PRO 3: Organisation & Environment Lectures
Book: Balogun, J., Hailey, V. H., & Gustafsson, S. (2015). Exploring Strategic Change 4 th edn. Pearson
Higher Ed. ISBN 978027377891
Articles: marked green.
*Lecture 6 is a wrap-up, everything mentioned in this lecture is present in lecture 1 – 5.
Lecture 1: Introduction
Strategic or transformational change = organizational shift in the context of environmental
developments:
- We are looking into how organizations change when they have to respond or when they
proactively take into account changes in the context of the organization. Changes in the
context of the organization (organizational environment) are surrounding us in an increasing
speed, in many cases organizations have to respond to that or have to proactively anticipate
on that.
o For instance: new competitors are coming into the environmental context or
introduction of a new technology that provides all kinds of opportunities and
challenges for organizations (something has to be changed in the organization to
take full advantage of new technologies).
Retailers: emergence of online retailing it can be seen as an opportunity
or as a thread, but you will always have to respond to it as an organization.
Organizations nowadays will proactively change their set of goals, earlier they were only focusing on
financial targets, now also on sustainability etc. This requires organizations to do something about
their internal organization (culture and more tangible things).
Aspects of an organization:
- Hard: often involves changes in patterns of resource allocation, organizational structure and
processes (are relatively tangible);
- Soft: often involves changes in central beliefs that members of an organization hold about
the organization, the nature of its environment and the competition and how it competes
(culture/identity of the organization).
Means are closely connected (mutually reinforcing):
- A certain structure also shapes the beliefs of the organization: a customer-oriented
organization with a very strong marketing department is reinforcing itself the strong
marketing department will fuel the organization in being very customer-oriented;
- Other way around: a very strong belief about what the organization is will also result in what
the emphasis will be when we look at dividing processes a very innovative culture means
that in many cases the organization has a very advanced product innovation process.
changing organizations will be hard, because hard and soft aspects are interrelated.
1
,Terminology context specific change
1. Change content: the why and what of change; an outline of the required future state of the
organization and its relationship to the current state.
a. The connection with the external environment, what is your strategy and what do I
have to change? What do I want to achieve after the change is implemented? (E.g.
Porter’s five forces).
b. Relationship between the organization and the outer context.
2. Change process (transition): how is the change implemented?
a. Relationship between the inner context and the change process.
3. Outer context: external (competitive) environment
a. About the border between the organization and its context. In the outer context
there are a lot of stakeholders that are important for the organization.
4. Inner context: internal organizational context (e.g. control systems, power, and politics of the
organization)
a. The hard and soft aspects of the organization. The change process is imbedded in the
inner context, while the inner context is embedded in the outer context.
Context-specific change
Context-specific change, managerial capabilities for change agents (change process/transition):
1. Analytical skills: to create a holistic picture of the organization (inner context)
2. Judgmental skills: to recognize what is critical in a particular change context and design a
change process that addresses it.
a. Analytical and judgmental skills guide you in a direction of developing a specific
approach to the change process/transition.
3. Translation skills: moving between and vocabularies associated with the formulation of
strategy and vocabularies of change implementation (putting the developed approach to the
change process/transition into practice).
a. High-level change process strategy will first start with the most important
departments of the organization, but still, you will have to make clear what the
change means for the individual departments. Different departments could have
different terminology/concepts.
4. Implementation skills: to take action and decide on which intervention to make and in what
order to apply them.
a. What to do first?
2
, The importance of inner context
The book focusses on contextualized
change, two approaches can be
distinguished:
1. The change-agent has learned a
specific approach (has used it
before) and uses it as a hammer for
all kinds of problems. The change
agent makes the decision to use
this approach to achieve his aims
without much thoughts and
reflection, hereby he does not look at the change context (he does not take into account the
inner context).
2. You start with the change content
(the why and the what of change),
again the change agent has to make
decisions, but here the change
agent’s judgement is based on the
change context. The selected recipe
is based on the change agent’s
judgement taking into account the
change context and the
organizational inner context to come up with a recipe that fits the organization. This
approach takes away the preferences of the change agent.
Flowchart context specific change
Sequential steps that are relevant in putting in place
change.
Why and what: the practice-oriented part of this
course (change content, focused on current and
future state) how can the organization be
managed better? This is more about what is
relevant for the future state and far less about how
to achieve this state.
How: the theoretical part of this course (change
process).
