Employees’ witnessed presence in changing organisations

In recent years, governments, businesses and other organisations have increasingly been forced to attempt to survive by reorganising themselves fundamentally. Although this happens at present on a large scale, it is not unprecedented. In fact, most organisations have had to change their working practises at some time for some reason-for example, when the competition catches up or when technology threatens to make production obsolete. The usual strategy is to fire part of the staff and to redistribute tasks. This tends to put a heavy burden on staff. They have to search for other jobs or attempt re-skilling. Those remaining may face substantial changes in their relations to their managers, who will require changes... 'or else'. The study reported in the paper focuses on people's reactions to this approach. Some employees accept and leave. Others become aware of an opportunity to damage their company. Others again see a way to resist and change the way the managers behave and thereby turn around the company and maintain or increase the number of jobs. The study focuses on two questions. The first is how one should model or describe the behaviour of people in the third category, i. e. those wishing to contribute. It does not seem useful to follow one's first hunch, i. e. to search for quantifiable patterns. People's behaviour will always be contextualised as a reaction to what managers do. This suggests the use of qualitative methods. The second question is whether the concept of presence may clarify the behaviour and identify ways for employees to contribute positively to changes in their organisations. An obstacle to answering the second question is that qualitative methods focus on people's experiences in some context, and on the emergence of their behaviour, but do not necessarily lead to suggestions on how to behave with what effect. It is attempted to answer the second question and thereby the first question with the aim of identifying what people may do who are not immediately fired or made redundant when fundamental organisational changes are introduced. Data have been collected from four companies that decided to initiate such changes in 2003-2004. © 2011 Springer-Verlag London Limited

Modelling organisational culture and change in the context of an empirical study

We identify and evaluate three models of Organisational Development and Change. We examine how organisational identities may be formed partly through the adoption of Organisational Development (OD) and change procedures, practices and policies. We consider the academic literature written on this topic which has sought to highlight the importance of culture and change in the creation of organisational identity and in so doing emphasises and indeed celebrates the contribution of the middle and bottom of the hierarchy to the top. Various cultural and change models such as those of Greenfield and Schwandt (1994) and the multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted nature of organisational and individual identity which focuses on the sociology of identity will be developed using the Clark, Chandler and Barry (1984) approach

Leadership and the Changing World of Work: A review, a critique and new directions

Although there is an extensive body of research on leadership, findings on the effectiveness of different leadership styles within the changing world of work are inconsistently inconclusive. No one style of leadership has been shown to consistently reshape people’s behaviours and render organisational members’ interactions more effective in the changing world of work. The aim of this study is to conduct a comprehensive systematic literature review and critique with the view to develop a more comprehensive understanding of emerging leadership and change patterns. To be able to do so, we investigate the extent to which the theoretical propositions on leadership styles’ positive (or effective) impacts within the context of the changing world of work is supported. We are particularly interested in looking into the extent to which leadership styles can sustain effective organisational change within the world of work

What has been “reengineered” thus far?

I n this paper, I explore both management and non-management literature using, Handy (1993) and Hammer and Champy (1995), amongst others, and critique these approaches with symbolic interactionism and actor network theory. One of the principal emphases, providing the paper’s plan is the notion of Latour’s (1993, 2005) ‘actor network theory’ and its contribution to understanding the conflicting dilemmas posed when managers in four private sector organisations introduced new forms of working practices to change their organisational cultures. The second part of the paper discusses the complex processes involved in cultural changes using the data from my field work on 4 organisations in the United Kingdom that have recently been “reengineered”, as a limited number of organisations undergo fundamental changes to their management and organisational systems at any given moment in time. The importance of language and levels of discourse in understanding respondents’ interview statements and stories are explored so as to deepen insights into the dynamic richness of organisational cultural change and gain understanding of some of the conflicts and tensions when managers, who rely heavily on Hammer and Champy’s (1995) and their followers’ “reengineering” rhetoric introduce organisational changes in a top-down, autocratic and totalising manner

Organisational change research: challenges and assumptions. What about possibilities?

