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Coping with Change, Managing Uncertainty Essay

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Coping with Change, Managing Uncertainty
Introduction
'Thirty years ago most people thought that change would mean more of the same, only better. That was incremental change and to be welcomed. Today we know that in many areas of life we cannot guarantee more of the same...[we] cannot even predict with confidence what will be happening in our own lives.' (Handy, 1991)

He differentiates between incremental and 'discontinuous' change, suggesting that the combination of economics and technology form a potent blend in this. We can see that Higher Education (HE) Library and Information Services (LIS), are part of an environment which is subject to both incremental and discontinuous change:

Political - increased control from central …show more content…

For LIS, uncertainty tends to centre particularly on:

Strategic direction for HE itself and how far it can and should become technology-dependent
Role changes, particularly in relation to user support
Organisational restructuring and altered work patterns
Technology itself - feelings of inadequacy and inability to keep up
Corrall (1995 a) suggests that:

'Current thinking, informed by chaos theory, prefers a 'radical/dynamic' view, as opposed to the 'mechanistic model previously espoused. This interpretation rejects the notion of managing change as an incremental, evolutionary, linear and orderly process, and instead sees the process as one of creating change, viewing it as inherently transformational, revolutionary, circular/spiral, and essentially chaotic - but ultimately productive and beneficial.'

This approach will also assist in coping with the sense of loss of control induced by increased end use, the complexity of electronic systems, the rate at which they change and in acknowledging that some aspects of the new electronic environment are paradoxical:

Promise of extended access yet problems of reliability, copyright, cost and complexity
Promise of new ways of learning yet staff and user

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