Organisational Changes: The Paradox of Balancing Changes and Continuity - Essay Example

Organisational changes: The paradox of balancing changes and continuity 16 April Continuity in a sea of changesis a paradox, one of the paradoxes of organisational changes. This essay discusses the view of Nasim and Sushil (2011) regarding the paradoxes of managing changes. Nasim and Sushil (2011: 186) emphasise that managing change has shifted from the trade-offs approach to the paradox thinking paradigm. They argue that managing changes involves managing various paradoxes, specifically balancing change and continuity efforts. This view of organisation change’s reality indicates a postmodernist oncology, where change remains fluid and elusive. As a result, to understand it demands acknowledging and accepting its dynamic, fluid nature. Managing changes requires managing paradoxes through a postmodernist ontology with postconstructivist epistemology because of the existence of diverse types of changes, resistance to changes, and narratives for attaining individual and organisational changes. The paradox of change lies in the postmodernist ontology with postconstructivist epistemology. Postmodernist thinking on the study of being views reality as a combination of different ways of seeing. The study of organisational changes has intersected various concepts from diverse fields, such as child development and evolutionary biology, and yet not many scholars have integrated them in a systematic manner (van de Ven and Poole, 1995: 510). Poggie (1965: 284) remarks on the paradox of knowing reality: “A way of seeing is a way of not seeing.” One epistemological view of reality is one way of not seeing reality through another perspective. van de Ven and Poole (1995: 511) urge for an interdisciplinary approach to seeing the reality of organisational change: “It is the interplay between different perspectives that helps one gain a more comprehensive understanding of organisational life, because any one theoretical perspective invariably offers only a partial account of a complex phenomenon.” They promote a postmodernist view of seeing and knowing the reality of organisational change because it enriches its understanding. Furthermore, the paradox-of-change approach uses postconstructivist epistemology using competing theories to explore and to illustrate it. van de Ven and Poole (1995) offer a typology of process theories that examine how and why change happens in social or biological units. These are life cycle, teleological, dialectical and evolutionary process theories. These four theories stand for essentially different event chains and generative components that they called “motors” to depict the processes and causes of changes (van de Ven and Poole, 1995: 511). van de Ven and Poole (1995) stress that organisational change do not neatly fit only one of these process theories because some conditions can stimulate interdependent changes across different organisational elements. They stress the complexity of changes: “Even though each of these types has its own internal logic, complexity and the potential for theoretical confusion arise from the interplay among different motors” (van de Ven and Poole, 1995: 534). The paradox of changes arises from the reality of spontaneous effects of changes, anticipated or otherwise. Sturdy and Grey (2003) criticise the one-sided view of organisational change management (OCM) discourses that emphasise stability over changes. They offer different views of changes using discourse analysis. They conclude the need for using different lenses in understanding changes and in attaining effective changes. Hence, this essay finds it useful to see changes from a postmodernist view of organisational reality and knowledge. The paradox of change and continuity affects different kinds and stages of changes. Managing changes in different types of changes require balancing change and continuity. Nadler and Tushman (1989) examined diverse large-scale organisational changes and provided several insights and generalisations. They reviewed fundamental organisational and organisational change concepts and described several kinds of organisation change. They proposed the concept of “frame bending,” a kind of change in large organisations (Nadler and Tushman, 1989: 194). The frame refers to the context of existing organisational strategies and elements, and strategic changes can bend, reshape, or in extreme circumstances, even break an organisation’s frame (Nadler and Tushman, 1989: 196). Using several examples, Nadler and Tushman (1989: 196) illustrate that as organisations bend their frames, they either choose to continue the past, as in reorientation forms of changes, or break it, as in re-creation changes. They note the difficulty of maintaining organisational systems and culture, as these changes occur. Furthermore, managing changes and stability affect different stages of change in varying ways. An example is the critical stage, the period after the incubation stage and where catastrophe follows. The incubation period happens a long time before the crisis, such as years or decades, while the critical period happens briefly, such as minutes, hours or days before the catastrophe (Stein, 2004: 1245). Stein (2004) explores the critical period using sense-making and psychoanalytic theories. Sense-making helps people understand the changes that shock their worldviews, as if meaning is completely lost (Stein, 2004: 1245). Weick (1993) depicts this abrupt loss of meaning as a “cosmology episode”, wherein people “suddenly and deeply feel that the universe is no longer a rational, orderly system” (633 cited in Stein, 2004: 1245). How managers relate changes to fractured realities can be a complex