As organisations have been attempting to deal with the practical difficulties that change brings, the debates and discussions seemed to have played to a number of themes and assumptions. Although the former has benefited from extensive research the latter has been neglected over the past seven decades. Whilst researchers have focused on planned and emergent change and the discourse and practice approaches, others have proposed dualism/paradox, change agency, behavioural and positioning theory as these are assumed will help management resolve challenges and achieve successful change. However, a study is yet to be carried out on what the taken-for-granted assumptions that these debates play to really are and what they could offer to an area that has been claimed to be under-theorised over decades. This lies at the crux of the paper’s aims and objectives. Through content analysis and the interpretation of the qualitative, empirical data, it has been found that employees’ preferences have been neglected in organisational change (OC) research but could offer researchers and practitioners a new direction in identifying what barriers, opportunities and permutations could be at stake as attempts are undertaken to better understand how to effect successful change. The paper’s main contribution is referred to as ‘preferential positioning’ which is argued as a theoretical addition to positioning theory and to the traditional dualistic reporting of most OC research and their theories. It is anticipated to help resolve part of the under-theorisation and offer research openings beyond dualism and in a post-planned change era

Creating objectives-based knowledge to resolve organisational change dysfunctionality

Lewin’s (1947) tripartite approach seems forgotten and hence to be considered of no value when organisational structures are initiated. Proposals for organisational structures, architectures and staff interactions as the panacea to organisational problems appear to have had limited success (Zack, 2000; Massini, Lewin and Pettigrew, 2001; Feher, 2004 and Garezzi and Terzi, 2005). This raises the question what types of organisational knowledge are wealth-producing. It seems advisable to search for alternatives to organisational knowledge. Objectives based knowledge is reported. It consists of efforts to focus on the links between individual objectives and organisational resources

Challenging Contingency Approach to Organisational Failure-induced Adaptation: New Research Directions and Implications for Organisational Change Studies

Despite the plethora of research on organisational change (OC) and the popularity of applying contingency-based or structural measures for its successful implementation, we do not know how a people process-based model can more effectively and comprehensively deal with the threat that such an implementation poses for SMEs’ failure. Although contingency theory and its implicit approach to organisational change offer hope for SMEs to resolve their structure-outcome alignment difficulties, amongst others, we do not know whether their application in organisational failure-type situations (such as merger-acquisitions and post-mergers) has facilitated the survival of specific SMEs in such contexts. To address this gap, I use empirical data from a survey of 85 participants, including managers and employees from four SMEs covering two geographic regions of the UK to develop a missing ‘dynamic process model’ for organisational change scholarship and practice. I contribute by extending the contingency planning literature’s focus on a reactive, planned set of procedures by developing a model that highlights the dynamic, people-related factors that were previously missing from the structurally based contingency model in four specific change situations. I also identify what needs to be done by developing four people-procedural areas (PP1, 2, 3 & 4) that will help SMEs overcome their challenges in a more dynamic way at the individual, collective and organisational levels. The results’ implications, the study’s limitations and new directions for organisational change studies are highlighted

Rethinking the Application of HRM’s Configuration Perspective in Organisational Failure Contexts: Contributing Resilience Innovation Model and Resilience Innovation Capacity for SMEs’ Sustainability

