In this thesis I study what I call the improvement approach, which is a different approach to organi-zational change than the normal one. Usually when we speak about change we have an understand-ing of change as a planned periodic process typically initiated at the management level of an organ-ization. In the improvement approach in contrast, both managers and employees make continuous improvements in the way they work by using the PDSA cycle, which is supposed to give exception-al results. By combining two of the most central theorists in the field of organization culture, Martin and Schein, I show how important an organizations culture can be for the improvement approach to become a success. To be able to study organizational culture one must have at least one case. In this thesis I have been studying the culture of the section Citizens’ Services at Thisted Municipality, Denmark. I have observed the section over a period of 3 months, which together with seven inter-views have been giving me a huge amount of data and have made it possible to present many inter-esting results in this thesis. For example I show that organization culture is not such an easily af-fected object that the improvement approach, despite its great points, will easy become a central part of a culture. In this case several deep assumptions in the section make it a hard and long way. Not only the existing culture is a challenge. In addition, organizational structure and the fact that the case is part of a public organization have a huge influence on how well the improvement approach works.
However, I do not only study the improvement approach. I also explore the potential of what I call a planned improvement. In a planned improvement a change agent combines the improvement approach with change management theory. I have had the opportunity to follow a planned im-provement, that focus on the way of working in the sections expedition where citizens come to get help if they for example need new passports or have questions about their social benefits. A desired outcome of the planned improvement was to reduce the number of citizens waiting in more than 15 minutes. The planned improvement was in several ways a success. The number of citizens waiting in more than 15 minutes was reduced with about 50%. Likewise the way of working in the expedi-tion got improved. The reason to the success was that the change agent used both change manage-ment theory and the improvement approach. Change management theory was essential to give the planned improvement a good start by, among other things, reduce the resistance against the change and gave the planned improvement important subject matter knowledge. The improvement ap-proach showed also to reduce the resistant against the change and one of the central points is, that it highlight the importance of follow the change to see if it is a improvement or another failed change.