First of all, most organizational changes are planned,intentional changes, introduced by management for different reasons (that varyfrom a response to internal or environmental pressures, to strategic changes,meant to develop the organization). Secondly, organizational changes are easilynoticed, as they unfold in a more orderly, a better structured and asignificantly smaller space than social changes. Moreover, changes that takeplace at organization level often evolve in a shorter time span than thosetaking place at a macro level (except for the revolutions, of course). Oneother difference is in identifying the operator of change – thanks to thefeatures presented so far, it (or they) can be easily identified.

Yet anothersignificant difference is the fact that, in the case of organizational changes,the systematic paradigm has a leading role; for instance, in OD the mostfrequently used means of measuring the effects of a change is measuring a setof factors specific to the system both before, as well as after the change, thevariation thus representing the effect of the intervention. Otherwise said, twodifferent stages of the system are measured, estimating the difference betweenthem at different moments in time – the very core principles of the systematicmodel. The theoretical space of organizational change has a few morefeatures, that are part of the metalanguage; first of all, most of the expertliterature is written from a managerial point of view – that is OD representsthe point of view of the management team, that is certainly interested in themost effective ways of introducing change in the organization they run. Thesecond feature refers to the fact that there are two main ways of approaching theissue of organizational change: the one that is an explanation for the means ofimplementing a planned change, and the one that represents a description of theprocess, that analyzes change instead of offering norms for applying it.

Wewill continue by presenting the two models included in each approach. 21  One of the most wellknown analytical models belongs to Harold J. Leavitt. This American authorbelieves that organizations are multivariate systems with at least 4 importantvariables: goal, structure, players and technology – see graph 1.35 STRUCTURE GOAL                   TECHNOLOGY PLAYERS Figure 4.

ORGANIZATIONAL MODEL PROVIDED BYH. LEAVITT (3, p. 198)         By structure, Leavitt meantstructures of authority, responsibility, communication and work relations; the playerswere represented by the employees of the organization; technology wasbelieved to be a total of instruments and techniques used in the attempt toreach the organization?s goals; as for the goal, it was considered “laraison d?être” of the organization, the rationale that supports its existenceand functioning.

These variables represented the marks for change to set in,thus resulting 4 types of changes. At the core of this model was the stronginterdependence between these variables, which means if one modified, theothers would also modify as an effect. This fact has two consequences: 1. One variable canbe deliberately modified in order to cause desirable changes in the othervariables 2.

The change of one variable may lead tounexpected and unwanted changes in the other variables  The influence of the systematic paradigm is quite obvioushere.