The Awakening Giant (Routledge Revivals)

Continuity and Change in Imperial Chemical Industries

Andrew Pettigrew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415668767
• eBook ISBN: 9781136720932
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

First published in 1985, this book is about Imperial Chemical Industries' response to the changing social, political, business and economic environment over the past twenty years. Using personal interviews and archival material, Andrew Pettigrew examines the evolution of business strategy, organisation structure and culture, technology and union-management relations within this corporate giant over an extended period of time. It is a compelling account, told from the inside, by one of the world's leading management and organisation theorists. The Awakening Giant has made a major practical and theoretical contribution to the study of corporate strategy, organisational analysis and change, and business history. Anyone with an interest in managing change in a large corporation will find this reissue rewarding reading.

1	Research on Organisational Change and Development and Strategic Change: Some Limitations

Change is ubiquitous. Or is it? In the micro-events which surround our particular lives and in the daily trumpetings of the media change has an ever-present illusion of reality. Yet observe other men consciously attempting to move large and small systems in different directions, or attempt it yourself, and one sees what a difficult and complicated human process change is. And there is the problem of perspective. Where we sit not only influences where we stand, but also what we see. No observer of life or form begins with his mind a blank, to be gradually filled by evidence. Time itself sets a frame of reference for what changes are seen and how those changes are explained. The more we look at present-day events the easier it is to identify change; the longer we stay with an emergent process and the further back we go to disentangle its origins, the more we can identify continuities. Empirically and theoretically, change and continuity need one another, although as we shall see, many social scientists in their attempts to identify and explain change in organisations in terms of the micro-events of the day have artificially abstracted change out from the structures and contexts which give that change form, meaning, and dynamic. Change and continuity, process and structure, are inextricably linked.

A further conundrum is the choice of metaphors and images which exist in the study of change, each one pregnant with its own world view, model of man, and explanatory language. How are we to choose between growth and development, continuity and flow, life cycle and phase, contradiction, intrusion, and crisis? Are we to go along with the social analysts who would have us believe that cultures grow and perish in the same superb, natural, and aimless fashion as the flowers of the field? Or are we to accept the assumption that human history and social change are about chaps – and nothing else? Gellner's (1973) view is that history is about chaps, but he is quick to point out that it does not follow that its explanations are always in terms of chaps. Societies are what people do, but social scientists are not biographers en grande série.

Beware of the myth of the singular theory of social or organisational change. Look for continuity and change, patterns and idiosyncrasies, the actions of individuals and groups, the role of contexts and structures, and processes of structuring. Give history and social processes the chance to reveal their untidiness. Arguments over the true or basic sources of change, while interesting and worthwhile in the sharpening of academic minds and egos, are ultimately pointless. For the analyst interested in the theory and practice of changing the task is to identify the variety and mixture of causes of change and to explore some of the conditions and contexts under which these mixtures occur. That at least is the first stepping stone I offer the reader for joining me on this particular enterprise.

This research on continuity and change in ICI has provided an opportunity to study in a comparative and longitudinal mode the activities and strategies of very senior and middle managers trying to create significant change, and the role of internal and external organisation development (OD) specialists in facilitating change. The study began in 1975 after ICI had been using specialist OD resources at a variety of different levels and divisions in the company, and were pondering particular questions about why and how these specialists seemed to be more effective in some parts of the company than others. From this initial pragmatic question the research began to explore and establish the first theme in this book – the contributions and limitations of specialist-based attempts to create changes in organisational structure and culture. The first process under examination in the research has been the birth, evolution, development, and impact of groups of internal and external OD consultants in four divisions, and the corporate headquarters of ICI. However, as a result of the access and analyses provided by the initial study objectives the opportunity arose to explore a second and more inclusive process, the long-term processes of strategic decision-making and change in ICI in the differing social, economic, and political context of 1960–83. The use of the word strategic linked to change is just a description of magnitude of alteration in, for example product market focus, structure, and organisational culture, recognising the second-order effects, or multiple consequences, of any such changes. This second, broader analysis of continuity and change is seen through the eyes and activities of the main board of ICI, and the boards and senior managers of ICI's four largest divisions – Agricultural, Mond, Petrochemicals, and Plastics.

