Change, Conflict and Community

Barbara Kenton, Suzanne Penn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781136422157
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The cost to business of unresolved conflicts is high; tribunals, loss of productivity, resignations and damaged reputations are serious consequences for all concerned. With increased organizational change in the form of changes in leadership, restructuring, downsizing, matrix management, mergers, acquisitions and systems changes comes increased political activity and the potential for either increased learning and growth or tension and unproductive conflict.Change agents, HR practitioners and managers need to be skilled at empowering others to use or resolve conflict effectively for a more productive working environment and greater employee satisfaction. Change, Conflict and Community takes readers through the essential theory and hands-on practice of working with change and conflict by considering: * How we can increase our understanding of the tensions that often exist when change is ever present in the organization
* How to work more effectively with the dynamic relationship between change and conflict
* How the idea of "community" can help us to work with the energy of change and human interactionBarbara Kenton is a freelance consultant and Director of WHooSH Whole Systems Health. She is an experienced consultant, mediator, facilitator, coach and trainer with over 25 years' experience as a manager and development specialist working with individuals, teams and organizations both in the UK and internationally. She has published a number of articles on the role of the internal consultant and challenges facing those in HR. She is a qualified workplace and community mediator.Suzanne Penn is an independent consultant, facilitator and coach with 20 years' experience in the HR and Organization Development field. She has worked as an internal and an external practitioner across all sectors and industries in the UK, mainland Europe and the US. A previous Assistant Director at Roffey Park Management Institute, she brings to this book particular expertise in leadership development, group facilitation, strategic HR and organizational change and culture. The HR Series The HR Series is edited by Julie Beardwell, Principal Lecturer in Human Resource Management at DeMonfort University, and Linda Holbeche, Director of Research and Policy at CIPD, and is designed to plug the gap between theory and implementation. The books draw on live examples of strategic HR in practice and offer practical insights into how to transform individual and functional delivery to improve value-added. Intended for serious HR professionals who aspire to make a real difference within their organization, The HR Series provides resources to inform, empower and inspire the HR leaders of the future.

1

Introduction

The context of this book

What we’ve got now is a continuous turbulence in the organization which needs us to be ready to be changing, changing our focus, changing what we do, how we think, as we go. And that means you have to be looking at this in HR as something which goes beyond the ‘we ’ll do a special project and stop’. Now, it’s not about changing organizations, it’s about changing people and people being ready for change all the time and I think that’s the atmosphere that HR needs to create in organizations today.

Vicky Wright, CIPD President (CIPD Podcast 9 Jan 2007)

As managers and HR practitioners supporting others through change, it is essential that we are able to work with change effectively, but what does ‘effectively’ really mean? We need organizations to thrive rather than just survive, to deliver the services and products needed, and to be sustainable in the long term. Corporations are tasked with achieving shareholder value. Many of us might also believe that we need organizations to contribute positively to our society in other ways, by creating places of work that are satisfying, motivating and contribute to our individual and collective well-being. We have high expectations of our organizations and high expectations of our ability to handle change including a corporate ability to contribute towards the environment and society as a whole.

How effective are we at working with change in our organizations? It is often reported that we are not good enough at it, primarily because bottom line targets are not always achieved as a result of the changes designed to deliver on them. We are told for example that over 40% of reorganizations fail to meet their objectives (Whittington and Molloy, 2005). It is suggested that we are improving, but we still have many challenges: ‘Organizations are getting better in the earlier stages of change but find it difficult to learn and consolidate’ (Garrow and Stirling, 2007). There is little doubt that large scale changes are hard work to achieve. It is also true that there are people adapting, responding and shaping the future of their organizations every day in myriad smaller ways and there are many organizations where change is achieved in one way or another, with improved performance as a result. Part of our judgement about whether we handle change well, is to do with whether specific objectives have been achieved. Sometimes we fail to achieve our intended aims, sometimes those aims and goals prove to have been unachievable, or the context has shifted and they are less relevant. Another measure of success may be the experience of individuals and groups through that change. Did we manage to bring the best out of people? Did we work effectively together to achieve changes? How well did we manage the emotional ups and downs of change? With these less tangible aspects of change, it is hard to demonstrate one way or the other how well we have done. From most people’s experience, and perhaps on most people’s ‘wish list’, would be the desire for organizational change to be a more positive, energizing, productive and creative aspect of life than it is now.

