The Management of Change.

The main body of this document consists of three presentations given at a conference on the management of change. The conference provided each participant the opportunity to formulate, plan, and implement desired change at particular institutions in a more sophisticated fashion. In the first presentation, three conceptual models of executive behavior and decisionmaking in a complex organization are discussed -- i.e., the rational approach, the political approach, and the organizational structure and processes approach. A variety of case studies illustrate these models. The second presentation reviews the research-development-diffusion, social interaction, and problem-solver perspectives employed by most authors in the field of dissemination and utilization of knowledge for the purposes of change. The authors explain how these three perspectives can be brought together in a "linkage model," describe the general factors which contribute most to dissemination and utilization, and discuss the implications of these factors for the practitioner. The last presentation analyzes and criticizes four major change theory models: the mechanical, the systems, the organizational analysis, and the anthropological. (Author/DN)