Change in a chaotic post‐modern world

This paper seeks to argue that despite the easy surface pervaisiveness of notions of turbulence, instability and chaos, such conceptions have yet to radically influence our views of change. Most of the change literature can be seen to be rooted in a traditional modernist paradigm which sees change as linear incremental progression. While there are some theorists who appreciate the limitations of the modernist paradigm, there are few who have begun to develop a truly postmodernist approach to change. This paper represents a small step in that process and concludes by surfacing the practical implications for change agents of transcending the modernist paradigm. ‘Speculate what our ideas of cause and effect might have been had melting butter been our model rather than billiard balls. As it is, the world may seem to us to be a succession of clicks, pushes, ticks and tocks. Had the melting of butter or wax seized our imagination instead, the world would have appeared to us as a series of simmering, drippings, meltings, and splashes…’ (Hanson, 1969, pp. 282–283).