Organizational Change MOD002A 2019/2020 Course Summary
Content
L1 – Introduction and Organizational becoming ..................................................................................... 1
L2 – Emergent Change............................................................................................................................. 5
L3 – Different voices in the change process .......................................................................................... 10
L4 – Upward influencing and issue selling............................................................................................. 13
L5 – Selling sustainability....................................................................................................................... 14
L6 – Perspective on power and resistance ............................................................................................ 15
L7 – Doing resistance............................................................................................................................. 19
L8 – Technology and change – Resisting what? .................................................................................... 22
L9 – Managing change at all levels ........................................................................................................ 26
L10 – Consultant – client relationship ................................................................................................... 27
L1 – Introduction and Organizational becoming
Approaches to change
Literature: Tsoukas & Chia – “On organizational becoming”
Idea: Flipping the established idea that stability is the norm. Change should be considered
natural, not exceptional.
Change is the reweaving of actors’ beliefs and habits in order to perceive new experiences
obtained through interactions.
William James states that “what exists are things in the making”, thus we should perceive
change as an ongoing process, not stable periods of time.
Organisations are: 1) the attempt to order the intrinsic flux of human action by generalizing
and institutionalizing particular cognitive representations. 2) a pattern that is constituted, shaped
and emerging from change. They aim at stemming change but during the process of doing so
they are generated by it.
Three reasons why we should look at change as an ongoing change rather than be based on
stability:
1) It enables researchers to obtain a more complete understanding of the microprocesses
of change at work. Understanding and answering such microprocesses will help
understand the dynamics of change and allow the careful assessment of non-linear
processes. Based on Greenwood and Hinings, future research should address the
question of how “precipitating” and “enabling dynamics” interact in response to
, pressures for change = what makes an organisation move from and change “archetypes”.
Greenwood and Hinings say that to properly understand change, we should allow
emergence and surprise – we should take into account the possibility of organizational
change to have implications beyond the initially imagined ones.
2) We don’t know how change is accomplished. We can only give a brief description of
how the organisation went from state X to state Y, but we won’t be able to describe how
the change was accomplished on the ground – how plans transformed into actions, how
they got modified, adapted, changed. Feldman (2000) shows that organizational routines
are actually “emergent accomplishments” = flows of connected ideas, actions and
outcomes which interact and change in action. As routines are performed by human
agents, they contain the seed of change – even the most stable parts of organisations
(e.g. routines) can be a subject of instability. Change is always potentially there if we
care to look for it.
3) There is a major cause of dissatisfaction with the traditional approach to change (= it
treats change as epiphenomenon /of secondary importance/ and gives priority to
stability). If we want to overcome change implementation problems reported by
literature, we should look at change as an ongoing process, a stream of interactions, a
flow of situated initiatives and not as a set of episodic events (when change is opposed
to stability in the form of an extraordinary event).
The main barriers to rethinking change are the ontological and epistemological (justified by
knowledge) commitments. The problem comes from Platonic and Aristotelian believes that
stability matters more than change. Now we need to acknowledge change as something that
matters on its own, its centrality, and to stop looking at it as an epiphenomenon.
The purpose of Tsoukas & Chia’s paper is to build on and extend Orlikowski, Weick and
Feldman’s arguments. We should reverse the ontological and epiphenomenal grounding of
change and focus on the process of becoming, how org. change appears, reasons and methods
of its transformation and the continuous maintenance of the applied change. One of the main
ideas is that change is not opposed to stability, it is not a disruption of the norm. It should be
viewed as necessary, normal part of the organizational becoming. It should be understood as
“emergent property” of change. We should acknowledge that change is pervasive and
indivisible.
Traditional approach to org. change:
- Organisation is the way to set rules which goal is making stability, so that human
behavior is more predictable;
- Organisation is emerging from the reflexive application of these rules in local contexts
over time.
= organisation is both trying to achieve stability (stop change) and the result of change
becoming.
Making sense of change
What is organizational change?
It divides into synoptic and performative accounts.
Synoptic accounts enable us to attain vision of the far, we notice patterns at different points of
time.
