ABSTRACT
This chapter further fleshes out differences between Burns and Stalker’s book and its mainstream representations. The first part of the chapter demonstrates the deep concerns in The Management of Innovation with factors affecting organisational change other than the structural, objectivist factors focussed on in much orthodox scholarship. As the evidence from the detailed analysis of Burns and Stalker’s own text shows, a not inconsiderable part of the book is devoted to the difficulties in effecting change from a hierarchical to a flexible, decentralised model, and to showing how change strategies without the commitment of employees or an able chief executive can result in dysfunction and failure. A comparison is then drawn between Burns and Stalker’s book and the chosen textbooks. Derrida’s advice to engage in detailed textual analysis (Derrida 1981; Norris 1987) and Eco’s (1992b) prescription for the focus being on intentio operis (the text itself) are followed. The chapter concludes with a comparison of pages of the original text with pages in the textbooks based on Fairclough and Hardy’s (1997) critical discourse analysis.
