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Samenvatting Organizational Change, ISBN: 9781292063836, Organizational Change
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Samenvatting van het boek 'Organizational Change' door Senior & Swailes. Inclusief figuren uit het boek.
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Organizational Change - B. Senior & S. Swailes (2016)
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Page 1 of 39Organizational Change (Barbara Senior, Stephen Swailes, Colin Carnall)
PART ONE: THE CONTEXT AND MEANING OF CHANGE
Chapter 1: Organizations and their changing environments
Organizations are de ned as systems made of formal aspects of
management and operations that are heavily overlaid by informal
aspects of life in organizations deriving from relations between
people.
Organizational systems are conceptualized as operating in three
types of environments - temporal, external, and internal - that
interact with each other to create the ‘triggers’ of change.
Environmental triggers of chang
• Changing customer requirements and changing demand for
products/services
• Regulatory changes
• Trade union activity
• Actions by competitors;
• Business performance (falling incomes or revenues)
• Economic climate
• Advances in technology that affect production systems or
products
• Production costs (materials, labour)
• The growth of e-commerce and use of the internet
• Competition from other countries.
Brooks (2011) regards the business environment as ‘a general concept which embraces the totality of external
environmental forces which may in uence any aspects of organizational activity’.
PESTLE analysis
Factors Examples
Political factors Government legislation, government ideology, international law, universal rights,
wars, local regulations, taxation, trades union activities.
Economic factors Competitors, suppliers, currency exchange rates, employment rates, wage rates,
government economic policies, other countries’ economic policies, lending policies
of nancial institutions, changes from public to private ownership.
Socio-cultural factors Demographic trends (customers and employees), lifestyle changes, skills
availability, attitudes to work and employment, attitudes to minority groups, gender
issues, willingness and ability to move, concern for the environment, business
ethics.
Technological factors Information technology, new production processes, computerisation of processes,
changes in transport technology, new ways to generate energy, waste management
and recycling.
Legal factors
Ecological factors
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Environmental turbulence
The dynamics of an organization’s environment can also be
assessed in terms of the degree of environmental turbulence. Ansoff
& McDonnel (1990) argue that a rm’s performance is optimized
when its aggressiveness and responsiveness match its environment,
and they propose ve levels of environmental turbulence
• Level 1 - predictable: a repetitive environment characterized
by stability of markets; where the challenge repeat
themselves: change is slower than the organization’s ability
to respond; the future is expected to be the same as the past
• Level 2 - forecastable by extrapolation: complexity increases
but managers can still extrapolate from the past and forecast
the future with con dence.
• Level 3 - predictable threats and opportunities: complexity
increases further when the organization’s ability to respond
becomes more problematic; however, the future can still be
predicted with some degree of con dence.
• Level 4 - partially predictable opportunities: turbulence
increases with the addition of global and socio-political
changes; the future is only partly predictable.
• Level 5 - unpredictable surprises: turbulence increases further with unexpected events and situations occurring
more quickly than the organization can respond.
These levels can be compared to three different kinds of change situations proposed by Stacey (1996)
• Closed change: applies to the continuing operation of an existing business.
• Contained change: only able to say what probably happened, why it probably happened and what
its probable consequences were.
• Open-ended change: other sequences of events and actions arising from the past and continuing to impact on the
future where explanations do not command anything like widespread acceptance by those involved.
Chapter 2: The nature of organizational change
Types of change (1
Grundy (1993) considered three ‘varieties of change’
• Smooth incremental change: evolves slowly in a systematic and predictable way
• Bumpy incremental change: characterized by periods of relative calm, punctuated by acceleration in the pace of
change
• Triggers: both the environment and and internal initiatives such as the periodic restructuring that
organizations go through to improve ef ciency.
• Associated with the means by which organizations achieve their goals, rather than as a change in the goals
themselves.
• Discontinuous change: change which is marked by rapid shifts in strategy, structure, or culture, or in all three.
• Triggers: response to sudden and unpredictable high levels of environmental turbulence.
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Types of change (2
Some new terms will be introduced and they are summarised in the table below.
Convergent This is ne-tuning of an existing con guration. The organizational con guration or
template is not changed.
Planned Deliberate actions designed to move an organizational or part of one from one state to
another and having discrete beginning and end points. Change is seen as something that
managers can control.
Evolutionary Slow adaptation of existing systems or structures. Also termed continuous change.
Although small in nature, changes are not trivial and are cumulative. They can trigger
radical change.
Revolutionary Fast-paced and affecting all or most of an organization at the same time. Typically a
planned move from one strategy and/or structure to another. It incorporates the idea of
episodic change which is intentional but is infrequent, not continuous.
