Managing organizational change a multiple perspectives approach pdf download

Skip to content Home Search results for: managing organizational change a multiple perspectives approach. Managing Organizational Change: A Multiple Perspectives Approach offers managers a multiple perspectives approach to managing change that recognizes the variety of ways to facilitate change and reinforces the need for a tailored and creative approach to fit different contexts. The third edition offers timely updates to previous content, while introducing new and emerging trends, developments, themes, debates, and practices.

Providing the Skills to Successfully Manage Change. Managing Organizational Change: A Multiple Perspectives Approach, 3e, by Palmer, Dunford, and Buchanan, offers managers a multiple perspectives approach to managing change, which recognizes the variety of ways to facilitate change and reinforces the need for a tailored and creative approach to fit different contexts.

These multiple perspectives provide a theme for the text as well as a framework for the way each chapter outlines different options open to managers in helping them to identify, in a reflective way, the actions and choices open to them. The authors favor using multiple perspectives to ensure that change managers are not trapped by a "one-best way" of approaching change which limits their options for action.

Changing organizations is as messy as it is exhilarating, as frustrating as it is satisfying, as muddling-through and creative a process as it is a rational one. This book recognizes these tensions for those involved in managing organizational change. Rather than pretend that they do not exist it confronts them head on, identifying why they are there, how they can be managed and the limits they create for what the manager of organizational change can achieve.

This book "provides managers with an awareness of the issues involved in managing change, moving them beyond "one-best way" approaches and providing them with access to multiple perspectives that they can draw upon in order to enhance their success in producing organizational change.

Virtually all of the testable terms, concepts, persons, places, and events from the textbook are included. Cram Just the FACTS studyguides give all of the outlines, highlights, notes, and quizzes for your textbook with optional online comprehensive practice tests. Only Cram is Textbook Specific. Accompanys: Managing Organizational Change: A Multiple Perspectives Approach, 4e, by Palmer, Dunford, and Buchanan, offers managers a multiple perspectives approach to managing change, which recognizes the variety of ways to facilitate change and reinforces the need for a tailored and creative approach to fit different contexts.

The fourth edition offers timely updates to previous content, while introducing new and emerging trends, developments, themes, debates, and practices. In the end, however, the indelible impression from all of these change cases is the classic model of top-down, change in the hands of a strong, forceful and char- ismatic leader.

While input and involvement are actively sought and encouraged, the underlying message is not about managing paradox but about maintaining control. In this environment there is little tolerance for ambiguity or dissent. Lewin and Volberda counseled that progress requires combining and recombining multiple theoretical lenses to improve the integration of theories and avoid increasing fragmentation.

They argued that change is neither an outcome of managerial adaptation nor of environmental selection, but rather is a co-evolutionary outcome of strategic intentionality and environmental impera- tives. For Lewin and Volberda, the management of change means accepting that adaptation and selection are interrelated rather than opposing forces. In prac- tice, their position emphasizes that a single, linear commitment to change theory will fail to account for the non-linear, recursive and multi-level nature of change reality.

Therefore, tapping into a range of different perspectives provides the scope to understand a situation from many angles and create different modes of engagement Morgan, The following section of this article explores a range of organizational change philosophies and comments upon their impact on the tools and techniques typi- cally employed in change interventions. The complementary and competing insights they offer also demonstrate that complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty are part of the organizational dynamic and do not respond well to a rational, leader-centric approach bent on establishing certainty and control.

Change Philosophies We note that a philosophy of change is a general way of looking at organizational change, or what might be considered a paradigm: a structured set of assumptions, premises and beliefs about the way change works in organizations.

Philosophies of change are important because they reveal the deep suppositions that are being made about organizations and the ways that change operates within and around them. In the forthcoming section we take an in depth look at 10 philosophies, sum- marizing their methods and approach to change. Typically, these are expressed as theories, which in turn generate hypotheses and predictions about organiz- ational change. Any given philosophy may have generated numerous theories, but it is not always clear what they have to do with each other, and in some cases, what they have to do with theories emanating from other philosophies.

Nevertheless, philosophies are advantageous because they offer both description and prescription. Regarding the former, philosophies provide a metaphorical and theoretical explanation of assumptions and, therefore, of methods for change.

While the usefulness of metaphors for explaining change is well sup- ported Palmer and Dunford, ; Oztel and Hinz, ; Wood, , the way metaphors can offer prescriptive guidance is less well articulated. As with many complex aspects of organizational life, metaphors are useful in conveying the range of paradigms from which change can be viewed.

