178
Looking back after nine years, he acknowledged ruefully that, iiWellt I recall that
there is one page in the Report -1 can ,t tell you which one, but it,s there if you read it
- where I predicted most of the things that might happen and subsequently have"
(Dearing 2003).
Because he produced his reports during an active retirement, it is unsurprising that he
had not foreseen another potential problem that might result from the changes he was
recommending. However, younger policy makers should perhaps been aware that
changing organisations was not a simple matter. As an outcome of the 1980s takeover
frenzy and the 1990s fondness for ‘downsizing’ organisations, the subject of ‘the
management of change’ had become something of a growth industry in management
literature. For example, in August 2003, a search of the Institute OfEducation library
catalogue using the key words ‘management of change’ produced 295 records. Yet
while in each instance of merger detailed above there was a certain logic in the minds
of policy makers, none of their plans seemed to indicate any awareness of the
potential hazards of organisational change. This was a surprising oversight at a time
when the writings of both serious academics like Michael Eraut (Eraut 1985) and
management gurus like Charles Handy (Handy 1995) had made something of a cliche
of the idea that if it were to succeed, change required careful management. Both
academic research and organisational experience confirmed that if change were to
bring hoped-for improvements, it must be planned with care and each stage
introduced with the support of the staff who would implement any new system. Yet
these major changes were imposed with no apparent expectation that they would have
any repercussions on the organisations involved. One person directly involved in one
of these restructurings - he was Director of Research at NCVQ and about to move