Organisation change and management decision in museums

A survey of 24 museums of various kinds in Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA sought to identify the processes that these organisations used to manage change. It was hypothesised that those organisations which were assessed by respondents to have achieved successful change outcomes would also have managed the change process in accordance with general guidelines on effective change in the change literature. The general guidelines largely recommend a consultative or participative style of leadership as being most effective for leading change. Recent contingency models relating change leadership style to change strategy predict that participative leadership styles are not always appropriate or effective for leading change, and that under circumstances, exceptions to the general guidelines would apply. However, it was argued that due to the nature of museums as professional bureaucracies, such exceptions are unlikely to occur for the organisations studied in this paper. The findings provided strong support for these general principles of effective change management.