Factors contributing to organizational change success or failure: a qualitative meta-analysis of 200 reflective case studies

Change, and changing, exercise the minds of most managers most of the time. In consequence, leadership development and change management tend to be top priorities for many human resource development (HRD) professionals today. Despite this, much academic and practitioner literature suggests that 70% of all change programs fail. Through analyzing 200 organizational change case studies, this chapter examines this high failure rate, investigates leadership styles and their relationship to change, and explores the key factors that either enable or hinder successful change. The key findings of this examination were that the majority of the 200 studied change initiatives were considered successful and that using Kotter’s change model, which has been long established, does not necessarily mean success; nor does the use of a democratic/participative leadership style. The most significant hindering factors and the key critical success factors are also acknowledged

Involve users or fail: An IT project case study from east Africa

Repeated surveys, and most notably those by the Standish Group, suggest that a substantial proportion of Information Technology (IT) projects fail. The literature suggests that this is in part due to a lack of user involvement in the project. The authors’ research describes the case study of a major IT system implementation project in East Africa. The paper reports on the results of both an online questionnaire and interviews with key participants. The authors’ findings suggest that the subsequent failure of this project was in large part attributable to a lack of user involvement in the definition of requirements and implementation of the system. There did not appear to be an organisational culture that recognised the significance of such participation in the project. Although there are issues of definition raised, such as the definition of success and failure, this work supports previous findings that user involvement is a key factor in IT project success and failur