This summary of Philosophies of Organizational Change van Sutherland & Smith is written in 2014 and donated to JoHo WorldSupporter
A philosophy of organization change is ‘the set of assumptions, tacit beliefs, conscious theories and implementation of approaches that govern a change agent’s way of looking at the organizational world and the best approach to introducing change’. The book will introduce nine philosophies of organizational change, because the ideal, classical, linear approach to change does not exist.
The traditional approach focuses on a strong leader who provides predictable, manageable steps to follow. But change and continuity are competing but complementary forces. Change encourages creativity and continuity maintains control. Criticism on the traditional approach:
Organizations are not perfectly controllable
Rational approaches ignore the human factor
But these approaches are appealing to leaders because they provide an easy model and are top-down. A more humanistic approach can be taken while still following the traditional approach. Challenging the status quo, increasing risk-taking and creativity, and transcending boundaries through information-sharing and teamwork fit such an approach. The paradox here is that teamwork etc. cannot be mandated through strategy. The individuals really have to want to change.
Rational orthodoxy is the extreme form of the traditional approach, where order, discipline and control from the top-down are most important. The possibility of implementing change bottom-up is not discussed at all. It seems an either-or choice but some authors do combine leadership and empowerment, collaboration and competition, and other seemingly contradictive terms.
Theories are statements that express relationships among concepts. A statement represents a theory because it offers law-like statements, or hypotheses, that make measurable predictions about change. Theoretical relations are the relationships between theories from the same and from different philosophies.
Theoretic context:”the level at which a theory operates: single analytical level (intra-level) or multiple levels (inter-level). The more levels of analysis in a theory, the more complex but the greater the explanatory power. Theoretic continuity is how a new theory relates to existing theories. Low continuity leads to revolutionary theory change. High continuity leads to incremental theory change. So higher-level theories deal with more complex variables and lower-level theories involve less complexity and fewer variables. Continuity describes the relationship between theories that explain the same change phenomenon.
The paradigm problem
A paradigms is the established or commonly accepted perspective of a discipline. A shift in shared assumptions occurs when problems begin to emerge which a paradigm’s theories cannot resolve. These shifts are scientific revolutions. The life-cycle approach to change is an example of a theoretical paradigm. It holds sway for a period while researchers try to make sense of all the evidence through the lens of that paradigm. But the there is evidence that a gap exists and if the gap becomes too great the paradigms collapses. Competing paradigms suffer from fatal incompatibilities. The incommensurability thesis says the content of competing paradigms cannot be compared due to the absence of common elements. The diametric approach says there are no paradigms at all. Some say the incommensurability debate is redundant. A multi-paradigms approach would need to account for or reject incommensurability. Several views could be helpful, but on the other hand no legitimacy can be claimed if there is a multiplicity of competing theories. A solution would be a dominant paradigm, but that does not seem to exist. But if paradigms are overrated then there is no barrier for theory integration.
The reductionism-unification problem
The lower the level of theoretic reduction, the more powerful the theory. A theory can have sub-disciplines that become units of analysis in their own right. Different methodologies employ characteristic tools, approaches and standards, which results in theories at different explanatory levels. The analytical level defines the properties of a theory’s construct and the relationships between the constructs. Reductionisms is prominent; researchers try to identify basic commonalities by stripping away higher-level ideas. They assume that despite the diversity, all change looks the same when examined at its lowest level.
Empiricism or logical positivism came in Europe and then in the US. It is an observational approach based on logic, deriving theories from careful analysis of a phenomenon. Unity: more complex phenomena should be validated by less complex phenomena. The bottom-up theory development counters the reductionist approaches. Complexity theory says the whole is more than the sum of the parts.
Multi-level theories are defined as those spanning numerous levels of organizational behavior and performance, describing combinations of individuals, dyads, teams, businesses, etc. so they bridge the micro and macro.
Barriers to reductionists theory:
Multi-level theories traverse disciplines but one tends to adopt the parent role
Different researchers research differently
Chasm between theoretical complexity and practical oversimplification seems unbridgeable
Lack of peer appreciation among researchers because multi-level change theories cannot please any philosophical faction
Suffers from the collection and analysis complications of multi-level data, which is difficult to bring together
Also, some branches of knowledge employ concepts that cannot be reduced. Lastly, we might be able to reduce from higher-level to lower-level theories but that would not necessarily explain everything. The most extreme form of anti-unification is using a single approach to examine change.
A typology of inter-theoretic perspectives (p35)
Theoretic pluralism
New theories offer little connection to the predecessors but they replace, compete, and/or subvert. Also, theories cannot bridge contexts or analytical levels. Human factors in change make it too difficult to conceive a single and generalizable theory of change. Theories work as heuristics, rules of thumb to discovery and understanding. So theoretic pluralism means that there is no one best way to secure knowledge about change. We all see organizations differently and we are all correct.
Theoretic connections
Intersections can be found between adjacent theories. Reductions and unifications can occur but only offer partial replacement of previous theories. Theories connect at different levels by accommodating one another through local integration. There are three ways in which theories from different organizational change philosophies become connected:
Heuristic dependence: shows where theories of one philosophy may be used to guide the generation of new hypotheses in another.
Conformational dependence: methods from one field confirm hypothesis in another field
Methodological integration: when methods cohere to assess common hypotheses and data
Theoretic revolution
This says that theories get exchanged wholesale at the same level. New theories replace old ones because the former offers superior predictions and explanations. The new theory becomes incompatible (incommensurate) with the old explanations.
Theoretic evolution
The best theories get better. Incremental and evolutionary updating, consolidation, and correction takes place. A common approach is to replicate important findings from earlier studies. It occurs infrequently, except for on the single analytical level.
Most leaders introduce change programmes with a clear appreciation for the problem, a strong commitment to its resolution and a definitive path for intervention. Still, the majority goes wrong. All available approaches seem to contradict in some way. Managers must look at what would work for them under the available conditions.
Rational strategy assumptions
The direction that change takes is less important than the need for a coherent framework in which to manage the process. The rational philosophy (strategic change) is the most common one. There are many definitions of strategy, the most used is ‘a difference in the form, quality or state over time in an organization’s alignment with its external environment”. In applying the rational strategy, leaders should apply logic and honesty to define a current position and a desired position. The difference dictates the requirements for change. Managers should decide on the deployment of scarce resources within the boundaries of environmental circumstances in order to achieve objectives. This approach is sometimes called teleological because the final destination represents the guiding logic.
Early inspirations
Leaders do interventions aimed at manipulating organizational parts in response to environmental circumstances. The rational approach first appeared in military literature. Also the term strategy comes from the military. Taylor made the approach very popular as management approach. Weber followed. By finding the fit between vision and the environment, rational change managers optimize performance. Lewin described one of the first systematic approaches to change. He saw the change process as comprised of three steps:
Unfreezing
Moving
Refreezing
Kotter’s eight step model is also very popular.
Assessing the rational philosophy
The rational change method offers a definitive solution by laying a prescriptive, logical process upon a confusing, complex problem. A flaw in any change management approach is the inability to determine the need for change until forced upon the organization. Confusion may occur due to insufficient time to plan. Many organizations have a step-by-step approach to change which works to a certain extent at least. But it may be that the steps are right but wrongly implemented or that the steps are not right for the circumstances. Employees’ support for the change is also crucial. A reason why the rational philosophy is so popular is because mapping out change can be done in advance.