Radical Breaking away from a position such that a very different position is reached.
Organizations or parts of them can bee seen as being transformed from one template or
blueprint to another. Also known as frame-bending or frame-breaking.
Emergent If the organization is seen as an evolving system then change arises out of
experimentation and adaptation. Change is seen as something that managers create the
right climate for.
The pace and scope of chang
Grundy’s three types of change are somewhat simplistic. This also appears to be the case with Balogun and Hope
Hailey’s (2008) identi cation of change ‘paths’, they go further by suggesting four types of change mapped on two
dimensions (incremental or big-bang), and scale (realignment or transformation).
Tushman, et al. (1988) proposed a model of organisation life that consists of ‘periods of incremental change, or
convergence, punctuated by discontinuous changes’. They suggest there are two types of converging change - both
types have the common aim of maintaining the t between organizational strategy, structure, and processes
• Fine-tuning is aimed at doing better what is already done well
• Incremental adaptation involves small changes in response to minor shifts in the environment.
Both ne-tuning and incremental adjustments to environmental shifts allow organizations to perform better and
optimise the consistencies between strategy, structure, people, and processes. Yet Tushman et al. show how, as
organizations grow and become more successful and develop internal forces for stability, these same forces eventually
produce resistance to hold back further change.
• At times of major disruption and turbulence in an organization’s environment, incremental adjustment will nog
bring about the major changes in strategy, structure, people, and processes that might be required. When that
happens, most organizations will need to undergo discontinuous or frame-braking change if they are to survive.
Thus, in the lifetime of most organizations, periods of relative tranquility will be punctuated with (probably
shorter) periods of frame-breaking change.
The scope of frame-breaking change includes discontinuous change throughout the organization. Frame-breaking
change is usually implemented rapidly. It is revolutionary, not incremental, and usually involves the following features:
• Reformed mission and core values
• Altered power and status
• Reorganization;
• Revised interaction patterns (new work ows, procedures, communication networks, decision making patterns)
• New executives
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Frame-breaking change is revolutionary in that the shift reshape the nature of the organization. It requires discontinuous
and concurrent shifts in strategy, structure, people, and processes. Reasons for this rapid, simultaneous implementation
of frame-breaking change include:
• To create synergy
• To overcome pockets of resistance;
• To leverage a pent-up need for change;
• To control risk and uncertainty.
Plowman et al. (2007) mapped organizational change in terms
of pace (continuous or episodic) and its scope (convergent or
radical). Each of the four categories of change differs on the
following dimensions
• The driver of change: namely instability or inertia
• The form of the change: namely adaptation or
replacement
• The nature of the change: namely emergent of
intended;
• Types of feedback: negative feedback discourages
deviations from the organization’s current position
whereas positive feedback encourages deviation;
• Types of connections in the system which are loose or
tight.
The four quadrants portray four types of change
• Type 1: Continuous and convergent change which happens slowly and which is channelled into improving
systems and practices. Change happens within an organizational template; the template itself is not altered
• Type 2: Episodic and convergent change occurs more quickly and perhaps as a result of a speci c shock or crisis.
Negative feedback pushes minor changes and keeps the template in shape
• Type 3: Episodic and radical change happens quickly in response to a major shock or crisis. The template is
altered through, for instance, a new top management team of new strategy.
• Type 4: Continuous and radical change arises out of an accumulation of small changes that gather momentum
and lead to a new template being formed. If successful the new template becomes established and is reinforced by
new rules, values, and norms
Fine-tuning to corporate transformation
Dunphy & Stace (1993) de ned four types of change. The bene t of their model is in the detailed descriptions of each
scale type and its testing with the executives, managers and supervisors of 13 Australian service-sector organizations.
• Scale type 1: ne-tuning → organizational change is an ongoing process characterized by ne-tuning of the ‘ t’
or match between the organization’s strategy, structure, people, and processes. Such effort typically occurs at
department/divisional levels and deals with one or more of the following
• Re ning policies, methods, and procedures
• Creating specialist units and linking mechanisms to raise output and better focus on quality and cost
• Developing personnel better suited to the present strategy
• Creating/improving individual and group commitment to the company mission and one’s own department
• Promoting con dence in the accepted norms, beliefd, and myths
• Clarifying established roles and authority and the mechanisms for allocation resources.
• Scale type 2: incremental adjustment → organizational change is characterized by incremental adjustment to a
changing environment. Such change involves distinct modi cations to corporate business strategies, structures,
and management processes, for example
• Expanding sales territory
• Shifting the emphasis among products and services
• Improved production processes
• Articulating a modi ed mission statement to employees
• Adjustments to organizational structure within or across divisional boundaries to achieve better links in
product/service delivery.
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