Page 96 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Introduction
management knowledge’. For these authors ‘successful management in the
future must be based on intelligence and creativity and the capacity to question
and learn’. Moreover, there is a constant need to seek an appropriate balance
between continually confronting uncertainty, paradox, trade-offs and contin-
gencies and the need for balance, direction and motivation. More simply, exec-
utives must learn how to combine continual change with the ability to sustain
‘business as usual’.
One organizational model designed for such a purpose is the ‘virtual organiza-
tion’ (Nohria and Berkely, 1994). Project-based, this model emphasizes peer group
working rather than ‘command and control’. Behaviour is mediated through def-
initions of desired outcomes and the creation of the conditions for those engaged
to accept of accountability rather than by rules, procedures and orders. The
accountability question is likely to be answered largely via market solutions. Do
virtual organizations exist? Well, where organizations work together over long
periods of time the combination of those involved may take on some at least of
the characteristics of virtual organizations. Certainly, where activity is based on
the use of data in a digitized form structures are being created which possess some
of these features (airline booking systems, Ebay?). Traditional organization designs
derive from assumptions about behaviour and motivation which may no longer
be relevant in a world of networked databases, e-mail, remote access and so on.
Technology presents an ‘enabling mechanism’ allowing time and geography to be
merged, facilitating the speeding up of information flows.
But what does this mean for the management of change? Of course, one
assumption inherent in the change management idea is that someone knows
the appropriate organizational arrangements to change to and why. While this
point is often dissected by theorists into questions of strategy, organization
design and human resources including reward, motivation and so on it is worth
stating that the essence of this assumption relates to the questions of organiza-
tion or business model. The central question facing people seeking to change an
existing organization is one of identifying an appropriate model with which to
offer products or services. This requires decisions of which products/services, to
which customers, at what prices, through which delivery channels or systems,

when and in what quantities (noting here that for some rationing is a key ele-
ment of the model). Whatever the context, these questions need to be resolved
effectively if stakeholders and/or customers are to be satisfied.
You can immediately add the question of in whose interests are these judge-
ments to be made but it is at least possible that the switch from the corporatist
to the market solution changes the nature of that question. Here we must note
that this is a significant simplification. Economic categories such as feudalism,
globalization, corporatism and so on do not provide a means of straightforward
analysis. Historians argue over the problem of how to create meaningful datelines
for their purposes. But that ought not to matter for our purpose here so long as
we note that the emerging dominance of market solutions around the world may
not be permanent, is certainly not emerging consistently around the world and
still leaves many real questions open.
To return then to our theme. Can we assume that someone knows what to do
next? On what basis would such a view be judged? Only on results? Surely this is

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