Levels, maps and steps
Rational philosophical approaches normally do not differentiate between levels of change. It occurs everywhere. The environment is also not really considered, it is seen as unmanageable, objectively determined and it cannot be influenced. Rationalists might fall into the trap of seeing the world as black and white. But the innumerable shades of grey make choosing strategy a far more nuanced and uncertain process than the rationalist model implies. So transforming from starting point to desired vision always goes with adapting policies and change methods along the way. Two comments on systematic frameworks on change should be made:
Frameworks do help in change attempts
Slavishly following a framework will almost certainly result in failure
A limitation of the rationalist model is a lack of interest in people. Individual contribution and personal responses to change are underestimated or even overlooked. This is bad both because it is an underutilized resource for innovation and a dangerous potential for resistance.
Leadership and rational change
Next to the vision of organizational leader, their preparedness to direct the change effort is important. Sometimes leaders (even CEOs) need to stand up as heroes to promote the change. However, there are three disadvantages to organizational leaders heading the process:
There is no one to who objective appeals can be made.
Operational work will likely suffer if the CEO becomes involved in the day-to-day change process.
Most important: the appearance of the CEO as leader conveys the impression that change imposes the exclusive will of the leader through autocratic dictatorship.
The rational philosophy assumes that change leaders are responsible for success. That is why a lot of literature has emerged recommending traits, characteristics and practices of great leaders. All of this literature prescribes a leader who makes a personal commitment to change. Transformational leadership methods have been positively associated with followers’ change commitment.
All change involves winners and losers and that is why time should be invested to identify who in the organization will stand to benefit and who will suffer. Then appropriate steps can be prepared. Honesty is not always there in the task. Strategic plans often evolve in an ad hoc manner, reflecting individual or sectional perspectives rather than organizational needs.
Rational connections
If the mission and vision are there, as well as objectives, tactics, and strategies, the next step is the organizational culture. The rational philosophy seeks to change culture in a linear and strategic way. The culture is often a source for resistance, or a source for obstacles.
So it is easier to change for younger companies as there is less tradition/history. To change culture, the change agent needs to provide an elemental reason sufficient to inspire executives and staff to voluntarily remove themselves from their comfort zones. The rationalist method seems difficult to change culture because to identify where you are and where you want to go, a transparent analysis of culture should be possible. A problem with culture is that behavior, beliefs, and values do not necessarily match. Also, it is dangerous to decide on a future culture before undertaking the development of the new vision, goals and objectives. Strategic direction represents a powerful form of cultural change. Every employee must be convinced that the future depends upon the plan’s successful implementation for a change to succeed.
Consolidating the rational philosophy
The rational philosophy appeals but does not offer guarantees. Before even considering what the change will look like, urgency about the need for change needs to exist, otherwise staff will not endorse the change. Also, an organization’s leadership should accept or direct the change, leaders need to be recognized as initiators and supporters. But once in place, an open process is helpful. Third, identifying winners and losers helps to anticipate what is necessary in terms of support and resistance. Fourth, honesty is key, rational change needs a true assessment of organizational direction. Fifth, an accurate assessment of culture is necessary and one should keep in mind that the perceived culture may not be the same as the measured culture. Future direction depends on the reason for change. At a primal level, the cause probably relates to resource utilization and its impact on the bottom line (see resource philosophy). Resources constraint choices. Stability remains a core requirement in strategic management to have a head start. Change has spatial and temporal properties and these are inseparable.
Conclusion
Where the rational philosophy presents change as a clearly determined process, lots of case studies say that change has emergent properties. And it seems that planned programmes indeed do change as well. After events, reconstructions take place. Actually, the need for organizational change in the first place demonstrates a failure of organizational planning and strategy. Managers should try to take a holistic view, taking all variables into account to determine the direction. There will always be some resistance, maybe because some feel that the change will adversely affect them , because the requirements are misunderstood, because they do not have the capability to accept change, or because they think the plan is flawed. The rationalist philosophy does seem to work well for substantive change across a large organization. The rational philosophy says change works in a one-dimensional way but it occurs at different levels and the external environment also is not completely manageable. Sometimes too much analysis leads to too much complexity.
The majority of change programmes follow the rational philosophy, but only a third succeeds.
Institutional theory is the dominant approach to understanding organizations. It studies how and why organizations behave the way they do and what the consequences of that behavior are. It explains both organizational and individual change. The core premise of institutional theory is that organizations change when they need to in order to fit their environments better. They change towards the norm, so there is a link to culture. The impact of cultural influences on formal structures and decision-making forms the main difference between traditional theories and new institutional theories. Pressure from an institutional group arrives through explicit and tacit expectations which make organizations change towards conformity and legitimacy.
Old institutionalism focused on influence, competing values, and collations. New institutionalism focuses on legitimacy, the centrality of routines, scripts, and schema, and the embeddedness of organizational fields. Institutions are distinct social systems concerned with the influence of family, religion, economy, government and education. However, one definition is not sufficient as there are many faces of institutional theory. There are two fronts on which institutional theorist agree:
They do not like ‘atomistic accounts’ of social processes because they ignore the impact of social forces. That is wrong because organizations perform as members of social networks because they are formed by people communicating and collaborating.
Organizational action occurs in response to exogenous forces. The environment creates a socially constructed context which canals decision-making in organizations. It also delivers disturbances to which organizations have to adapt.
There are other points on which they do not agree:
Structure vs agency: is organizational behavior a product of organizational agency (strategic theorists) or of macro social forces (as biological theorists say)? Structuralists say organizations become increasingly similar, agency theorists say institutionalization stimulates deviance in the form of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Pro-conformance vs pro-performance: do organizations pursue conformity in order to be appropriate and acceptable or to improve performance?
Separating structure and agency is impossible as structures emerge from and influence actions.
DiMaggio and Powell defined an organizational field, which is ‘those organizations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life: key suppliers, resource and product consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organizations that produce similar services or products’. It is present when these 4 parts are there:
Increase in the level of interaction among organizations in the field
Rise of sharply defined inter-organizational structures and patterns of coalition
Increase in the volume of information handled within the field
The development of ‘mutual awareness’ among organizational field players that they share a ‘common enterprise’.
This whole process is called structuration.
There are three mechanisms that determine the spread of isomorphism:
Coercive: other powerful organization exert pressure for change through formal and informal means
Mimetic: uncertainty forces an imitation of organizations that do well
Normative: through the influence of professionalization
Legitimacy is an important explanation of the organization’s prospects of survival. It results from assumptions about legal mandates, rational effectiveness and collectively valued purposes, means and goals. It forms a barrier between the external pressures and the organization.
Power is important for institutionalism because if power is successfully exercised by influencing behaviors, opportunities, and beliefs of individuals, groups, organizations, and societies, then institutions survive. Culture also plays a role. Scott defined three pillars of institutions:
Regulative pillar: establishing rules, monitoring and sanctioning activities (formal and informal) by fear, force, and expedience tempered by rules.
Normative: evaluative, prescriptive, obligatory dimension, focus on prescribed norms and roles, setting standards for appropriate behavior.
Cultural-cognitive: focus on how organization’s shared beliefs and values construct and interpret social reality and guide behavior. Impact on culture is strong and it matters who pulls the strings.
Lawrence argued that organizational politics has three dimensions:
Institutional control: impact of institutions on behavior and beliefs of individual and organizational actors. Adherence to rules and norms, influence of power, use of discipline and domination to control.
Institutional agency: individual and group action that creates, transforms and disrupts institutions. Influence and role of organizational members.
Institutional resistance: organizational actors impose limits on institutional agency and control. It relates the three dimensions because power underpins institutions but that would not be possible without input from interested actors.