Paradigms describe the fundamentally different event sequences and generative mechanisms, or what can be thought of as motors of change Van de Ven and Poole, While it is not possible to consider every metaphor or paradigm conceived, we have re-conceptualized a range of divergent approaches for change into 10 the- matic philosophies.

Each of the philosophies is explained in turn, with emphasis on their respective interpretations of change. We also comment on the influence each has upon the tools and techniques typically employed for change interven- tions. The aim is to show that the underpinning philosophical assumptions associ- ated with various change interventions not only help to map the terrain of change options, but also reveal why change is so difficult to introduce successfully when a single approach is overlaid upon a complex and ambiguous organizational scenario.

The Biological Philosophy The most long held change philosophy has been commandeered from biology. In fact, biology has been used in several different ways as a metaphor for organiz- ational change Witt, The first is appropriated from evolution itself. It refers to the adaptations experienced by a species — or in this case, a population of organizations — during its evolution. This application of biology, pioneered by Hannan and Freeman under the terminology of population ecology, focuses on incremental change within industries rather than individual organizations.

Population ecologists McKelvey and Aldrich, subsequently began to take a biological view of industrial behavior. They suggested that change comes about as a consequence of Darwinian-like natural selection where industries gradually evolve to match the constraints of their environmental context. Ulti- mately, population ecologists seek to determine why there are so many different kinds of organizations within a population when the biological imperative for effi- ciency and a best fit would suggest that there should be an ideal configuration that has evolved into dominance Van de Ven and Poole, The second biological sub-philosophy refers to the individual experiences of members of a species organizations within an industry and is summarized by reference to its life cycle.

The contrast is, therefore, between the Darwinian concept of natural selection and the developmental life cycle of individual organ- izations. Life cycle theory Van de Ven and Poole, ; Kezar, explains change in organizations from start-up to divestment. The philosophy is developmental in nature, comparing the ongoing stages of progress and change in organizations to organic processes of growth and reproduction.

These can be analogous to child, human, organic, moral, or even financial development. The life cycle philosophy implicitly assumes that change is imminent and progressive.

While correct in practical application, this is a technically inaccurate view of evolution which is concerned with species industries , not individual organisms organizations. Change from a biological perspective must be viewed as dynamic. In addition, the evolutionary and life cycle sub-philosophies, as opposed to punctuated- equilibrium, reflect a slow and incremental pace of change, moderately affected by the environment, moderately controllable, and tending toward certainty.

Sometimes also known as teleological theories because the final destination of the organization is its guiding logic or planned change, the rational philosophy assumes that organizations are purposeful and adaptive Van de Ven and Poole, ; Kezar, As highlighted in an earlier discussion of the rational perspective, change occurs simply because senior managers and other change agents deem it necessary.

The process for change is rational and linear, like in evolutionary and life cycle approaches, but with managers as the pivotal instigators of change Carnall, ; Carr et al. Strategic choice theorists Child, ; Smith and Berg, belong to the rational philosophy and maintain that leaders and managers have ultimate control of their organizations.

They argue that any events outside the organization are exogenous; successful change is firmly in the hands of managers. The corollary of this argu- ment, of course, is that unsuccessful change is also the responsibility of managers, although sometimes there is the acceptance that the actors cannot override the environment and resource limitations.

In other words, when change goes well it is because leaders and managers were insightful and prescient, but when change goes badly it is because something happened that could never have been foreseen.

The rational philosophy assumes that change can be brought about at any pace and on any scale deemed suitable.

Similarly, change is internally directed, controlled and certain. Approaches consistent with the rational philosophy give precedence to strategic decision-making and careful planning towards organizational goals. It is therefore the most popular philosophy for leaders seeking to impose a direction upon an organization. The Institutional Philosophy The institutional philosophy makes some fundamentally evolutionary assump- tions, but does so in the context of a strong belief in the sensitivity of organizations to the external environments in which they are placed.

Smith industrial sector over time, but view the shaping mechanism to be the pressure of the institutional environment rather than competition for resources.

It is less the strategy in place or even the competition for scarce resources that stimulates organizational change, but rather the pressures in the wider institutional context. These might come in the form of new regulatory, financial or legal conditions DiMaggio and Powell, , Irrespective of the specific forces, change is largely a function of a shifting industrial landscape.

The implication is that suc- cessful organizations are successful because their set-up neatly accommodates the industrial pressures to which they are obligated to respond. The key to this philo- sophical standpoint is that organizations are coerced into change by pressures from within their institutional environment.

Clever strategy cannot out-manoeuvre the rules set by an institutional context. Since organizational form is instrumental to the institutional philosophy, it remains essential to study how similarities are driven by external forces that coerce companies into set patterns and structures Meyer and Rowan, One of the strengths of the institutional philosophy is that it explains similarities between organizations and stability of organizational arrangements within an industry.