Given that the completed study incorporates an analysis of senior executive and specialist contributions to the process of formulating and implementing changes of such scope and impact that they can justifiably be described as strategic; and examines the role of line managers and specialists grappling with the introduction of more localised and circumscribed changes; and that OD techniques and ideas were applied to both the strategic and the more limited changes, then it is evident the data in this study are potentially connectable to a number of the various elements of the literature on the management of change. Unfortunately the writing and research on the management of change is a sprawling and none too coherent collection of bodies of literature, some proclaiming pragmatic precepts and transparent values, others coolly analysing and theorising without any commitment to statements of practice, and others being concerned with the lofty analytical formulation of strategic change and disdaining the examination of how such strategies are to be implemented in the political and cultural mosaic of large and medium-sized organisations. Of course, a further and predictable difficulty with a topic like organisational change, is that the study of change has attracted scholars from a number of academic disciplines who identify themselves as being more or less interested in description or prescription; a consequence of this is that these different bodies of literature do not, explicitly at least, talk to one another.

In what follows no attempt is made to find a herculean and grand coherence in the literature on the management of change where none exists. Rather the more limited objective for a review is offered of description, explication, and where appropriate criticism. The aim is to lay out some parts of the writing and research on organisational change and development in the hope that some of the strengths and weaknesses of that literature are clarified, and in the expectation that the identification of such patterns will serendipitously encourage the disparate elements in the literature to talk to one another. This chapter thus begins by briefly defining and reviewing the history of organisation development. Attention is then focused on identifying the strengths and limitations of the theory, research, and practice in the related fields of organisational change and development, and finally a short commentary is provided on the literature on strategic change in organisations. From this review will emerge some points of synthesis which will identify not only the particular and limited forms of theorising about organisational change, but also a recognition of the essentially ahistorical, acontextual, and aprocessual character of much research on organisational change and development. From these themes will appear a statement outlining the theoretical and methodological rationale for this research on the processes of continuity and change in ICI.

ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT

The immediate theoretical and empirical context in which the present research places itself is the research and writing in the related fields of organisational change and development. Organisation development (OD) has almost as many definitions as it has practitioners. Thus, Bennis (1969:2) talks of OD as “a response to change, a complex educational strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values and structure of organisations”, while French and Bell (1973:15) emphasise the long-range problem-solving and renewal process objectives that OD denotes to them. Alderfer (1977) meanwhile sees OD both as a professional field of social action and an area of academic study, and emphasises its dual value objective in improving the quality of life for members of human systems and increasing the institutional effectiveness of those systems. Beckhard's (1969:9) definition perhaps best captures the idealized scope that people in the 1960s had for OD.

Organisation development is an effort (1) planned, (2) organisationwide and (3) managed from the top, to (4) increase organisational effectiveness and health through (5) planned intervention in the organisation's processes using behavioural science knowledge.

This plethora of attempts to find an acceptable definition to use as a focal point for defining a field of practice and study has by no means met with success. Kahn (1974) in an oft-quoted and penetrating article has argued that these different definitions merely reflect a series of preferred approaches in selecting different techniques, targets, and processes for creating planned change. According to Kahn then, OD is what each man wishes to make it, and in consequence the field of OD, while possessing its own house journal, the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, and its networks of associations, lacks a body of ideas and concepts, a theory even, to give it coherence and identity. This, like most pertinent statements, conceals as much as it reveals. Concepts and theories about intervention processes (Argyris, 1970), contingent forms of organisational diagnosis (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1969), theories of change (Alderfer, 1976), and strategies for building and managing consultant groups (Pettigrew, 1975a) have appeared, but these have been faltering and few compared with what the practitioners in the field, given their experience, are capable of writing. Instead, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a torrent of idealised literature, most of it written by external consultants extolling the virtues of OD in general or their particular packaged form of it, (Blake and Mouton, 1968; Reddin, 1970; and Taylor, 1972).

Part of the problem has been the absence of a counterpoint to these espoused theories of change and intervention. Few took up Vaill's (1971) research and proceeded to ask the simple question, what do individuals in organisations who think of themselves as doing OD actually do? Weisbord (1974), who did ask this question, and McLean et al. (1982), who followed him, found not surprisingly there were large mismatches between formal descriptions of consultants’ roles as portrayed in the OD literature and their actual activities. I am led to conclude, therefore, that merely using what the OD practitioners themselves define and report of their concepts, activities, and techniques is an inadequate basis to use as a starting point for this research. The practice of OD has far outstripped research on and in OD.

