Managing change at Novotel: Back to the future

Novotel is one of the world's major hotel chains, occupying a leading place in Europe and with locations globally. We interpret Novotel's change manag ement programme in the 1990s in three parts. First, we summarise the action s that managers took in terms of strategy and organisation. Second, we cons ider the sequence and timing of events, and how this resulted in rapid tran sformation in an organisation employing more than 30,000 people. Third, we emphasise the dialectical nature of the change processes: an element often ignored in the literature that likes to see things as an either-or rather t han a both. We observed both deliberation and experimentation; both integra tion and differentiation. We also observed both preservation and transforma tion, as noted in our sub-title 'Back to the Future'. Finally, we wrap up w ith a discussion explaining how our story can add to better thinking about change. We suggest that we can shed new light on some old debates and provi de tangible guides for action. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights re served.