Abstract

As organisations have been attempting to deal with the practical difficulties that change brings, the debates and discussions seemed to have played to a number of themes and assumptions. Although the former has benefited from extensive research the latter has been neglected over the past seven decades. Whilst researchers have focused on planned and emergent change and the discourse and practice approaches, others have proposed dualism/paradox, change agency, behavioural and positioning theory as these are assumed will help management resolve challenges and achieve successful change. However, a study is yet to be carried out on what the taken-for-granted assumptions that these debates play to really are and what they could offer to an area that has been claimed to be under-theorised over decades. This lies at the crux of the paper’s aims and objectives. Through content analysis and the interpretation of the qualitative, empirical data, it has been found that employees’ preferences have been neglected in organisational change (OC) research but could offer researchers and practitioners a new direction in identifying what barriers, opportunities and permutations could be at stake as attempts are undertaken to better understand how to effect successful change. The paper’s main contribution is referred to as ‘preferential positioning’ which is argued as a theoretical addition to positioning theory and to the traditional dualistic reporting of most OC research and their theories. It is anticipated to help resolve part of the under-theorisation and offer research openings beyond dualism and in a post-planned change era.