Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 231
The workaround may be the evidence
Lewis’s framework treats stakeholders as actors who interpret influence enact and evaluate change rather than audiences awaiting announcements
Premise
Change becomes real through communication as people interpret expectations, coordinate work, question inconsistencies, learn new practices, and decide whether to support, adapt, resist, or redirect an initiative. In Laurie K. Lewis’s framework, communication is not a campaign added after leaders choose a change. It is one of the processes through which implementation itself is accomplished.
Lewis developed this view through a cumulative research program: studies of dissemination and input seeking, nonprofit implementation approaches, the 2007 Organizational Stakeholder Model of Change Implementation Communication, and the 2011 integration of strategy, stakeholder interaction, power, resistance, and outcomes. The governing question shifts from whether people were told to what communication is shaping enactment.
What the model is: Change Communication in Knowledge →
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- FamilyTool
- CategoryAnalytical Frameworks, Typologies & Heuristics
- DomainOrganization & Structure
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Tool
In this series, Tool names the editorial family primarily used to act on, examine, measure or organize communication. It includes instruments, methods, practices, protocols, codes and institutional arrangements. Membership does not certify effectiveness, portability or safe use in every setting.
Editorial orientation · Category
Analytical Frameworks, Typologies & Heuristics
Organizes dimensions, distinctions, types or questions so that a situation can be examined systematically. A framework supplies structure, a typology distinguishes forms, and a heuristic offers a usable way to orient judgment.
- KnowledgeChange Communication
- Related briefSensemaking: Decide What Situation You Are Actually In
- Related briefStructuration Theory: Change the Practice That Recreates the Structure
- Key conceptReadiness for Change
- Key conceptResistance to Change