What is the place of conflict within our ‘perfect’ picture of change?

Change in organizations is a collective enterprise and it asks for the best of us, our creativity, our effort and our human collaboration, in order collectively to reshape and redefine how we do what we do. At the same time, it is also capable of bringing out the worst of us, in tension, disagreement, conflict and fear. There is a tendency to assume that if we get change right, the shadow side of who we are should not somehow be there, that ‘conflict’ means we have got the change management process wrong in some way. Or perhaps we may take the view that in any change there will inevitably be winners and losers; that we can never make everyone happy but, nevertheless, we need to push the changes through and ride out the waves of resistance and angst. Between these two positions are many choices about change and how we view conflict in relation to it.

Just as the challenge of change is not going to disappear, neither is the challenge of conflict, however much we might prefer to avoid it.

We see signs of conflict within organizations in many different ways. A classic example is that of industrial relations disputes. In the UK, at the time of writing, the police are considering their options for dealing with a pay dispute and their right to strike against the government’s decisions. There are, however, many other manifestations of conflict within organizations which are far less obvious. For example, conflict between teams, arguments and stand-offs between individuals, resistance to change, harassment, grievances, disagreements, the ‘silent’ treatment and so on. We have all experienced it in one way or another. Some conflicts are a direct result of change; in other instances, conflict or dissatisfaction itself has created change and these notions are explored more in the book. Then there is the internal conflict that can be experienced by individuals during change, the emotional roller-coaster that does not always get noticed either by the individual or those around them. It is these dynamics between conflict and change which our book seeks to explore.

The aim of this book

Our interest is in the dynamic nature of change, particularly as it relates to conflict and human relationships. We take a broad view of change, encompassing transformational, large scale change and small incremental everyday changes and adaptations. In addition, we recognize, as in Vicky Wright’s statement at the beginning of this section, that change is a part of our everyday life, rather than simply a linear series of initiatives that we can start and complete. Our focus is primarily on the relationship between change and conflict, the underlying assumptions that might be made about these two concepts, the human aspects in relation to organizational life and the considerations that could usefully be made by those of us working in support of organizational growth and learning.

Our curiosity in writing this book has been:

■ How can we better understand the tensions that often exist when change is ever present in the organization?

■ How can we work more effectively with the dynamic relationship between change and conflict?

■ What other possibilities are there for how we work with the energy of change and of human interaction? How does the idea of ‘community’ help us with this?

The book is about being in the ‘thick’ of change; we are not concerned about how to do it perfectly, but rather how to deal with our experience of it and how it affects us as people; how to do the best we can, in the contexts in which we are working. This may include resolving conflicts where needed, learning to live with them, and/or using the positive energy of conflict to create change and improvement.

A lot of time and energy is spent on conflict and change in many ways. Our belief is that organizations and individuals can work with change, in ways which use our best energies. The road is rarely smooth, but we can make progress. Our wish is to contribute to enabling practical people to find a few ideas and approaches that may just help them down this road in the organizations in which they work.

Who is this book for?

This book is primarily aimed at HR practitioners who have a crucial role to play in working with change within their organizations.

Our experience of working with people in HR over many years shows us that there is still a lack of confidence, both within the HR function and on the part of their partners in the business, which can result in a more reactive and less responsive approach to change and conflict. Building confidence in these areas includes letting go of some of the more traditional, tried and tested approaches and entering the blue water of unknown territory. We could say that the culture and senior management population in some organizations is closed to allowing HR to work in a more emergent way within the organization, or we could hold a view which challenges this notion, rather seeing HR as the lever for change, an influential stakeholder who can support managers to think and act differently around change.

This book is intended to be helpful for HR practitioners in a proactive and a reactive sense, providing ideas, ways to understand change and conflict, and practical ideas for improving our readers’ confidence and competence at both. For HR professionals change and conflict present challenges in terms of their ability to work with the business strategy, create HR strategy and policy, advise line managers and, at the same time, manage change within their own function. We have written the book with all of these challenges in mind.

The book will also be useful for line managers looking for ideas and ways to understand change and conflict and the range of perspectives and options available to them.

Our readers will notice that we, at times, use the expression ‘change agents’. Our perspective is that both line managers and HR professionals often act in this capacity, and so the term is intended as an inclusive one for all.

