Change management: is a concrete case file more useful than a shared glossary?
When a change spans several professional groups, defining the project's terminology can seem like a sufficient precaution. The more precise management question is whether examining a concrete case file together reveals incompatibilities that a shared glossary leaves untouched.
What the literature establishes
Paul R. Carlile (2002, Organization Science) analyses knowledge boundaries between functions in new product development. His study shows the value of shared objects, such as representations or models, in making differences in knowledge and dependencies between professional groups visible. Their usefulness extends beyond providing a common language: they also enable people to represent constraints and work through their consequences.
What a concrete object opens up for discussion
Beth A. Bechky (2003, Organization Science) examines exchanges between occupational communities in a production setting. She describes how drawings and machines help transform understanding between groups whose knowledge is grounded in different activities. The mechanism relevant to organisational transformation is this: a shared concrete object can help people locate another group's explanation within the work itself, rather than merely recognise its terminology.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that a workshop built around a case file is a better substitute for any work on definitions. These studies do not establish such general superiority, and a shared object may itself favour the perspective of the group that designed it. The aim is to let other groups incorporate their constraints and discuss the consequences, not to secure their approval of an already settled representation. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
These studies draw on field research in product development and production, not an experimental comparison of change management methods. They do not allow us to quantify the expected benefit in a bank or an international organisation. In practice, an oversimplified case, sensitive data or the absence of a relevant professional group may also limit the exercise's value.
A practical check in Genève
Within SHR — Swiss Human Resources' « Conduite du changement » programme, one possible exercise is to examine an anonymised or fictional case file: client onboarding in private banking, project approval in an international organisation, a component modification in luxury watchmaking or the handling of a commodity trading transaction. Before the discussion, each professional group independently records the action required at each stage and the constraint that justifies it; after the joint review, each group independently revisits its description. The proposed measure is the proportion of stages for which the descriptions still prescribe incompatible actions, retaining the responses and documenting the discrepancies. This check records any convergence in interpretations of the case examined, without proving that the change has taken hold. To go further: explore the Change Leadership training in Geneva in the canton of Geneva, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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