Change is the one constant in every organisation, but not all change looks the same. A bank rolling out a new mobile app is doing something fundamentally different from a government department digitising decades of paper files. Understanding these differences matters because each type of change demands a different strategy, different resources, and a different kind of leadership. Scholars of organisational behaviour have developed several useful frameworks to classify change, and these categories help administrators, managers, and policymakers make sense of transitions that would otherwise feel chaotic.
Table of Contents
Organisation-wide versus subsystem change
The first distinction concerns the scope of change – how much of the organisation is actually affected. Organisation-wide change is the broadest kind, touching every department, every role, and often the culture itself. As the Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development notes, this typically involves reorganisation, adding a major new product line, or a shift in the organisation’s life cycle – for instance, moving from a highly reactive entrepreneurial set-up to a more stable, planned one. Cultural change is almost always organisation-wide because culture permeates everything.
The Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) transition from a traditional IT services firm to a digital transformation partner is a clear example. It required new leadership thinking, retrained employees, different delivery models, and fresh client engagement strategies. Such changes are resource-intensive and need careful coordination across multiple functions.
Subsystem change
Subsystem change, by contrast, is surgical. It targets a specific department, process, or team while leaving the rest of the organisation largely untouched. A public sector bank that upgrades only its loan processing software, or a university that digitises student admissions without altering research or hostel administration, is carrying out subsystem change. It is easier to plan and less disruptive, but it can also create friction if other subsystems are not aligned with the updated one.
Transformational versus incremental change
The second axis is about magnitude and pace. Transformational change – sometimes called radical, revolutionary, or frame-breaking change – is a fundamental shift. It often alters the organisation’s strategy, structure, culture, and sometimes even its core identity, all at once. Revolutionary change is rapid and dramatic, and it can be planned or unplanned. It is risky, expensive, and emotionally demanding for employees, but it is sometimes the only way for an organisation to survive or reinvent itself.
Reliance Industries’ journey from being a petrochemicals-first conglomerate to a digital services and retail giant is a textbook transformational change. New business lines like Jio and Reliance Retail did not just add to the old company – they redefined what Reliance means in the Indian economy. Similarly, when a government department shifts from a file-driven bureaucratic model to a citizen-centric digital service delivery system, the change is transformational because every assumption about how work gets done is revised.
Incremental change
Incremental change takes the opposite approach: small, steady improvements that build on what already exists. Practitioners define it as low-risk improvements that enhance performance without significantly altering the core structure or strategy. Think of the Income Tax Department progressively adding features to its e-filing portal year after year, or a state transport corporation gradually rolling out GPS tracking on buses route by route.
The advantage of incremental change is that employees can absorb it without experiencing massive disruption. It also allows for course correction – if a small pilot fails, only a small piece needs to be fixed. The disadvantage is speed: incremental approaches may be too slow when the environment demands a bold pivot.
Interestingly, the same initiative may be incremental for one organisation and transformational for another. Introducing agile project management would be a minor adjustment for a tech start-up but a revolutionary cultural shift for a century-old manufacturing firm used to long sequential planning cycles.
Remedial versus developmental change
The third distinction looks at why the change is happening – whether it is fixing a problem or building on a strength. Remedial change is planned to address current situations such as increasing efficiency or reducing burnout, and it tends to be more focused, urgent, and visible because it deals with existing major problems. When public sector banks initiate clean-up drives to address non-performing assets after a regulatory rap, they are doing remedial change. So is a municipal corporation revamping its waste collection system after repeated public complaints.
Remedial change has one useful feature: its success is easy to judge. The benefit of remedial change is that judging its success is quick and simple – was the problem solved or not? Because the goal is concrete, feedback loops are tight and outcomes are measurable.
Developmental change
Developmental change, on the other hand, enhances what is already working. It is about moving from good to great rather than from broken to fixed. Developmental change builds on the strengths of existing capabilities without redoing the system – for instance, a well-run call centre rolling out advanced communication training for agents who are already performing well, simply to make service even more polished.
A profitable technology company that invests heavily in exploring quantum computing, even though its current products are doing fine, is engaged in developmental change. The motivation is opportunity, not crisis. Many Indian conglomerates have used developmental change in their digital transformation programmes – upgrading skills, systems, and processes while their core businesses continue to generate strong revenues.
The leadership challenge with developmental change is complacency. When nothing is obviously broken, mobilising effort and budget for improvement can be difficult. This is why developmental change often needs visionary leaders who can paint a compelling picture of future possibilities.