Using this book

To put this book together we have drawn on our own experiences, the stories and experiences of colleagues and clients, and a range of research reports, books and articles. We have included short examples of people’s experience of change, conflict and community in boxed sections throughout the text. In addition, there are a number of longer case studies that appear after the main body of the book.

Our intention is to be primarily practical in our writing in order to help the reader deal with issues and opportunities that arise. We have, however, placed importance on understanding some of the principles behind how change and conflict are constructed. These are drawn from a range of different perspectives, as we have been keen to present some up-to-date thinking about the concepts, as well as to explain some more classical approaches. Our view is that, although we both have our preferred ways of looking at change, all of these perspectives are helpful in different ways, for different situations and we encourage readers to take a holistic and practical view on the range of ideas offered. What we most encourage is for the reader to be open to new possibilities and to draw their own conclusions. Where you disagree with us, we hope you will use that to stimulate your own thoughts and actions about change and conflict.

The book covers a breadth of subjects within the overall aim of understanding the relationship between change and conflict, and our choices for community or other ways of working as people together in organizations. It cannot, therefore, be comprehensive on all of the subjects and we have provided a bibliography and list of useful resources and websites at the end of the book for further reference.

We understand that readers often like to dip in and out of books, and the chapters are, therefore, relatively self-contained to facilitate this. There is, however, a natural flow to the book, effectively a circular one (Figure 1.1), as we explain, with brief chapter outlines, below.

Figure 1.1 Change, conflict and the community

Our starting point is Making Sense of Change in Chapter 2. Here, we take the reader through some critical questions about change in order to refresh and promote some new thinking about how we understand and work with it. We pose some questions for practitioners and change agents to ask in order to promote greater understanding of change in their organization.

Chapter 3 then looks at Patterns Past and takes a view on conflict as part of the organizational culture and considers how this impacts on ways of handling change. We discuss the concept of the toxic organization and the cellular memory of organizations; how the history and ways of dealing with change in the past can leave an imprint or pattern which determines how things are dealt with in the future.

We then move on to look at the relationship between Change and Conflict more directly in Chapter 4, to show how they are inextricably linked. We consider how the pace of organizational evolution impacts on people, their role and motivation both positively and negatively. We look at how conflict is manifested in organizations from the more overt industrial actions to lower level unrest and the potential cost of conflict if left unresolved. In this chapter, we also look in more detail at the rise in political behaviour within the organization.

With a greater understanding of change and conflict, we then move into ways of Resolving Conflicts in Chapter 5. We help the reader to see ways in which organizations typically address change and conflict issues through the strategies adopted, either planned or emergent. We highlight the benefits and drawbacks of a number of different approaches. Chapter 6 focuses on mediation in particular, as a way of moving From Conflict to Collaboration in addressing or heading off potential conflicts.

Having explored practical approaches to dealing with conflict, Chapter 7 asks how we can learn from what has been happening in terms of change and conflict. We consider the challenge of Learning through Change, particularly in order to create an environment where people are able to learn from everyday occurrences, as well as identifying how learning can contribute powerfully to creating change. Specific approaches to learning are covered which can enable individuals and groups to improve their ability to learn from differences.

In Chapter 8, Energizing the Organization, we look at ways of working with change that draw the positive from conflict, seeing it as a source of energy and creativity. We explore approaches that can be used in everyday settings by line managers and HR professionals, as well as large group methodologies which create opportunities for dialogue and collaboration. Our exploration of different ways of working in organizations continues with Chapter 9, Holistically Healthy Organizations. Here, the book aims to take the reader to a more holistic view of organizations using the metaphor of open living systems and taking a body and spirit approach to looking at the organizations that we are creating and working within.

Chapter 10, finally, looks at The Bigger Picture: Community and considers organizations within the wider social setting. We look at the potential for viewing organizations from a different perspective, where we collaborate as a community and question what this might offer us as an alternative approach to the conflict we experience in organizations. We situate the organ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Series Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Making sense of change
• Chapter 3 Patterns past
• Chapter 4 Change and conflict – a chicken and egg debate?
• Chapter 5 Resolving conflicts
• Chapter 6 From conflict to collaboration
• Chapter 7 Learning through change
• Chapter 8 Energizing the organization
• Chapter 9 Holistically healthy organizations
• Chapter 10 The bigger picture: community
• Case studies
• Bibliography and Further Resources
• Index