Page 102 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Emerging thinking about organizational change
of high levels of uncertainty is not new but increasingly it looms large as our
global political–legal–economic activities become both more complex and
more interconnected.
Fraher (2004) and Pascale (1990) both seek to show how organizations adapt
not by valuing consensus above all but rather by stimulating innovation through
processes emphasizing tension, contention and conflict and debate. Emery
(2004) goes well beyond this position in presenting an analysis of open systems
theory-based action research as an enabler of learning and change.
Emery’s starting point is that learning is essential to sustainable change.
Second she argues that to achieve sustainable change practitioners (here she
means the organizational development practitioner) must work with people at all
levels of the organization involved; from senior executives to customer-facing
staff. Moreover all levels and functional areas must be involved in some sort of
process within which they can engage with this learning (not an identical process
please note). This creates problems for some practitioners who may, for example,
be members of an ‘elite’ with their own ‘language’, frameworks and meaning sys-
tems. In reality it can be hard work to operate collaboratively, at least in the per-
ception of the often thousands of employees involved and impacted by a set of
intended changes, whatever the intentions of those involved.
For sustainable change to be achieved every step of the process must lead to
learning which engages and energizes action (see Strebel (2000) and Collins
(2001)). But people learn at different rates and through different learning styles.
Also, and inevitably, people positioned differently in any large organization have
very different learning opportunities depending on many factors, for example
the nature of their roles, variable access to information and experience and so on.
Thus the crews of the early space missions organized by NASA developed knowl-
edge and experience others could not access in the same way. The early trans-
plant surgeons similarly. Clearly in both cases they were supported by teams and
operated within an evidence-based system designed to capture and codify the
data such that it could be shared. This is important but nevertheless it is hard not
to conclude that, in the midst of complexity and uncertainty, when we think
about engaging people in learning and change processes and activities we are

going to do so in varying ways and at differing stages of the process because
knowledge and experience is variably distributed. None of this is to argue that we
should not engage with people at all levels during a period of change. Rather it
is to note that saying so begs a range of questions to do with who, why, when
and in which ways, through which mechanisms and so on.
For Emery, however, the key idea is ‘diffusive learning’. Diffusive learning is
that form of learning which motivates the learner to recreate the learning envi-
ronment for others. This is particularly interesting because it links powerfully to
a study by Kelman (2005). He uses the diffusion of innovation literature and in
particular the seminal work of Rogers (1995) noting that this literature takes dif-
ferences of opinions about innovation seriously. Rather than label people as
‘resistant to change’ Rogers views people as ranging from enthusiasts to critics.
Some are ‘early adopters’ and Kelman refers to them as the ‘change vanguard’.
This is very important in practice when he combines this notion along with the
identification of people as ‘opinion leaders’ within organizations.

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