Summary of the course Change Management of the Master of Business Administration at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). The summary contains all the slides of the lectures, the main points of the articles, and a number of answered discussion questions.
change management uva universiteit van amsterdam master of business administration business elective change
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Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA)
Master of Business Administration
Change Management
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Change Management
Session 1 – An introduction to change management
Session 2 – Understanding Responses to Change & Zooming in on Communication,
Participation, and Fairness
Session 3 – Effective Change Management Practices
Session 4 – Managing Emergent Change & The Role of Middle Managers During
Organizational Change
Session 5 – Culture Diagnosis & Change
Session 1 – An introduction to change management
Organizational change – A transition/movement from one organizational state to another
(desired) organizational state.
Organizational change – “deliberate activities that move an organisation from its present state
to a desired future state”.
Effective change management refers to the use of principles to increase the likelihood that
movement to desired end state is successful (Merlijn).
What drives organizational change?
Perceived (predicted) misalignment with environment
o And misalignment prevents organization from functioning as it should to
succeed (or to exceed)
Perceived opportunity
But also: Mindless mimicry of top performers or trends (see also Ten Have et
al., 2016)
What are the reasons why organizations become misaligned with the environment?
Social
Technological
Economic
Political
,Forces of change
External triggers
o STEP
Internal triggers
o Expansion, TMT (top management team) change, internal pressure, low
performance and morale, internal innovation
Note: Both drivers mix and overlap in shaping change orientation
Next step: Problem identification & Change choice (Diagnosis – see also Stouten et al., 2018)
Through scientific evidence
o Systematic reviews
o Meta analyses
Through organizational data
o Hard numbers
o Measuring attitudes/perceptions
o Observations
o Pilot testing
Through diagnosis tool
o E.g. force field analysis
Through stakeholder data
Through professional judgment/expertise
,Article 1 – Ten Have et al. (2016) - Reconsidering Change Management
“Understanding and managing change have developed into a virtual industry, encompassing
consultancy firms, management and leadership gurus, mass media, the business press, high-
profile corporate executives, politicians and business schools, as well as management
writings and management rhetoric and practice. In most writings, change is seen as good or
necessary or both, often however with limited critical reflection on the subject matter (Sturdy
and Grey 2003, in Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2008)”.
What do Ten Have et al. (2016) point out is a major problem in Change Management
practice nowadays? How do change managers make decisions according to the authors?
Practitioners do not rely on Evidence Based Approach – making decisions by relying
on scientific research along with organizational data, professional judgment, and
stakeholder concerns
Evidence-based practice seeks to improve the way decisions are made. It is an
approach to decision making and day-to-day work practice that helps practitioners to
critically evaluate the extent to which they can trust the evidence they have at hand. It
also helps practitioners to identify, find, and evaluate additional evidence relevant to
their decisions. "Evidence-based practice seeks to address this state of affairs by
helping managers to critically evaluate the validity, generalizability, and applicability
of the evidence they have in hand and how to find the 'best available' evidence"
“Knowing, and using the available evidence is not something that is (...) essential. It is
a moral and professional obligation for the professional and reflects care and
responsibility toward clients, customers, and patients” (Ten Have et al., 2016, p,17)
Eminence based approach: Relying on opinions by gurus and success stories of
famous CEOs instead of looking at the available evidence (e.g., Peters & Waterman,
Collins, Goleman)
Prominence (providence) based approach: Making decisions based on popular beliefs
and ideologies, fads, ‘best practices’, without any critical reflection (e.g., new working
practices)
But also (Barends et al., 2014 on EBM)
o Intuition, opinion, beliefs
Not recommendable at all
Professional/Expert judgment/experience: Repeated experience and
practice of specialized activities, with critical reflection
Till highly susceptible to biases
When used alone questionable source of evidence
Which reasons do they put forward for these problems? (Ten Have et al. 2016; see also
Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006)
Reputable publishers
Flawed “socially constructed” folkloristic convictions (social virus)
Biases in judgment and flawed perceptions of reality (focus on hits)
Availability of “Quick fixes”
Lack of training in EBP
Personal experience is seen as more valid than data
Stories are very appealing
, Role of business schools
All too often, the importance of solid managerial and organizational knowledge and science is
underplayed.
Role of consultants
Should consultants base their recommendations on the best available evidence instead of
merely relying on the 'tool kit' routinely applied in earlier engagements? Yes
Consultants and managers are often perceived as merchants of hope, and people look to them
for guidance.
When evidence is hard to come by, insights based on providence and eminence may be useful.
But those insights will need to be qualified and explicitly positioned for the client. If no tried,
tested, and proven method is available, other avenues that might lead to a solution will need to
be explored: trial-and-error, experiments.
Knowing and using the available evidence is not nice-to-haves; they are must-haves: a moral
and professional obligation.
The evidence-based approach offers a well-considered, positive, and dedicated way of
thinking and acting whereby the academic knowledge and profound expertise of experienced
professionals are made available to management practitioners.
Article 2 – Alvesson & Sveningsson (2008) - Changing Organizational Culture
Much of existing writings and of projects of organizational change involves organizational
culture in one sense or another. Culture is often seen as either the key issue to be changed or
something that is crucial to take seriously in order to make change possible.
Organizational change is a very broad area. It addresses a variety of time spans, interests in
broad patterns (industrial/professional trends) or organization-specific transformations, and
types of changes (technological, mergers, downsizing, etc.).
In many change studies the actual change work is put in the notorious black box - before and
after are studied, but not much is known about the actual change at work.
Various aspects of organizational change (e.g., content, source)
Time: Different time spans can be focused, however. At one extreme we have an
interest in how changes take place over history, and here a decade may be a fairly
short unit of analysis. At the other extreme we have a limited time period, where one
may even study what is happening over a few hours.
Need for change: including espoused or 'real' motives for change. As indicated ábove,
it is frequently assumed that an organization, in the face of changing contextual
circumstances, 'must' adapt or face great problems. However, we can also study
people's constructions of the 'need' for change or how rhetorical and other resources
are mobilized in change projects.
Context and levels of analysis: An interest in organizational change may lead to an
extension of contexts to broad trends or macro- and business-level changes, e.g.
changes in an industry and how fashions affect an entire set of organizations at an
aggregated level. At the other end, there may be a focus on micro-level changes in a
specific part of an organization, e.g. on how a new manager or an emergent expression
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