As Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote 25 centuries ago, “change is the only constant in life,” so, in theory, there is nothing new about this idea. The novel development is that, in recent times, organizations have started to see change as something that is desired and needs to be governed, rather than resisted or feared. Consequently, change management skills are seen as a key element of the manager’s toolbox, and academic studies and management school programs have flourished. In spite of the availability of so many sources of advice, one fact comes out as striking: a general consensus exists on the fact that most change management initiatives result in failure.

Probably one of the reasons rests in the gap between saying and doing, between theory and practice, where academicians develop elegant models and managers struggle to adapt them to the realities of their organizations, as time and resource constraints lead them to devise simplistic approaches that are supposed to deliver results as quickly as possible.

Perspectives on change takes an original approach by putting under the same roof the experiences of academics, consultants, and managers, providing an opportunity to benchmark how each category sees change in reality.

Part 1 of the book contains contributions from academics that perceive the gap between theory and practice and want to do something about it. The perspectives expressed are sometimes orthogonal to mainstream academic thinking, as in Buchanan’s “eight things about organisational change that we know for sure but which are probably wrong,” which challenges common assumptions like the death of bureaucracy, the transformational power of best practices, or the need to avoid mixing change with organizational politics. Other chapters include accounts of actual change encounters that the authors had with individuals and groups of subjects of their research. The contributions succeed in conveying the message that those scholarly authors do not work in isolation and, instead, have been capable of engaging with the subjects of their studies to explore the topic of change in a more realistic way.

Part 2 enables consultants to share their point of view, highlighting how the consultancy panorama is in reality composed of many small businesses or sole proprietors, and not only by a handful of big consulting firms. In one way or another, the contributors underline the importance of understanding the mindsets of the individuals that comprise organizations as a way to govern their expectations and reactions to change.

Finally, Part 3, “Managers as Consultants,” discusses how managers need to acquire consulting skills and how, increasingly, consultants are being recruited in management roles. Different experiences are presented to suggest that one result of the state of “constant change” in which many organizations are immersed could be the emergence of a more ambiguous management role, less tied to the realities of the production process and therefore more similar to external consultancy.

This is a dense, well-written, interesting book for thinking about change management in a new, less abstract manner.