Unplanned versus planned change
The fourth axis is about intentionality – whether the change is deliberately designed or thrust upon the organisation by circumstance. Planned change is deliberate and carefully orchestrated – it happens when management identifies a need for major shifts and develops a strategic plan to implement them. The rollout of the Goods and Services Tax, supported by the JAM trinity – Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar identity, and mobile connectivity – is a classic example of planned change at the national scale. Years of consultation, drafting, IT infrastructure building, and stakeholder negotiation preceded the actual implementation.
Planned change allows for detailed communication strategies, training programmes, pilot runs, and phased rollouts. It gives managers the time to address resistance and build buy-in. The downside is that planned change can be slow, and sometimes the environment moves faster than the plan.
Unplanned change
Unplanned change, sometimes called emergent or reactive change, happens when an organisation is forced to adapt to sudden, unexpected events. The management of unplanned change requires agility and the ability to quickly adapt to new circumstances to minimise disruptions and maintain stability. The COVID-19 pandemic forced almost every organisation in the world into an unplanned change – remote work, digital customer engagement, and supply chain re-routing all happened in weeks, not years.
Closer home, the 2016 demonetisation triggered massive unplanned change across Indian businesses. The demonetisation exercise disrupted the Indian consumption cycle and deferred economic recovery by up to 18 months according to some analysts, while simultaneously pushing millions of small traders into digital payment systems almost overnight. Companies that had never thought about cashless transactions suddenly had to install card machines, train cashiers, and re-engineer their accounting flows.
Unplanned change is rarely comfortable, but organisations that develop the capability to respond well to it often emerge stronger. The ability to pivot quickly is itself a strategic asset.
Why these categories matter in practice
These four pairs of categories are not mutually exclusive. A single change initiative can be organisation-wide, transformational, developmental, and planned all at once – Aadhaar enrolment is an example. Or it can be subsystem, incremental, remedial, and unplanned – like a branch office quickly fixing a security loophole after a minor breach.
The value of understanding these types lies in what they tell managers about the resources, risks, and leadership style needed:
Different changes need different resource allocations. A transformational, organisation-wide change demands far more money, time, and human capital than a subsystem tweak. Budgeting appropriately prevents initiatives from dying halfway.
Different changes carry different risks. Transformational change is more uncertain than incremental change; unplanned change is immediately risky because there is little time to think. Risk management strategies should be calibrated accordingly.
Different changes call for different leadership. Transformational change needs visionary, inspirational leaders who can rally people around a bold new direction. Incremental change benefits from detail-oriented, process-focused leaders who enjoy continuous improvement. Remedial change needs decisive troubleshooters. Developmental change needs coaches who can push good performers to become great.
Different changes need different communication approaches. Organisation-wide transformational changes demand town halls, regular updates, storytelling, and repeated reinforcement because the cognitive and emotional load on employees is high. Subsystem incremental changes may only require a simple team email and a short training session.
Matching approach to type
Successful e-governance initiatives in India illustrate this principle well. The Aadhaar programme, being transformational and organisation-wide across the government machinery, required a dedicated authority (UIDAI), new laws, biometric infrastructure, and sustained political backing. In contrast, incremental upgrades to the Passport Seva portal could be handled within existing Ministry of External Affairs structures through routine IT procurement. When administrators correctly diagnose the type of change they are dealing with, they can match their approach to the challenge rather than over-engineering small changes or under-resourcing big ones.
A final insight is about organisational capacity. An organisation only has so much capacity for change while normal day-to-day operations continue, and pushing too much change simultaneously will limit successful implementation. Any leader planning multiple major transformations at once must ask whether the organisation and its people can realistically absorb them. Otherwise, change fatigue sets in, and even well-designed initiatives begin to fail.
What do you think? Which type of organisational change – transformational, incremental, remedial, developmental, planned, or unplanned – do you think Indian public administration handles best today, and where does it struggle most? If you were leading a change initiative in a government department tomorrow, would you push for a bold transformational overhaul or a slow incremental upgrade, and why?
References
- https://management.org/misc/types-of-orgl-change.pdf
- https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-organizationalbehavior/chapter/types-of-change/
- https://www.peterfgallagher.com/single-post/incremental-change-versus-transformation
- https://www.med.upenn.edu/hbhe4/part4-ch15-dimensions-of-organizational-change.shtml
- https://whatfix.com/blog/types-of-organizational-change/
- https://wisdomcircle.com/types-of-organisational-change/
- https://sixsigmadsi.com/what-is-organizational-change/
- https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2017/09/indias-post-demonetization-policy-agenda?lang=en
- https://holistiquetraining.com/en/news/six-types-of-change-management-for-organisations
- https://www.quantumamc.com/article/One-Year-of-Demonetisation-Pass-or-Fail
- https://www.thinkers360.com/tl/blog/members/incremental-change-versus-transformation
Leave a Reply