Content
L1 – Introduction and Organizational becoming ..................................................................................... 1
L2 – Emergent Change............................................................................................................................. 5
L3 – Different voices in the change process .......................................................................................... 10
L4 – Upward influencing and issue selling............................................................................................. 13
L5 – Selling sustainability....................................................................................................................... 14
L6 – Perspective on power and resistance ............................................................................................ 15
L7 – Doing resistance............................................................................................................................. 19
L8 – Technology and change – Resisting what? .................................................................................... 22
L9 – Managing change at all levels ........................................................................................................ 26
L10 – Consultant – client relationship ................................................................................................... 27
L1 – Introduction and Organizational becoming
Approaches to change
Literature: Tsoukas & Chia – “On organizational becoming”
Idea: Flipping the established idea that stability is the norm. Change should be considered
natural, not exceptional.
Change is the reweaving of actors’ beliefs and habits in order to perceive new experiences
obtained through interactions.
William James states that “what exists are things in the making”, thus we should perceive
change as an ongoing process, not stable periods of time.
Organisations are: 1) the attempt to order the intrinsic flux of human action by generalizing
and institutionalizing particular cognitive representations. 2) a pattern that is constituted, shaped
and emerging from change. They aim at stemming change but during the process of doing so
they are generated by it.
Three reasons why we should look at change as an ongoing change rather than be based on
stability:
1) It enables researchers to obtain a more complete understanding of the microprocesses
of change at work. Understanding and answering such microprocesses will help
understand the dynamics of change and allow the careful assessment of non-linear
processes. Based on Greenwood and Hinings, future research should address the
question of how “precipitating” and “enabling dynamics” interact in response to
, pressures for change = what makes an organisation move from and change “archetypes”.
Greenwood and Hinings say that to properly understand change, we should allow
emergence and surprise – we should take into account the possibility of organizational
change to have implications beyond the initially imagined ones.
2) We don’t know how change is accomplished. We can only give a brief description of
how the organisation went from state X to state Y, but we won’t be able to describe how
the change was accomplished on the ground – how plans transformed into actions, how
they got modified, adapted, changed. Feldman (2000) shows that organizational routines
are actually “emergent accomplishments” = flows of connected ideas, actions and
outcomes which interact and change in action. As routines are performed by human
agents, they contain the seed of change – even the most stable parts of organisations
(e.g. routines) can be a subject of instability. Change is always potentially there if we
care to look for it.
3) There is a major cause of dissatisfaction with the traditional approach to change (= it
treats change as epiphenomenon /of secondary importance/ and gives priority to
stability). If we want to overcome change implementation problems reported by
literature, we should look at change as an ongoing process, a stream of interactions, a
flow of situated initiatives and not as a set of episodic events (when change is opposed
to stability in the form of an extraordinary event).
The main barriers to rethinking change are the ontological and epistemological (justified by
knowledge) commitments. The problem comes from Platonic and Aristotelian believes that
stability matters more than change. Now we need to acknowledge change as something that
matters on its own, its centrality, and to stop looking at it as an epiphenomenon.
The purpose of Tsoukas & Chia’s paper is to build on and extend Orlikowski, Weick and
Feldman’s arguments. We should reverse the ontological and epiphenomenal grounding of
change and focus on the process of becoming, how org. change appears, reasons and methods
of its transformation and the continuous maintenance of the applied change. One of the main
ideas is that change is not opposed to stability, it is not a disruption of the norm. It should be
viewed as necessary, normal part of the organizational becoming. It should be understood as
“emergent property” of change. We should acknowledge that change is pervasive and
indivisible.
Traditional approach to org. change:
- Organisation is the way to set rules which goal is making stability, so that human
behavior is more predictable;
- Organisation is emerging from the reflexive application of these rules in local contexts
over time.
= organisation is both trying to achieve stability (stop change) and the result of change
becoming.
Making sense of change
What is organizational change?
It divides into synoptic and performative accounts.
Synoptic accounts enable us to attain vision of the far, we notice patterns at different points of
time.