For example, institutional advocates would point to legal firms as an exemplar of institutional compliance where most are configured in the same way simply because they have hit on the best approach for success.

On the other hand, the institutional philosophy tends to downplay internal forces and the impact that organizational actors can have on their own predicament. The institutional philosophy tends to view change as slow and small in scale, although institutional pressures can encourage a more rapid pace and magnitude of change. The stimulus for change is external, control is mostly undirected, and certainty is moderate.

The Resource Philosophy An instructive starting point is to contrast the resource philosophy with the insti- tutional philosophy. Where the latter explains the industry-specific pressures encouraging organizations to conform, or at least move toward some greater orga- nizing homogeneity, the resource philosophy helps to explain deviance.

Accord- ing to what is typically called the resource-dependence theory, any given organization does not possess all the resources it needs in a competitive environ- ment. Acquisition of these resources is therefore the critical activity for both survival and prosperity Pfeffer and Salancik, Thus, successful organi- zations over time are the ones which are the best at acquiring, developing and deploying scarce resources and skills.

Moreover, the most valuable resources to acquire are either unique in themselves or in the ways in which they can be combined with other assets Connor, Understanding that a dependence on resources increases uncertainty for organizations, is particularly useful to change attempts because it encourages an awareness of critical threats and obstacles to performance.

While resource dependency creates uncertainty, theorists note that the direction of uncertainty is generally predictable even if its magnitude is not. As core competencies are seen as assets that will generate an ongoing set of new products and services, the focus of organizational change from a resource perspec- tive is on the strategic capabilities of the organization, rather than on its fit with the environment.

Change can, therefore, be fast or slow as well as small or large. The stimulus for change comes principally from within — as organ- izations seek the resources they require — while control is directed and compara- tively certain. However, variables such as inertia, inflexibility, resource immobility and industry pressure make the fit between factors difficult to predict.

This fact explains why researchers have noted different levels of organ- izational performance, with performance reflecting degree of fit Van de Ven and Drazin, However, 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. The strength of the contingency philosophy is that it explains organizational change from a behavioral viewpoint where managers should make decisions that account for specific circumstances, focusing on those which are the most directly relevant, and intervening with the most appropriate actions.

In fact, the best course of action is one that is fundamentally situational, matched to the needs of the circumstances. For example, although introducing change in the mili- tary might typically be autocratic, whereas change in a small business might typi- cally be consultative, there could be times when the reverse is the most effective solution. There are no formulas or guiding principles to organizational change. The flexible nature of the contingency perspective means that change can be fast or slow, small or large, loosely or tightly controlled, be driven by internal or exter- nal stimuli, and deal with varying levels of certainty.

It just depends on the situation. Smith The Psychological Philosophy The psychological philosophy is based on the assumption that the most important dimension of change is found in personal and individual experience. In the tradition of applied social psychology pioneered by Lewin , the psycho- logical perspective focuses on the experiences that individuals have within organi- zations. It is concerned with the human side of change Iacavini, ; Stuart, and has clear links with human relations, human development and organi- zational development approaches, which emerged in response to the overly mechanistic methods of scientific management.

Since the psychological philo- sophy assumes that individuals are the most important unit in organizational change, it also has strong links with behavioral science as well.

Organizational development is an approach to change based on applied behavioral science, and founded on the action research approach Burke, Data are collected about problems and then actions taken accordingly.

Change transitions, as a sub-philosophy of the psychological model, is even more focused on the psychological status of organizational members. Accord- ingly, personal feelings, emotions and learning are seen as amongst the most important contributors to the management of change transitions.

These assump- tions all imply that emotions are learned aspects of behavior, are culturally mediated, and can be managed. By its nature, psychological change is slow and undertaken on a small scale. That is not to say that organizational change itself is necessarily slow and small, but it does imply that individuals cannot accommodate fast and large-scale change without discomfort. Personal psychological adjustment to change is also an internal process, rather than one imposed by the environment, and it is undirected and uncertain, at least partly because every individual is different.

The Political Philosophy Originating from the sociological work of Marx and Hegel, the political philos- ophy explains change as the result of clashing ideology or belief systems Morgan, Conflict is seen as not only an inherent attribute of human inter- action, but also as the most important one driving change.

As a result, the political philosophy assumes that it is the clashing of opposing political forces that produce change. When one group with a political agenda gradually gains power, they chal- lenge the status quo in the hope of shifting the organization toward their own inter- ests. Given the political nature of organizations, it may be assumed that they are composed of numerous coalitions and alliances which work together both overtly and covertly to secure power and influence.