Institutional entrepreneurship is ‘activities of actors who have an interest in particular institutional arrangements and who leverage resources to create new institutions or to transform existing ones’. It depends on the individual’s embeddedness, their satisfaction with their position, their alignment with the status quo, and the richness of resources if they question existing norms and practices. Seo and Creed identified four contradiction within fields that may push change:
Efficiency contradiction: gaps between existing performance levels as a result of existing rules and opportunities in the market place
Non-adaptability contraction: no power to respond effectively or proactively to external changes due to entrenched patterns of behavior
Inter-institutional incompatibility contradiction: inconsistencies in shared values within the field
Misaligned interests contradiction: conflicts of interest and tension between those in favour and those operating on the margins
Institutional entrepreneurs are very important in reshaping organizational fields and creating new industries, practices, identities and structures. Another important force is inter-organizational collaboration. It initiates change and innovation and helps smaller organizations to overcome size or resource limitations and initiate change.
The resource philosophy says that an organization’s ability to acquire and leverage valuable resources will determine its ongoing competitive success and survival. So change does not only depend on how the resources coalesce and evolve but also on the way they are reconfigure and redeployed over time.
Resource perspective
At its most simplistic, resource theory begins with the assumption that knowledge about resources, their abundance, scarcity and ownership contributes to effective strategic decision-making and allows an organization to build a solid, sustainable base. Assessing resources has a long history but used to focus on labor, capital and land. Eisenhardt and Martin described three key types of resources:
Physical: specialized equipment, geographic location etc
Human: expertise
Organizational: leadership, culture, superior customer services
Rumelt came up with the idea of ‘resource conversion activities’, firms are characterized by bundles of linked and idiosyncratic resources. Creating values requires more than just possessing critical resources, resources should be accumulated, combined and exploited. Then, competitive advantage can be created. The employment of unique resources can be more easily copied than their original acquisition unless they receive protection from an isolating mechanism. These influence business strategy because they defend and stabilize competitive positions. The most used resource-based theories are the political economy model, the power dependence model, and the resource dependence theory. All say that organizations depend upon the external environment for their resources, so they have and inside-out open systems perspective. Later, the resource-based view (RBV) and the dynamic capabilities approach emerged (focus on the internal organization). During the 80s, Porter’s competitive forces model was the dominant paradigm for strategic decision-making. The competitive forces include:
New rivals
Substitute products
Power of suppliers
Power of buyers
It has a defensive viewpoint, organizations should be protected from the competitive forces that affect them.
The strategic conflict model was also popular during the 80s. It says that competitive advantage can be achieved by keeping competitors guessing through novel tactics. It reflects economic theory. However, the problem with economic theory is that it says that resources should be used where they give the greatest return. We can combine the resource-based view with the economic view by saying that an organization should seek firm-level efficiency advantages rather than industry-level. Organizational Economics (OE) is becoming more popular so the firm-level efficiency search is debated. OE says that a firm’s primary concern is to structure its activities to maximize performance. OE seeks to structure an organization’s activities efficiently to ensure optimum performance at minimal cost and the resource-based view aims to extend an organization’s unique bundle of resources and capabilities. They can be complementary to provide greater insight into change decision-making. Both internal and external competencies should be redeployed. We can also separate strategic management into:
Governance-based theories (transaction-cost economic, agency theory, property-rights theory). These explain the existence and boundaries of economic institutions and relationships.
Competence-based theories (evolutionary economic and dynamic capabilities, resource-based view). These explain the emergence and sustainability of economic rents.
But the best organizations combine these.
Resource-based view
This term was first introduced by Wernerfelt.
Resources: “those assets that are tied semi-permanently to the firm”.
Barney provided further details and formal definition. Resources that will y8ield a sustained competitive advantage must meet four criteria:
Economically valuable
Rare (so difficult to access or obtain)
Inimitable (or at least difficult to imitate)
Non-substitutable
If resources possess these characteristics, they are heterogeneous, sticky, and immobile (costly to move between firms). This argues for an internal view because resources that are external are the same to every firm. Intangible or invisible assets are not limited to actual ownership, but also include factors that come back outside the organization (reputation, good relationships with stakeholders). As discussed, RBV originated from economic theory.
Economics say that resources and capabilities are elastic in supply but the RBV says that enduring competitive advantage depends on exploiting rare and valuable resources that are inelastic. Elastic means that an increase in demand will trigger a price increase without affecting the availability of the resource.
Elements from biology are the impact of three processes (variation, selection, and retention) and the life-cycle perspective (existence, growth, maturity, decline).
Firm heterogeneity reflects the variety of business routines within a single organization, and a firm’s resources and capabilities lead to superior routines which can be deployed to gain competitive advantage. The conventional image of routines implies predictability and stasis, the evolutionary perspective focuses on routines as process, restructuring and reforming. Routines link the RBV to the rational philosophy through strategy, to the biological philosophy through evolutionary thinking, and to the systems philosophy. Also, it links to the institutional theory, they both say that change managers’ actions will be constrained by numerous external environmental pressures. Success and survival depend on responses to these. But they differ in how to respond:
Institutional perspective: conformity to accepted institutional norms and beliefs is key, which leads to institutional isomorphism.
Resource-based theory: opportunistic, rule-breaking approach, inviting non-compliance.
Resources and dynamic capabilities
The RBV has been criticized as being vague and empirically deficient. Multiple external contingencies exist which can only be successfully countered with a dynamic capabilities approach. That focuses on the ability to align and stretch resources and competencies not only to cope with, but also to take advantage of conditions. Dynamic capabilities extend the relevance of RBV for generating competitive advantage while operating in difficult and unpredictable environments. Distinction between resources and capabilities:
Resources: observable, not necessarily tangible, assets that can be valued and traded (brands, patents, real estate, licenses). These can be bought.
Capabilities: cannot be observed, firm-specific, non-transferrable resource embedded in organizational processes. These must be built.
The capability life-cycle:
Founding
Development
Maturity
Then there are the six Rs of capability transformation: retirement, retrenchment, renewal, replication, redeployment and recombination. That is the dynamic form of RBV. Eisenhardt and Martin defined best practice skills and processes across high performing firms. They concluded that dynamic capabilities have greater equifinality, homogeneity, and substitutability than can be inferred from conventional RBV thinking. Dynamic capabilities are necessary but not sufficient for the achievement of competitive advantage.
The environment is also a determinant: in stable environments, dynamic capabilities were routines and in complex environments dynamic capabilities were simple, experiential unstable processes. Dynamic markets act as boundary condition for the RBV because competitive advantage becomes uncertain and unpredictable and the dynamic capabilities are threatened. If the argument is valid that environmental awareness and understanding are essential for managing resources, it makes sense that contingency theory should be integrated into our understanding of the RBV. It assumes that organizational performance reflects the fit between two or more factors. The fit between different factors is difficult to predict. The search for best fit is limited by the impossibility of modeling all the contingent variables and the difficulty of predicting their connections and causal relations.
Resource dependence
Dependence on resources increases uncertainty. So it is useful when analyzing environmental threats and opportunities. Responsiveness to external demands shows the importance of contingency models. Choice will be constrained by internal and external pressures. The institutional environment gives pressure as well. Power and influence is therefore important. Quality resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable reduces the dependency on external contingencies. Resource dependency focuses on innovation and change, finding new opportunities to ensure ownership of valuable and scarce resources.
Adaptive capacity is the unique mix of skills, capabilities, and technologies residing in the organization. It must evolve as organizational environments evolve.
Critics on RBV:
Being able to measure a resource makes it less likely to be a source of sustained competitive advantage
Paradoxical and circular reasoning: competitive advantages create value but emanate from resources possessing value
Too little prescriptive advice
Conclusion
A major contribution is the firm-level focus. Also, it explains enduring differences in firm performance that cannot be explained by differences in the external industry environment. The resource philosophy has elements from the systems and biological philosophies by presenting the firm as a system of resources and capabilities which coalesce, evolve and reconfigure. Managers should understand both the effect of environments on organizations and the effect of organizations on the environment.
