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Digital Change Management - week 6 (Burnes (2004), Argues that the work of…
Digital Change Management - week 6
Burnes (2004)
Argues that the work of
Kurt Lewin
(theory/practise of
change management) is still relevant today
.
Lewin created the
3-Step model of change
Lewin maintained that to understand any situation it was necessary that: ‘One should view the present situation – the status quo – as being
maintained by certain conditions or forces
’ (Lewin, 1943a, p. 172)
Group Dynamics
stresses that group behaviour, rather than that of individuals, should be the main focus of change
3 Step Model
: Lewin saw the four concepts as forming an integrated approach to analysing, understanding and bringing about change at the group, organisational and societal levels. (1) '
Unfreezing
(e.g. he equilibrium needs to be destabilised, unfrozen, before old behaviour can be discarded, unlearnt & new behaviour successfully adopted - the recognition of change is the most crucial element of unfreezing) (2) '
Moving
(e.g. unfreezing is not an end in itself; it ‘. . . creates motivation to learn but does not necessarily control or predict the direction). (3) '
Refreezing
' (e.g. this final stage seeks to stabilise the group at a new quasi-stationary equilibrium in order to ensure that the new behaviours are relatively safe from regression).
Lewin was primarily interested in resolving social conflict through behavioural change.
Lewin then focussed on: (a) To analyse and understand how social groupings were formed, motivated and maintained. To do this, he developed both
Field Theory
and
Group Dynamics
. (b) To change the behaviour of social groups. The primary methods he developed for achieving this were
Action Research
and the
3-Step model of change
.
Culture-Excellence
stressed the integrated nature of organisations, both internally and within their environments (not Lewin I don't think)
Criticisms of Lewin
: (A) Many have is argued that Lewin’s Planned approach is too simplistic and
mechanistic
for a world where organisational change is a continuous and open-ended process. RESPONSE: One should view the present situation – the status quo – as being maintained by certain conditions or forces. (B) Lewin’s work is only relevant to
incremental and isolated change
projects and is not able to incorporate radical, transformational change. RESPONSE: This criticism appears to relate to the speed rather than the magnitude of change because, as Quinn (1980, 1982) pointed out, over time, incremental change can lead to radical transformations. (C) Lewin’s stands accused of
ignoring the role of power
and politics in organisations and the conflictual nature of much of organisational life. RESPONSE: As Bargal et al. (1992, p. 8) note, Lewin’s approach to change required ‘. . . the taking into account differences in value systems and power structures of all the parties involved . . .’ (D) Lewin is seen as advocating a
top-down, management-driven approach to change
and ignoring situations requiring bottom-up change. RESPONSE: Lewin was approached for help by a wide range of groups and organisations (who did actually help).
Conclusions: (1) The first is that
Lewin’s work stemmed from his concern to find an effective approach to resolving social conflict through changing group behaviour
. (2)
Lewin promoted an ethical and humanist approach to change
, that saw learning and involvement as being the key processes for achieving behavioural change. (3) When seen in isolation, the 3-Step model can be portrayed as simplistic.
When seen alongside the other elements of Lewin’s Planned approach, it becomes a much more robust approach to change
.
Huy (2001)
Change is affected by the agent's notion of time (those with a short perception of time will choose short-term remedies, for example).
There are also two distinct 'types of time' that affect change processes: (a) qualitative time (clock time) and (b) quantitative time (everything is measured by events occurring etc).
Huy highlights
four different types of change
: '
commanding
(the changing of structures, usually impacted by 'real time' and external factors like regulatory restrictions or financial insecurity e.g. manager enacting change upon advice of consultants, who came to 'cost cut'),
reengineering
(fundamental re-thinking of business processes to reap enact significant change e.g. IBM slashing 7 day turnaround to 4 hours),
teaching
(to change beliefs e.g. change targets begin in their own re-education) and
socialising
(to change social relationships e.g. a chart developed to show interrelationship of different hospital departments, developed in conjunction with a whole mass of stakeholders).
Risks of enacting change in the wrong way
: (1) You can upset the balance of time of your employees (temporal work routines e.g. clock time, psychological comfort e.g. inner time and quality of relationships e.g. social time). (2) Change is often reversible, interdependent and precarious (this needs to be navigated by subjects and change makers. Word:
sequencing
e.g. the order in which things unfold).
Conclusions
: Each 'type' of change represents a series of assumptions.
Mitzberg (1999)
Discusses strategy, the evolution of strategy and ten different perspectives or 'schools' on strategy (including Porter in the 80's).
But, do they
represent different approaches to strategy formation or are they all different parts of the same process
?
Mintzberg argues that
strategy often evolves from four quite distinct sources
: (1) collaborative contacts between organisations, (2) confrontation and competition, (3) new strategies are often a re-casting of the old, (4) strategy pushed by sheer creativity of the managers.
Conclusions
: (1) We have to go beyond the narrowness of each school. (2) We need to understand more about strategy formation. (3) We need to examine and employ 'real life concerns' not just concepts. (4) Can't just see strategy formation as separate entities.