Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of the source of change on sustainability of organizational change. The paper analyzes data collected from a survey. The sample group consisted of an organization’s employees of all levels that have undergone at least one change, with one important assumption, namely that the change was implemented successfully. The analysis revealed that sustainability of a successfully implemented organizational change depends on the source from which the impulse to make a change arose, the source being the organization’s environment (external source) or the organization itself (internal change). However, such a conclusion can only be made on the condition that the change is analyzed in its entirety, and the only variable is the origin of the initial stimulus that initiated the process. In modern days, when organizations are in a nearly perpetual state of organizational flux and change is considered a permanent element of organizations’ activities, evaluating the impact of the source of change on change sustainability provides organizations with very important information. Such insight can also serve as one of the criteria in the selection of an efficient organizational change management model. The research subject – organizations – by its very nature, rules out the option to obtain a controlled research environment, thereby precluding e.g. the possibility to repeat the research at different parameters of the change process in the organizations studied. Most of the data were not collected by direct observation of the change process, but rather from employees participating in it, thus an a priori analysis is vitiated by an error of subjectivity. Determining whether change sustainability in an organization, one of the evaluation criteria of the change process, depends on the location of the source of change or initial impulse.