Management Scholarship and Organisational Change

Representing Burns and Stalker

Miriam Green

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781315519272
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Change is a crucial and inescapable process for many organisations. It remains a constant challenge for managers and many change management initiatives fail. Burns and Stalker's seminal text on managing change, The Management of Innovation, has often been used as a basis for research in mainstream management journals and has been represented as an important theory in popular and long-established management textbooks. The issues raised in that book are still being grappled with by academics and practitioners today.

Miriam Green provides a critical analysis of the mainstream construction of knowledge on change management through an examination of representations of that text. The main thesis of her book is that this literature, though valuable, does not provide a full picture. Its objectivist approach ignores the role of other factors raised in the original study. These factors include the effects of power, politics, resistance and employee influence on the outcomes of managerial change strategies and on other organisational processes, with important consequences for the understanding of change initiatives by both academics and practitioners. This is part of an ongoing debate in management studies and more widely in the social sciences about theoretical approaches and research methods.

The originality of this book lies in its in-depth comparison of an entire monograph on organisations facing technological and commercial change, with an equally in-depth analysis of the ways this work has been represented and used as a basis for teaching and research. It highlights the limitations of the exclusive use of one approach to explain the complications arising from organisational change. It challenges the scientific justification offered for that approach and supports arguments for more inclusive and sustainable scholarship, of greater relevance to academics, managers and other organisational stakeholders.

1 Introduction

Introduction¹

The focus of this book is an analysis of the ways in which change management has been represented and researched in mainstream academic literature. These representations and research applications have been and remain a strong influence on scholars in the organisation, management and management accounting fields. This construction of knowledge by scholars writing on the management of change is examined through the detailed analysis of a seminal book on change management by highly regarded ‘contingency’ theorists, accompanied by an equally detailed comparison of mainstream representations of that original text.

The book on which this study is based is Burns and Stalker’s The Management of Innovation, first published in 1961, with second and third editions in 1966 and 1994.² That book raised issues regarding the implementation of change, still being grappled with by academics and more widely by practitioners, as evidenced in more practical texts, such as those published by the Harvard Business Review, and by professional institutions such as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The Management of Innovation has been used extensively in research and teaching in the management and management accounting fields throughout the second half of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Chapman (1997:198) described The Management of Innovation as ‘Perhaps the most influential and long lasting source of ideas in the contingency area’. In 2016 it was described by Otley as having constituted ‘ground breaking work’ (Otley 2016:50) and is still seen as a classic in the field (Barley 2016).

Rationale

The significance of this study lies in its claim that while orthodox scholarship has been widely and usefully concerned with the management of change, such representations, fully legitimated in the academy in the UK and US, are contestable, with importance consequences for the understanding of change initiatives by scholars and professional practitioners. The construction of mainstream³ scholars’ representations and research applications of works such as Burns and Stalker’s, it is argued here, puts into question much of what has been regarded in dominant scholarship as being adequate for understanding successful change. Because these representations have long been accepted by the academy as legitimate knowledge on change management, this raises important epistemological⁴ and practical issues of concern to academics, students, professional managers, management consultants and not least employees at various levels in their organisations.

The main contention in this book is over the almost exclusive recourse to one single ontological,⁵ epistemological and methodological⁶ paradigm adopted in mainstream scholarship. The consequences of this are that the meanings in Burns and Stalker’s original text have been limited to an emphasis on formal organisational systems and structures to an extent, it is argued here, that much of the substance – to do with distortions, resistance, dysfunctions and even failures of management strategies - is lost. Problems for managers implementing change raised in The Management of Innovation have been minimised if not entirely omitted.

The critique in this book is based on the absences (Bhaskar 2008) of subjectivist aspects of organisational processes – the influence that members at all levels in organisations can have on the direction and success of managerial strategies and their implementation. One positive outcome of the publication of this book would be to influence researchers and other scholars to broaden the parameters for what is accepted as legitimate knowledge and to consider alternative, more holistic research methodologies. It should highlight factors likely to result in the success or failure of managerial policies, rather than the ‘abstracted empiricism’ (Burrell and Morgan 1979:104–106) or ‘idealized worlds’ (Panozzo 1997:459) so often seen to be on offer in academic books and journals. It should provide tools to critique various theoretical and methodological approaches. It might also encourage students to be critical of the smooth and glib models and solutions with respect to organisational change so often presented in more popular books on management.

What is novel about this book is that its research is done through the exploration and analysis of an entire monograph. A close examination of mainstream representations and research applications of that monograph details the similarities and differences between it and many of its interpretations, demonstrating the need to raise questions as to what counts as valid knowledge in the academy and what counts as the stuff of successful management. The rationale for the book stretches beyond the interpretation of one academic monograph, as much orthodox scholarship has relied on similar approaches, widening the implications for management scholarship and practice.

Background to contingency theory

The second half of the twentieth century saw changes and challenges to organisations in the UK and the US. These included increased global competition alongside a decline in protected markets and rapid technological development, with its effects on production, product innovation and information processing. The need arose for flexible organisation systems and management styles that would respond to the rapid changes in market demand and competition from Europe and the Far East (Ashton et al. 1995). Contemporary organisation theories on the design and running of successful organisations, be they classical or scientific management, human relations or a mixture of both, were thought to be unfit to cope with these developments. These theories had assumed largely closed systems which did not take external factors into account. They had advocated one best way, applicable to all organisations in all situations (Burrell and Morgan 1979).

