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When planned organisational change happens, the members of the organisation experience it in different ways at different times. Their “change journeys” begin with the original response to the change initiative and they pass through a sequence of steps from the initial realisation that there is a discrepancy or inconsistency with pre-existing schemas (i.e. when the individual learns of a change, or perceives that there has been a change) to an actual change in their own schemas (George and Jones, 2001), which is the point where the change journey has (temporarily) ended and the destination been reached. Such a journey becomes possible when individuals start to question their own position(s) in regard to the change, when they start taking into account their own reactions to it together with developments and responses to the change initiative at the meso and macro-level over time. As individuals reach different understandings about themselves during the change process, their change journey itself changes: they may set out for a new destination, or continue to the original destination but follow a different route. Much of the literature on reactions to change ignores the tendency of individuals to pay attention to their own reasons for how they react and tends to view responses to change–especially resistance– almost as an involuntary reflex rather than as part of a complex process of interpretation and action carried out by self-aware individuals. This paper reports on how reflexivity is a vital aspect of the change journey. We carried out a longitudinal, multi-level qualitative study of a planned change initiative at PCo, the Canadian subsidiary of a European pharmaceutical company, which involved the introduction of a new organisational structure– the creation of a matrix structure. Grounded theory was used to guide the research. More than sixty in-depth interviews were carried out over a period of eighteen months. The data from these interviews were supplemented by quantitative data. We describe how members of the organisation thought through what the change was “really” about and what it meant for them. They told stories and passed on anecdotes, which provided a way of demonstrating their own analysis of the change and their role in it, and of then building on this in order to achieve particular goals, like simply securing their own position or moving up the career ladder. We show that there was an element of playfulness in these processes. The employees analysed their own position and changed this according to developments in their groups and in the organisation. For some, it was like playing a game where they had to react to what was going on and change their tactics and strategy. This could then meant replanning their own change journeys. In analysing this process, we pay particular attention to the role of language. Language is not simply a mechanism of communication, but rather a fundamental aspect of organisation and organising (eg Westwood and Linstead, 2001). One view is that organisation exists only through language, leading to views of organisation as text, or as narrative, or as constituted in discourse (e.g. Mumby and Clair, 1997). So there is great value at investigating discourse during change processes because language, in the form of conversations, stories and rumours, is a significant factor in the way change is conceptualised (Balogun and Johnson, 2005). Conversation – “language-based interactions of individuals within organisations” (Woodilla, 1998: 33)– is one of the most common forms of communication in the workplace. Studies of managerial activities (e.g. Mintzberg, 1973) have shown that managers spend a large part of their time in carrying out oral communications. The act of conversation and the content of conversation produce action (Hardy et al., 2000), which indicates why conversations can play an important part in a change process. The way in which organisational members negotiate meaning in the change process is through discursive practices and textual objects (Anderson, 2005). Indeed, coherent language use can play a significant role in the outcome of change initiatives (Sillince, 1999) and there are fragmented and competing discourses within an organisation during a change process. Stories play a significant role in the creation and maintenance of meaning in organisations. Stories are passed from one person to another through conversation, and storytelling is “something done around the water cooler” (Boje at al., 2001: 166). The informal nature of storytelling does not mean that it is not important. Boje (1991) shows how the use of stories enabled change to take place, as when an executive's storytelling enabled him to convince colleagues to move in new direction. Indeed, Tsoukas (2005) argues that organisational change is the process of constructing and sharing new meanings and interpretations of organisational activities. Discourse, then, is a mechanism through which change happens and through which change journeys are planned and re-planned and made. The members of an organisation use discourse in all its various forms to reflect on and change (or not) their own position and to influence the change journeys of others.

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One cannot not communicate, says one axiom of Paul Watzlawick and emphasizes, that everything we do and everything we leave is a message to one’s counterpart. Where communication takes place conflict is close. From misunderstanding to war, from communication refusal to a communication overload: The combination of communication and conflict has different developments. The current book presents various facts of this combination. From an analysis of communicative conflict resolution of the Israel-Palestine-Conflict on Facebook, instances of leadership and communication in the literature of operation Iraqi freedom, political iconoclasm in the digital age on the basis of the death of Osama bin Laden, a social identity perspective on communication about errors in organisations, the overload with online communication at business, how conflict management training works, strategies in the communication of political violence to the influence of mass media on the course of contemporary military conflicts.

The process of change is difficult to manage. In this paper the authors investigate a planned organisational change involving a marketing department that did not reach its objectives and had several unwanted outcomes. The authors show how a multi-level model is helpful understanding change processes, and suggest how change can be managed more successfully.