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 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

Change Management MGMT625

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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