In this respect, change is a function of the movement of power from one coalition to another because each seeks the introduction of new philosophies, approaches or ideas. The political philosophy focuses attention on how things get done through political activity and because coalitions have competing agendas and each are seeking to acquire more power, conflict lies at the heart of the political philosophy. Change managers would be advised to focus on culti- vating the political support of strong coalitions, as well as securing the resources that confer power, such as leadership positions and financial support.

The strength of the political philosophy is that it reveals the importance of clashing ideological imperatives in organizations, as well as the inescapable axiom that without power change is futile. However, the political philosophy also has the tendency to over- look the impetus for change that comes from the environment or from power bases external to the organization.

It is dangerous to get distracted by internal political adversaries when in reality the real competition lies outside an organization. As ideology is the catalyst for dissatisfaction with the status quo, the stages leading up to change can be lengthy in order to cultivate a group of sufficient power to take overt steps and risk censure. However, although the development process can be slow, actual change can spring quickly, on a large scale, and some- times quite unexpectedly.

The stimuli for change conflict can come from an external or internal party or parties. In addition, control is largely undirected and the change process is uncertain. The Cultural Philosophy The cultural philosophy owes its emergence to the field of anthropology where the concept of organizational culture emerged, first translated to an organizational setting by Pettigrew In the cultural philosophy, change is normal in that it is a response to changes in the human environment Morgan, The diffi- culty is that this process is natural, leading to the construction of firm ways of thinking about how things should be done.

As a result, imposing change means fighting entrenched sets of values and beliefs shared by organizational members. Culture, like many of the philosophies addressed in this section, is fragmented and subject to controversy and inconsistency.

The most cited cultural researcher, Schein , , , , takes a psycho-dynamic view in which culture is seen as an unconscious phenomenon, and the source of the most basic human assumptions and beliefs shared by organization members. Smith unit of change to manage. The psychological philosophy is concerned with indi- vidual experiences of change which is both individually and socially determined , whereas the cultural perspective is exclusively concerned with collective experi- ences of change, and the shared values that guide them.

The cultural philosophy assumes that the change process will be long-term, slow and small-scale Schein, Unlike natural cultural change, which is an ongoing reflection of incremental adjustments to the environment, imposed cul- tural change is internally-driven. However, cultural change can be brought about through radical environmental change as well.

If internal in stimulus, control of cultural change can be directed with some certainty, although the process is troublesome. The systems philosophy looks beyond simplistic causal views of management and the constituent parts of organizations. It developed with the intention of acknowledging the importance of holistic analysis rather than focusing on compartments of organizations. Thus, organizations were seen as the sum of their parts rather than as a collection of reduced units.

The key to change for systems theorists is to first appreciate that any imposed change has numerous and sometimes multiplied effects across an organization, and consequently, in order for change management to be successful, it must be introduced across the range of organizational units and sub-systems. Systems are typically considered to be sets of objects or entities that interrelate with each other to form a whole.

These can be physical, mental or natural Laszlo, In looking at change with a systems view, it is typically assumed that organizations are rational and non-political entities. It is generally the systemic approaches which take best-practice viewpoints by prescribing steps and linear solutions.

The claim that a set of best practices is universally applicable may, however, unrealistically lead us to ignore the powerful and highly significant changes occurring outside an organization, such as those in tech- nology, employment and society. Critics argue that the search for sets of best prac- tices may be important, but so is the search for where and when they might be best applied, like the contingency philosophy advocates.

If organizations are perceived to be systems — interrelated parts that affect each other and depend upon the whole to function properly Hatch, — then organ- izational change is effective only when interventions are leveled throughout the entire system.

In fact, the presumption of critical interrelationships between parts is the unique contribution of the systems philosophy. Every system may be characterized by two diverse forces: differentiation and integration.

At the same time, in order to maintain unity amongst the differentiated parts and to form a complete whole, every system has a process of integration. In organizations, inte- gration is typically achieved through coordinating devices such as levels of hier- archy, direct supervision, and rules, procedures and policies.

Every system therefore requires differentiation to identify its sub-parts and integration to ensure that the system does not break down into separate elements. The systems philosophy assumes that change can be relatively fast and large scale.

This is because it implicitly requires all sub-systems in an organization to be changed at once. Of course, this means that change is internally driven, control- lable and certain.

The Postmodern Philosophy The postmodern philosophy challenges singular or grand theories about organiz- ational change, instead insisting that change is a function of socially constructed views of reality contributed by multiple players Buchanan, The postmo- dern change philosophy is probably best described as one which is comfortable with ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity and chaos, but also seeks to take action rationally toward ongoing improvement White and Jacques, The notion of postmodernism accompanied the transition from industrial to post-industrial society; from manufacturing and materials to knowledge and infor- mation.

