THEORIES OF CHANGE IN ORGANISATIONS

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Change Management MGMT625

LESSON # 13

THEORIES OF CHANGE IN ORGANISATIONS

4. Evolutionary Theory of Change

First thing we know is that it is also the concept of evolution which is also equated with change.

Darwin, the famous biological scientist is known as the leading protagonist of this theory. The term

organic evolution means how a living organism grows and shrinks over time. We are also familiar

with the debate between mechanistic versus organic organization. Therefore the question is; are

organization like living organism follow principles of natural evolution? The metaphor is borrowed

from biology, and as in biological evolution change proceeds through a continuous cycle of

variation, selection and retention. In context of organization these terms have the following

meanings:

Variation refers to the creations of novel forms of organisations are often viewed to emerge by

blind or random chance. Variation may be strategic or structural or operational in nature for e.g.

Innovation in organisational functional areas. Implied here is the relationship of organization and its

environment changes over a period of time. Changes in strategy and structural activities

characterise this relationship or in other words, organizations continue to define and redefine its

relationship with environment. Therefore external change leads to change in strategy which

eventually culminates in change of structure. For example, growth (opportunity) in industry (part of

environment) will result in the growth objective (increase in sales) of organization, will lead to in

manpower (HR) and hence will lead to change in management form/practices. Imperative might be

the transformation of autocratic style to participative style of decision making. In other words a

single organization cannot grow indefinitely and still maintain its original form. Variation is bound

to be there and this variation depends on adaptive capacity varies (of technology, capital, trained

personnel, etc)

Selection of organisation occurs principally through the competition of scarce resources and the

environment selects entities that best fit the resource base of an environmental niche. Some

organisms or variants perform better as changes occur in environment while other die or become

extinct.

Retention involves forces (including inertia and persistence) that perpetuate and maintain certain

organisational forms. Retention serves to counteract the self-reinforcing loop between selection and

variation.

The same concept is known as evolutionary thinking. Now change managers, CEOs and consultants

want to make organization as an evolutionary organization. The evolutionary thinking is described

to entail the following features:

All events are time bound

No such thing/phenomenon is absolute

Focus on historical particular for explaining causation

Study of context is important

The theory also accounts for diversity of the organic world.

Account for variations in organizational strategy and its structure

Therefore evolution explains change as a recurrent, cumulative, and probabilistic progression of

variation, selection and retention of organisation entities (forms and practices). Organization

mutates; mutation in biological terms means change in genetic character which means

transformation in genetic codification. Change in genetic character is a matter of random variation

(chance). In context of organizational innovation in different functional areas of organization

(managers in various departments) in a random manner discover efficient and effective ways of

management. The discovery of such changes could relate to two broader categories; systemic

change and operational change. Systemic change addresses the issue of effectiveness while

Change Management MGMT625

operational level change is concerned with efficiency improvement. Typically organizations have

growth as strategic objectives; and the relationship between control and growth is more pronounced

according to most of the management consultants. This is considered to be inversely related with

each other. For higher level growth organization control has to be relaxed and decentralized.

Another way to look at an evolving organization is to study entrepreneurship especially how do

smaller organizations transform themselves into a large organization? Organizations cannot grow

with single or constant management style or organization structure and hence variation in

organization and organization structure is bound to occur.

The same thinking is related with what is known as concurrent engineering. By going for

management audit one tends to evaluate forms and practices which are needed and those which are

considered redundant and futile, in production or manufacturing process.

There are two theoretical approaches further within the evolutionary school which differ in terms of

how traits are inherited, the rate of change and unit of analysis. One is Darwinian approach which

believes that organization traits are inherited through inter-generational processes. Darwinian

theorists believe in continuous and gradual process of evolution. While there are scholars who

follow Lamarckian line, and argue that traits are acquired within a generation through learning and

imitation. Most analysts believe that Lamarckian view is more applicable and appropriate than strict

Darwinism in context of organisation and management, especially on the acquisition of traits. This

is more in line with learning capability of an organization.

Unit of Change

Evolution theories operate on multiple entities, that is on intra-organisational, organisational,

population, communities as against OLC and teleological theories which operate within single

entity. Evolutionary forces are defined in terms of the impact they have on populations and have no

meaning at the level of the individual entity.

Mode of Change

Evolutionary theories incorporate a prescribed mode of change, which is of continuously evolving

character. Evolutionary theories rely on the statistical accumulation of small individual events to

gradually change the nature of the larger population.

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