3
Book: Balogun, J., Hailey, V. H., & Gustafsson, S. (2015). Exploring Strategic Change 4 th edn. Pearson
Higher Ed. ISBN 978027377891
Articles: marked green.
*Lecture 6 is a wrap-up, everything mentioned in this lecture is present in lecture 1 – 5.
Lecture 1: Introduction
Strategic or transformational change = organizational shift in the context of environmental
developments:
- We are looking into how organizations change when they have to respond or when they
proactively take into account changes in the context of the organization. Changes in the
context of the organization (organizational environment) are surrounding us in an increasing
speed, in many cases organizations have to respond to that or have to proactively anticipate
on that.
o For instance: new competitors are coming into the environmental context or
introduction of a new technology that provides all kinds of opportunities and
challenges for organizations (something has to be changed in the organization to
take full advantage of new technologies).
Retailers: emergence of online retailing it can be seen as an opportunity
or as a thread, but you will always have to respond to it as an organization.
Organizations nowadays will proactively change their set of goals, earlier they were only focusing on
financial targets, now also on sustainability etc. This requires organizations to do something about
their internal organization (culture and more tangible things).
Aspects of an organization:
- Hard: often involves changes in patterns of resource allocation, organizational structure and
processes (are relatively tangible);
- Soft: often involves changes in central beliefs that members of an organization hold about
the organization, the nature of its environment and the competition and how it competes
(culture/identity of the organization).
Means are closely connected (mutually reinforcing):
- A certain structure also shapes the beliefs of the organization: a customer-oriented
organization with a very strong marketing department is reinforcing itself the strong
marketing department will fuel the organization in being very customer-oriented;
- Other way around: a very strong belief about what the organization is will also result in what
the emphasis will be when we look at dividing processes a very innovative culture means
that in many cases the organization has a very advanced product innovation process.
changing organizations will be hard, because hard and soft aspects are interrelated.
1
,Terminology context specific change
1. Change content: the why and what of change; an outline of the required future state of the
organization and its relationship to the current state.
a. The connection with the external environment, what is your strategy and what do I
have to change? What do I want to achieve after the change is implemented? (E.g.
Porter’s five forces).
b. Relationship between the organization and the outer context.
2. Change process (transition): how is the change implemented?
a. Relationship between the inner context and the change process.
3. Outer context: external (competitive) environment
a. About the border between the organization and its context. In the outer context
there are a lot of stakeholders that are important for the organization.
4. Inner context: internal organizational context (e.g. control systems, power, and politics of the
organization)
a. The hard and soft aspects of the organization. The change process is imbedded in the
inner context, while the inner context is embedded in the outer context.
Context-specific change
Context-specific change, managerial capabilities for change agents (change process/transition):
1. Analytical skills: to create a holistic picture of the organization (inner context)
2. Judgmental skills: to recognize what is critical in a particular change context and design a
change process that addresses it.
a. Analytical and judgmental skills guide you in a direction of developing a specific
approach to the change process/transition.
3. Translation skills: moving between and vocabularies associated with the formulation of
strategy and vocabularies of change implementation (putting the developed approach to the
change process/transition into practice).
a. High-level change process strategy will first start with the most important
departments of the organization, but still, you will have to make clear what the
change means for the individual departments. Different departments could have
different terminology/concepts.
4. Implementation skills: to take action and decide on which intervention to make and in what
order to apply them.
a. What to do first?
2
, The importance of inner context
The book focusses on contextualized
change, two approaches can be
distinguished:
1. The change-agent has learned a
specific approach (has used it
before) and uses it as a hammer for
all kinds of problems. The change
agent makes the decision to use
this approach to achieve his aims
without much thoughts and
reflection, hereby he does not look at the change context (he does not take into account the
inner context).
2. You start with the change content
(the why and the what of change),
again the change agent has to make
decisions, but here the change
agent’s judgement is based on the
change context. The selected recipe
is based on the change agent’s
judgement taking into account the
change context and the
organizational inner context to come up with a recipe that fits the organization. This
approach takes away the preferences of the change agent.
Flowchart context specific change
Sequential steps that are relevant in putting in place
change.
Why and what: the practice-oriented part of this
course (change content, focused on current and
future state) how can the organization be
managed better? This is more about what is
relevant for the future state and far less about how
to achieve this state.
How: the theoretical part of this course (change
process).
3
