Liverpool John Moores University

Faculty Member, Centre for the Creation of Coherent Change and Knowledge (C4K)

Professor Emeritus

About

Centre for the Creation of Coherent Change and Knowledge (C4K).

C4K has been set up to assist the our understanding of social and organisational processes in a complex world through academic and people related activities.

Social and business organisations face the management of change and knowledge. Critical in the change process is the involvement of learning of the organisation’s management and staff. C4K operates as as a partner for learning with organisations to facilitate change and improvement. It has a track record of international projects in transformational change that began in 1990.

Social and business organisations pursue their own purposes and interests, and over time they take actions that interactively define where they are going in the complex world in which they exist. Their future pathways are often influenced by change that may either come from within the organisation, or externally. It is in such conditions that there is an imperative to manage the change process that deriving from competitive and other change influences.

Sometimes change is incremental, but a continuing process of incremental change can mean that it loses its tracking and coherence. It may also be radical, so that the organisation needs to determine new purposes that can address the change that the organisation is experiencing. This needs new structures, processes, and the creation of coherent organisational behaviour, and there are often implications for its culture. Sometimes change is dramatic that involves a culture shift for the organisation. This can occur when it moves from the public to the private sector, when it moves from one sphere of activity to another either across sectors or public cultures as our economy globalises. It can also occur in the creation of joint alliances, over which a half of those intended fail.

C4K believes that the management and staff of social and business organisations contain the knowledge through which coherent change programmes and can evolve collectively within them. An effective way to leverage this knowledge is through action learning where multiple perspectives are combined to create greater coherence in future aims and objectives. It is through action research that management and staff can clarify the nature of both the present and the future. Action learning and research workshops are key component of C4K formulations of the change process.