Change Management

These change management dissertation examples are student-contributed and focus on how organisations plan, deliver, and sustain change when people, processes, and incentives pull in different directions. Students often investigate why change initiatives stall, why “adoption” is uneven, and what separates a short-term rollout from a lasting shift in behaviour and performance.

Common dissertation directions include leadership and sponsorship, communication strategy, employee resistance and engagement, capability building, and how organisational culture shapes outcomes. Many projects use well-known frameworks to structure analysis, such as Kotter’s 8-step model, Lewin’s unfreeze–change–refreeze, ADKAR, McKinsey 7S, Bridges’ transition model, and Kübler-Ross–influenced change curves (often critiqued, but still widely used). Students also draw on socio-technical systems theory (how tech and people co-produce outcomes), normalisation process theory (how new practices become routine), and institutional theory (how rules and legitimacy pressures shape adoption). Where change involves digital transformation, dissertations frequently explore governance, process redesign, training, stakeholder mapping, and benefits realisation — including why KPIs don’t reflect lived reality on the ground.

Use these change management dissertation examples to build keywords such as change readiness, resistance, stakeholder analysis, organisational culture, communication, learning, adoption, benefits realisation, and transformation governance.