Master BA: Change Management (RUG)
Summary Theories and Approaches of Change Management (2016/2017)
Exam grade: 8.9
This summary includes:
- A summary of the lectures, including the lecture slides
- Summary of the following literature:
Burnes, B., Managing Change, 6th edition, 2014
- Chapters 1 – 14
Smith, A.C.T., Graetz/Sutherland, F.M. 2011. Philosophies of Organizational change,
Edward Elgar Publishing, Northhampton
- Chapters 1, 2, 10 & 11
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,Chapter 1: From trial and error to the science of management
The classical approach
- The first detailed and comprehensive recipe or theory for running organizations.
- Organisation-wide approach to control workers’ behaviour.
- To develop universal principles of organization which would ensure the efficiency,
stability and predictability of internal functions.
- Once these principles were established and in operation, organizations were seen
as closed and changeless entities unaffected by the outside world.
- Organisations as machines, and those in them as mere parts which respond to the
correct stimulus and whose actions are based on scientific principles.
- Classical approach is characterized by three common propositions:
o Organizations are rational entities – pursue specific goals and output-
maximising behaviour
o The design of organizations is a science – there is a one best universal form
o People are economic beings – they are solely motivated by money
- Managers are the only group with the legitimate right to plan and implement
change. Change is based on rationality and managerial authority.
- Laying down hard-and-fast rules of what was and was not best practice.
- Seeks to regulate the behaviour of workers through the removal of their control over
work process, the increased division of labour, work standardisation, close supervision
and financial incentives.
- Basic assumptions:
o There is a ‘one best way’ for all organisations to be structured and operate
o This approach is founded on the rule of law and legitimate managerial
authority and is designed to ensure that employees’ behaviour is geared solely
to the efficient pursuit of the organization’s goals: organizations are rational
entities.
o Human fallibility and emotions, at all levels in the organization, should be
eliminated because they threaten the consistent application of the rule of law
and the efficient pursuit of goals.
o An organization is a closed system.
o People are motivated to work solely by financial reward.
o For this reason, the most appropriate form of job design is achieved through
the use of the hierarchical and horizontal division of labour to create narrowly
focused jobs encased in tight, standardised procedures and rules, which remove
discretion, dictate what job-holders do and how they do it, and allow their
work to be closely monitored and controlled by their superiors.
- Key elements of the classical approach:
o The division of labour
o The distrust of human variability
o The need for written rules, procedures and records
o The need for rational and consistent management and objectives
- Main authors: Frederick Taylor (scientific management), the Gilbreths (motion
study), Henri Fayol (overall organizational control), Max Weber (bureaucracy)
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, - Approach was badly flawed:
o View of human nature and motivation was inaccurate and counterproductive
‘Greedy robots’: indifferent to fatigue, boredom, loneliness and pain,
driven solely by monetary incentive.
Division of labour: creation of jobs which have little intrinsic
satisfaction leads to poor morale, low motivation and alienation.
o Non-realistic view on our capacity to analyse complex situations
o The possibility to possess all relevant information
o Limited view of change: change is the responsibility of management, and
workers should not be involved because they have nothing to contribute, given
that all valid knowledge should lie with the organization’s managers and
technical experts.
o Restricts psychological growth of individuals and causes feelings of failure,
frustration and conflict.
o Lack of attention to social and informal processes.
o Is there really ‘one best way’?
Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management
- An approach to controlling workers’ behaviour, based on detailed specification of
tasks, monetary motivation and close supervision, which restricted their ability to
deviate from managerial requirements
- Primary focus was on the design and analysis of individual tasks (operative level)
- Three core elements of scientific management:
o The systematic collection of knowledge about the work process by managers.
o The removal or reduction of workers’ discretion and control over what they do.
o The laying down of standard procedures and times for carrying out each job.
The Gilbreths and motion study
- The Gilbreths developed a number of procedures for breaking work down into its
constituent components.
- Purpose of this microanalysis was
o To establish what was done
o To discover whether a better method of performing the task in question could
be developed.
- Organizations and workers as machines
- Workers were told when to move, how to move and how long to take in making the
movement
- Having established the best way to carry out a task, this should not be undermined by
selecting the wrong person to carry it out or by creating the wrong environment
- Taylor was concerned with reducing the time taken to perform a task
- Gilbreths were more concerned with reducing the motions taken to accomplish the
task.
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,Henri Fayol and the principles of organization
- Focus was on efficiency at the organizational level rather than the task level
(Taylor/Gilbreth’s): top-down rather than bottom-up.
- More concerned with general (rather than departmental or supervisory) management,
and with overall organizational control (as opposed to the details of tasks)
- Need to educate and train managers who need to follow the rule.
- Fayol believed that much industrial unrest could be eliminated by fairer, more
consistent and firmer management.
- Universal approach (like all approaches in Classical school) to management that was
applicable to any organization.
