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Chapter 13 ■ Managing major changes
understood, in part, as the outcome of processes of competition between these
rationalities expressed through the language, priorities and values of technolo-
gists, of accounting and finance, or from the perspectives of groups such as oper-
ational research, organizational development or personnel.
Proper study of organizational politics involves the examination of political
process, activity and skill, and the study of what we refer to as ‘professional
rationality’. There I depart somewhat from Pettigrew. For me the interest is on
professional rationality, being the language which represents the professional
technique (whether engineering, accounting, personnel or operational research).
It is somewhat simplistic to equate interest groups with professional groups. In
our view the professional can be compelled to support one view of a problem
through use of the rationality into which he or she has been professionally social-
ized and yet, individually, may experience feelings which impel him or her to a
different view. As I shall argue later, changes in professional technique emerge
when the tensions so created lead individual professionals to question their roles.
An accountant can thus be aligned with engineers, personnel specialists and oth-
ers who form an interest group supporting a particular project. Rationality
emerges from professional technique, not simply from the emergence of interest
groups; the latter are altogether too unstable. Interest groups form around spe-
cific interests regarding policies, practices, power, status and authority.
Rationality comprises a means of dealing with the circumstances of a particular
professional practice and ways of articulating and legitimizing that practice.

Managing change
To understand how organizations are managed, experienced and changed we need
to understand their politics. In turn, this involves the examination of political
process, activity and skill. Why is the use of power and politics a necessary part of
managing change? Partly this is because of the departures from accepted norms:

Innovative accomplishments stretch beyond the established definition of a ‘job’
to bring new learning or capacity to the organisation. They involve change, a
disruption of existing activities, a redirection of organisational energies.
Kanter, 1983, page 21

Of course this is right, but the impetus to the use of power runs deeper. Any sig-
nificant organizational change demands that existing ways of thinking about
and talking about what we do can be overturned. Dominant views must be
usurped. Experience tells us that the first attempt to articulate an alternative
view, a novel concept, will frequently fall on barren ground. It will probably meet
opposition and even outright rejection. To overcome such opposition or rejec-
tion, neither logic nor evidence, nor the participation of all concerned, appears
to be enough. New ideas can seem unorthodox and even risky. A manager seek-
ing support for new ideas must be sensitive to political processes.
Kodak, once the dominant player in photographic film, saw competitors take
significant market share and through the late 1980s and early 1990s the com-
pany went through repeated restructuring, losing 40,000 jobs. While substantial
refocusing has been achieved, much turns on the success of digital imaging.

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