Checklist for organizational change
One of the most famous theorists of organizational change is John Kotter, of Harvard University. Last year he published “A Sense of Urgency”, which is reviewed here in the Financial Times.The review quotes from this new book:
“Change is shifting from episodic to continuous. With episodic change, the challenge of creating a sufficient sense of urgency comes in occasional spurts. With continuous change, creating and sustaining a sufficient sense of urgency are always a necessity.”
This is true. But the key word is sufficient. What does that mean? How can you be sure that you don’t create an organizational climate where people run around like headless chickens? When do you need urgency and when do you not need urgency? How long can something be said to be urgent before people become indifferent? Are there degrees of urgency?
Managers always need to think carefully before applying gurus’ ideas to their own organization. Urgency in one department is not the same as urgency in another department. This week’s urgency is not the same as last week’s. The urgency for a particular organizational change can itself change, and so on ……
Organizational change – where is it from?
The organizational change management field is comparatively new. It has really only been in existence for the last 50 years or so. This excerpt from an academic article I wrote discusses the origins of the field.
There is an enormous amount of academic literature and an enormous amount of practitioner literature on the topic of change, where the most popular books sell in millions (over six million copies of In Search of Excellence; two million copies of Reengineering the Corporation), which indicates the widespread acceptance of the need for change. This orthodoxy has roots in the social developments of the last forty years.
The post-war era was one of relative stability until the 1960s, when there was social upheaval (protests against the Vietnam war, the student revolts of May 1968, the women’s movement), technological upheaval (the development of computers and transistors, the space race), and economic upheaval (the oil embargo of 1973, the “Japanese juggernaut” built on high quality products and high productivity). The scale of the resulting changes may or may not be fundamentally different to anything that had happened before, but they were important, and they created an impression that major change was happening and needed to be addressed.
The growing importance and economic power of Germany and Japan, together with the (relative) decline in the US and British economies seemed to indicate that there was a need to overhaul radically the traditional American and British ways of doing business. The emergence of Thatcherism and Reaganism, which called for a new enterprise culture and a much-reduced role for the state, was also a significant factor in creating a climate where change was seen as a sine qua non of future prosperity. The attrition rate of companies is huge; only 16 of the largest 100 US companies at the beginning of the 1900s still survived at the end of the 20th century, a fact which certainly implies that change is crucial to survival.
Organizational Change and More Theory
One way to understand change is to consider it in terms of the motors, or general theories, that bring about change. Van de Ven and Poole’s (1995) paper presents four ideal types of theory drawn from a wide range of disciplines which address the question of why organizations change:
- Life-cycle: immanent within any organization are the logics or processes that lead it to change from the present state to more advanced ones in a series of evolutionary stages.
- Teleological: the organization develops purposefully towards an envisioned goal or end-state; there is not a pre-ordained sequence of events as in life-cycle theories because the desired goal can be defined and socially constructed.
- Dialectical: conflicts between opposing forces (representing thesis and antithesis) may create a synthesis which represents a new state.
- Evolutionary: at the level of organizational populations, change occurs through variation, selection, retention or random chance.
The motors of change identified by Van de Ven and Poole have a relationship to the pace and scale of change. Life-cycle and evolutionary motors tend to lead to continuous and incremental change, while dialectical and teleological motors lead to episodic and radical change.
What does this mean for people who deal with change in organizations? Successful change management demands an understanding of the concept ‘change’, so a bit of theory is always appropriate. I’ll discuss this more in future notes.
Van de Ven, A. H. & Poole, M. S. 1995. Explaining Development and Change in Organizations. Academy of Management Review, 20(3): 510-540.
Organizational change outcomes
It is useful for people involved in organizational change to pay attention to the nature of the change outcomes that they wil be dealing with. It’s a bit less straightforward than it might appear to be at first sight. My research and experience have shown that there are three aspects to the concept change outcome.
First, there is the issue of intentionality. Any planned change has objectives – these are shown in Powerpoint presentations. So managers undertake planned change initiatives with certain outcomes in mind – these are intended outcomes. However, the unpredictable nature of change processes means that there will be unexpected outcomes which were not predicted. These develop as the change initiative progresses.
Next, when a change outcome is classified as intended, there is the issue of how well it meets its goals, i.e. whether its intended results have been achieved fully, or not achieved at all – or something in between. In fact, there can be different views within the same organization about the extent to which an intended change outcome has been achieved. Read more
Theory and Organizational Change I
At various times I will be posting on some of theoretical issues related to organizational change because I believe that it is necessary to understand the way the concept ‘change’ has developed. Here I outline some of the earliest thinking on change, which still influences discussions about change today.
