). It helps us realise that organisational change requires courage and leadership to make the “operation” successful.

6.2.2 Paradigm Shift and Change in the Mind

S. Covey’s (1989a) approach offers significant insight into the context of change management. This paradigm shift (in terms of organisations) refers to shifting from the human relations and resources models—according to which we must treat people well and use them—to a radically new management philosophy based on a method of personal improvement. Covey suggests seven habits that highly effective people have in common as their change mechanisms in both their personal and corporate life. These are the following: “be proactive; begin with the end in mind; put first things first; think the win/win scenario always; seek to understand first, before making yourself understood; learn to synergise; sharpen the saw.” Covey (2004) also adds an eighth principle later in this organisational paradigm shift, expressed as “finding your voice and inspiring others to find theirs.” In another book called “principle-centred leadership,” Covey (1989b) presents a more specific perspective on how this paradigm shifts in organisations. According to the suggested theoretical framework, the first concern of management must be to create a workforce that has been transferred with a part of the organisation’s authority, having shared visions and beliefs around a system of principle-based values. Covey argues that the fundamental paradigm must be shifted for most corporations, noting that most businesses are trying to introduce modern technologies and terminologies by keeping their old “philanthropic” and authoritarian paradigms. Shifting the paradigm altogether is not easy, especially at the organisation-wide level. However, it is not impossible, especially when it can be the only success for companies operating in today’s globalised economy (Friedman, 1999; Levitt, 1983).

From a similar research orientation, R. Martin (1993) suggests that organisations need to “change their minds,” noticing how disappointing it is when large corporations that go through a crisis take the same actions that once led them to become big, often causing a “resistance to change” syndrome (Coch & French Jr, 1948; Georgalis et al., 2015; Oreg, 2003). The secret to overcoming this syndrome is to stop the excuses and pay attention to the company’s development before the crisis. In trying to remove this syndrome’s adverse effects, structuring “steering mechanisms” is critical. These mechanisms can often be inadequate due to problematic feedback, leading managers to ignore complaints and other forms of unwelcome feedback that could be precious if used appropriately. In an ideal organisational setup, steering mechanisms report on changes in the market and continuously force the company to respond and learn. Martin also argues that change managers must be accurate about their organisations’ psychodynamics and technical analyses. In this context, shaping a path of rigorous strategic debate is crucial. The executive needs to clarify that the organisation is in crisis and determine what the company did right in the first place. In this debate, all senior managers must express their personal views on the company’s vision—and everyone must feel secure to express themselves freely. Martin concludes that companies need to “burn themselves down” and rebuild their strategies, roles, and practices every few years.

These approaches to change management are a significant basis for understanding the “resistance to change” manifested within all organisations. It could be said that this management theorising is in direct contrast to the mechanistic character of classical management since it conceptualises today’s manager as a “gardener” instead of an “engineer” (Burns & Stalker, 2011; McNamara, 2009). They help avoid misconceptions on managing change without affecting past successful organisational elements and processes.

6.2.3 Maintaining Balance in the Change Process and the Significance of Swift Results

According to J. Duck (1993), it is crucial to maintain organisational balance in any change process. The author suggests introducing new management methods, discouraging breaking down changes into small chunks and focusing on the necessary embracement of all parts in the effort. It is argued that change management means achieving critical balance, controlling discussion, creating a suitable organisational framework, and managing emotional relationships. This transformation always has a human-centric imprint, and change management is unlike any other corresponding task within all organisations because of its complexity and criticality. It is further argued that modern change management must be based on effective messaging and continuous communication. This reporting should be a priority for every manager in the company’s hierarchy, as unsuccessful communication means ineffective change management. In this context, all group members must first be communicated (and eventually persuaded by) the company’s vision and accepting this perception will lead to new attitudes within the organisation, causing their behaviour to change and their performance to improve. However, in large corporations, employees have often experienced various change programs, so they are now cautious. To this end, senior management should better start by calling for a change in behaviour that will lead to improved production in broad terms so that enthusiasm and faith can follow.

From a converging perspective, Schaffer and Thomson (1992) focus on the significance of tangible results for a change program’s overall success. They find that most corporate improvement programs negatively affect functional and financial performance because management focuses on activities rather than results. In the opposite direction, an alternative method for improvement and development programs is suggested based on results and focused on achieving specific, measurable operational improvements in the short run. It is noted that the second strategy is more effective, although both methods aim at reinforcing the company’s competitiveness. It is argued that result-based organisational transformation bypasses lengthy preparatory work, focusing on achieving immediate and measurable benefits. The primary advantages of the results-based method are four: companies introduce management and process innovations only when they are needed; empirical control reveals what works and what does not; frequent reinforcement revitalises the improvement process; management creates a routine learning procedure, taking advantage of lessons learned from earlier phases of the program.

