Between large-scale transformational and small-scale developmental change programmes lie a raft of other change initiatives, including branch and divisional restructuring, the reconfiguration of operations in the production of a given good or service, and the transition from some current state to a well-defined new state over a planned timeframe. Within these distinctions, the notion of the known and unknowable arises, especially with respect to the vulnerability and scope of the change in question. Much of the change management literature has focused on large-scale transitions and transformational change initiatives that are also referred to as ‘first-order change’. The velocity and vulnerability of such change initiatives draw them to the attention of academic researchers, the media and the business community. And yet, many of these change initiatives do not succeed in practice.