Pathways and Frameworks for Change: Frameworks
With the recognition that we need to attend to both systems and the people inside the systems to create change, there are many approaches onto which this view can be overlaid. While the readings offer specific examples of models or frameworks you might follow, below are some common elements across many of them.
Frameworks for Change
Each of the tools in the readings use a particular framework that describes different system components that need to be engaged in order to create the desired change. Each tool delineates and names these components in slightly different ways.
Moser and Ekstrom’s (2010) Framework to Diagnose Barriers to Climate Change Adaptation provides perhaps the most detailed analysis of the factors and influences on organizational change, outlining four systems components: barriers; actors; governance and context; and system of concern. Within each one, they offer specific examples of activities and factors to consider when advancing climate adaptation within an organization.
Asset Management BC uses the categories of information, finances, assets, and people. And the Federation of Canadian Municipalities delineates organizational change along the lines of service delivery and operations-based approaches.
While not focused on adaptation specifically, Nesta’s Cultural Change Impact Framework (2018) provides another way to think about the different parts of a system that move together towards a desired change, using nine categories that include: attitudes, abilities, behaviour, roles, relationships, environment and more.
Finally, the Human Systems Dynamics Architectural Model (2016) frames organizational change efforts in terms of beliefs (attitudes, values, worldviews, assumptions), functions (behaviours, daily operations, roles) and structures (policies, job descriptions, regulations, formal and informal rules, physical systems).
In all cases, these frameworks create a way to organize our thinking and to move through the following steps in a pathway towards change.
