Eight critical factors for successfully implementing organizational change in the public sector include verifying and communicating the necessity of change, developing clear strategies, building support, and ensuring top-management commitment. Providing adequate resources, institutionalizing new behaviours, and aligning subsystems with change objectives are also crucial for overcoming resistance and achieving lasting transformation.

Sergio Fernandez and Hal G. Rainey published an article in the March 2006 issue of Public Administration Review discussing eight propositions that describe the determinants of successful implementation of organizational change in the public sector. While some of these propositions might be considered obvious or debatable, revisiting them nearly two decades later is certainly worthwhile.

Proposition 1: Ensure the need

Managerial leaders must verify and persuasively communicate the need for change.

• Convince organizational members of the need and desirability for change.

• Craft a compelling vision of change.

• Employ written and oral communication and forms of active participation to communicate and disseminate the need for change.

Proposition 2: Provide a plan

Managerial leaders must develop a course of action or strategy for implementing change.

• Devise a strategy for reaching the desired end state, with milestones and a plan for achieving each one of them.

• The strategy should be clear and specific, avoiding ambiguity and inconsistencies in the plan.

• The strategy should rest on sound causal theory for achieving the desired end state.

Proposition 3: Build internal support and overcome resistance

Managerial leaders must build internal support for and reduce resistance to change through widespread participation in the change process and other means.

• Encourage participation and open discussion to reduce resistance to change.

• Avoid criticism, threats, and coercion aimed at reducing resistance to change.

• Commit sufficient time, effort, and resources to manage participation effectively.

Proposition 4: Ensure top-management support and commitment

An individual or group within the organization should champion the cause for change.

• An “idea champion” or guiding coalition should advocate for and lead the transformation process.

• Individuals championing the change should have the skill and acumen to marshal resources and support for change, to maintain momentum, and to overcome obstacles to change.

• Political appointees and top-level civil servants should support the change.

Proposition 5: Build external support

Managerial leaders must develop and ensure support from political overseers and key external stakeholders.

• Build support for and commitment to change among political overseers.

• Build support for and commitment to change among interest groups with a stake in the organization.

Proposition 6: Provide resources

Successful change usually requires adequate resources to support the change process.

• Provide adequate amounts of financial, human, and technological resources to implement change.

• Avoid overtaxing organizational members.

• Capitalize on synergies in resources when implementing multiple changes simultaneously.

Proposition7: Institutionalize change

Managers and employees must effectively institutionalize changes.

• Employ a variety of measures to displace old patterns of behavior and institutionalize new ones.

• Monitor the implementation of change.

• Institutionalize change before shifts in political leadership cause commitment to and support for change to diminish.

Proposition 8: Pursue comprehensive change

Managerial leaders must develop an integrative, comprehensive approach to change that achieves subsystem congruence.

• Adopt and implement a comprehensive, consistent set of changes to the various subsystems of the organization.

• Analyze and understand the interconnections between organizational subsystems before pursuing subsystem congruence.