These approaches shed light on significant aspects of the change management process within modern organisations, even though they seem to diverge in methodological terms. From a joint perspective, it could be said that claiming organisational balance and achieving tangible results through practical solutions can be simultaneously implemented within organisations. Moreover, in their conceptual background, the two approaches take for granted that any change process requires total organisational commitment (Nordin, 2012; Raja & Palanichamy, 2011). In this interpretive direction, the following subsection shows how leadership affects the overall course of the organisation.

6.2.4 Change and Leadership

J. Kotter’s (1996) relevant perspective is one of the most well-known approaches in organisational change management. The author suggests an eight-step process for successfully assimilating change into an organisation, arguing that an omission or inadequate handling of these could damage the change procedure’s effectiveness. The eight-step process is as follows:

  1. 1.

    Create a sense of urgency: A false reassurance can waste of valuable reaction time, and too often, a sense of urgency is absent at the beginning of a change program.

  2. 2.

    Form a guiding coalition: The leadership’s inadequate commitment to excellence through renewal can delay and significantly hamper the work for change.

  3. 3.

    Develop an inspired vision: In failures of change programs, various tactics and partial plans exist without sharp foresight.

  4. 4.

    Convey the new vision: Change cannot be effectively implemented if employees do not know when they will need to make sacrifices for functional changes, are unaware of why this change is necessary, and when their efforts will pay off.

  5. 5.

    Empower others to enact the vision: Too often, either implicitly or explicitly, senior management can obstruct the employees’ desire to implement the new understanding.

  6. 6.

    Generate short-term wins: Swift results and interim success can psychologically strengthen and encourage an organisation during its transformation.

  7. 7.

    Sustain acceleration of the vision: Any hasty declaration that the “war of change” has been won can be disastrous as it can lead to a relaxation of efforts when these endeavours should be intensified.

  8. 8.

    Institute permanent change: Transformation is assimilated when it becomes a settled method of action, that is, a profound “philosophy” of conceiving things within the organisation.

Kotter (1995) also notices that organisations often fail to successfully manage change because they cannot avoid critical errors that usually involve “bypassing” or improperly incorporating the aforementioned change management phases. In essence, it seems that Kotter’s approach is a well-grounded guide to effective change management within modern organisations. It is clear (suggests structured steps), coherent (every step follows a successive pattern), comprehensive (raises most of the internal issues of organisational change), and realistic (recognises why a transformation program can fail). If it involves a relative weakness this derives from its exclusively internal perspective, a trait that also appears in recent approaches to leading change (Thrassou et al., 2018; Vrontis et al., 2018). The external organisational environment’s specific dynamics and the corresponding business strategy are hardly considered (Ismail & Kuivalainen, 2015).

6.2.5 Chaotics and Doing Business in the Age of Turbulence

Various modern approaches to change management seem to be primarily inward-oriented. However, the idiosyncratic global environment cannot be omitted without affecting each change management model’s comprehensiveness. Kotler and Caslione (2009) focus on the underlying global crisis of the 2000s, arguing that contemporary business reality is characterised by “chaos.” The authors suggest solutions organisations can implement for responding to this unprecedented situation, noting that the new era requires a unique organisational action. Any traditional and hierarchically rigid model cannot adapt in this age of turbulence. In contrast, the modern way of approaching, dealing with, and exiting turbulence requires courage, aggressiveness, and determination instead of old-style anticipation, shrinking, and conservatism. In this context, the authors present ten fundamental mistakes and best business practices amid this “global chaos”:

  1. (a)

    Duplication of capabilities: Companies must do their best to avoid duplication between their suppliers and distributors by focusing on cutting overlaps and costs.

  2. (b)

    The complexity of contracts: Companies must have simple agreements based on the trust they built over time, including executing contracts with the cooperation of suppliers and distributors on a day-to-day basis and emphasising continuous improvement.

  3. (c)

    Insufficient performance rating systems: Companies must make significant efforts to obtain supplier and distributor performance measurement systems that are easy to understand and get direct feedback.