ORIGINS, HISTORY, AND DEVELOPMENT OF OD

There have been a number of comprehensive and useful efforts to chronicle the origins of OD (French and Bell, 1973; Greiner, 1977); and to analyse the emergence of certain parts of its technology (Back, 1972); and its values (Tannenbaum and Davis, 1969; Solomon, 1971; Friedlander, 1976). While this is not the place to effect another broadly based survey of the history of OD, given the empirical side of this book closely mirrors a good portion of that history, it is important to examine the ICI experience in the light of the wider development of the field. In addition, exploring its history is a further window to look through in attempting to specify what OD actually is.

The term OD appears to have originated in the United States in the late 1950s possibly by Blake, Shepard and Mouton while they were co-operating on a series of OD experiments at three Esso refineries: Bayonne, Baton Rouge, and Bayway. In 1957, the year before the Esso OD work began, Douglas McGregor, who as we shall see played a brief but important part in the birth of the ICI OD work, started using laboratory training skills at Union Carbide (French and Bell, 1973). It was no accident that both the Esso and Union Carbide work used group methods, for the seeds of OD's emergence were in offshoots of group therapy methods. Laboratory training, unstructured small-group situations in which participants learn from their own interactions and the evolving group dynamics had been institutionalised as a technology by Kurt Lewin, Kenneth Benne, Leland Bradford, and Ronald Lippitt when they created the National Training Laboratories for Group Development at Bethel, Maine, in 1947.

Kurt Lewin had, of course, played an important role not only in research on group dynamics but also in stressing how theoretical and conceptual formulations could be devised from practice. This kind of thinking led to action research work first of all when Lewin founded the Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1945, and then when the staff of the Center for Group Dynamics moved to join Michigan's Survey Research Center, and created the Institute for Social Research. This happened just after Kurt Lewin died in 1947. The kind of action research usually referred to as survey research and feedback is particularly associated with the University of Michigan at this time and later led to well-known work by Floyd Mann, Rensis Likert, and others.

As French and Bell (1973) point out, although Lewin died only 2 years after the founding of the Center for Group Dynamics and before the first formal session of NTL, he had a profound influence on both organisations and his¹ influence continues today, most notably in the writing of Chris Argyris. Greiner (1977) is careful to pinpoint Carl Rogers’ work (1942) as an influence in the group therapy side of OD and also in the theorising about consultant – client relationships which evolved with the training and development of internal and external consultants in the practice of OD. Rogers’ work encouraged therapists to reject traditional psychoanalytic techniques and “to advocate methods which focused on ‘here and now’ behaviour, with special attention to encouraging expressions of affection, trust, and openness as means for healing emotional wounds.” Greiner (1977:68). It was not too long before these Rogerian theories and the value emphasis they gave to listening, expressing feelings, trust and openness began to appear in the conduct of T-groups, but this time for “normal” people who possessed the usual assortment of behaviour problems.

If Lewin and Rogers were the intellectual heirs to OD, NTL and the Center for Group Dynamics were its early institutional embodiment, and the T-group and survey research and feedback its initial vehicles, then who translated these ideas into organisational settings? Following on from Douglas McGregor in Union Carbide, and Herbert Shepard, Robert Blake and Jane Mouton at Esso, came Sheldon Davis at the TRW Systems Group in 1961 and then a whole succession of well-known academics and consultants such as Chris Argyris, Warren Bennis, Richard Beckhard, Rensis Likert, Floyd Mann, and Edgar Schein.

During this period in the late 1950s and early 1960s, OD was already taking on board its core values. Solomon (1971) likens these to a philosophy of humanism where man is seen as basically good and is at the centre of all valuational processes. From this humanist dictum that man is the measure of all things, Solomon (1971) goes on to assert that institutions should serve man, and not vice-versa, that individual dignity is supreme and that participatory democracy really only works when individuals have a voice in all decisions that affect them, when present trends toward centralisation and bureaucratisation can be countered, and where there is a place for the non-rational and emotional in the conduct of human decision-making. Alongside these factors humanistic psychology propounded a view of man which saw the self moving toward actualisation, and growthful relationships implying the willingness and ability of partners to be equally vulnerable, honest, and open to change. Solomon (1971) was open enough to note that in his experience there was slippage between ideology and reality as training programmes drawing on these values were implemented. More generally he concluded that the above characteristics of humanism can lead to a fear of control, movement towards a narcissistic autonomy, and anti-intellectualism.