Various ‘contingency theories’ were developed out of those early managerial ideas in the 1950s and 1960s. Major theorists included Woodward (1958, 1965), Burns and Stalker (1961, 1966, 1994) and Lawrence and Lorsch (1967a, 1967b). Their writings were aimed at helping organisations cope with different organisational environments, structures and technologies. They took concepts from mechanistic classical and scientific management theories and from humanist or psychological human relations and motivation theories, and changed them from being rigidly prescriptive with universalist recipes, to ideas where organisations had to match their systems, structures and leadership styles to particular contingencies. They recommended that these elements be adapted according to developments in the external environment, as circumstances dictated (Burrell and Morgan 1979).

These theorists offered various explanations as to what kind of organisation system would be effective in different environments, linking organisation structure with a variety of variables. Woodward claimed that the relationship between organisation structure and type of production technology was the most important. She found that successful organisation structures varied in their degree of hierarchy depending on whether the technology was large or small batch, or process technology (Woodward 1958). The Aston School, considered to have produced the most coherent body of empirical research between 1976 and 1981 (Otley 1995), pointed to the various contingencies of size, production technology and external environment as factors influencing the structures of organisations (Pugh et al. 2007). Lawrence and Lorsch developed a theory which maintained that in different economic and market conditions different parts of organisations would be subject to different rates of environmental change. There therefore needed to be differentiation in the internal structures of the various organisational subsystems. But there also needed to be integration for those tasks requiring interdepartmental co-ordination (Lawrence and Lorsch 1967a, 1967b).

Contingency theory has been an important theory in the organisation/management and management accounting fields and is considered to have had a ‘long and distinguished role’ in management and particularly management accounting research (Hall 2016:73). According to a survey of research papers in the two decades of the life of one prominent management accounting journal (Management Accounting Research) (MAR) contingency theory was used in 7% of the articles in the first decade (1990–2000) and in 13% in 2000–2010 (Scapens and Bromwich 2010). Cadez and Guildiing went so far as to describe contingency theory as having become ‘the dominant paradigm in management accounting research’ (Cadez and Guilding 2008:840).

Burns and Stalker’s contingency theory

Burns and Stalker’s work on contingency theory is among the best known. Their ideas have been central to organisation and management theory from the 1960s and into the twenty-first century, and are still referred to in textbooks and used as a model for research. Burns himself noted that the end of the 1950s marked the end of post-war physical reconstruction, followed by political renovation, economic expansion and technological innovation (Burns 1994). What was now required was a theory which addressed the need for organisational flexibility in these new environmental circumstances (Burrell and Morgan 1979; Ashton et al. 1995).

Burns and Stalker’s research involved a study of twenty English and Scottish companies setting up new technologies for electronics development work. Their book dealt with an evaluation of successful as opposed to unsuccessful companies in environments of rapid technological and commercial change. As part of their analysis Burns and Stalker developed a continuum for two ‘ideal types’ in organisations – an ‘organic’ system appropriate for the contingencies of rapid change in technology and the market, and a ‘mechanistic’ one more appropriate in stable environmental conditions (Burns and Stalker 1961:119–120).

Their research was about the properties and effects of mechanistic (hierarchical) and organic (flexible) organisation systems in environmental conditions of both stability and change. The more volatile the market preference and probably therefore the technology required to deliver it, the more effective an organic structure would be – a structure with a looser definition of roles, more decentralised decision-making and more leeway for expertise over formal authority. This would enable innovative and timely responses to task uncertainties (Burns and Stalker 1961). These ideas are the ones most usually presented by mainstream scholars, with market or technological change being the independent variable selected – Burns and Stalker’s first of three variables.

A large part of Burns and Stalker’s book, however, also included the difficulties in implementing change from mechanistic to organic structures. The second variable introduced by Burns and Stalker – employee commitment – was about the power, politics and resistance strategies engaged in by employees in different parts of their organisations. These were manifested in departmental rivalries and conflicts, the influence of informal groups and the pull of previous bureaucratic systems. Burns and Stalker’s third variable was concerned with the capacities of the companies’ senior executives and the problems they faced in delivering organisational change. Burns and Stalker’s analysis showed that all these factors were potentially inimical to successful change, and had played a large part in hindering the implementation of change strategies, sometimes to the point of rendering them dysfunctional (Burns and Stalker 1961; Burns 1966).

Management of change⁷

Change is currently a crucial and inescapable process for many organisations. An understanding of what makes for successful or unsuccessful change outcomes is vital both for scholars and practitioners. It has been widely acknowledged that successful change is difficult to achieve and that there are as many, if not more, failures as successes. Kotter studied management change initiatives to cope with new market environments in over one hundred companies, including large organisations. He concluded that:

A few of these corporate change efforts have been very successful. A few have been utter failures. Most fall somewhere in between, with a distinct tilt toward the lower end of the scale.

(Kotter 2011:1)

Other research has shown similar results. Garvin and Roberto (2011) pointed to the predictability and inadequacies of many managers’ change strategies:

[Managers] revamp the organization’s strategy, then round up the usual set of suspects – people, pay and processes … They then wait patiently for performance to improve, only to be bitterly disappointed.

(Garvin and Roberto 2011:17)

Previous successes by high-ranking managers have also not proved a guarantee for success. Heifetz and Linsky wrote about such ‘top executives … who … have crashed and burned’ because of

the high-stake risks you face whenever you try to lead an organization through difficult but necessary changes.

(Heifetz and Linsky 2011:99)

With regard to these effo...