ZeePedia

IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE

<< IMPLEMENTATION APPROACHES:Attributes of incremental change,
IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE:Definition of Leadership, Follower Work Facilitation >>
img
Change Management ­MGMT625
VU
Lesson 38
IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE
Since the need for change often is unpredictable, it tends to be reactive, discontinuous, ad hoc and often
triggered by a situation of organizational crisis. Although the successful management of change is
accepted as a necessity in order to survive and succeed in today's highly competitive and continuously
evolving environment. Balogun and Hope Hailey (2004) report a failure rate of around 70 per cent of
all change programmes initiated. It may be suggested that this poor success rate indicates a fundamental
lack of a valid framework of how to implement and manage organizational change as what is currently
available to academics and practitioners is a wide range of contradictory and confusing theories and
approaches.
Grundy defines discontinuous change as `change which is marked by rapid shifts in strategy, structure
or culture, or in all three'. This sort of rapid change can be triggered by major internal problems or by
considerable external shock. According to Luecke (2003) discontinuous change is onetime events that
take place through large, widely separated initiatives, which are followed up by long periods of
consolidation and stillness and describes it as `single, abrupt shift from the past'.
Advocates of discontinues change argue this approach to be cost-effective as it does not promote a
ever-ending process of costly change initiatives, and that it creates less turmoil caused by continuous
change. Nelson (2003: 18) states that `Change cannot be relied upon to occur at a steady state, rather
there are periods of incremental change sandwiched between more violent periods of change which
have contributed to the illusion of stability once assumed to be the case.'
According to Luecke (2003) this (continuous) approach allows defensive behaviour, complacency,
inward focus, and routines, which again creates situations where major reform is frequently required.
What is suggested as a better approach to change is a situation where organizations and their people
continually monitor, sense and respond to the external and internal environment in small steps as an
ongoing process. Therefore, in sharp contrast to discontinuous change, Burnes (2004) identifies
continuous change as the ability to change continuously in a fundamental manner to keep up with the
fast-moving pace of change. Burnes (2004) refers to incremental change as when individual parts of an
organization deal increasingly and separately with one problem and one objective at a time. Advocates
of this view argue that change is best implemented through successive, limited, and negotiated shifts.
The difference between Burnes' (2004) understanding of continuous and incremental change is that the
former describes departmental, operational, ongoing changes, while the latter is concerned with
organization-wide strategies and the ability to constantly adapt these to the demands of both the
external and internal environment
When characterized by how change comes about, there are several different approaches. However, the
literature is dominated by planned and emergent change. Even though there is not one widely accepted,
clear and practical approach to  organizational change management that explains what changes
organizations need to make and how to implement them the planned approach to organizational change
attempts to explain the process that bring about change. Furthermore, the planned approach emphasizes
the importance of understanding the different states which an organization will have to go through in
order to move from an unsatisfactory state to an identified desired state.
The foremost questions are how do we define and identify radical changes? What are radical or
transformational changes? Why it is considered more effective for organizational transformation?
Changes associated with strategy or strategic changes are considered revolutionary changes. For e.g.
restructuring, privatisation of a state owned unit, merger, take-over, acquisition or joint-venture
amongst two organizations. Similarly changes pertaining to product development or market
development and the strategies how to engage customers through differentiation, technology or cost
leadership. Such decisions of organizations like exit or entry decision viz. product, market, R& D etc.
110
img
Change Management ­MGMT625
VU
Other types of radical changes could be of down-sizing, cost-cutting but these are related to structural
changes as well.
Why Radical Change?
Arguments for radical changes are based on the inherent weakness associate with the incremental
approach to strategy implementation. By this we enter a debate between effectiveness and efficacy of
continuous (incremental) and discontinuous (radical) change? Which one is more effective? Rational
adaptation theorist believes organisation change can easily and speedily be managed given the various
types of exogenous changes. Natural selection theorist view organisation as complex systems severely
constrained by exogenous forces that create and institutionalise strong web of commitments. From this
perspective, organisations are inherently inflexible to respond to external opportunities and threat, and
rarely engage in transformations.
Orlikowski challenged the concept that changes must be planned, technology is the primary cause of
technology-based organisational transformation, and that radical changes always occur rapidly and
discontinuously. Therefore change cannot be anticipated and hence is discontinuous in nature. In
contrast she maintains that organisational transformation is an on-going improvisation enacted by
organisational actors trying to make sense of and act coherently with the world.
Radical or Transformative changes
Related concepts are quantum change, discontinuous change or radical change. Quantum change is said
to occur when change is both dramatic and concerted. A caution must be taken on strategic change as
this is defined as a variation in organization's long term goals and mission, and may occur in either
incremental or revolutionary manner. Therefore, increment view holds that organization experiences
large scale strategic changes quite slowly while revolutionary view suggests long periods of
organization experience brings very little strategic variation instead punctuated by short intense
periods of change.
Proponents of radical perspectives, organization changes very little through incremental change.
Incrementalism fails to account for large-scale organizational transitions which are related with total
structures, management processes and corporate cultures where the theme is of:
·
Restructuring
·
Repositioning
·
Revitalization
·
Or Renewal
Assumptions on which incrementalism rests are:
1. Senior managers have the capacity to fully anticipate the environmental forces (opportunity &
threat) and future conditions for further development. The assumption may be valid for stable
times and age of continuity. However an age of discontinuity presents an environment so
complex and turbulent that it is sometime impossible for the most competent manager to
accurately predict the future.