Possession of unique resources alone does not guarantee competitive advantage, it lies in how resources are managed and manipulated. Synergies or value creation come from synchronizing the individual components. Environmental constraints are not predestined and irreversible. The change manager can act as an advocator, an active manipulator.
Many change management approaches forget how people respond to change. Still, there are some which describe stages through which individuals go during change. For instance the five-stage model of Kubler-Ross:
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
Bridges proposed three stages: endings, the neutral zone, and new beginnings. The psychological psychology says change is complex and severe, and that resistance will usually be the first instinctual reaction to change. The main difference with the systems philosophy is that the latter has the organization as unit of analysis and the psychological philosophy takes the people as unit of analysis. The latter encourages employee involvement and empowerment to minimize discomfort and trauma associated with change. However, if involvement and communication is exaggerated to overcome resistance, it will yield resistance. So feedback and recommendations of employees should be listened to.
Responses to organizational change
Rational/systems philosophies see resistance as a barrier that impedes change. Psychological approaches see change as something that draws a complex responses, and acceptance and rejection do not occur separately but rather are on the same continuum. The psychological psychology suggests empowerment, participation, education, facilitation, and negotiation to overcome negative intuitive responses to change.
Empowerment
Rationalists see empowerment as a means to an end: improved financial performance. They try to get that through team-based forms and decentralization. The psychologists see empowerment as more than offering decisions-making involvement to employees. So it should foster community, help organizational members feel better about their work, and contribute to society. It is not really about giving power away, it assumes that employees already have it. strategies to ensure empowerment are open communication, cooperative goal-setting, role modeling, organiszational learning. Psychological-style empowerment enhances creativity. But is still is difficult to implmenet. Employees may not even want to be empowered if they have more work, risk, and rsponsiblity. Som employees may also see it as an attempt to hide control.
Practices for adjustment to change
Each change programme related with the psychological philosophy has its own things but common elements are sharing knowledge and decision-making, adaptation and flexibility, and acknowledging the contributions of all team members. Learning and development should also occur it there is no active change (job enrichment and rotation).
Coaching (training, guidance, and feedback about specific tasks and performance) and mentoring (guidance through emotional support and tutoring) is also common. But the latter can be difficult because a coach can provide poor advice, it can be seen as a friend (boundaries unclear). Psychologists would say that coaches and mentors should help change managers anticipate employee responses.
Organizational spirituality
There are various definitions. But individuals are seen as the most important parts of organizations and change transitions should support individual spiritual development. Spirituality is about the search for meaning about life, work, and organization. Spirituality should span a bridge of values and principles between organizations and employees. It results in enhancement of both inner virtues and their outward expression. Critics say that it is just a fad. The ideas sound nice but the potential is limited. It is very intangible.
Organizational development (OD)
OD explores the human side of change responses. It emerged as a legacy of humanistic psychology. Focus is on individual and subjective experience. Employees are a resource for learning, development, and productivity. But to reach their potential, the working environment must encourage self-determination, creativity and the opportunity for flexible responses to change. Personal growth is stimulated. Integration should be achieved between employee development and organizational performance. That is difficult, because for instance hierarchies and centralization undermine personal expression. Open, trusting and collaborative structures should be there. OD recommends simultaneous and widespread organizational change (consistent with systems philosophy and psychological philosophy). OD uniquely uses human intervention as means for introducing change. OD agents do not dictate change, they are facilitators (‘action research’). Participation should lead to contribution which leads to learning. OD agents provide data collection and analysis methods and use interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and open discussion. Action research is however impractical because consultants cannot be relied on constantly. OD does not provide generic prescriptions so it has more in common with the contingency approach or critical philosophy and less with the systems philosophy.
Organizational learning (OL)
Marriage between developmental side of OD and cognitive side of culture philosophy. Knowledge is key. Change is challenging established ways of behaving and transpires sensemaking. OL and OD both emphasize open communication and collaboration. Common inquiry is required so that organizational members recognize, question and replace existing practices and behaviors. Responses to change should be understood. The OD component in OL is that employees interpret experiences and share them. Managers learn from that. The dialogue process in OL shapes meanings and experiences into a shared ‘schema’ or frame of reference. OL reveals how common knowledge guides behavior through rules. A schema evolves as individual experiences converge into share behavior (the cognitive content that makes organizational culture). Flexible organization can enhance learning but it is also said that shared learning experiences of permanently fixed employees are important because mobile workforces do not foster collective learning relationships. A bottom-up, collaborative approach is appropriate.
Decision-making, reasoning and change
In studies on decision-making, individuals tend not to choose options that maximize their happiness. Freedom and too much choice introduces an emotional dimension which can delay and disrupt decision-making. Economics-based change approaches say that people make decisions to their best interest. Short term changes will probably not appeal to people but some are able to see the longer term benefits. People fail to choose optimally because:
They do not accurately predict the consequences
They ignore their own predictions
Research says that people use intuitive decision-making strategies based on emotional responses and experiences. Impact bias is the tendency to overestimate the effect of an emotional event while overlooking the contextual circumstances. We project current states into future imagined states (so don’t shop when you’re hungry). Distinction biases occur in predictions made during different modes of evaluation as well as emotional states. People evaluate options differently before and after the decision. Before, a comparison between alternatives occurs. After, employees romanticize the past prior to change and do not considerate the impact of a failure to change at all. If former change programmes worked, employees will more readily accept new ones. Choice heuristics: the more choices, the worse. Even if predictions are accurate, there can be failures to act in accordance with them. People may select options that offer greatest immediate appeal or that fit previous experience rather than the ones that lead to the greatest happiness. Medium-maximization: individual resolve to focus on something other than the target outcome, for instance:
Change agents work with greater dedication and intensity in the wrong areas
Changing structure is readily implemented but does not resolve deeper issues like culture
Conclusions
Responses to change are crucial to organizational change. The psychological philosophy focuses on managing the traumatic and subtle experiences. Change arrives from the inside-out. New options and directions are explored collaboratively. Change agents are provocative but objective facilitators. Empowerment, coaching and mentoring may be introduced and spiritual development can add an extra dimension. Personal development is key. Organizational learning is the key outcome from development. Critics include the uncertainty of action and timing, implementation, heavy investments in time and money and rationalist managers say that employees cannot envision organizational strategy.
The theories in this philosophy have in common the assumption that change cannot be segregated or compartmentalized. If something change, there are always corresponding implications for others. So the entire organization should be understood. So reduction is no option.
The systems philosophy emerged in the middle of the 20th century. Scholars from social and physical sciences thought of implications of inter-disciplinary connections. They saw general laws describing behavior. To find these laws, the whole system must be observed.
System: a set of two or more elements where the behavior of any individual element affects the entire system as well as other elements. Systems always gravitate towards balance and stability.
General systems theory
Systems theories connect to other philosophies. Systems theory gathered momentum when the early management theorists combined their thinking with biological models. Next, Lewin took elements of behavioral psychology which paved the way for, among others, Schein. Organizations are considered as open systems. The elements are interrelated and can be influenced from the outside. Most systems theories go to some trouble to specify both the differentiation and integration of organizational parts. Usually, change initiatives typically strive to rectify poor integration. But systems theorist say that fixing problems in a certain area constitutes only part of the problem. General systems theory was slow to gain acceptance because it was interpreted as a theory of everything. Boulding made a hierarchy of systems based on the level of complexity. He said systems can be classified means that hose within the same class can be expected to possess common properties. Systems theory expects that all organizations can be managed the same way because they all possess common features. Critics on that:
Impossible for all organizations to be usefully classified together into one generic category.
