Change management practices in small island economies: A study of private sector organisations in Mauitius

Gungadeen, Sanjiv (2014) Change management practices in small island economies: A study of private sector organisations in Mauitius. PhD thesis, Murdoch University.

Abstract

This dissertation examines change management practices in private sector organisations in Mauritius. It presents the findings from a qualitative study of three private sector organisations from different sectors in Mauritius: the banking sector, the hotel industry and a privatised state-owned enterprise.

Thirty eight in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted in a modified grounded theory study to establish the key dimensions of organisational change. Themes from participant responses were coded and synthesised to provide insights into the process of change in the organisations under study. The emergent theory suggests that organisational change is a multi-dimensional, multi-directional and evolutionary process and this study has identified that organisational change is influenced by the contextual and historical aspects of the country. The emerging key dimensions of change served to confirm six dimensions evident in the extant literature on organisational change:
o Organisational structure.
o Organisational culture.
o Leadership processes.
o Individuals.
o Knowledge management.
o Resistance to change.

A seventh dimension, and therefore largely unacknowledged factor, considered to be central to the change process in Mauritian organisations was also identified:

Partisanship.

Partisanship was found to be present in all the case study organisations, and to be a pervasive influence on the change process. History, culture and context have served to embed this dimension in the change processes.
A model is presented which illustrates how the process of organisational change is undertaken in Mauritius, which clearly defines the role of partisanship. It is proposed that this model may be applied to other small island economies with similar historical, cultural or contextual features as is the case with Mauritius.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Management and Governance
Supervisor(s):	Holloway, David and Paull, Megan
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/25975

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