Many changes in organization fail to reach the intended objectives (e.g. Meaney & Pung, 2008). This is also true for changes in major hazard organizations (Sætren & Laumann, 2015). However, the consequences are potentially larger if a technological change go wrong in a major hazard organization than other. The main objective here is thus to compare two theoretical perspectives; change management theory and safety theory, to the theory of man made disaster in order to explore if an explanation could be found there.
A common theory in management of organizational changes is the one of Kotter (1996). However, this theory could be regarded to have an insufficient safety focus if compared to for instance the theory of high reliability organization (HRO) (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2015) or man made disaster (TMM) (Turner, 1978). If the steps of explaining an accident such as Turner’s TMM does, is compared to the organizational change theory of Kotter (1996) and the high reliability theory of Weick and Sutcliffe (2015), this could be an explanation why alternative change management theories should be considered.
The steps of TMM starts with a starting point with accepted beliefs, from this follows an incubation period before a disaster occur. The next two stages are the consequences, and the rescue and salvage before finally stage five is a cultural readjustment. Comparing this to HRO, and having the accident as a main factor, one see that the two theories fit. In order to prevent the accident, HRO have three techniques to prevent the accident, and if the accident occur, there are two techniques to prevent the consequences to be more devastating than necessary. However, the change management theory of Kotter’s first step is to create an urgency. In other words, this theory has a starting point by creating the “accident”. There are no steps in order to prevent an urgency, yet rather the objective is to create one. This way, changes will occur, which also is shown through the TMM, as the final step is cultural readjustment in both Kotter’s and Turner’s theory. However, it could be questioned whether this is a safe change process compatible to major hazard organizations. I thus argue that Kotter’s theory follows a recipe for an accident and therefore provide change based on an accident theory, which is probably not the optimal theoretical basis to use when leading a change in major hazard industries.