Page 89 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Chapter 4 ■ Theories of change: traditional models
conceived of organizational change as requiring the active participation of
those directly involved in and effected by intended changes. Lewin viewed
change as a process of problem solving through social action, essentially dia-
logue. But while this may well work at the level of the individual and the
group how can this be made to work where scale, including geography, is
involved? In reality as the focus has moved to an organization-wide scope OD
practitioners may have needed to become more directive. But this would need
to be based on the assumption that all those involved are willing to see change
introduced. This may ignore the reality of organizational politics (Wilson,
1992). But this may only present a problem for those who view OD practi-
tioners as operating within a set of values in which participation of all is a pre-
condition to effective change. Some mistakenly label these values as
democratic ignoring the reality that, depending on the form of democracy,
those who are governed often disapprove of at least some of the policies of the
governing elite. Views differ. Policy choice and organizational choice rarely
can be both successful and satisfy everyone involved.

OD certainly represents an enormously influential mode of thinking about and
practice in the change management field. It has focused attention on the people
and behavioural issues in change management and provided a wealth of tech-
niques to help organizations do so in an evidence-based way. By doing so it has
helped us take into account the possible consequences of implementing change
and provided the means for at least considering and working with these conse-
quences. The impact of OD on organizational practice should not be under-
estimated but we should note that the work of OD has typically been based on
the assumption that the changes to be made cannot be modified too substan-
tially, rather the task of OD was to find ways of helping people and organizations
to implement change in a sensible way, given the human dimension involved.
One exception ought to be noted here, that of systems theory.

Systems theory

Systems theory is claimed by its adherents to take the whole system into account
as the basic unit of analysis, though rarely is this achieved in reality. The socio-
technical systems theory school originally based at the Tavistock Institute of
Human Relations in the UK was for many years the leading institutional base for
research and thinking. Researchers such as Trist, Emery, Rice and others proposed
to optimize jointly the social and technical subsystems in work settings. In effect
the claim was that there exists a range of technological possibilities and options
in any given setting. Thus ‘organizational choice’ exists. By going for a less than
optimal technological design you might achieve, overall, a more effective design
where the design chosen created more satisfying and meaningful work, thus
avoiding other performance inhibiting behaviour like absenteeism. If you look at
Emery and Trist (1963) you can see just how attractive this theoretical stance
proved to be, but you can also see its limit.
Emery and Trist (1963) is a study of mechanized coal mining. By contrasting dif-
ferent levels of technology the researchers were able to show that some technology
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