Managing and Leading Organizational Change

Mark Hughes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138577411
• eBook ISBN: 9781351265942
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Organizational change impacts upon all organizations regardless of size and sector. In this unique organizational change textbook, important ongoing debates about managing change and leading change are combined, giving a broader perspective that encourages readers to engage with both management and leadership. In combination, management and leadership insights inform how organizations are changing and how we can make a positive difference in such processes of change.

Managing and Leading Organizational Change speaks both to the applied and practical aspects of organizational change, as well as questioning the research and evidence base of organizational change practices. Chapters begin with real-world insights, followed by coverage of the major theories. The ongoing nature of these debates is signposted through the inclusion of questioning sections with research case studies showcased.

This textbook will be particularly beneficial for final year undergraduates and postgraduates studying organizational change, strategic change, change management and change leadership modules.

Part I

Introduction

Chapter 1

Myth-understanding organizational change

Introduction and chapter questions

In a contribution to a recent organizational change book – What academics, consultants and managers really think about change (Burnes and Randall, 2015), Buchanan (2015) a highly respected emeritus professor themed his chapter around eight organizational change myths. His observations were based upon his work as a researcher and his experience in senior organizational roles. He effectively highlighted eight myths which although being most certainly wrong still endured. Many schools of thought and perspectives will be presented in this textbook. However, highlighting and working with myths, as well as, on occasions debunking organizational change myths will provide the unifying theme, for example:

• Do we need change leaders, rather than change managers?
• Do employees always resist organizational change?
• Do 70% of organizational change initiatives really fail?

In answering these questions, we sensibly review the evidence, enabling us to offer informed and evidence-based answers to the questions. However, organizational change myths informing these questions reflect ongoing debates with regard to theories and practices of organizational change. Avoiding and marginalising organizational change myths may miss the origins of organizational change debates, underestimating factors currently and in the future influencing organizational change theories and practices. This view will be explained further in this chapter as it informs subsequent chapters.

When you begin to engage with myths and myth-understandings you quickly appreciate that one person’s myth may be another person’s myth-understanding. The global consultancy Accenture (2016) published a report Turning Change Upside Down: How New Insights are Changing Old Assumptions, and highlighted four change management myths they wished to dispel.

Myth 1: Too much change, too fast, is destructive.

Myth 2: Change causes organizations to go off track.

Myth 3: Performance dips during the early stages.

Myth 4: People need to understand change before committing.

Their report drew upon 15 years of consulting experience as they challenged faulty assumptions encountered when consulting. In place of these myths they encouraged organizations to focus on the following performance drivers: leadership, process, vision and passion. Their message was very effectively crafted and more persuasive than most academic accounts of organizational change, although academic evidence in support of their so-called myths will be offered later in the textbook.

Parry (2011: 57) writing about the common association between leadership and organizational change acknowledged that they were inextricably intertwined and that ‘organizational change has become an interest for organizational consultants more so than for empirical researchers’. There are many more books and articles on practitioner or conceptual scholarship than on theoretical or empirical scholarship. Much of the practitioner work is case study-based and anecdotal and not rigorous in its conduct. This acknowledgement introduces dilemmas central to this chapter and to this textbook.

In universities, we rightly privilege theoretical/empirical scholarship over practitioner/conceptual scholarship as Parry (2011) implies, but given the proliferation of practitioner literature don’t we need to engage with such literature in order that anyone studying organizational change can fully understand the debate? Put another way, if we completely avoid prevalent myths characterising organizational change are we comprehensively understanding organizational change theories and practices?

In this textbook, the four assumptions highlighted by Accenture (2016) as myths will be challenged, raising issues for this field of study and you the reader. One person’s myth might be another person’s myth-understanding. There is no consensus, but this textbook will help you to navigate the mythical nature of organizational change as a field of study enabling you to make your own choices about the most appropriate theories and practices of organizational change. Although the title of this chapter refers to ‘myth-understanding’, you will not find this term in any dictionary. The term seeks to acknowledge the mythical nature of organizational change and the potential of myths to inform and misinform organizational change theories and practices. The related terminology of stories and storytelling is acknowledged in the next section.

In terms of the structure of this chapter, initially, it is necessary to understand myths and their wider influence on societies and organizations, before considering why and how organizational change myths occur. Acknowledging such myths has the potential to inform and misinform your studies and equally the potential to inform and misinform the practices of organizational change practitioners. Many organizational change myths are integral to particular chapters with these myths highlighted and the chapters in which they are addressed signposted. The chapter is organized around the following questions:

• How is organizational change myth-understood?
• What are the implications of myth-understandings for organizational change practice?
• What are the implications of myth-understandings for organizational change literature reviewing?
• How are organizational change myth-understandings addressed in this textbook?

How is organizational change myth-understood?

