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Intervention in organizations text assignments 5 and 6. Radboud University master OD&D 2018/2019.
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Intervention in Organizations Assignment 4
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Intervention in organizationsText Assignment 5
Text assignment 5
1/2. Conger
,According to Conger, top-down change has a more chance of achieving success than bottom-
up/participative change (Bennis).
The reason for this is because change often is driven by shifts in the corporate strategy of the
company processes. Consequently, change is not about incremental improvement. Nowadays,
change often has a great magnitude, involving investment, difficult choices, etc. In this
situations, executives are in the position to lead such changes.
However, this is not a job for only the CEO. A team of executives, which is leading the
organization, with all means necessary, (rewards, debate, candor, etc.) to a successful change.
But the lower levels are still necessary to successfully achieve the appropriate visions,
strategies, goals, tactics, and operations. Purely top-down without any participation is doomed
to fail.
Organizational change today
Incremental change is becoming rare these days. Given the competitive landscape, changes in
strategies, structure, culture, and aspects that support these, are far more important.
Consequently, such changes (can) cause change in almost all organizational systems,
something that also makes change costly.
If one tries to achieve this using a bottom-up method, the following problems can occur:
groups can be blind to cross-functional implications, lack of power, implementation problems,
less authority, etc.
So, Conger states that bottom-up change just will not work for such major shifts in an
organization, which an organization has to make, in order to survive
Unique advantages that senior leaders bring to change efforts
1. Senior team’s breadth of perspective and strategy-formulation role
2. Attributes about leadership itself
3. Power of top leadership’s position
The executives often have a broad overview. Given this position, an executive can oversee the
‘battlefield of change’ and its implications. This is important, because changes may have
cross-functional implications, which makes this overview more than important.
Furthermore, human beings make attributions regarding people. These attributions may or
may not represent accurate understandings. As members of an organization, we would like to
, see that one person can alter the company’s destination. Of course, this is impossible, but you
can create such a feeling. Since executives are visible in the entire organizations are have
some sort of authority, it is easier for people to make such causal attributions about that
person.
So, senior leaders have the advantage that they can harness the power of this attribution
process, which is important during periods of change. Juniors members do not possess this
kind of power, visibility, and authority.
Power
This most obvious advantage of executives is power because they can control systems
regarding rewards, performance measuring, recruitment, information, setting targets etc.
This is called positional power: power depends on the position you have in an organization.
This kind of power is very useful during changes, because with this is possible to set targets,
without a great fear of losing your job because of failure.
Furthermore, executives possess political clout. Consequently, they can use their power to
obtain access to a resource or to shift attention towards certain functions, businesses or
individuals. Especially the access to resources is important during changes since it often
contains investments.
Conclusion
Senior leaders are in the best position to successfully lead organizational change. But this
does not exclude participation by lower levels, because successful change depends on the
cooperation of all the organizational levels. Using these methods, one has access to the
advantages and capabilities of both high as low organizational levels.
Bennis
According to Bennis, top-down leadership is not the way to go. This is some sort of myth,
where people think one person can alter an entire organization. Of course, this is not true or
possible. Since the world is growing more complex and integrated, it is almost impossible for
one person to understand all of this. So, urgent projects, such as changes, require
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