Universities in Australia, as part of the public sector and reliant on public funding, are increasingly the subject of pressure for greater accountability and organisational change. The role of senior managers in the sector is often to be change agents and to manage the change process effectively. However the implementation of any change envisaged is often problematic for various reasons including issues of power, resistance, emotional reaction and plain fear. Senior managers and associated change agents need to be aware of this and need to act sensitively and empathically if the planned change process is to succeed. This article chronicles the change process utilized within Murdoch University that resulted in the creation of a nascent School during the period from early 2001 through to its creation in January 2002 and its subsequent re-transformation by the beginning of 2003. It argues for an organisational change approach that has active staff/employee involvement and ownership of the process in order to nurture real engagement with the outcome(s) and to minimise resistance to change. The organisational component of the article is written primarily as a textual analysis of the discourse (verbal and written) that occurred during the change process. Field notes of the two authors, who were among the main participants, are used as a major source for the analysis. (Contains 8 endnotes.)