Change management (is a discipline)

There are a number of "business" and "organizationally-focused" magazine/journals produced by business schools and consulting firms. The best known is the Harvard Business Review. The Sloan Management School at MIT and the Rotman School at the University of Toronto have similar publications. (Plus, MIT's general magazine, Technology Review, which was originally the alumni magazine, is also good.) Stanford publishes the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Plus McKinsey publishes their quarterly, and Booz Allen publishes Strategy+Business, which is available on newsstands.

I'd be lying if I said I read them all, but I do read HBR and SSIR, and the special Sloan sections in the WSJ.

HBR and Technology Review are carried in most main branches of public libraries. Sloan articles are often available as part of the special sections they publish in association with the Wall Street Journal.

McKinsey Quarterly's current e-letter calls attention to a number of their articles on change management, which seems to be particularly relevant considering DC's primary election results. Registration is required for access to the articles:

The psychology of change management

Why do so many corporate-transformation programs fail? Perhaps because too few companies understand that they must transform their employees’ mind-sets and daily behavior, not just their equipment, systems, and procedures. “The psychology of change management,” from 2003, shows how companies can renew themselves by using psychological principles that explain why people think and act as they do—and how they can learn to think and act differently.

June 2003
The psychology of change management

Related reading

March 2010
Making the emotional case for change: An interview with Chip Heath

March 2010
What successful transformations share: McKinsey Global Survey results

April 2009
Corporate transformation under pressure [includes audio]

April 2009
The irrational side of change management

November 2007
Driving radical change

With regard to the DC schools effort, I would argue that the Fenty-Rhee effort was directed neither at rebuilding robust organizational systems nor at rebuilding culture, at least in terms of the current staff. Instead, efforts were focused on replacing "bad" or "unenlightened" staff with new people who presumably already had the "right mindset" in place.