The postmodern analysis of change finds that words, symbols and signs are increasingly divorced from direct, real-world experience Fox, It is a juxtaposition of the old and new, characterized by a change management approach that emphasizes diffusion, empowerment, flexibility, trust and market responsive- ness Clegg, The postmodern philosophy views reality as multiplicitous, fragmented and contradictory.

Postmodernism is also deeply suspicious of the rational impo- sition of change because it holds a particular sensitivity to power and its appli- cation.

Power is typically viewed as a mechanism for exploitation rather than a reasonable means to achieve common goals. Embedded in the postmodern philos- ophy is the idea that power and knowledge are intrinsically connected. This has led to a more textured presentation of the postmodern philosophy known as discourse analysis, heavily influenced by the work of Foucault Discursive analysis is concerned with the way in which language helps to reveal social phenomena Grant et al.

Discursive analysis recognizes that language what is written, spoken, heard and read plays an active role in creating our social worlds. This means that the world appears different to everyone. Smith subscribe to. For most practically-minded managers, however, the postmodern philosophy ventures too far into the abstract and is difficult to wield without relin- quishing the very power needed to instantiate change.

Unlike the systems perspective that encourages best practice thinking, a post- modern analysis precludes the use of an overarching theoretical approach. As a result, change can occur at any pace, scale, stimulus, control and level of certainty.

Dualities: Competing and Complementary Insights The first part of this article highlighted the limitations of adopting a singular, rational philosophy when managing the process of change, while the previous section demonstrated that the other prominent philosophies about how change works in organizations are similarly rigid or subject to the limitations of their prin- ciple assumptions. At one end of the spectrum, formal, rational logic may be valu- able in articulating a clear course of action, and in providing structure and process to the complex task of strategy making, yet its scope is limited because inconsis- tency and ambiguity are beyond its repertoire.

At the other end, postmodern, discursive philosophies preference individual experience and power, but are more ambiguous when it comes to specifying practical change interventions without falling into the power trap it eschews or encouraging anarchy. Somewhere in the middle, the contingency philosophy has a bet each way, while on either side theorists are inclined either towards systemic views or speak of culture as the key.

Others still suggest that acquiring resources is the crucial step for successful change, and at the same time further commentators declare that acquiring power is the most critical success factor to change. How then do we turn around the way organizations, and in particular senior management, view the process of change?

Given that change is neither simple nor straightforward, and unlikely to conform to an n-step formula, this article has argued that a paradigmatically different sort of philosophy is needed that cap- tures the complexities and dynamics of organizations and actively seeks out the accumulated knowledge, skills, experience and learning of the different commu- nities interacting in them.

The latter point underlines the true nature of organizations as dynamic, evolving entities that must be continually changing, organizing, strategizing. The view that organization or structure is subservient to agency or strategy may be considered an artifact of Chandlerian Chandler, thinking, which demanded a sharp dis- tinction between the two as different properties and processes Whittington and Melin, However, Whittington and Melin concluded that strategy and organization are not distinct states.

The assumption is that a change to organizing is a strategic change Paroutis and Pettigrew, As verbs, the terms impart the importance of continuous rather than static change pro- cesses. Organization and strategy therefore become organizing and strategizing, wherein the former is a type of the latter and change in both is ongoing.

Strategiz- ing and organizing are neither linear nor sequential activities, but are actually iterative and reciprocal in action Dijksterhuis et al. The challenge for future research is to understand and explain how organiz- ations manage the dynamic relationship between competing philosophies of change. Modular and ambidextrous forms of organization, which embrace hetero- geneity, for example, might provide a sound theoretical platform.

Modularity the- orists would propose adding to or reconfiguring strategic components Baldwin and Clark, ; Galunic and Eisenhardt, ; Schilling and Steensma, ; Pil and Cohen, ;.

Modular systems are, therefore, more resilient and better able to manage environmental flux and uncertainty than their more tightly coupled counterparts Pil and Cohen, Modularity thus confers flexi- bility as organizing components can be reconfigured, such as the selective repla- cement of hierarchical structures with more loosely coupled forms, using tactics such as sub-contracting, alternative work arrangements or alliances.

The impor- tant strategic decisions come in the choice of which aspect of structure should be reconfigured and, with greater heterogeneity within the firm, more options become available Smith and Graetz, Similarly, Stark , proposed that adaptability is enhanced by the organization of diversity within an enterprise.