Counterargument: without common properties to fall back on, general management solutions to problems cannot be devised (which is actually what many theories suggest)
An issue is the connection of organizational systems to biological descriptions of natural systems. Open biological systems tend towards equilibrium but social systems do not operate as natural systems. However, the systems philosophy does assume that organizations move towards stability and equilibrium. Also, systems theory struggles to separate organizations and their environments which is sometimes necessary. Next, the assumptions that organizations are open systems might not be right. It is more accurate to say that they are partially open and partially closed.
Complexity as systems theory
The key in complexity and chaos thinking is the interaction of elements in a systems, so it offers an explanation of how a system can generate output greater than the sum of its parts. That would not be possible in a closed system, so an organization must be an open system.
The complexity perspective says that organizations (as systems) can exhibit normal and predictable behaviors but they can also behave strangely. The analogy of a butterfly causing a weather catastrophe is appropriate here.
Systems can be in two states:
Stable: it remains at equilibrium
Unstable: organizational change cascades into a range of unpredictable and divergent behaviors
Complexity interprets systems as acausal and non-linear. There are three characteristics:
Non-additive behavior emerges from interactive networks: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts
The emergent behavior exhibited in a complex system unpredictably relates to underpinning causes
Complex behavior occurs in the nebulous region between predictability and unpredictability (edge of chaos)
So creating the conditions under which emergence might appear leads to surfing the edge of chaos. Identifying that edge would be a great advantage to the change manager.
The benefit of complexity theory is that it describes how complex systems can generate simple outcomes while looking at the whole system. However, many managers do not like the fact that unpredictable, emergent change should be pursued.
Planning complexity
The classical view depends upon causal, reductionist interpretations of the world. But complexity theory emphasizes acausal, holistic interpretations. So sufficient chaos exists to ensure loss of regularity and predictability but enough order for consistent patterns to endure. Pursuing both stability and innovation does not work well in turbulent environments. Complexity theory is almost the reverse of the punctuated equilibrium model: disequilibrium is normal, punctuated by odd periods of relative stability. Stability signals obsolescence and death. Brown and Eisenhardt revealed that successful firms balance structure and chaos and rely on a range of low-cost experimental initiatives.
The new perspective of complexity theory is that it discourages managers from making predictions about the future. Innovation should emerge from bottom-up. So it does not say anything about incremental/radical change, the change will reveal itself spontaneously.
Changing with adaptive complex systems
A complexity theory interpretation suggests that sometimes chaos springs from underlying patterns encouraging the emergence of unpredictable organizational behaviors.
If the circumstances are right, these emergent behaviors can produce powerful but unpredictable innovation. So what are the implications for organizational leaders seeking to initiate change?
Strategic, linear change planning is impossible
The rate of change is faster than ever before
According to organizational evidence, change is the exception rather than the rule and change often fails
Complexity theory might best be viewed as a metaphor. Because change is very difficult, and bringing an organization to the edge of chaos requires a change in itself
The gap that complexity attempts to fill is to deal with change and environmental turbulence. Uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity should not stimulate combative rational interventions, they should be accepted and even encouraged.
The two most important lessons for leaders and change managers:
Management adjustments to activity and change programmes become critical because responsiveness must replace preparation
Change managers should encourage the phase transition, where the edge of chaos can provide a platform for the emergence of innovative ways of looking at organizational problems.
Criticisms:
Lessons may not be as novel as presented
Prescriptions for new action are vague
Recommendations against analysis and futures thinking is questionable
The lessons and legacies of adaptive complex systems
It has been recorded for a long time that organizations may respond differently to change than expected. Also, it is generally accepted that innovations may arise bottom-up. What is different from a complexity perspective is the assumption that emergent behavior occurs from acausal processes and cannot be anticipated due to that. There is not much evidence for that.
Organizations as complex adaptive systems can best be used as a metaphor to observe activity in organization as it does not really provide guidelines on how to deal with change. It is also difficult to place analytical and rational techniques like strategic planning in complexity.
We can assume for sure that the world operates as non-linear and dynamically. So encouragement of emergence might be an advantage. But achieving that without any rationality seems impossible.
A reason for the growing movement of complexity might be the fact that the environment is quite uncertain and turbulent at the moment. Still, planning seeks to diminish the uncertainty that the future presents. And abandoning strategy at all and assume that it will materialize in an emergent way is nonsense anyway. Also it is weird that the expectation that specific planned interventions will fail exists, as there is enough evidence to counteract that.
So in conclusion, complexity helps in understanding that some events are unpredictable and may occur in an acausal, random matter. However, it is best used as a metaphor rather than a rule.
Conclusion
Complexity thinkers work as biologists, hoping to find new ways of understanding the intricacies of organizational systems. Systems thinking through complexity has best been used to help explain how some organizations can manage chaos and order to stimulate innovation. Complexity thinking implies that the causes of events cannot be know, but that may be due to absence of reliable information rather than impossibility of the task. Conceptualizing the unit of analysis may be an important step in noting relationship between variables.
Implementation seems difficult, change leaders should focus on managing the boundaries that govern equilibrium with a view to encouraging an environment where innovative change will emerge unprompted. The mediation between chaos and stability could require a manger to incite chaos, which few probably want. So we should best see complexity theory as a reminder that non-linear and dynamic systems can exhibit chaotic properties from the interaction of simple laws, and that patterns may emerge from the ostensible randomness of complex interactions. We could say that change within the complexity paradigm is non-linear and ambiguous but change to the complexity paradigm is linear and rational.
Anthropologists began with seeing organizations as cultural systems. It emerged in response to an absence of explanations for how certain values and beliefs gain prominence. Organizations generate cultures that shape how their members behave. The key idea is that organizational change transpire when the common beliefs and values held by organizational members change. So change must be preceded by a period of careful cultural diagnosis where common beliefs and values rise to the surface.
Tylor described culture as the entire set of knowledge, beliefs and customs held by members of a society in 1871. Change theorists started to realized that the most useful interventions change deep values and beliefs. Cultural theorists say that organizations operate as social systems that work according to the collective norms and priorities of its members. It is very difficult to bring values to the surface and even more difficult to change them.
Conceptualizing cultural change
Overt behavior can dominate and camouflage the underlying values and motivations that really drive action. Commonality may be found but inconsistency and controversy are also there. Schein sees culture as an unconscious phenomenon made up of deep assumptions and beliefs. On the surface there are only artefacts and symbolic representations. Schein says managers should avoid the superficial and explore unconsciously held concepts. Others say that tangible items are important. There are many definitions on culture but there are some common elements:
Culture resists flexibility
Culture is determined by the members of an organization
Culture is shared by members of an organization
The core assumptions of culture remain hidden from most organizational members although its influence on behavior can be profound
Culture is mostly seen as a collection of fundamental values, beliefs, and attitudes. Another common element is that culture must be appropriate to the environment of context. Strength refers to the intensity or pervasiveness of the culture. Strong cultures lead to appealing outcomes such as commitment, unity, and coordination which lead to better performance. But if the culture is strong but not matched to the environment, it is bad. Strong works well when it reinforces useful common values and beliefs but can be an obstacle when it undermines performance.
Managing change through cultural dimensions
To identify the culture, some cultural theorists prescribe a strongly research based statistical or quantitative approach with questionnaires and scaled response. Another approach is using interviews, close but discrete observation of behavior, and systematic analysis of statements and documents. But any kind of defining culture is a kind of contradiction because it manifests in every aspect of the existence.
