Week 1 Evaluating organizational change
Boonstra, J.J. (2004) Dynamics of organization change and learning: Some reflections and perspectives on organizing,
changing, and learning. In: Boonstra J.J. (Ed.) Dynamics of Organizational Change and Learning. Wiley handbooks in the
psychology of manage...
Organizational change: the process by which an organization moves from a present to a desired
future state with the goal of increasing it’s ability to create value
- Bottom line: I’m here – I want to go there: bigger market share, better product, higher grades
- Changing organizations serves a purpose: From a learning perspective: organizations have a
purpose!
- There are a lot of different types, approaches and so on (incremental, first order, episodic) –
‘lenses’
- Theories on change are not descriptive, but prescriptive
Three ways to think about change in organizations:
- Planned change: assumes that regardless of the problem you’re dealing with and the situation
you find yourself in, there is one-best way to solve this problem. Initiated by management
(top-down). They decide what to organization needs to do to change something. Disruption of
an equilibrium: begin – middle and end. Going to a new equilibrium your organization can
function again
- Organizational development (human approach): management decides what needs to happen,
(captain) but the employees decide how this will go/work out (sailors). The beginning and
ending are not sharply defined, more gradual approach (can take a lot of time)
o Change according to PC and OD is something which need to be brought about
(someone has to initiated it). Change is not a given.
- Continuous change: assumes that change always takes places. Continually changing! People
make small changes to what it is they do. Change don’t need to be initiated, it already
, happens. Important: everyone has to be working on the same goal – more a ‘caretaker’,
provide cohesion
Boonstra mentioned also the theory E, O and C. They focus on the purpose of the organizations and
the role om employees. Theories E, O and C approach the same questions from a different angle by
focusing on the purpose of the organization and the function of its employees.
- Theory E: Employees as instruments
- Theory O: Employees as purposeful beings within the framework of the organizations – they
are not just tools, but people can think for themselves
- Theory C: Employees as sensemakers – they actively try and understand the world around
you (categories in our heads). Only when the worldviews get disrupted, you have to think
about it. Not about an purpose/intention – it’s more about a process of organizing. People act
differently, they approach the same issue in different ways
(2) (How) are organizational change and learning related?
Learning: The acquisition and development of new knowledge and skills (broadly speaking)
If something needs to change (ex. You need to do your work in a different way), you need to
understand how you are going to this. If you’re going to learn something, you need to change
something!
Change and learning cannot be successful without each other – Boonstra: different kind of learning.
Learning is to take place when they organization is do thrive and survive. Usually identify three types
of learning in organisations:
- First-order learning: Acquisition of ‘stock knowledge’ for solving problems (improvement)
- doing the same thing, but doing it better.
- Second-order learning: development of new knowledge for solving problems (breakdown) –
approaching the same problem in a different way
- Third-order learning: questioning what constitutes a problem (re-invention)
,Necessary to understand: these theories on changes, learning theories, theories on purpose on
organisations and their employees are distinct entities. They are not different sides of the same coin,
but there is a lot of overlap between them. The overlap is quite substantial, but not perfect. It might
inform one of the other perspectives. There is no natural/direct link between them, but they overlap.
What does is all amount to?
Message: Each way of conceptualization change make some assumptions / ascribe certain attributes
and characteristics to the world, and if you want to bring that about, you need to take a specific aspect
on learning.
- Change is not straightforward, multi-faceted, opaque at times there is no best way of
implementing it. Each approach has it owns merits, strengths, weaknesses
- Most importantly, it is about making choices, explicating your own assumptions, beliefs,
convictions and ideas
Different kind of change and types of learning require different approaches for realizing them.
(3) How can we evaluate change? Part one
Why do we evaluate change? We change organizations to reactively or proactively make
improvements so the organizations will either survive or flourish. We have a result we want to obtain.
We can only determine if you obtained (or the extent to) the result if we evaluate the change
- Lot of things influence the evaluation
- We evaluate because we want to know if achieved the goals or not and if not, what we did
wrong avoiding mistakes in the future
- A lot of change interventions fail evaluation is more important!
- Somethings it can be difficult measure the outcomes
What does one focus one when evaluate change?
- Theoretical issues
- Focus on the process
Paper of Nielsen and Rendall: Evaluating change their model can be used to other fields as well
, Three aspects or factors that impact/influence intervention outcomes:
- Core of the model is the design and implementation of the intervention – the others influence
the interventions
o These are all process aspects
- Context
- Mental models
If you look at the three boxes, a theme crystallizes – world view? What kind of approach do they take?
Which kind of change? Try and understand the connections! Look behind the curtain
It is not about these questions (or factors), it’s about the underlying logic
Limitation of the article:
- The questions are not thematically consistent
- Not a stable foundation
- Can become overwhelming if you pay attention to all aspects identified (especially a problem
if you forget all about the logic)
o There is a more fundamental way to think about evaluating!
(4) How can we evaluate change? Part two – Guba and Lincoln
Discussion: the notion of paradigms (do they exist)
- Useful to structure your thoughts
- Makes sense of the world
- Be modest! There is much more to it
Exam: only study the things in the article which are in the slides!- very difficult topic
What are paradigms? The worldview guiding the methodological, epistemological and ontological
choices made by researchers (Guba and Lincon)
- It is meant to explain how science develops
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