Page 24 - Managing Change in Organizations

Carnch01v3.qxd 3/30/07 4:08 PM Page 7

Implementation
measures, for which they propose a two-by-two matrix looking at motivation and
knowledge and competencies on one dimension, and change drivers and obsta-
cles on the other dimension.

Implementation

This leads on to an outline of the whole question of implementation and the idea
of an index of change readiness. But what dimensions to include in such an
index? In short, implementation could be defined as those processes needed for
designing and organizing the process of change to be effective. So how can we
judge the effectiveness of change?
Why do some change programmes succeed and others fail? Why can some com-
panies achieve change quickly and others not at all? Why do more and more com-
panies see leadership and culture as defining issues in success or failure? Why are
we most concerned to establish the process of change properly? Why do changing
organizations concern themselves about values and benchmarking? Is not the cen-
tral issue for successful change that of ‘reading’ the environment right and putting
in place a competitive business model? Is there not a case for saying that in many
strategic changes the most important thing is to define the right business model
and replicate it accurately? Are we really convinced with the ‘no one best way’
argument? This has it that any of a range of business models can be appropriate,
and therefore one should concern oneself mostly with the human-centred model.
Throughout my working career in the business school world I have often met
this dilemma. Managers are often seen as unable or unwilling to take the human-
centred view seriously. Could it be that in reality some of this is about people
arguing for the adoption of the human-centred view and not considering the
‘task-centred’ view seriously enough? Might there not in fact be ‘one best way’,
or at least only a few variants of ‘one best way’? If so, getting managers to focus
only on the so-called human issues is unlikely to be meaningful.
The socio-technical systems school was an early attempt to resolve this issue. It
held that joint optimization was the relevant goal but then principally focused on

work-group organization as a prime work organization design innovation. Any exam-
ination of outcomes from change projects based on this concept demonstrates that
the increased flexibility arising is often a source of significantly enhanced perform-
ance. Employee satisfaction often also improves. And this leads to a further dilemma.
Why do academic observers and consultants so often perceive attempts at change to
be failures? Boonstra (2004) makes this very point. In the USA by far the majority of
attempts to redesign business processes fail. The development of new strategies runs
aground in 75 per cent of cases. Research in The Netherlands indicates that 70 per
cent or more of change programmes lead to ‘insufficient results’.
And yet this perception surely flies in the face of the evidence. Industries
and sectors have been transformed in recent years. We re-engineer hospitals,
government itself and the great companies of the world. Ford was very different
in the year 2000 compared with, say, 1960. Is anyone seriously arguing that the
privatized British Telecommunications plc of today’s world has not gone through
dramatic change since privatization? Or British Airways?

7