Another confusing issue is the fact that many different terms are use: norms, values, attitudes beliefs, assumptions, etc. These two are used most often:
Values: a broad tendency to prefer certain states over others
Attitudes: enduring structure of beliefs around an object or situation predisposing an individual to respond in some preferential manner
Beliefs may be more visible and values and assumptions may be inferred through behavioural patterns. Every organization has its own patterns of behavior. Many have devised sets of dimensions against which any organization can be mapped. To examine culture, a common measurement scale is needed. It seems that the different dimensions suggested have commonalities. Some terms reoccur often:
Stability/changeability
Cooperation/conflict
Short-term goals/long-term goals
Control/freedom
There are many subvalues and attitudes. Once cultural dimensions are assessed, it should be defined what exactly they represent. Typologies can be useful in narrowing the options faced by change managers, but also tend to smooth out the novel idiosyncrasies that make organizations unique. There are always obstacles in managing cultures. To assess it accurately, the first step should be to comprehend the depth and breadth in which a culture can be expresses. A cultural map summarizes the predominant features of the culture and provides a means through which raw data can be interpreted into measurable criteria. Once mapped, a change strategy can be determined to target cultural areas, usually in line with the rational philosophy, but with a special interest in some elements of the psychological philosophy.
The psychological philosophy
Jung provided a construct that can be applied to the analysis of cultural meaning. He designed a three-level model.
The first level is the conscious mind: the totality of a person’s thoughts and experiences. So these can be compared with the readily apparent and observable qualities of an organization. One of the most important observable qualities involves the place of organizational heroes who represent culturally rich and highly visible indicators of the dominant culture. They give insight into the culture and indicate admired and respected qualities. Heroes can be reactionary and progressive. Heroes that reinforce the dominant culture will not change the values and attitudes and heroes that transcend and transform the culture will be a catalyst for change in the behaviors and values. Tradition is another easily observable element of the culture. Rites and rituals display shared understandings, conveyed through myths, sagas, legends or other stories associated with the occasion.
The second and middle level is the personal unconscious. It controls individuals through powerful drives that exist below conscious awareness. Cultural theorists advise that beliefs should be inferred from what people do, rather than what they say they believe.
The third level is the collective unconscious. It constitutes an innate, primal, virtually inaccessible level of the mind hardwired into humans. It is the archetypal level of culture and reveals the meanings held within the history, tradition, legends, myths and stories. Paradoxically there is overlap with the rational level. But there the traits are the tip of the iceberg.
Any analysis of culture should include all levels. Schein used this model to conceptualize cluture using three levels that interact as a hierarchy: artefacts, espoused values (strategies, goals, philosophies that are put forward to justify actions) and basic underlying assumptions (unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, thoughts and feelings).
Cultural change through symbols and identity
Morgan says that organizations operate like mini-societies with a culture and sub-cultures. The dominant character of the culture becomes evident as patterns of behavior rise to the surface, and the language, themes, images and rituals become transparent, illuminating critical actions and events affecting an individual’s construction of reality. It is also proposed that organizational behavior comes about because certain actions are encouraged, reinforced and repeated until habitualized as patterns in members’ minds. So stories may be central to the social distribution of knowledge. Every individual has his own perception of organizational reality which provides meaning for their behavior. The cognitive elements of culture reflect the internal interpretive processes that individuals experience when exposed to informal belifs, values and norms, as well as formal legal, political and economic structures.
Changing powerful cultural units
Rituals have long been seen as key contributors to social organization, cohesion and solidarity. Ritualized behavior may be understood as input and output of culture through specific forms of social interaction and behavioural custom. A rite is a singular and specific instance of a ritual, although the terms get mixed. Rituals ‘transform’ in that they bring about changed social conditions. Ceremonies ‘confirm’ in that they bolster existing social circumstances. Transforming and confirming are key to success. It is difficult to separate rituals from other organizational activities. Some criteria:
Failure to connect with normal organizational goals where causes and effects logically associate
Either compulsory or compulsive
Actions involved in rituals remain inflexible due to the incorporation of repetition and redundancy
Relate (symbolically/overtly) to a restricted set of themes
The most easily perceived and visibly apparent artefacts include the environment, architecture, audible behavior and technology. More inaccessible features include deep psychological meanings and symbols. Organizational culture is not simply the shared understandings but also the communication of these understandings. Rituals not only communicate and reinforce the shared understanding of an organization’s culture, they alos provide an entry point for its change. But it is dangerous to assume that rituals always provide a useful function or act to support the prevailing culture. Also, introducing new rituals can prove dangerous. Disaffection might be the result. So it is safer to support existing functional rituals because they organize and reduce uncertainty or anxiety. But little is known about this so change theorists recommend approaching rituals with caution, instead preferring to work on interpreting culture through less complex and inflammatory mechanisms such as stories.
Stories: oral or written performance portraying two or more people interpreting past or anticipated experiences. Contrasting or competing stories highlight points of contention and diverging cultural priorities or sub-cultures. From an organizational change perspective, stories affect behavior by defining characters, sequencing plots, scripting events and enacting responses to change. Change agents can access stories that communicate deep cultural meanings but cannot access the values and assumptions that support them. Successful change therefore focuses on working with existing stories as diagnostic tools and reinforcing those containing advantageous cultural messages. For individuals, sensemaking often occurs retrospectively through stories and their interpretation.
In the narrative conception, stories precede narratives: they exist in a void between coherence and incoherence where a clear meaning within the social setting remains absent of underdeveloped. Stories are accounts of incidents and events upon which narration may be layered. Narratives construct organizations through individual constructions of the self. Understanding an organization begins with its genesis story. Stories such as those about the beginning of an organization allow common thoughts and messages to e repeated in novel ways. So stories share norms and values, cultivate trust, communicate tacit information and stimulate an emotional connection. According to one author, legitimate, formidable and influential stories:
Involve characters in a predicament
Occur in a sequence which subsequently reflects the plot and the salient features of the characters
Employ symbolism
Utilize poetic embellishment and embroidery
Have a discernable beginning, middle and end
Communicate enduring truths beyond mere facts
Conclusion
Researchers have different opinions held by researchers regarding the nature, existence and importance of organizational culture. A general consensus is that culture has a significant effect on performance and behavior. The cultural philosophy has made a significant contribution to organizational change by encouraging change leaders to think carefully about the intervention mechanisms they employ. As in the systems philosophy, cultural theorists say that change in one part of an organization inescapably connects to other parts.
During the 1970s, the Western capitalist world underwent a transformation in cultural mood and economic expectations. There are many authors who all have a different idea on how the Western society shifted, but they all agree that it shifted. Conventional boundaries of thinking were thrown away, traditional approaches were discarded. Ambiguity and contradiction were the new norm. cultural relativism became bigger than cultural universality. Businesses started to soften their management philosophies. The postmodern organization emerged. The emphasis was now on more fluid and customized ways of delivering products to customers as a reaction on bureaucracy and homogenized mass production. Rational systems and cultural philosophies of organizational change were criticized. Postmodernists say that reality is socially constructed by multiple players.
Change management in a changing world
To understand postmodernism, we first have to assess modernism. After the feudal and religious conventions, a rapid process of industrial development, international trade, urbanization, and bureaucratic governance took place. The modern organization then was a mechanical organization focused on specialization and producing homogenized commodities. Taylorists wanted to remove uncertainty and chaos and irrationality was not considered. Standardization and uniformity drove objectives and change should deliver certainty and stability. Then there were some crises and experimentation with novel structures and systems took place. An important observation as that satisfied employees were productive and creative. Flexible specialization and a focus on innovation became popular, just as customizing products and market segmentation. Companies like Nike and Coca-Cola were changing their ideology from selling to branding. This growth of consumerism had three implications that were crucial for organizational change:
Substitution of essential, standardized products for a pluralistic array of unnecessary products and services meant that organizations purveyed personal identity as much as daily needs.
