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Digital Change Management: Week 11: Change Nexus (Richard Baskerville and…
Digital Change Management: Week 11: Change Nexus
Richard Baskerville and Jan Pries-Heje (2014) -
Diffusing Best Practices: A Design Science Study Using the Theory of Planned Behavior
Theme
: best practices
Explanation of best practises
: knowledge of best practices circulates under an assumption that the practices will usefully self-diffuse through innovation and adoption in other contexts. The diffusion of best practices is therefore not as simple as declaring new process rules.
They
focus on one case study
: Where the '
Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)
was used as a kernel theory. This materialised into two training workshops. TPB is perhaps the most widely acknowledged model for describing the decision- making process that results in behavioral stasis or behavior change
Definition of best practises
: “best practices are leadership, management, or operational methods or approaches that lead to exceptional performance.” [1, p. 334]. In this sense, diffusion of best practices is not necessarily dissemination of knowledge. Rather it is a process of improvement.
Professionals are knowledge carrying agents who diffuse best practices into diverse organizations.
Focus of the paper: These issues lead to the research question addressed in this paper: Why do organizations fall victim to the innate problems with diffusion of best practices; how can an organization ideally enable such diffusion?
Definition
: A kernel theory is a natural or social science theory that governs design requirements
Forty managers in this workshop reported strongly increased intention to use immediately after the workshop. Furthermore observational data indicated a majority of the managers actually used the procedure months after the workshop.
Explanation of the theory
: TPB is a predictive model of human behavior in specific situations [12, 13]. It is an extension of the theory of reasoned action.
The theory is being used as "as a strategy for solving a problem diffusing a best practice"
.
Definition
: An action case is a hybrid research approach that combines action research and interpretive case approaches.
In their case study work with ENKACE (not the real name of the company - nor do they explain what they do), they at least attempt an 'unfreeze' approach similar to Kurt Lewit's Unfreeze Model
We initially framed the problem as “resistance-to- change”. Across the iterations, we reframed this problem as “not-invented-here”.
Conclusions
: (1) Diffusion of a best practice requires the engagement of experts who can help adopters situate the practice in their own specific context (2) In short we found that it is possible to use TPB for guiding a design. And we found that the resulting design actually diffused best practice within ENKACE (3) Actors in the field are not just receivers of a best practice, but are co-constructors of this best practice. (4) SUCH a fricking obvious conclusion: "On the context side, the qualities of the selected opinion leader were necessary to provide the subjective norm described in TPB. On the best practice side, the technological qualities of the best practice itself were necessary to instill the ideal attitude (belief that the behavior will be effective)."
Definitions
:
Explicit knowledge
- the knowledge we have consciously accepted and
implicit knowledge
is the knowledge which is suggested but not directly expressed.
Davis (1989)
Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease Of Use, And User Accepance of IT
Says: there isn't a lot of concrete research about IT systems and a) perceived 'usefulness' and b) 'ease of use'
He argues: these two variables are useful predictors of 'user acceptance' e.g. will a user accept an IT system?
Findings
: He found that 'ease of use' was less strongly correlated with likelihood of 'user acceptance' e.g. that they actually use it, than 'usefulness'. Allowing us to conclude that these users placed more emphasis on how 'useful' the IT system was, than how 'easy it was to use'. Although, the later remains important - as well, of course.
Argues
: User acceptance is such a
hot topic
because IT systems have the potential to improve 'white collar work' but the implementation of these systems is so often forted by the "lack of genuine uptake by the users" e.g. that they either don't want to, refuse to use it, or somehow, end not using it.
Also argues
: That previous
measures
used to analyse the relationship between IT systems and user uptake are not strong (which results in a) loads of differing results from study to study, and b) a failure to find hypothesised relationships). E.g. "little attention is paid to the quality of the measures" used in a study in question. GREAT point. Also, too many of the measures are subjective.
Aim
: better measures to predict and explaining use of IT systems
Some conclusions
: (1) There are often discrepancies between perceived usefulness of an IT system and actual 'usefulness' of an IT system to a person's work. BUT - the important thing here is that the two are very heavily correlated e.g. a person's use/uptake is highly correlated to how useful they think a system will be to their work (whether is actually true in reality doesn't always matter, it is the 'feeling' that they have which has power and impact).
Dent and Goldberg (1999) -
Challenging ''Resistance to Change''
Main focus: the 'notion' that people resist change
But these guys argue against that: "People may resist loss of status, loss of pay, or loss of comfort, but these are not the same as resisting change".
Main argument
: "It is time that we dispense with the phrase 'resistance to change' and find more useful and appropriate models for describing what the phrase has come to mean—employees are not wholeheartedly embracing a change that management wants to implement." e.g. we all assume that people are resistant to change. Let's ditch that notion (coined by Kurt Lewin and something which has evolved into popular psychology. Why? Because it's unhelpful.
Literature: Dent and Goldberg (1999) in this paper find almost no evidence that employees resist change. "Kotter (1995) observed more than 100 companies in a decade and reported that when organizations attempt a major change, the employees often understand the new vision and want to make it happen, but there are obstacles that prevent execution". They actually argue that a lot of literature shows that executives (and not middle management) are those trying to 'maintain' the status quo.
Basically they provide an overview of the literature which has given rise to the notion of 'change resistance' to show the reader that it is certainly predominant in the literature, but not necessarily for any good reason.
Reflections on the literature about change resistance
: (1) most of the literature blames subordinates for 'resisting' change (2) Puts responsibility to implement change on the shoulders of the executives, not the 'teams' (3) most of this literature also focuses on how to 'prevent' resistance from occurring, not how to deal with it when it emerges
Main conclusion
: Assuming resistance to change, and the textbook strategies for overcoming it, does not form a useful framework for resolving change implementation issues. Other
main conclusion
: ditch it, and come up with a better 'mental model' to explain why implementation of change fails to so often.
Du Pont and Eskerod (2015)
Enhancing project benefit realization through integration of line managers as project benefit managers
Aim of their article: The aim of this study was to investigate the potentials of integrating line managers in a formal role as project benefit managers within a project team for enhancing realization of project benefits.
Based on the findings, we claim that line managers as project benefit managers can enhance compliance in project implementation. This is not least due to their detailed knowledge about operational processes.
However, the cohesiveness of a project benefit manager’s network as well as the mutual relationship between the project benefit manager and relevant peer managers has an importance for the success of the project benefit managers.
Definition
:
project benefits
Zwikael and Smyrk (2012) define project benefits as ‘flows of value that arise from a project’ (p. 11),
Method
: To answer the research question, we conducted an inductive longitudinal case study in an international service organization with multi-site operations, i.e., a bank with 300 branches
Seo et al (2011)
Managing IS adoption in ambivalent groups
Argues that we have not 'nuanced' the discussion about resistance or acceptance enough. By defining these parameters (resistance or acceptance) we fail to recognise the spectrum of other emotions e.g. 'acceptance' but an inability to use it due to organisational restraints. It shouldn't be so 'either or'. E.g. the conventional view is
too one dimensional
.
Focus IS implementation.
Theory introduced
: one where there is more of a spectrum e.g. a lot of resistance but high usage, or no resistance but no usage.