The Life of Change Method: Rethinking Change Management in Resource Constrained Organizations through Constructivist Grounded Theory
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Issue Date
2026
Editor
Authors
Whitney Rochefort, Susan
License
Subject
Faculty of management
Abstract
Resource-constrained organizations (RCOs) operate in environments characterized by continuous change, limited capacity, and heightened risk, yet the change management (CM) discipline continues to rely on fragmented literature along with linear, assumption-laden methods that struggle to reflect how change, and the managerial efforts intended to shape it, are experienced in practice. This study addresses a critical gap in the CM body of knowledge by examining how organizational change is understood, navigated, and managed in Canadian RCOs for organizational survivability. Guided by organizational learning and complexity theories, this research adopts a qualitative constructivist grounded theory (CGT) approach to generate empirically grounded insights into change as a lived, non-linear process. Data were collected through 23 semi-structured interviews with leaders and professionals working in RCOs across diverse sectors in Western Canada. Through iterative coding, constant comparison, and analytic memoing, the study identified 18 provisional categories and 63 provisional sub-categories that together represent the organizational-level, human-experience, and outcome factors shaping how change, and the managerial efforts to shape it, unfold in RCOs over time.
The analysis synthesizes participants’ accounts into two interrelated, empirically grounded analytical models that explain how change, and the managerial efforts intended to shape it, are experienced and enacted in RCOs. The Organizational-Level Factors model articulates how contextual conditions, practices, decisions, actions, and outcomes interact through feedback loops over time, while the Human Experience Factorial model captures how individuals interpret, respond to, and learn from change through sensemaking, agency, relational dynamics, and reflection. Together, these models suggest that organizational survivability emerges not from isolated factors or prescribed steps, but from the dynamic interaction between organizational conditions and human experience.
Building on these analytical insights, the study introduces an applied CM method, called the Life of Change (LoC) method, that conceptualizes change as unfolding through identifiable yet fluid phases, represented as nested concentric circles that reflect varying levels of uncertainty and evolving scopes of consideration. This phase-based representation provides a temporal and experiential structure for understanding how change, and the managerial efforts intended to shape it, are revisited, adjusted, and renegotiated over time in RCOs. Guiding questions within the LoC method translate participants’ reflective inquiry into practitioner-facing prompts that support sensemaking, judgment, and adjustment under conditions of uncertainty, capacity constraints, ethical considerations, and unintended outcomes. The LoC method conceptualizes change as an iterative journey rather than a linear sequence, operationalizing the study’s findings through six interconnected phases supported by structured yet flexible reflective inquiry.
By reframing change as an adaptive, relational, and ongoing process, this research contributes to CM theory by empirically substantiating the study’s theoretical framework grounded in organizational learning and complexity theories, addressing longstanding critiques of fragmentation and lack of methodological rigour, while offering practitioners in RCOs an empirically grounded method for managing continuous change in ways that support learning, adaptation, trust, and organizational survivability while preventing harm to people.
Future research may extend this study by further refining and elaborating the LoC method, its associated analytical models, across a wider range of organizational contexts, including organizations with differing levels of resource constraint, size, and change experience. Such work could include longitudinal and action-oriented studies examining how practitioners engage with the LoC method over time, as well as comparative research exploring how the identified conditions, human experiences, and change dynamics manifest across organizational settings. Quantitative inquiry may also be used to explore patterns and tendencies associated with the analytical models under particular contextual conditions, contributing to ongoing theory refinement rather than confirmation. Additional avenues for inquiry include examining how established CM methods may be meaningfully situated within the analytical framework, as well as engaging complementary knowledge systems and epistemological perspectives, including Indigenous ways of knowing, to further deepen understanding of the ethical, relational, and experiential dimensions of organizational change. Collectively, these directions position the analytical models and the LoC method as a foundation for an evolving and generative research agenda that bridges theory development and applied change practice.
Description
2026