Why Organizational Change Fails

Robustness, Tenacity, and Change in Organizations

Leike van Oss, Jaap van 't Hek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136718342
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Sviluppo organizzativo
• Index: Business

Change in organizations can arise spontaneously, or it can begin in response to a planned process of change. Even planned change is not as predictable as one might like it to be; it is often partial or incomplete, or the results of change may not be what one hoped. The aspects of an organization that resist change can be vital to an organization's success, helping to keep it firm, stable, and robust.

Why Organizational Change Fails aims to make change managers and OD consultants sensitive to signals of the robust part of an organization, helping them to see something different than they usually see: signs of change. The authors distinguish two aspects of stability in organisations: robustness and tenacity. Robustness is the ability of organisations to remain stable under changing conditions. Tenacity is the reaction of a robust system to planned change. Each of these aspects has its own unique qualities and value within organizations. In the book, the authors describe three aspects of robustness: social, cognitive and political. They also describe healthy and unhealthy forms. Tenacity is described in three patterns: bouncing back, smothering and calculating.

Each chapter of the book is preceded by an essay written by a leading scientist designed to help provide real-world context for the process of change and offering insights for the reader on either side of the change equation.

Part I

Robustness

In Part I we describe the phenomenon of robustness: an organization’s capacity to shape and protect their individual character. It is the characteristic feature that sets an organization apart. In the first chapter we set out a theory of robustness, and in the following three chapters we go on to describe the way robustness is formed through social, cognitive, and political aspects of sensemaking, respectively.

1 Robustness

During the time that we were writing this book, we took a walk through a landscape that one of us knew from his past, but where he had not been for more than thirty years. To his delight and surprise, nothing had changed. This was obviously not entirely the case, as many of the trees that stand there now had not been there thirty years ago. Why, then, did he perceive the landscape as “unchanged”? The answer to this question lies in the fact that the fundamental pattern of the landscape has not changed. The alternation between forest and meadow is the same; the mixed forest of oak, beech, birch, larch, and pine is the same; the tranquility is the same; the sandy footpaths are the same. Preserving the landscape in this state requires maintaining the fundamental pattern of paths and occasionally replacing a bench. Things do change, therefore, but such change is usually in the interest of what is already there. Nature lends a hand as well. During these thirty years, old trees have died but new ones have appeared. The effect is a sense of continuity.

Obviously, many more changes occur in nature than the occasional death of one tree and the growth of another. Each season brings its own changes. We were there in the fall; six months later, in the spring, it would have looked entirely different. This cycle—this perpetually recurring change—also provides a sense of continuity.

In organizations, we can observe a similar continuity, which appears to be founded on a balance between adaptation and stability. If you look back over an organization’s history you will see that many things have changed, while many others have not. In their book, Spelen met Betekenis (Playing with Meaning), Ruud Voigt and Willem van Spijker (2003) discuss change in government organizations and explore various approaches and the factors that contribute to the success or failure of these approaches. The authors describe how change and preservation go hand in hand:

We work with organizations that are marked by innovation and continuity and that, like ourselves, are struggling with these forces. In our stories, we hope to show the great extent to which government organizations are changing. At the same time, bureaucratic organizations are characterized by stubborn continuity. In some cases, this could serve as evidence that nothing fundamental has changed in these organizations. We are of the opinion, however, that bureaucracies, with all their certainties and fixed rituals, offer considerable space for innovation. There can be no innovation without structure. The certainty and security of several elements of bureaucracy allows people in government organizations to accept radical change. (p.249)

It is not only in historical perspective that we can clearly see how much has remained the same despite the many changes that have taken place. The same balance can be observed in the present.

For example, consider the secretarial pool in a large organization, in which a group of secretaries are working for a number of managers and policy workers, each with a unique division of tasks and a fixed way of working. Within these patterns rests the capacity to respond to changes that occur each year. For example, the secretaries know that they will receive an enormous mountain of work right before most of their “customers” leave for a vacation, but this will be followed by several fairly calm weeks. This time can be used for archiving. They also know that the hectic Christmas-card period will begin in November and that everything will be relatively calm again around Christmas. They are aware of events that recur each year, and they adapt their working methods accordingly.