In a beautifully written article Friedlander (1976) outlines another version of the underlying philosophy and perspective of OD. He argues the grandparents of OD can be thought of as three basic value stances: rationalism, pragmatism, and existentialism. The rationalistic side of OD derived from its linkages with psychology and social psychology. These provided logic, consistency, and determinism where the basic purpose was to discover truth through the precise construction of concepts and knowledge. As I indicated earlier, the academic literature on OD hardly suggests that this value has been fulfilled.

Usefulness and effectiveness, the desire to improve practice by acting – doing, were the cornerstones of pragmatism. Existentialism meanwhile provided OD with a phenomenological mode of exploration – everything now was to begin with the actor's own subjective experience in the here and now, and shared feelings and mutuality were to be the hallmarks of good communication.

The elegant part of Friedlander's (1976) use of these three value stances was the way he drew on the uncomfortable mixture which they presented for OD in its “adolescence”. Thus, for example, the pragmatist's stance of “if it works, it's good” offends the rationalist's need for precise models and frameworks, and the latter is likely to accuse the pragmatist of becoming a victim of whatever works – whether it be a technique, a fad, or a method. The existentialist meanwhile will feel suspicious that whatever works may turn out to be a manipulation of the person, and both the pragmatist and rationalist will think that the existentialist's mode of feeling and doing will run the risk of pushing experience, intuition, subjectivity, and an idealized humanistic vision beyond the realms of what most people in organisational settings will be prepared to accept.

Greiner’s (1977) model of stages of OD evolution is a useful heuristic for revealing when and why some of these value tensions in OD began to reveal themselves in practical project work. He posits five stages:

1. Orthodoxy and Advocacy – the 1950s

2. Packaged Alternatives and Choice – the early 1960s

3. Evaluation and Doubt – the late 1960s

4. Pragmatism and the Eclectic – the early 1970s

5. Reconceptualization and the New Theorists – the late 1970s.

Greiner’s (1977) dates refer to the American experience of OD, the ICI experience followed a broadly similar pattern but in a different historical time frame. In discussing the birth of OD, I have already described Greiner's stage 1. The second stage was in some sense a response to questioning of the practical value of T-groups. Blake in particular turned his back on T-groups after the Esso experience, feeling that they did not produce lasting results in the back-home organisation, relied too much on external consultancy help, and excessively stressed human relationships over task performance (French and Bell, 1972; Greiner, 1977). Blake's response was the first and probably most successful of the 1960s packages, the managerial grid (Blake and Mouton, 1964). This was a multi-phase programme focusing on managerial style which integrated people with task accomplishments and which could be run without Blake's presence. Blake and Mouton left their university posts and set up their own company, Scientific Methods Inc. They were reputed to be dollar millionaires by the end of the 1960s. Other packages by Reddin (1967) and Likert and his colleagues (1961) also emerged at this time.

The late 1960s was a period of evaluation and doubt. Managers and academics began to question the utility of many of these person-centred organisatio...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• The Awakening Giant
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 Research on Organisational Change and Development and Strategic Change: Some Limitations
• 2 Context, Culture and Politics: The Development of Strategic Change
• 3 Ici in its Changing Business and Economic Context
• 4 Implementing Corporate Change: A Role for Organisation Development 1965–72
• 5 The Heavy Hand of History: Business Development and Social Innovation in Agricultural Division
• 6 The Organic Strategy for Creating Change: Agricultural Division
• 7 The Enforced Strategy for Creating Change: Petrochemicals Division
• 8 The Change Strategy Without Political Support: Plastics Division
• 9 The Top-Down Strategy for Creating Change: Mond Division
• 10 Strategic Change and Organisation Development at the Centre of Power, 1973–83
• 11 Processes of Strategic Change: Some Patterns
• 12 The Use, Impact, and Fate of Specialist Change Resources
• References
• Index