- Established 14 ‘universal’ principles of organization, such as unity of command,
authorityresponsibility, discipline, equity
- Main duties of management:
o Forecasting and planning
o Organising
o Commanding
o Coordinating
o Controlling
Max Weber on bureaucracy
- Like Fayol, Weber was concerned with the overall structuring of organizations, and
the principles which guide senior managers in this task.
- Three pure types of legitimate authority
o Rational-legal: resting on a belief in the ‘legality’ of patterns of normative
rule, and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue
commands.
o Traditional: resting on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial
traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them. (it has
always been that way)
o Charismatic – resting on devotion to the specific and exceptional sanctity,
heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative
patterns or order revealed or ordained by them.
o The bureaucracy approach to controlling human behaviour was the most
appropriate and efficient and is universally applicable to all organizations.
o Bureaucracy is characterized by:
The division of labour
A clear hierarchical authority structure
Formal and unbiased selection procedures
Employment decisions based on merit
Career tracks for employees
Detailed rules and regulations
Impersonal relationships
A distinct separation of members’ organizational and personal lives
o Mechanical adherence to set rules, procedures and patterns of authority.
o Bureaucracy removed the system of patronage and eliminated human
variability, replacing it by the rule of law.
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,Chapter 2: Developments in organisation theory
- New ideas that strike against the classical approach:
o Organizations are cooperative systems instead of machines. To operate
effectively and efficiently, they require the active cooperation of workers and
not just their passive obedience.
o People are motivated by range of rewards, including social esteem, not just
monetary ones.
o Motivating factors change over time.
- Two new approaches to managing and changing organizations emerged: Human
Relations approach and Contingency approach
Human Relations approach
- People have emotional as well as economic needs
- Organizations are cooperative systems that comprise informal structures and norms
as well as formal ones
- Workers have to be involved in change if it is to be successful
- Basic assumptions:
o People are emotional rather than economic-rational beings.
o Organizations are cooperative, socials systems rather than mechanical ones
People seek to meet their emotional needs through the formation of
informal but influential workplace social groups.
o Organizations are composed of informal structures, rules and norms as well as
formal practices and procedures.
- Similarities Human Relations approach with Classical school:
o Shared belief in organizations as closed, changeless entities.
Once organizations have structured themselves in accordance with the
correct precepts, them, regardless of external or even internal
developments, no further changes are necessary or desirable.
o Proponents of both believed they had discovered the ‘one best way’ to run
organizations; regardless of the type, nature or size or organization, their
precepts were the correct ones.
- Key authors: Mary Parker Follett (managing organizations), Elton Mayo
(Hawthorne), Chester Barnard (cooperative systems), Maslow (hierarchy of needs),
McGregor (theory X & Y), Warren Bennis (death of bureaucracy)
Mary Parker Follett – from Scientific Management to Human Relations
- View individual actions from the viewpoint of their impact on wider society
- Gestalt psychology: human behaviour is a product of the interaction of the individual
with their environment.
- Approach to managing organizations:
o Groups are more important than individuals.
o Need for individuals to achieve a sense of identity and psychic growth through
meaningful work.
o Individuals can only fully develop their potential through their participation in
group life.
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, Elton Mayo and the Hawthorne Experiments
- Hawthorne Experiments designed to examine the effects of various levels of lighting
on workers’ productivity, but also the effects of rest periods, other communication,
shorter and reduces working days and working weeks.
- Findings: it was not the changes in working conditions that affected output, but the
fact that those workers involved had been singles out for special attention. It was the
very fact that they were being studied which produced the increased performance
(‘Hawthorne Effect’)
- Two propositions:
o The need to see the work process as a collective, cooperative activity as
opposed to an individual, isolated one (importance of informal groups within
the formal structure of organizations).
o Humans have a deep need for recognition, security and belonging.
Chester Barnard and cooperative systems
- Organizations as cooperative systems
o Cooperative nature of organizational life
o Organizations as systems, rather than machines
- Cooperative system: the organization cannot operate effectively, without the
willingness of its members to make contributions to its goals and to pursue them.
- Cooperation can only be achieved by a mixture of monetary and non-monetary
inducements.
- Cooperation by itself would not be effective, unless an organization also possessed a
common purpose: clear and realistic goals and objectives that the organization’s
members could understand, relate to and pursue.
o Establishing this common purpose: responsibility of those at the top of the
organization.
o Achieving this common purpose: required the cooperation of those at the
bottom, and all levels in between.
The flow of authority is from the bottom up (not top down)
He defined authority not as a property of management, but as a
response by subordinates to superiors. If subordinates did not respond
willingly and appropriately, then there is no authority.
- Key function of the executive:
o Communication through both formal and informal structures.
o Leading the organization by facilitating communication and motivating
subordinates to high levels of performance.
o Shaping and reinforcing the organization’s value systems (the culture).
- Overlap with Classical school:
o Setting and pursuit of clear objectives.
o Need for hierarchical organizations and formal lines of authority.
o But differs because organizations are seen as cooperative social systems and
emphasis on the non-rational, informal, interpersonal and indeed moral basis of
organizational life. Also rejection of the idea of material incentives being the
only incentives to make people work purposefully.
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