Among the concepts discussed by the philosophers of ancient Greece was the idea of change. Two schools of thought with respect to change existed among pre-Socratic thinkers, and the differences between them were significant. Parmenides (c. 515-445 BC) used an argument based on language and thought processes to claim that change was not possible: “[Reality] is uncreated and indestructible; for it is complete, immovable, and without end”. He stressed that reality is permanent and unchangeable, and change is illusory. Heraclitus (c. 544-483 BC), who was well known to Plato and Aristotle for his belief in universal change and his doctrine that everything is in a state of flux, took an opposing view: “You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you”. He argued that there is a continuous process of transformation, so things are in a constant state of becoming, and therefore the world changes and is changeable .
There is no doubt about which of these two arguments is the more influential. Heraclitus is referred to by writers on organizational change as writers on strategy refer to Sun-Tzu. For example, Beer and Nohria (2000) write: “As Heraclitus noted 2,500 years ago: ‘All is flux, nothing stays still.’ Sadly, this is as true today as it was then”.
Change in an uncertain world
I recently did a search of the online journals of the academic publishers Taylor and Francis. This revealed that the phrase “unprecedented change” has been used in reference to many, many topics, including life in rural communities, Italian politics, healthcare, libraries, information technology and education.
It is not surprising, then, that implicit in many management texts, articles on business in newspapers and magazines, and management training courses is the view that the world is changing more quickly than ever. This point is made explicitly equally often. To give but three examples:
- “We are living at a time when the competitive environment has a steep and rapid learning curve. It’s also a time of unprecedented change.”
- “Today, however, companies are in a process of retooling and developing new strategies which will assist them to be competitive at a time of unprecedented change in product and labour markets and technology.”
- “All parts of organizations are going through unprecedented change as a result of the volatile business environment, including such well-known items as exploding technology, globalization, and new work processes.”
In the terms we use at Turris Consulting, this means that the outer context is not stable. This in turn means…. organizational change! So how should managers deal with this instability?
Language and Organizational Change
In my work, I often comment on the importance of communication for organizational change management. This insight is based on both practical experience and research. Here is an extract from an article I wrote about language and organizational change.
Theorists started to study the relationship between language and organization in the 1980s, when language began to be understood not simply as a mechanism of communication, but rather as a fundamental aspect of organization and organising.
Language-in-use is often referred to as discourse. In its narrowest and most traditional definition, discourse refers only to spoken dialogue. A fuller understanding of discourse, however, includes both speech acts and written texts. The most radical view is that organization exists only through language, leading to views of organization as text, or as narrative, or as constituted in discourse.
It has been shown that there is great value in looking at discourse during change processes. Language, in the form of conversations, stories and rumours, is a significant factor in the way change is conceptualised. The way in which organizational members negotiate meaning in the change process is through discursive practices and textual objects. Indeed, coherent language use can play a significant role in the outcome of change initiatives. One study of the introduction of new technology on the London Insurance Market demonstrates that there are fragmented and competing discourses within an organization. Consequently, competition between groups takes place through discourse.
Conversation is one of the most common forms of communication in the workplace. Studies of managerial activities have shown that managers spend a large part of their time in carrying out oral communications. The act of conversation and the content of conversation produce action, which indicates why conversations can play an important part in a change process.
Stories play a significant role in the creation and maintenance of meaning in organizations and hence in the development and maintenance of organizational culture. The informal nature of storytelling does not mean that it is not important. It has been shown, for example, that the use of stories enables change to take place, as when an executive’s storytelling enabled him to convince colleagues to move in new direction.
Discourse – communication – is a mechanism through which change happens, and it should therefore be considered in an investigation of change processes.
Managers and consultants should also pay attention to language when leading and managing change processes.
Change management books
Just in time for Christmas – here are some books which I have found to be useful for change management in several ways.
Images of Organization by Gareth Morgan shows how the ways in which we view organizations and the metaphors we use affect how we manage. The other books contain a range of insights into the organization change process.
Caldwell’s work (Agency and Change) is more theoretical. It looks at how the tension between agency and structure to investigate how people as change agents can affect the way change initiatives in their organization progress.
Understanding Organizational Change by Dawson is aimed at MBA students. Nevertheless, it should be read by people in organizations because of the way it emphasises taking a view of change at all levels of the organiztion.
Finally, the Handbuch Change-Management has been written by some prominent German experts. It provides a comprehensive view of change and change management.
