The Process of Managing Leading Change in a Complicated Public Environment

Purpose - To promote knowledge about how the process of change and its performance is implemented, and the complex environment in which public organizations operate. Methodology - The combination of three government offices in Mashhad was selected for a case study. This integration was carried out in an environment increasingly complicated by the progressive development of implementing the process. The main method of collecting data was interviewing managers who participated in organizational change. A total of 19 interviews were conducted. Interviews were coded using Atlas.ti software. Findings- Analyzes show that a high degree of complexity of the environment forces public organizations to adopt a planned approach from top to bottom, while the effectiveness of such an approach is limited to the simultaneous change of a complex environment. In addition, the routine change leadership activities is not sufficient to implement a change in a complicated environment. In order to overcome environmental dependence and maintain current trend in change process, public managers must be involved in leadership activities focusing on external environment. Innovation - The hypotheses can be further tested in future research and provides a basis for future research in the field of change management in public organizations. Focusing on the process and not paying attention just to the feedback of the process and the pre-process schema is the distinction of the present research