  4. (d)

    Inadequate product development/specification: Companies should ask suppliers and distributors to suggest modifications for improving products and reducing costs.

  5. (e)

    Single dimensional selection process: Companies should choose suppliers exclusively through supplier departments and distributors via sales divisions, making their choices based on information gathered from the company’s inter-functional teams.

  6. (f)

    Maintaining physical separation from primary suppliers and distributors: Shared infrastructure and facilities promote better communication between suppliers, distributors, and the company, while the knowledge of all sides helps the firm and ensures better control over its interests within the supplier and distributor operations.

  7. (g)

    Maintaining too many suppliers: To improve their management, companies must increasingly supply from a sole source or a reduced number of suppliers, thus securing their customer base so that limited resources can be focused on an easily managed number of suppliers.

  8. (h)

    Maintaining the wrong suppliers and distributors: Companies do not have to wait too long to break off relations with suppliers and distributors of low or marginal performance, or their relationship with the company is irreparable.

  9. (i)

    Not investing in training for suppliers and distributors: By training their suppliers and distributors, companies reduce operating costs and increase sales while increasing the quality of products and services provided to the company and its customers.

  10. (j)

    Not investing in communications with suppliers and distributors: Companies use various methods to improve communication with suppliers and distributors while reducing inferior quality communications and offering feedback opportunities on issues of mutual interest (Fig. 6.1).

Fig. 6.1
A model diagram of opportunities for mutual interest. The current business strategy and model, the organization's ability under chaos, behavior execution, chaotic strategic execution, reassessment, and revision.

Strategic behaviour, technological and managerial potential within the chaos of contemporary global dynamics, based on Kotler and Caslione (2009)

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All these findings specify the need for a reconfirmed strategy, technology, and management (the Stra.Tech.Man organisational generator, as explained in the concluding section) for dealing with the co-determined chaotic conditions that emerge in contemporary global dynamics (external environment). Overall, these aspects and best practices highlighted by Kotler and Caslione converge that any fragmentary, opportunistic, and hasty response is inadequate for responding to the pressing challenges and growing uncertainty a modern organisation faces. Their suggestions focus on change management dynamics, “condemning” organisational inertia, myopic conservatism, submissiveness, and strategic cowardice in dealing with chaotic global conditions (Laudicina & Peterson, 2016).

6.3 Analysis of Findings

Without a doubt, change management literature appears to be quite diverse. Are immediate results or quick wins the primary motors of change management within an organisation? Is it patience, slow cultivation of organisational abilities, or “strategic perseverance” that distinguishes successfully managed transformations? Do instantaneous leaps defeat the continuous evolutionary transformation and corporate mutation? Is change a “bottom-up” or “top-down” process? Is effective change management a birth of democracy and co-decision or an expression of robust and enlightened central leadership? We do not find any easy or one-way answers to these questions:

  • As business consultants, we have repeatedly faced how pursuing only immediate results can adversely affect organisational change. We do not question the significance of a fast-paced administrative manoeuvre. However, we also have witnessed procrastination and “tail chasing” within various organisations where no further effort can save them.

  • We also have seen that hasty solutions lead to added tensions and unnecessary conflicts, increasing uncertainty and exacerbating instability during the organisation’s transition to the new reality. Quick-change plans can often destroy the present “healthy metabolism” of the organisation. Simultaneously, we have experienced situations where the long-term expectation of creating a learning and participatory organisation remains only a lengthy wish list that can accompany the organisation until its decay.

  • Deciding the best alternative between a significant leap or continuous and mutational organisational improvement is challenging. Various organisations might manage a significant transformational leap while others succeed by following the humble path of day-to-day progress.

  • Likewise, no sufficient arguments suggest any unilaterality of the “bottom-up” or “top-down” approach to change. On the contrary, most successful transformation endeavours are due to bottom-up and top-down affective action—at every hierarchical level.

Therefore, as it seems, change management becomes perceived as a cross-disciplinary field in the presented related literature. Some authors appear to focus either on the commanding role of technology, the need for dynamic strategic rebalancing, or the overhauling effort of management. At best, the attempted synthesis appears to involve only two of these change rudiments. Hence, bearing this shortage in mind, the concluding section functions as a resynthesis endeavour, arguing that managing change must integrate the organisation’s strategy, technology, and management.