The distance between perceptions of high and low culture reduced. Art was just as good as sports. Employees became also more demanding, it should be satisfying rather than just putting bread on the table.
The world according to postmodernists was packed with sensory stimulation and a fluid combination of reality, simulation and fantasy.
The postmodern change agent
The postmodern approach is concerned with indeterminacy, ambiguity and contradiction of organizational life. Postmodern thinkers say that organizational change will never work if it conforms to the uptight demands of rationalist leaders seeking to impose corporate objectives and performance measures.
The concept of pastiche (imitation) is important. It is connecting clashing ideas or symbols until they take a novel life of their own as something new and original. For change managers that means experimenting with a unique combination of products, structures and values in a way that traditional conservative change methods would not accommodate. The problem is that no rules guide change because the change is the journey and the destination.
Rather than finding better metaphors and models for understanding organizations, the postmodern approach looks for new ways of dealing with change itself. So change should be embraced rather than countered. We can see the world as a global village because of the internet and other globalizing tendencies. Postmodernists see this as evidence that organizational change should mirror the fluidity of the world in which organizations operate. It is inevitable to have some modernists thoughts when you want to implement some postmodernist ideas (experimentation, innovation).
Politics, power and change
Political dimensions are often seen as change forces. Political theorists say change management is pursuing power through political means. Dialectical model: political explanations of change describe clashing ideologies or belief systems. Conflict is the most important change force. When one group gains power they challenge the status quo to shift the organization towards their own interests.
Foucalt came up with discursive analysis: change arrives through discourse within organizations. It concerns the ways language helps to reveal social phenomena. It fits as a subset of he critical philosophy because it also places importance on the analysis of organizations and their members as social units that compete for power and ideological priority. The implementation is less clear, as with the postmodern view. Next to language, other forms such as art, music, and architecture may be seen as discourse.
The Foucauldian view
Foucalt explored the relationship between power, knowledge and discourse. He said that power and knowledge intertwine but are mediated by discourse. Every individual has his own knowledge about what reality encompasses according to him. The organizational knowledge consists of common ideas about mission, vision, objectives, conduct, etc. Foucault says that every organizations uniquely produces knowledge through discourse.
Change should be introduced by exercising of power through the control of discourse. Forms of power can be unrecognizable because their mechanisms have become embedded in views and roles. But power can also be wielded directly when a manager shapes an employee’s role through domination. Organizational leaders and change agents do not own or possess power, but they apply it. the latter idea is very important! A high position does not automatically mean power! Marx saw power as repressive, Foucault sees it as permissive and productive, encouraging people to behave in novel ways.
Discourse and change
Most discourse change theorists agree with the assumption that reality is socially constructed. So individual sensemaking determines individual’s reality. There are three dimensions to sensemaking:
History: the way the rules for interpreting meaning were established in the past and have been maintained through tradition
Power: traditions persevere through reinforcement, reproduction and practice, which require the application of power through choices about communication content and delivery
Imagination: the capacity to envisage a difference. It provides direction but is not equal to vision. It is more how any organizational member can see a positive result coming from a change program
Planned change occurs when the capacity to conceive a difference (imagination) meets the capacity to make a difference (power). Unplanned change occurs when context meets imagination. The context is the external environment as well as the internal setting (employees, processes, structures). Power is often seen as negative but this theory says it can free imagination to tackle problems in novel ways. Resistance is also mentioned. Where resistance exists, power exists. Also, resistance is not found within individuals, but within their constructed realities. Resistance is seen as having a common source in conventional models but it is unique to each individual.
Conclusion
When the Western society transformed from industrial to post-industrial, management transformed from modern to post-modern. Postmodernism emphasizes diffusion, empowerment, flexibility, trust and market responsiveness. Implementation proved difficult. Within postmodernism, there are many interpretations. Discursive models of organizational change discard the conventional pursuit of universal patterns too and focus on the individual social construction of reality. Background discourses in organization need to be made transparent so that power relations can be examined.
The rational philosophy remains the enduring approach, it is popular due to the strategic alignment that is encouraged between competencies and environmental opportunities. Change is limited by a leader’s capacity to envision a new future. Intention and outcome connect in a causal and linear manner. However, reality can quickly diverge from even the best plans.
The biological philosophy and the metaphors it has generated enjoy the longest history of use. Survival and reproduction are appealing because they are logical, natural processes. Industries can be treated the same way as species. Non-incrementalists favor the punctuated equilibrium model where radical change is interjected between periods of stability. The life-cycle theory offers a linear interpretation of the way individual organizations evolve.
The institutional philosophy concerns industries rather than organizations. Change comes through the shaping forces of the institutional environment. Isomorphism may occur. Strategy is constrained to the alternatives imposed by institutional conditions. Power accompanies institutional norms.
The resource philosophy (resource dependence and resource-based theory) says that acquisition and deployment of resources is critical to survival and prosperity. How organizations cluster their resources determines competitive success. Resources can be combined in unique and powerful ways in order to bring about change. The environment plays a critical role in affecting the availability of critical resources (like the institutionalist position). Change managers can develop strategies for reducing environmental uncertainty. The rational and resource philosophies diverge because the former insists that strategic planning will always bring about successful change. But some firms will be incapable of shifting their unique, difficult-to-imitate, non-substitutable resources towards a desire goal, especially if the necessary resources for change are unavailable from the environment. The institutional approach seeks conformity, the resource philosophy deviance.
The contingency seeks fit between different organizational components, relevant to the situation at hand. Efficiency demands that accompany competitive environments force managers to change composition. Contingency and resources theorists accept that human responses to change defy predictability.
Organizational psychology and social psychology claim that individual responses to change determine its success. So the human side of the change equation. So the individual is the unit of analysis.
OD and change transitions provide theories exploring personal change experiences. OD employs knowledge from the applied behavioural sciences in order to understand individuals’ experiences of change through action research and intervention. Resistance can be managed with care and sensitivity. The psychological perspective can help understand general disaffection and even ameliorate the destructive impact of resistance.
Systems thinking and general systems theory treats organizations as complex machines where change means tinkering with the convoluted interaction of dynamic parts.
Simple causality does not work because organizations behave as open systems, influenced by many internal and external factors. Small changes to one part will have multiple and cascading effects.
There is an overlap between systems theory and biological models; they both borrow from natural systems to help explain the intricacies of complex and dynamic organizations. Complexity systems theory says that change is messy and non-linear and should be seen from a holistic viewpoint.
Chaos theory explains how the combination of simple systems can lead to chaos and unpredictability. It is the opposite of the punctuated equilibrium model. There are limited practical dimensions of complexity and chaos theories but systems approaches have succeeded because they offer prescriptions for change.
The cultural philosophy is inspired by anthropology. Change is a process of interpreting and influencing the behavioral and social patterns of individuals within an organization and their responses to the environment. Culture is the collection of values and attitudes common to organizational members. Diagnosing culture is difficult.
Critical philosophy advocates approach change from the viewpoint of power and conflict. If the fight for control is on, change can come about. Change and politics are inseparable.
Postmodernists reject certainty. They say the world is fragmented, messy and contradictory. So knowledge is relative and reality is socially constructed.
Discourse refers to conversation or dialogue and discursive analysis assumes that language creates the social worlds in which organizations attempt change. It also sees reality as a social construction.
