Organizational Development and Change

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Organizational Development and Change

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Chapter 5 Organizational Development and Change Chapter Overview The organizational development (OD) tradition is a practitioner-driven intervention-oriented approach to effecting organizational change via individual change, with view to increasing effectiveness. It is implemented within a problem-solving model, places a heavy accent on surveybased problem diagnosis and subordinates people to a vision of the future. Commitment-based strategies of effecting change assume that the impetus for change must come from the bottom up, whilst compliance-based strategies involve the creation of behavioural imperatives for change. Various ‘employee involvement’ strategies are reviewed, but there is little evidence for their effectiveness either as a means of securing commitment or enhanced performance, or as a means of leverage for change. Culture is assumed to be the primary vehicle for change within the OD tradition, although the relationship between culture and the change process is ill understood. Finally, the assumptions underpinning team development, and its implementation, are critically examined. The organizational culture literature itself is fraught with epistemological debate. Practitioners are interested in management by measurement and manipulation of culture. Theoreticians of culture, however, aim to understand the depth and complexity of culture. Unresolved issues remain regarding how to define culture, the difference between culture and climate, measurement/levels of analysis, and the relationship between organizational culture and performance. Interest in corporate identity is relatively recent, and is mainly driven by marketing and strategic management considerations. More psychological approaches to the analysis of corporate identity include an interest in how corporate identity is reflected in the identity and self-esteem of employees, and the implications of this for managing organizational change. The classic OD approach to organizations and organizational change has been somewhat ‘side tracked’ today in favour of ‘knowledge management’, where knowledge and its creation is seen as critical to organizational sustainability and competitive advantage in today’s constantly changing global economy. Knowledge management raises issues about the potentially highly complex relationship between structure, technology and people. The dangers of a too tightly coupled understanding of the relationship between organizational structure and technology are highlighted. Chapter Thought Bytes and Examples ‘Diagnostic’ organizational methods Questionnaires and other instruments (for example, The Managerial Grid) Data is ‘canned, anonymous’, economical and readily analysed, but not itself conducive to creating the kind of ‘personal involvement and discussion necessary to ‘changing hearts and minds’. Interviews

This involves the skilled and impartial elicitation of opinion and sentiment on a wide range of subjects, including personal concerns that are rarely aired. However, they are time-consuming and labour-intensive to analyse. Sensing This involves unstructured group interviews designed to explore group issues, concerns, needs and resource requirements. Sampling members from different parts of an organization affords the OD researchers a ‘feel’ for the whole. Alternatively, it can be used to identify problems and concerns pertaining to one particular subsection. Sensing generates rich data and people come away feeling that they have been listened to. However, people will not disclose their real concerns if there is no trust.

Polling A group is ‘polled’ by questionnaire, or a structured ‘round robin’ exercise, on issues or agendas otherwise unspoken (for example, interpersonal conflict, the future of the group and its place in the organization). Full and balanced involvement of all members is essential to ensure ownership of the results. It is important that the results are followed-up rather than left ‘open’ and unaddressed.

Collages Individuals or groups prepare collages on a theme (for example, my feelings about the team or the organization). If a single collage is produced by a group it can elicit deep but burning issues for discussion. Fun, but at first might not be taken seriously.

Drawings One or more members of a group make a drawing about an aspect of the organization or organizational life. Common themes are identified, discussed and posted on flip-charts. Can unearth issues otherwise ‘buried alive’ (p.157) – for example, interpersonal conflict, inappropriate competition. Must be framed by clear objectives.

Physical representation of organizations Group members ‘sculpt’ themselves physically according to some issue of worry to them (for example, cliques, inappropriate influence, competition). Can yield dramatic results, creating strong motivation for improvement but must be sensitively managed.

Diversity management – do not conflate national boundaries with cultural boundaries

National boundaries are often inappropriately used as surrogate definitions of culture. However, the ‘nominal’ and impoverished use of culture in this sense stems from a lack of a theoretical framework for investigating culture at a broader level. It is common to use Hofstede’s (1980) work to describe cultural variation based on national differences. He identified (based on data from over 116,000 employees of IBM across 40 countries) four cultural dimensions: power distance (the degree to which members accept an unequal distribution of power); avoidance of uncertainty (the degree to which members are able to cope with ambiguous or anxiety-provoking situations); individualism– collectivism (an emphasis on striving and initiative versus belonging and following) and masculinity– femininity (the relative extent to which members value traits conventionally associated with masculinity and femininity). Some multi-national corporations like IBM have responded to the diversity issue by seeking to create a homogenous and unifying culture transcending national boundaries. Other organizations allow cultural differences to flourish, seeking only to exert financial regulation and control.

Predicting behaviour – a misleading enterprise? Myers (1993) argues that predicting behaviour is almost impossible because it is influenced by so many individual, situational and chance factors. However, if we look at average behaviour over a long period of time then the influence of attitudes is more apparent. For instance, knowing someone’s attitude towards an organization poorly predicts whether he or she will stay behind to finish an assignment, because many other things also influence this such as family circumstances, mood, feeling and so on. However, organizational attitude does predict quite well the total quantity of ‘extra-mile’ behaviours demonstrated by someone over time. The influence of attitude on behaviour is thus not something that is evident in any one isolated act. Conditions that improve the predictive accuracy of attitudes are described below. General versus specific attitudes Azjen has found that the correspondence between attitudes and actions is high in studies where measured attitude is directly relevant to the situation. To change organizational behaviour through persuasion, we should therefore seek to alter attitudes towards specific organizational or job factors and practices .

Attitude Potency When people operate by habit, there is little or no reflection engaged. Attitudes are likely to be brought especially to mind in non-familiar situations. Evidence shows that attitudes guide behaviour if they come to mind. Self-conscious people who are highly self-aware are usually well in tune with their own attitudes. High self-consciousness is associated with consistency of words and actions.

Central route strategies to changing attitudes An effective communicator cares not only about the content of the message, but also about how their audience is likely to react to it. The following strategies can be used: 1. Know the audience, identify and address the ‘issues’ of concern to them. Get into the mind of the audience and keep them on their toes. 2. Make people feel responsible for evaluating the message and allow them to draw their own conclusions from the ‘facts’ presented. 3. Participative vs confrontational style: a participative style that involves people is more likely to elicit ownership of the issue(s) at stake than a dogmatic and argumentative style, presenting only one side of the story. 4. Repeating the message with examples and case -studies.

Level of organizational impact evaluation It is common within the OD evaluation literature to apply the Kirkpatrick (1959) hierarchy of ‘impacts’: initial reactions, attitude/perceptual changes, behavioural changes, and organizational changes.

Initial reactions Many OD intervention evaluation studies begin and also end with ‘testimonial’ types of assessment, from participants.

Attitudinal/perceptual changes Most published studies measure attitude/perceptual change (for example, team cohesiveness, leadership styles, organizational climate, job satisfaction). The use of questionnaires constructed specifically for the purpose of each particular evaluation is common, thus undermining meaningful cross-study comparison. Studies also rarely provide details of scale reliability and validity, even for established measures.

Behavioural changes Some studies document changes in ‘behaviour’ (for example, turnover, absenteeism). Reliability and validity statistics are rarely provided, making it difficult to judge the stability of findings at this level of analysis.

Organizational changes Studies rarely examine the impact of OD intervention on organizational effectiveness.

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