6.4 Conclusion: Towards a Restructured Perspective of Organisational Change (Strategy–Technology–Management Synthesis)

We argue that effective change management needs a way of thinking deriving primarily from dialectics—the thesis–antithesis–synthesis amalgamation. A dialectical synthesis where the ongoing birth of evolutionary conflict occurs between the “thesis” that denotes the previous states of affairs and the “antithesis” that signifies the continuous subversion of the earlier regimes (Morabito et al., 2018). To overcome this antithesis, the modern manager of change must elucidate before any action the primary “physiological” goals of change in “Stra.Tech.Man” terms, meaning the synthesis of strategy, technology, and management (Vlados, 2019a):

  • Strategy: “Where am I? Where do I want to go? How do I go there? Why?”

  • Technology: “How do I draw, create, compose, diffuse, and reproduce my knowledge and expertise? Why?”

  • Management: “How do I use my available resources? Why?”

There is no linearity in this understanding of managing change; no firm is an unwitting machine but a “living organisation” (de Geus, 2002; Kelly, 1994; Meyer & Davis, 2003). It has specific limits of “physiology,” determined by the way innovative evolutionary synthesis is achieved in “Stra.Tech.Man” terms (Vlados & Chatzinikolaou, 2019). Moreover, any attempt to manage change within all organisations must consider the “livingness” of the external environment, which co-evolves with the corresponding internal environment. This coevolution between the internal and external organisational environment is critical to delimit the environmental boundaries in “Stra.Tech.Man” terms for all socioeconomic organisations—and not just for large companies, as usually advocated in popular change management approaches.

Specifically, innovation in Stra.Tech.Man terms concerns how each socioeconomic organisation manages to match its existing production potential (supply side) with the corresponding demand dynamics (Di Stefano et al., 2012; Peters et al., 2012). From the “technology bunching strategy” perspective (Grappes technologiques), a concept developed by GEST (1986), technological changes result in the appearance of generic technologies and systematic commercialisation of technical competencies (Delapierre & Mytelka, 2002). Though this idea of socioeconomic change was industry-oriented, we suggest that this transformation is due to innovation caused by the inner organisational synthesis of strategy, technology, and management expressed at the various socioeconomic levels (Fig. 6.2).

Fig. 6.2
A flow diagram illustrates the global dynamics of innovation caused by the inner organizational synthesis of strategy, technology, and management at various socioeconomic levels.

Stra.Tech.Man innovation at the various organisational levels and correlative-evolutionary SWOT analysis

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The Stra.Tech.Man of the internal organisational environment constitutes the root (a generator) wherein innovation bunches and micro-innovation are organically extended to all other corporate departments and units. Successful innovation derives not only from one Stra.Tech.Man factor, but always from their dynamic synthesis. In addition to how the organisation synthesises these domains, innovation may arise from coalescing individual business functions. In this sense, modern firms must draw and assimilate innovation from any spatial or functional context to the others, realising that potential opportunities and threats only spring up when specific evolutionary strengths and weaknesses develop over time. In this context, every socioeconomic organisation must recognise the idiosyncratic and “physiological” strengths-weaknesses based on the synthesising Stra.Tech.Man perspective. This realisation opens the path for corresponding specific opportunities and threats derived from today’s demanding and labyrinthine global economy and dynamics (Vlados, 2019b). Furthermore, this framework for change becomes increasingly challenging nowadays, considering that globalisation has entered a profound crisis and revolutionary phase (Schwab, 2016; Vlados et al., 2018), especially after the COVID-19 pandemic (Thrassou et al., 2022; Vlados & Chatzinikolaou, 2021).

Therefore, the most profound problems for effectively managing change emerge from the organisation’s physiological core. For this reason, the “Stra.Tech.Man” perspective of innovation enlightens the change management effort since it defines the extent of possible paradigmatic mutation and shift (Depoux, 2009). Based on these conceptual bases of business physiology, five change management phases in “Stra.Tech.Man” innovation are suggested (Vlados, 2019c). From this perspective, the steps of managing change determine a continuous cycle (Fig. 6.3).

Fig. 6.3
A cycle diagram depicts the steps of innovation and managing change. To clear with the vision and mission, enrich and use technology, manage efficiently, innovate and balance, change and start over.

The five steps of innovation and change management in the Stra.Tech.Man approach

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This five-step method of understanding change consists of eight points each, setting out a continuous process for transformative business action:

  1. I.

    Successful strategic development:

    1. (a)

      Make clear and deepen the vision and mission—unify the firm’s mindset.