Incidental adaptations take place as well. For example, new managers often bring different questions and demands. These questions and demands are incorporated into the existing way of working. None of these events or external demands changes the core of the work pattern, but they do lead to adaptation.

We use the term robustness to refer to the balance between stability and adaptation in the interest of such stability. Because of robustness, the fundamental pattern of the organization remains the same. Robustness is therefore the capacity of an organization to retain its core characteristics under changing conditions. For this to be possible, robustness must have two sides: existing patterns and routines, on the one hand, and the capacity to create and preserve them, on the other. In some situations, organizations need to be able to adapt to external influences in order to guarantee stability.

Robustness is a capacity that remains invisible unless we focus on it. Robustness is what the organization normally is, in the same way that the landscape normally exists. The robustness of the landscape is noticeable only when something has changed, or when one returns to it after many years, only to find that very little appears to have changed at all. The same is true of robustness in organizations: it is only when our attention is drawn to it that we notice it.

1.1 Change and Unchangeability as System Characteristics

Robustness is a capacity. Describing robustness requires theories that provide insight into how organizations build and maintain themselves. To this end, we draw upon insights from social constructivism, as this perspective provides insight into the ways in which people jointly create organizations and shape them into cohesive, stable entities. These notions can also be used to describe how it is possible for change and unchangeability to exist simultaneously in organizations.

From the social-constructivist perspective, people create their own realities through interaction with others. In the context of organizations, Karl Weick (1979) refers to these processes as “organizing.” According to Weick, organizing is the core activity with which organizations are built and maintained. Organizing consists of the processes of sensemaking, which people use to interpret information from their surroundings and transform their interpretations into a created reality. This reality subsequently provides direction for behavior, which reinforces the created reality.

Sensemaking consists of three phases (Weick, 1979): enactment, selection, and retention. Sensemaking begins with the moment at which people notice something in their surroundings that is unfamiliar to them. According to Weick (1995), this involves three types of disturbances: unexpected occurrences, occurrences that are expected but that do not take place, and processes that are interrupted. In each of these cases, attention is drawn to something that is unfamiliar and to which a meaning must be assigned. The drawing of this attention marks the enactment phase of sensemaking, the phase in which information is actively identified and selected. Weick refers to this process as “bracketing.” In the selection phase, information that has been placed “in brackets” is positioned alongside schemas that exist in people’s minds, in order to arrive at an explanation for the phenomenon. The explanation that is found is registered in the retention phase. The retention phase subsequently provides direction for what was identified in the enactment phase and what served as comparative material in the selection phase. Not every disturbance is noticed. Only that which is registered as a construct in the retention phase and which actually allows space for identifying the disturbance is noticed. Sensemaking is therefore a self-reinforcing and self-confirming social process.

Figure 1.1 Sensemaking (adapted from Weick, 1979).

Sensemaking entails both the capacity to change and the capacity to preserve. Active enactment and selection allows people to use sensemaking to adapt their realities and to change their behavior accordingly. What is registered in the retention phase ensures the selective identification and interpretation of information. Sensemaking therefore has a closed character, which reinforces individual views of reality and serves to strengthen rather than to change.

Sensemaking is thus both a source of change and a source of preservation and continuity.

Figure 1.2 Stability and change.

As shown in Figure 1.2, both capacities—the capacity to bring about change and the capacity to build stability—are always present. In this chapter and throughout this book, we focus on the latter capacity: the capacity to build stability and to preserve.

1.2 The Formation of Robustness

Robustness is the capacity of an organization to remain the same in terms of its core characteristics under changing conditions. Every organization develops this robust capacity, which is applied to build, strengthen, and preserve the organization. As the process becomes more ingrained, robustness increasingly becomes a characteristic of the organization.

It is seldom possible to observe how robustness develops within an organization from the very beginning. In order to understand robustness well, however, it is helpful to know the process through which it is shaped. Further insight into processes of sensemaking can help provide a better overview. In the rest of this chapter, we will therefore delve deeper into this subject and conclude by describing a practical example of the emergence of an organization and its robustness.

