Organizational change occurs when a company makes a transition from its current state to some desired future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to minimize employee resistance and cost to the organization, while also maximizing the effectiveness of the change effort.

Today's business environment requires companies to undergo changes almost constantly if they are to remain competitive. Factors such as globalization of markets and rapidly evolving technology force businesses to respond in order to survive. Such changes may be relatively minor—as in the case of installing a new software program—or quite major—as in the case of refocusing an overall marketing strategy. "Organizations must change because their environments change. Outside pressures come from changes in the legal, competitive, technological, and economic environments."

Start the discussion by providing relatively recent examples of companies that changed and stayed in business while others that resisted and ceased to exist or filed for bankruptcy.