    2. (b)

      Challenge the organisation’s strategic certainties and warn for threats—come closer to its allies and partners.

    3. (c)

      Build mechanisms to keep track of changes occurring in the firm’s external environment—come closer to the customers, suppliers, and competitors.

    4. (d)

      Develop an understanding of the firm’s internal environment—come closer to its employees and make them part of the strategic process.

    5. (e)

      Build a correlative and evolutionary SWOT analysis to realise the firm’s specific strengths and weaknesses that unlock potential respective opportunities and threats.

    6. (f)

      Carefully build the firm’s alternatives and openly evaluate them—ask those around the firm and realise that there is no one best way.

    7. (g)

      Choose the strategy that better suits the firm—with ambition but also realism.

    8. (h)

      Comprehensively and coherently analyse the firm’s tactics and policies.

  2. II.

    Successful technological development:

    1. (a)

      Understand the firm’s technology background.

    2. (b)

      Get a complete comparative picture of the firm’s technological skills.

    3. (c)

      Develop mechanisms for scouting the environment and collecting new technical information.

    4. (d)

      Cultivate the internal potential for creating new technical abilities.

    5. (e)

      Stimulate the firm’s mechanisms for modern technology diffusion.

    6. (f)

      Reinforce the company’s tools for technological information assimilation.

    7. (g)

      Practically support the integrated application of modern technology—do not be afraid of experimentation since mistakes are allowed if they offer meaningful lessons.

    8. (h)

      Reward the productive application of modern technology.

  3. III.

    Successful management development:

    1. (a)

      Experiment with new planning methods.

    2. (b)

      Make the organisation chart flatter.

    3. (c)

      Build a meritocratic way of putting the right person in the right place at the right time.

    4. (d)

      Give the firm’s people specific leaders they want and inspire them.

    5. (e)

      Make the firm a learning organisation.

    6. (f)

      Motivate and specialise the structure of incentives.

    7. (g)

      Measure and evaluate from a comparative and fair perspective.

    8. (h)

      Open new communication channels and build new ways to coordinate action.

  4. IV.

    Successful innovation synthesis:

    1. (a)

      Clear up the accomplished strategy, technology, and management transformations by carefully preparing the new Stra.Tech.Man synthesis.

    2. (b)

      Balance and multilaterally adjust this innovational Stra.Tech.Man synthesis.

    3. (c)

      Spread the revolutionary message and build a dynamic guiding coalition.

    4. (d)

      Remove obstacles, commission roles, and lead.

    5. (e)

      Maintain balance during the intervention’s implementation.

    6. (f)

      Generate short-term wins and not over-celebrate them.

    7. (g)

      Set up checkpoints and evaluate the firm’s overall change management and innovation effort.

    8. (h)

      Do not forget to reward the warriors who fought on this battlefield of innovation.

  5. V.

    Successful assimilation of change and continuous transformation:

    1. (a)

      Preserve the acts that brought results and unify them.

    2. (b)

      Deepen and develop the firm’s physiology.

    3. (c)

      Do not punish those who honestly experimented and failed, but those who abandoned their duties during the battle.

    4. (d)

      Refresh the hierarchy.

    5. (e)

      Make yesterday’s success a goal to overcome rather than a monument of conservatism.

    6. (f)

      Put foreigners and “devil’s advocates” in the firm and withstand their critique.

    7. (g)

      Build a firm that can be “loved” by internal and external stakeholders.

    8. (h)

      Do not rest on laurels. Always start all over again.

In the past, we have used various elements of this Stra.Tech.Man change management and innovation approach by experimentally implementing it with a specific sectoral–industrial focus to offer consulting and advice in diverse organisations. Within this advising direction, this method has prospects to be further systematised, enriched, and used in the field for diagnostic organisational research and surveys. Our team is currently working on a related project that integrates this concept into the “Scorecard” perspective by considering an additional level of fundamental “corporate finance indicators” beyond the five main ones (Vlados, 2021). This complete qualitative and quantitative system of evaluating and self-evaluating an organisation’s performance could be implemented in the future for managerial, technological, and strategic control, possibly for smaller organisations besides the bigger ones that most Scorecard methodologies seem to be focusing on (Hoque, 2014; Van Looy & Shafagatova, 2016). This “Stra.Tech.Man” scorecard could be a prolific application in the field of change management because most scorecard-type and performance measurement methodologies do not have an explicit change management framework that can function complementarily and become quickly accessible by all types and physiologies of socioeconomic organisations.