2. Second, assumption is that organization is run by intelligent and pro-active managers. In fact
organization and societal selection processes are such that many/ majority of managers are very
mediocre and have information and experience limited to their industry and cannot judge
complex information outside their industry and organization therefore cannot scan the
environment effectively. (where scanning environment is the 1st step in strategy formulation)
3. Third assumption is that large scale organizational change can always be accomplished
incrementally. The fact is managers have little control over economic fluctuation, political
111
img
Change Management ­MGMT625
VU
intervention, industry restructuring; and on other discontinuities and technological developments
which destroy the whole market and organization processes and structures (high pace of change
can not be managed incrementally). These discontinuities are often beyond the control of
managers because managers are members of a dominant coalition with a historical conditioned
model of reality.
Nonetheless the above stated arguments do not imply that managers are completely powerless in a
deterministic world. Johnson and Scholes view is more descriptive of reality as they believe that
managers live in a world operated by both determinate forces which act as constraints and also scope
for exercise of managerial choice. Here our concern is that discontinuities arise which are often beyond
the capacities of managers to sense and act upon, particularly given that managers are members of a
dominant coalition with an historically conditioned model of reality. To the extent that managers can be
powerless to change external forces that may also be unforeseen, and can be trapped in to a fixed mind-
set, they will be forced into an reactive rather than proactive mode. Their culture ordinarily is identified
as of a bureaucratic one which is based on tight and narrowly defined rules, procedures and following
precedence. Therefore in such a scenario managers and power elites in the organizations are least
motivated or internally driven for change. Hence in such cases the need is to have externally imposed
change. This is considered the only way to bring the organization back into fit with its environment.
Revolutionary change theorist view that organization having deep structures (Gersick 1991) or coherent
configuration of strategy, structure, systems, controls and ideologies which are highly stable in nature
limit the range of options available to manager contemplating change.
112
Table of Contents:
  1. COURSE ORIENTATION:Course objectives, Reading material, Scope of the subject
  2. BENEFITS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT:Traditional management domain
  3. KURT LEWIN MODEL: ASSUMPTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS:Change Movement, Refreeze
  4. IMPLICATIONS OF KURT LEWIN MODEL:Sequence of event also matters, A Critical Look
  5. SOME BASIC CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS:Strategic change, Logical incrementalism
  6. TRANSACTIONAL VS. TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP:Micro-changes, Organisation Development
  7. THEORIES OF CHANGE IN ORGANISATIONS
  8. LIFE CYCLE THEORY:Unit of Change, Mode of change, Organisation death
  9. TELEOLOGICAL THEORIES OF CHANGE:Unit of change, Mode of Change, Limitations
  10. DIALECTICAL THEORIES OF CHANGE:Unit of Change, Strategic planning
  11. A DIALECTICAL APPROACH TO ORGANISATIONAL STRATEGY AND PLANNING:
  12. LIMITATION OF DIALECTICS; DA AND DI:Overview of application of dialectics
  13. THEORIES OF CHANGE IN ORGANISATIONS
  14. APPLICATION OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY:Managerial focus
  15. FURTHER APPLICATION OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES:Criticism
  16. GREINER’S MODEL OF ORGANISATIONAL– EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION
  17. GROWTH RATE OF THE INDUSTRY:CREATIVITY, DIRECTION, DELEGATION
  18. COORDINATION:COLLABORATION, The Crisis
  19. ORGANISATION ECOLOGY:Structural Inertia, Internal Structural Arrangements, External Factors
  20. CLASSIFICATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL SPECIES:Extent of Environmental Selection, Determinants of Vital Rates,
  21. FOOTNOTES TO ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE:Stable Processes of Change, Rule Following, Conflict
  22. SOME COMPLEXITIES OF CHANGE:Superstitious Learning, Solution Driven Problems
  23. ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTATION:The Entrepreneurial problem, The Administrative Problem
  24. PROSPECTORS:Analyzer, Reactors, Adaptation and Strategic Management
  25. SKELETAL MODEL OF ADAPTATION:Determinants of Adaptive ability, The Process of Adaptation
  26. STRATEGIC CHANGE:Nature of Change, The Importance of Context, Force field Analysis
  27. Management Styles and Roles:Change Agent Roles, Levers for managing strategic Change
  28. SYMBOLIC PROCESSES:Political Processes, COMMUNICATING CHANGE, Change Tactics
  29. STRATEGIC CHANGE:Pettigrew & Whipp’s Typology, Context on X-axis (Why of change)
  30. STRATEGIC CHANGE:Attributes of SOC Model, Implications for Management
  31. STRATEGIC CHANGE:Flow of Information, Recruitment, SOC Process
  32. Determinants of a Successful Change Management:Environmental, Management Orientation, Management Orientation
  33. Higgins 08 S Model – An Adaptation from Waterman’s Seven S model:Strategy, Systems and Processes, Resources
  34. IMPLEMENTATION AND STRATEGIC CHANGE: CONSTRAINING FORCES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF STRATEGIC CHANGE (CASE STUDY OF XYZ COMPANY)
  35. IMPLEMENTATION AND STRATEGIC CHANGE: CONSTRAINING FORCES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF STRATEGIC CHANGE (CASE STUDY OF XYZ COMPANY)
  36. WHY IMPLEMENTING STRATEGIC CHANGE IS SO DIFFICULT?:Change Typology, Technical Change
  37. IMPLEMENTATION APPROACHES:Attributes of incremental change,
  38. IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE
  39. IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE:Definition of Leadership, Follower Work Facilitation
  40. IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE:Recognize the challenge
  41. IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE
  42. IMPLEMENTATION: PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM MODEL:Features of Radical Change, Theory of P-E model
  43. CHANGE IMPLEMENTATION: OD MODELS:The Transactional Factors
  44. CULTURE, VALUES AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE:Significance and Role of Values, Values Compete
  45. ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES, CULTURE AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE:Issues in Change Management