In beginning, to engage with organizational change myths, it is informative to consider how myths in general are understood. Mann (1947) referred to myth as the foundation of life and as a timeless schema and Armstrong (2005) in the preface to A Short History of Myth writes about myths being universal and timeless stories, reflecting and shaping our lives, in that they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, providing narratives what it means to be human. She goes on to explain how myths have played a central role in societies throughout human history. However, during The Great Western Transformation (1500–2000), belief in mythos was replaced with belief in logos. Logos reflects the logical, pragmatic and scientific mode of thinking favoured today. However, as Armstrong (2005: 31) warns ‘mythology often springs from profound anxiety about essentially practical problems, which cannot be assuaged by purely logical arguments’. This is highly applicable to theories and practices of organizational change, which inevitably raise anxieties through attempting to engage with uncertain futures. However, before applying myth-understandings to organizational change, it is necessary to clarify related terminology. Gabriel (2008) has encouraged greater engagement with myths, stories and narratives in organizational settings; consequently his definitions of key terminology are favoured (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 highlights close relationships between narratives, stories and myths. In the literature cited in this chapter, authors do not always precisely differentiate narratives, stories and myths. As Brown et al. (2009) note, there is not a consensus around differentiating stories and narratives from myths. However, what Table 1.1 helps to differentiate, is the everyday nature of organizational storytelling from the more powerful symbolism of myths. It is the relationships between such myths and organizational change on which we now focus, relating myths and related concepts to organizational settings.

Movva (2004) in discussing myths as a vehicle for transforming organizations highlighted Stephens and Eisen’s (1998: 219) account of the significance of myths in our day-to-day life.

Myth is the story that we tell to explain the nature of our reality. It is a whole picture constructed out of the particular pieces of our attitudes and beliefs. Myths become our touchstones to what is ‘real’ and what is ‘important’. They encompass the most basic, fundamental, and ultimate. They are the ‘truths’ to which we look when trying to decide how we should conduct our lives, what we should actually do, and how we should think and feel.

Table 1.1 Defining narratives, stories and myths (Gabriel, 2008)

Narratives are then viewed as particular types of text. Unlike other texts… narratives involve temporal chains of interrelated events or actions, undertaken by characters. (Gabriel, 2008: 194)

Stories are pithy narratives with plots, characters, and twists that can be full of meaning. (Gabriel, 2008: 282)

Myths are narratives that carry a powerful symbolism, are capable of generating strong emotions, and have a profound effect on our thoughts and actions. (Gabriel, 2008: 191)

In this way, organizational documents such as annual reports, strategic change plans and vision statements have mythical properties. The forward-looking aspirations they encourage may not be completely evidence based, but these aspirations particularly for their authors are real. Berglund and Werr (2000) highlighted two basic managerial myths legitimising managerial practices; the rationality myth and the normative/pragmatic myth. These myths have a long history emanating from central western dichotomies of:

thought vs action,

theory vs practice,

objective vs relative and

nature vs culture.

Already we can locate Parry (2011) and Buchanan (2015) cited earlier on the left side whereas Accenture (2016) reflect thinking on the right side. If you asked the authors, I am sure they wouldn’t see it as black and white as this, but these dichotomies help us to appreciate debates central to organizational change particularly thought versus action and theory versus practice. The first myth, the rationality myth is aligned with the left-hand side with expertise and techniques firmly anchored in modern beliefs in rationality. Formalised knowledge is praised for offering hard and objective truths. It is the central myth in organizations and businesses with managerial decision making regarded as being rational and scientific. However, scientific knowledge through its goal of being objective, negates studies of power, ideologies and interests. Management models, methods and tools are used in a belief that they will deliver solutions.

The second normative/pragmatic myth is aligned with the right-hand side. This myth challenges parts of the rationality myth, typified by sayings such as ‘action speaks louder than words’ with a different emphasis than that of manager as rational decision maker. Instead, theoretical knowledge is regarded with suspicion and ‘hands-on’ experience privileged with an emphasis upon the unique nature of specific situations, ‘trust me I was there’ is a common argument (Berglund and Werr, 2000: 643). Whilst they acknowledge the centrality of these two myths, they did not regard them as opposite sides of a dichotomy (Barley and Kunda, 1992). Instead, they may be mixed and they are mixed. Managers utilise the latest theories (rationality myth) and pragmatically tailor them to their own unique challenges (normative/pragmatic myth). This is the position favoured in this textbook introducing theories, models and concepts, yet not forgetting the action oriented and pragmatic nature of organizational change.

In their editorial for a Special Issue of Organization themed around storytelling and change, Brown et al. (2009: 326) offer a provocative insight:

…no single perspective on organizing and processes of change has a monopoly on ‘truth’, and that the vivid insights that a storytelling approach may yield need always to be complemented by other ways of seeing and understanding.

We appear to live in an age of change leadership persuaded and even seduced by the agency of exceptional change leaders to make change happen. However, this might be at the expense of engaging with management and command and the very different problems leading, managing and command seeks to address. Grint (2005) has differentiated between three types of problem that leaders encounter by drawing on Rittell and Webber’s (1973); wicked, tame and critical problems, as well as, Etzioni’s (1964) three types of power; coercive, calculative and normative. He creatively highlights command, management or leadership being appropriate, for different types of problem. For example, if a problem is critical for the future of an organization, there may be a requirement for coercion. In this scenario there is a need to provide answers through command, rather than collaborative resolution of the problem. However, if the problem is tame, calculative power may be more appropriate with management organizing processes. Wicked problems, are those such as how to allocate limited car-parking spaces at university when both the students and staff need to park. It is this type of wicked problem which...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Author biography
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• PART I Introduction
• PART II Managing change
• PART III Leading change
• PART IV Managing and leading organizational change
• Author index
• Subject index