Page 101 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Chapter 5 ■ Theories of change: critical perspectives
by others (e.g. managers) they do so using discourse. In turn their own discourse
can be (should be) deconstructed. We need not concern ourselves with the criti-
cism relating to the danger of double standards, which is obvious enough, and at
least the postmodernist is directing our attention to that very line of criticism.
Rather we are interested in the idea that a postmodernist stance might help with
the design of interventions in organizations (Barry, 1997). If we can break the
power of the ‘expert’ by a thorough analysis of client ideas, narratives, descrip-
tions and the like we may move towards a position of being able to base such
interventions on a more reflective dialogue and thereby an improved under-
standing of problems and issues facing the ‘client system’. Is this not the basis of
much of the work of Argyris (1990, 2004)?

Complexity theory

Darwin, Johnson and McAuley (2002) provide a convincing survey of the emer-
gence of complexity theory within the organization behaviour literature. They
note that the fundamental idea underlying the application of this body of theory
is that of the complex adaptive system, defined as follows:

1 It is a network of ‘agents’ acting in parallel, often interconnected, ways but
without any ‘command and control’ framework.
2 These agents are ‘adaptively intelligent’; constantly seeking and making sense
of patterns, testing ideas, evolving and learning.
3 Change is achieved through learning, evolution and adaptation.
4 Control of the system is dispersed throughout the system.
5 Coherence within the system arises out of competition and cooperation
among the agents as they see advantage in alliances and other arrangements
for mutual support.
In effect this thinking is based on the idea of ‘self-organization’. Harré (1984)
and Wheatley (1996) consider how ideas and practices can emerge from groups
which transcend the ideas of the individual members of the group. As people act

in the world new issues arise (including as a result of ‘unintended conse-
quences’) and often new possibilities arise, for example the discovery of peni-
cillin. A reductionist approach emphasizes the analysis of individual elements of
a situation or issue and may not bring out a broader perspective on important
emergent themes.
Capra (1996) traces the emergence of the concept of self-organization from
the early years of ‘cybernetics’. Darwin, Johnson and McAuley (2002) also note
that the interest in complexity theory within management studies has derived
from the attempt to understand problems relating to planning systems which
appear not to be able to predict the future. I might add here that we all of us
experience systems which seem unable to predict the future when we look at
weather forecasts, for example, certainly those beyond 48 hours duration. More
seriously we are each of us to some degree engaged with the often confusing
attempts to predict the longer-term causes and impacts of ‘global warming’.
The question of how to agree public policy or corporate strategy in the midst

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