1.2.1 Sensemaking

People are constantly looking for ways of making sense of the phenomena that occur around them. Doing this makes the world clear and understandable to them. Meaning is an indispensible element in this process. Without meaning, the world is incomprehensible to people and therefore uncertain and unmanageable.

Imagine that your colleagues occasionally break offtheir conversations and retreat to a conference room when you enter the room. They never invite you to join them, and they are secretive about what they are discussing. You would obviously like to know what they are discussing and whether it involves you. When your questions are met with evasive reactions, you become insecure. Left in the dark, you start coming up with your own explanations for their behavior toward you in isolation, and your performance is likely to suffer as a result.

Sensemaking is less an individual activity than it is a collective form of information processing. Together, people are continually passing through the three phases of enactment, selection, and retention in order to make the world understandable. It is this interaction that leads to the convergence of personal images. In this way, a common, shared reality emerges—a created world that is not objective but constructed socially by people. What is created, in its turn, determines the direction of people’s behavior. Since people have created a common meaning together, they also know how they should act within this meaning, and this makes it easier for them to be effective within it. People are thus both the object and the subject of their own construct: they play a role in a story that they write themselves.

Imagine that you are travelling with a group of people that you do not know in an inhospitable area, offthe beaten tourist track. You camp and eat together, and you need each other in order to travel around. In the initial stages of the trip, the group searches for ways of camping, eating, and traveling that are suited to the area and for the best way in which to work together. Each form of behavior that contributes to this effort is retained. The behaviors that prove unsuccessful are discarded. In this way, the group discovers which behaviors are appropriate, and they interpret the surroundings and the contributions by and relationships among members. In this way, routines emerge that the group members can feel confident about and which are effective in the surroundings in which they find themselves. In the process of acting, they find out which one of them is best at making fires, at cooking food, and at setting up camp. They also know whom to avoid in the mornings or how to deal with one group member who tends to get dispirited. They divide the different tasks among themselves and avoid encroaching on each other’s terrain. They also accept leadership and guidance from each other on the basis of this division of tasks. As subjects, and in the course of their travels, these people have given shape and meaning to their cooperation. At the same time, they are also the objects of this form of cooperation. It is important for them to continue to display the behavior that has proven effective. What has been created thus determines the direction of their own behavior.

The frequent interaction also leads to the emergence of emotional and problem-solving experiences that are recognized as mutual. As observed by De Moor (1995), “We come to realize that we somehow belong with each other. A common awareness of mutuality and single-mindedness emerges.” People become attached to what has been created, and they adhere to the corresponding rules of the game.

1.2.2 Constructs

The result of sensemaking processes consists of constructed images of reality: constructs. That which is registered is highly diverse, as is the form of the constructs. Weick (1995) conducted an inventory of concepts appearing in the literature that he considered to fall under the category of construct (with regard to meaning). The list includes ideologies, third-order controls, paradigms, theories of action, and stories.

• Ideologies are “shared, relatively coherently interrelated sets of emotionally charged beliefs, values, and norms that bind some people together and help them to make sense of the world” (Beyer in Weick, 1995, p.111). They describe the values and norms that provide direction for behavior within organizations.

• Third-order controls are constructs that, according to Weick, include the “taken-for-granted assumptions” of the organization (Schein). These assumptions act as unconscious control mechanisms for behavior. Weick also refers to them as “professional blind spots.” They include convictions that are assumed to be true.

• Paradigms consist of broad intellectual visions—worldviews—into which fundamental cognitive schemas and values are closely woven. Paradigms are the convictions that provide direction for professional behavior.

• Theories of action (Argyris) are sets of rules that individuals use to explain their own behavior, as well as the behavior of others. Theories of action are cognitive organizational structures that direct the behavior of people within organizations.

• A tradition is a conviction from the past that is passed along to subsequent generations. Within a tradition there are convictions...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface to the English Edition
• Preface
• Part I Robustness
• Part II Tenacity
• Part III Perspectives
• Appendix A: Social-Constructivism
• Appendix B: Overview
• About the Authors
• About the Contributing Authors
• References
• Index