The pressure for firms to utilise their human and non-human resources innovatively when challenged with organisational failure has led to a gap in HRM literature, which is how to do so effectively as well as resiliently. The problem is that the HRM literature’s assertions of how beneficial the traditional configuration and emerging resilience perspectives may help in alleviating impending organisational failure has been neglected in SME research. This paper’s research results are based on an empirical, qualitative survey of 85 staff and managers from four UK-based SMEs. The results contributed to the development of a ‘resilience innovation model’ as contribution to the emerging scholarship on resilience as well as to add resilience capacity to HRM’s configuration perspective. This led to my second contribution, which refers to the concept of ‘resilience innovation capacity’. The model and theory will firstly facilitate the development of human capacity in four ways and its innovativeness is found in how it provides an alternative to management’s reactive utilisation of the configuration perspective in the four SMEs that were challenged to fail. Secondly, it will also help identify and prioritise aspects of human capacity that could benefit from resilience development and thirdly it shows how SMEs can innovate-in-practice when their capacity development is threatened by systemic failure. I therefore address a capacity development gap for SMEs, a configuration-resilience theorisation deficit in HRM literature, HRM research’s oversight of a much needed resilience model and theory and the enhancement of SMEs’ sustainability. The limited number of firms, predominantly SMEs, and the regional-centric focus of the survey are the study’s limitations. Implications of my propositions and a future HRM research agenda are identified

Staff Preferences in Four SMEs Experiencing Organizational Change

Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of preferences when SMEs are confronted with the practical problems associated with implementing frequent and large scale changes to their working policies and practices. This paper aims to alleviate some of the concerns as claimed in positioning and change agency theory by introducing ‘preferential role positioning’ to organizational change. Design/Methodology/approach – This study uses a qualitative case study approach and change agency and positioning theories to find out the extent to which staff and management experienced the practical difficulties and challenges and what resolution actions they took. Eighty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2004/05 and 2011 with the staff and management of four SMEs in the UK. An interpretative analysis was conducted on the case data in the tradition of Husserl and Schutz. In the first set, participants were asked to elucidate the difficulties faced in their roles and how these were experienced whilst the second focused on impacts and strategies. Three independent researchers reviewed and interpreted the qualitative data and helped with the coding and thematisation. Findings – This paper's main results are based on the data's three stages showing how SME members chose to deal with the practical difficulties namely ‘new structures and procedures’ (stage 1); ‘new ways of communicating’ (stage 2) and ‘new collaborations’ (stage 3). The combination of the stages’ aspects led to the emergence of ‘preferential role positioning’ as the study’s theoretical contribution to the gap on preferences in organizational change research. Research limitations – The eighty-five interviews from UK-based SMEs constrained the sample size thereby limiting the number of questionnaire categories asked. The findings and their analysis cannot be generalised to non SMEs that seek to address similar difficulties. Practical implications – Managers need to be aware of the adverse impacts of using draconian, top down disciplinary and punishment measures/structures as a way to implement change. Other practical lessons include the fact that managers should contextualise people’s anxieties, dissatisfaction, resistance and disengagement as a platform from which social knowledge can be generated with all change agents in order to resolve implementation challenges in the longer term. Staff developed the ability to deal with some practical issues such as navigating through the new departmental structures, new working procedures and new ways of talking with management and with each other to implement change more successfully. Social implications - The social value of the findings demonstrate that preferences can be imported from other social science disciplines into Organizational Studies to show the value of what people can contribute and how they choose to do so (i.e. via what discourse, using what types of interactions and capabilities to do so). In addition, the results show that management need to consider employees in their plans as they try to implement change firstly to facilitate greater interaction and success, secondly to minimise implementation difficulties and thirdly as a recognition that there are multiple change agents and multiple role-enacting positions in developing sociological knowledge that can be of value. Originality/value – This study’s three-stage approach has shown that a successful implementation and management of change in SMEs should also include a bottom-up recognition of the difficulties, adversities, conflicts and tensions and a resolution to deal with the structural and communicative constraints via dialogue and ‘preferential role positioning

Clash of identities: management approaches to organisational cultural change

A first step in the design of the paper has been to explore what may be learnt from previous studies that focus on the same employee experiences, behaviours and reactions or similar events. It is hoped that the results of the present exploration will help narrow the focus of the study, and facilitate the analysis of collected data (the design of the necessary analysis is discussed later). It appears useful in organising the present paper and to maintain the sharp research focus on employees’ reactions to change to distinguish between management approaches to organisational change and non-management approaches. I will continue to discuss these to see what they can contribute to the study’s focus in particular and organisational cultural change studies within a wider frame of discussion