process. Harris and Ogbonna (2002) assert from their case study that managing changes should include managing unintended consequences too. These unintended consequences can bring up problems or issues that have profound and widespread implications to change efforts (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002: 47). Change managers grapple with fractures in continuity, as they find ways to assert meaning in these changes and to respond to different consequences. With these concerns, modern management faces predicaments that Industrial Revolution managers did not face, where change is important, though not to the effect of being stuck in the continuity of the past. Hamel (2009) believes that managers must aim high in reinventing management theories and practices, so that they can respond to volatile environments. He proposes “make-or-break challenges,” which he calls “moon shots” (Hamel, 2009, p.1). These moon shots involve “[dramatically reducing] the pull of the past” (Hamel, 2009: 4). Hamel (2009) understands the role of continuity in transitions and maintaining cherished values and visions, but it is not the same as protecting the status quo. He calls for a critical viewpoint on existing systems and structures: “While continuity is important, these subtle, baked-in preferences for the status quo must be exposed, examined, and, if necessary, excised” (Hamel, 2009: 6). When the status quo becomes an assumed given of organisational realities, it becomes the continuity that can deter meaningful organisational changes. Kärreman and Alvesson (2009) explore organisational changes in the context of power and resistance. While some managerial theories treat organisations as apolitical, they present a realistic view of organisations as a product of power relations and resistance. They propose the role of counter-resistance in identifying and subverting or neutralising resistance to changes (Kärreman and Alvesson, 2009: 1121). Managers must be able to understand the sources of adherence and loyalty to the status quo, in order to diagnose changes and design appropriate change strategies. In relation to resisting the status quo, managing changes include managing resistance to changes. Continuity wrestles with ongoing changes, which can come from the unanticipated reactions from stakeholders that produce conflict. Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) study unsuccessful and successful change efforts. They illustrate the different causes for resistance to change and offer systematic ways of choosing a change management strategy. They stress that managers must be aware of and responsive to the four main reasons that people oppose change: the desire to not lose something valuable; misunderstanding the change and its effects; a belief that the changes are not sensible and relevant; and a low tolerance for changes (Kotter and Schlesinger, 1979: 42). They discuss several methods for managing changes: 1) education and communication, 2) participation and involvement, 3) facilitation and support, 4) negotiation and agreement, 5) manipulation and co-optation, and 6) explicit and implicit coercion. These approaches have strengths and weaknesses, and Kotter and Schlesinger (1979: 51) suggest that managers choose the change strategy that has a predetermined speed of changes, contains preplanning and involves stakeholders, using tactics that affect and engage the latter and which are internally consistent. Internal consistency can reduce fear of changes and improve trust in proposed changes. Apart from managing resistance to changes, managing change is interconnected with managing continuity through injecting and understanding organisational narratives. Wines and Hamilton (2008) explain the role of narratives in introducing cultural changes in organisations, specifically when the goal is turning them into ethical entities. Stories are important because they inject new images and vocabularies that promote a new myth, where “[myth] is the set of interlocking stories, rituals, rites, and customs that inform and give the pivotal sense of meaning and direction to a community or culture” (Wines and Hamilton, 2008: 440). Using intuitive examples and corporate models, Wines and Hamilton argue that stories allow people to internally imbibe new values and orientations: “Our experiences make us reasonably confident that stories are more powerful as ways of transmitting values, confirming identities, and encouraging [behaviour] than mere admonitions or even commands” (441). Curie and Brown (2003) affirm from their case study that individual and group narratives help people make sense of the changes and establish common interests and identities. Hence, new and old stories interact to help people continue or change individual and social identities in relation to organisational changes. Organisational change has entered a postmodernist paradigm, as it embeds the paradox of continuity and change. Change involves continuity and changes operating side-by-side. To successfully manage changes, managers must be aware of the varying continuity and change needs and anxieties of stakeholders using different analytical frameworks. They must be prepared of cultural changes that can result to bending or breaking frames. A postmodernist epistemology can facilitate the formation of new realities that hail from discourses, stories that can change the status quo, while preserving the elements that will help organisations become more effective in unpredictable environments. To change is to change and to be the same to some extent, in a process where organisations are continuously changing, continuously developing. Reference List Currie, G. and Brown, A.D. 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