Most change practitioners rely on the rational philosophical tradition: organizational change is about changing plans. Plans are helpful but fail to capture the evolutionary nature of organizations. So change can also be about changing organisms. But organizations succumb to institutional forces forcing idiosyncrasy. So organizational change is therefore also about changing conformity. Also, it is about changing opportunities. The role of humans should also be included, so it is also about changing minds. The systems philosophy even says that success depends on changing everything. Changing values introduces new behaviors and superior performance. Any realistic approach accepts that power must be wielded, if only to empower employees. Some even say that organizational change is changing reality itself.
Connecting philosophies of organizational change
Traditional approaches to organizational change follow a linear, rational model where control and strategy emanate from a strong leader. Change involves a series of predictable, reducible steps that can be planned and managed. That is limited and ignores the messy, complex and iterative nature of change. Also, the rational perspective says that decision-making comes down to an either-or choice between change and continuity like innovation and efficiency, collaboration and competition, freedom and accountability, or new and old. But often, different perspectives can be combined to gain advantage.
Managers should become comfortable with the ever-present dilemma of tension between continuity and change. Human interaction should also be managed. Managing change demands balancing and conciliating what often appear as conflicting dilemmas, so merging:
Rational strategic planning with adaptive strategic thinking.
Rational strategic planning sets the direction, considers resources and budgeting, and provides a clearly defined focus and vision of future possibilities. Adaptive strategic thinking treats strategy as a trial-and-error learning process (also be adaptable in an unknown and turbulent environment).
Cultural renewal as in surfacing and challenging the core values, beliefs, and assumptions with structural change in the form of improving operational efficiencies through tangible changes to existing work processes, systems and reporting structures. An innovative, creative culture depends on equally dynamic, adaptive and thoughtfully designed systems and structures to support it.
Empowerment with strong leadership. The latter should provide a clear vision and focus. The leader must balance between power and control and integrate hard rational, analytical, planning organizing and controlling skills with soft human relational skills.
Continual, incremental adaptation with radical transformation, when sudden, unexpected environmental shifts occur that require decisive, unilateral action.
Social goals with economic goals.
The stability-change dilemma
The focus on re-establishing order and stability challenges the idea of change as a naturally occurring, ongoing phenomenon affirming continuity. Traditional frameworks for change ignore the dynamic, complex and contradictory nature of organizations as well as the diverse people working in them. Also, the intersection of stability and change (edge of chaos) reveals where opportunities of organizational development lie. Duality theory proposes that the tension or dynamic synthesis between contradictory forces within organizations provides a catalyst for self-renewal. Plurality is essential for performance. Most change philosophies will try and resolve paradoxical tension between conflicting truths by pursuing one extreme. But by prioritizing the stable dimensions over the less certain dimensions we dilute the enlightening potential of paradox. If we see organizations as dynamic rather that static, we can accommodate their complex and contradictory nature. The first step is recognizing merit in each of the opposing elements.
Change dualities
Traditional approaches see change as an exception. It is easy to say that organizations behave as rational entities following a change leader’s intentions. Stability bolsters effectiveness, but performance can be paradoxical because it demands the presence of dual attributes that appear to be contradictory. The duality philosophy encourages a tension between opposing dimensions. It says that dualistic elements may be independent and conceptually distinct, rather than opposed.
Understanding dualities: a dualities aware perspective
To deal with the paradox of continuity and change, a state of tension should be allowed to emerge. The challenge for senior management then involves integrating the functionality of the different forms into a coherent whole. A constructive tension between extremes of adaptive and manipulative acts should be sought. A paradox represents a range of contradictory yet interrelated elements such as perspectives, feelings, messages, identities, interests or practices. Managers often try to resolve rather than embrace contradictory elements. It might be natural but is unhelpful.
Duality characteristics
Characteristics are prominent aspects or definable, differentiating and universal features, traits or properties. There are five duality characteristics, which can be perceived as escalating. Simultaneity is the most basic property, then the others come:
Simultaneity
Dualities represent the simultaneous presence of what conventionally have been considered contradictory if not mutually exclusive. Dynamic synthesis between contradictory opposites provides the catalyst for long-term organizational effectiveness and self-renewal.
Relational
The bi-modal nature of dualities, integral to simultaneity, also manifests in its relational, interdependent nature. So there is not only simultaneous, but also mutual feedback. The relational characteristic illustrates that organizations are not independent of the other practices they house. Dualities often also relate to other dualities.
Minimal threshold
Dualities need a minimal threshold. Poles must be kept to a minimum to ensure that a centrifugal (enabling) rather than centripetal (constraining) force emerges. But a certain level at each pole creates the tension necessary to stimulate a duality. A minimal consensus ensures that the status quo is no implacable and unchallenged. Success no longer depends on having the best strategic plan or organizational structure in place, but on having the capability to reinvent them continuously. Dynamic capabilities come with streams of innovation that simultaneously exploit and explore. The characteristic minimal threshold depends upon a corresponding dynamic between the simultaneity and relational duality characteristics to establish a healthy tension between the two opposing poles.
Dynamism
In discussing the simultaneous, relational nature of dualities, its dynamic and flexible quality can be seen. The duality characteristic of dynamics underlines the bi-modal interactive nature of dualities relationships. Energy and feedback are pivotal to competing but simultaneous criteria. A dynamic interaction between duality poles is invoked. The tension between the two opposing poles needs to be managed on a continuous basis to ensure an ongoing interaction between constraining and enabling forces.
Improvisation
The dynamic and symbiotic properties of dualities suggest the centrality of improvisation. Improvisation is a fusion of intended and emergent action, so a mix of control with innovation, exploitation with exploration and routine with non-routine.
Improvisation illustrates the value of a bi-directional relationship between two opposing poles by encouraging activities that alter, revise, crate and discover rather than simply shift, switch or add. A dynamic interplay emerges between duality poles. Improvisation is a mediating action that reinforces how two organizing dualities can work dynamically to shape decision-making. So improvisation is an ongoing, iterative action which works in sync with the characteristics simultaneity, relational, minimal threshold and dynamism to manage continuity and change.
Continuity and change: competing and complementary forces
The figure on page 194 provides a framework of the five duality characteristics and typical continuity-change dualities that mangers must deal with. Simultaneity captures the heterogeneous qualitative nature of dualities and is the starting point for understanding and managing organizational dualities. The relational duality points to the interactive, symbiotic attributes of the dualistic tensions that arise from continuity and change. Then, relational interdependence within these dual forms of organizing highlights the advantage that come from managing contradictions as complementarities. A dynamic balance of minimal levels along the continuity-change range should be sought. Minimum thresholds should ensure the right tension. Improvisation is the arbiter between the intended and the emergent by encouraging simultaneity, interdependence, minimal threshold and dynamism.
Boundary principles can be placed around management activity to encourage dualities. Simple boundary heuristics can work effectively as guidelines around which minimal thresholds can be safely established. So a high degree of flexibility can be there while still maintaining high levels of control. Boundary heuristics operate to pull a system back towards dynamic equilibrium. So they offer a mechanism for enabling dualities to work in organizations.
Managers cannot control organizations like they can control machines. So it might be more effective for leaders to encourage dualities and help establish boundary heuristics, but to remain less involved in operational activities. Dualities theory illustrates how tensions are managed not through definitive resolution towards one pole or the other, but through the application of boundary heuristics that establish ha broad conforming imperative while opening up enabling mechanisms.
Conclusion
Traditional, positivist approaches that view management and change as troublesome diversion and simple to manage in steps have little conception of the emergent elements of change. Even if you ignore them, the tension between conflicting goals will not disappear. Rather than dismissing or trying to resolve opposing forces, managers should learn how to tap into the creative potential of the tensions.
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