Page 333 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Chapter 17 ■ Culture models and organization change

future success of the business, the company has attempted to engender a sense of
urgency about the need for dramatic change. Also much attention has been paid to the
need to create new values based on trust, openness and honesty. Early on it was recog-
nized that culture change cannot be achieved without fundamental change to how the
business operates. Projects have been used to change the way people manage.
However, it is also recognized that mind-set change lies at the core of the needed
changes. In particular, the attempt to create a new and shared mind-set requires atten-
tion to creating a sense of urgency, opening minds to what the competition is doing but
most of all focusing effort on action projects which can have an impact on the business
and which over time may lead to the growth of solidarity.
Here we see an attempt to use changed behaviour as the basic building block of cul-
ture change. In summary, the new behaviour includes cascade communications, dia-
logue across all levels of the business, cross-boundary working, a new focus on asset
management, benchmarking and so on. Not least of Philips’ ambition is to reinvent its
culture to emphasize behaviour such as risk-taking, creativity, etc.

Managing corporate politics

We have now seen that achieving change requires us to manage effectively in cir-
cumstances which include problems of organizational culture, organizational pol-
itics and the need to help people to cope with the pressures and anxieties created.
All this creates great uncertainty. In this chapter, we extend our discussion by
looking at the politics of change and how they can be managed.
Before commencing this task there is one point which deserves emphasis.
Changes in organizations are rarely, if ever, neat. One can rarely identify a clear
starting point or a clear end. The trends and pressures to which we respond are
ongoing. Discussion moves forward at varying speeds and in different arenas.
There is nothing new under the sun! The ideas incorporated in any particular
change will have been considered elsewhere, for other purposes, by other people.
Thus it is that organizational change is more process (and muddy process at that)
than event.
To organize our discussion of the use of political skills in the management of
change I present a simple model in Table 17.1. Managers and others utilize a vari-
ety of resources as they engage in the politics of organization. They may have for-
mal authority (or may be perceived as having such) by virtue of their positions
in the organization. Moreover, they may have direct control over resources. The
use of resources to negate change efforts is widely observed. If a change pro-
gramme needs engineering resources, and if the engineering manager can with-
hold those resources (perhaps by claiming that other priorities must prevail),
then the change programme will be delayed.
Control of information, agenda and access are all important political
resources. It is commonplace to state that ‘information is power’. This applies in
two main senses: power to control the organization internally, and power in
regard to the development of policies for the future. Control over the organiza-
tion is essential for control over policy. This point is made eloquently by Henry

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