Page 98 - Managing Change in Organizations

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Emerging thinking about organizational change
price in December 2005 had fallen below $19, the lowest level since 1982. Is this
a business challenged by customer expectations regarding design and price?
When such dramatic examples are considered the partial approaches listed above
seem unconvincing at best.

Emerging thinking about organizational change

Piore and Sable (1984) long ago argued that only decentralized firms have the nec-
essary flexibility, skills and commitment to respond to sudden shifts. A number of
theorists have developed ideas which are often labelled as ‘postmodernism’.
Modernism was the emergence of rational, objective science combined with an
underlying belief in human progress. Historians refer to the ‘enlightenment’
which comprised the evolution of laws and knowledge conducive to human
progress given rise to, but also given effect by, the application of science to the
study of human problems.
Postmodernism self-evidently is thought to ‘replace’ modernism. Darwin,
Johnson and McAuley (2002) make useful distinctions between critical theory,
postmodernism and complexity theory. We now take each in turn noting that
each seeks different ends while emerging out of a very similar critique of tradi-
tional theory in this field.

Critical theory

This body of theory relates not to the notion of criticism (of prior theory) but
rather to a social constructivist critique of positivism. The idea that management
is a neutral, technocratic discipline is rejected (Willmott, 1984). Relying on the
work of Habermas (1974) critical theory seeks to understand how knowledge is
derived, identifying two knowledge domains, one of which arises out of our
human practices of interpersonal life, and a third knowledge domain emerging
out of our capacity for reflection.
Now it is clear enough that most thinking about strategy is based on a com-

mitment to positivist thinking. This holds true whether we examine Kay (1993),
Mintzberg (1994), Whittington (2001) or Mansfield (1986) even though these
authors start from very different positions in terms of discipline and perspective.
Alternatively Darwinist style formulations examining forms of adaptation are
presented (Porter, 1985), or more specifically Hannan and Freeman (1983), look-
ing at the population ecologist idea of selection via ‘survival of the fittest’. More
recently, of course, Hamel and Prahalad (1994) have examined organizations
achieving rapid strategic change in terms of ‘strategic fit’ or of the evolution of
new ‘strategic competencies’. In essence, albeit perhaps to differing degrees, these
approaches are based on the assumption of an objective reality which, once
understood, can be exploited by organizations.
Critical theorists view strategy writing as having been dominated by a positivist
logic (see Stacey,1996; Alvesson and Willmott, 1992). It seems obvious that knowl-
edge is socially constructed. Therefore ‘strategy talk’, if dominated by owners or by
senior executives, is socially constructed by them and will not necessarily reflect

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