The Limits of Organizational Change

Herbert Kaufman

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351480062
• Edición: 2
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Business General

The environment of modern organizations is so complex and volatile that we take for granted that organizational change is necessary for organizational survival. Yet the literature on organizations has for years described manifold obstacles to such change. First published in 1971, this book extracts from that literature and from experience a comprehensive yet concise overview of those barriers. Because these elements of the analysis are as valid now as when they were originally written, The Limits of Organizational Change is still widely read and cited nearly a quarter-century later.

From the premises of this argument, Kaufman drew a number of conclusions about organizational survival and extinction, age and size, centralization and decentralization, and organizational evolution. Subsequent research and reflection induced him to refine and modify some of those inferences. The modifications are spelled out in a new preface that gives fresh relevance to his findings and his conjectures.

Yet The Limits of Organizational Change is not a ponderous, labored work. As one reviewer remarked, it is "a delightful set of essays... a review of empirical research in a witty, conversational style...." (The Rocky Mountain Social Science Journal). It is a book one can enjoy as well as profit from, and will be a useful tool for managers, organizational studies scholars, and sociologists.

1
Why Organizations Tend Not to Change

Organizational Mortality and Change

Organizations apparently die in great numbers. Admittedly, to define organizational death is not a simple matter (see Appendix). Nor do we have more than fragmentary and uncertain evidence about the mortality rate of organizations. Still, the impressions of thoughtful observers and such partial indicators as we have all seem to point toward a large death rate. Chester Barnard, for example, was not resorting to pure hyperbole when he declared that

successful cooperation in or by formal organizations is the abnormal, not the normal, condition. What are observed from day to day are the successful survivors among innumerable failures. . . . [Mjost cooperation fails in the attempt, or dies in infancy, or is short-lived. . . . Failure to cooperate, failure of cooperation, failure of organization, disorganization, disintegration, destruction of organization—and reorganization—are characteristic facts of human history.¹

Such data as we have on survival in the business world buttress this assertion. With a population of about four million business concerns in the United States, something approaching four hundred thousand of them have been discontinued annually in recent years. Many more tens of thousands disappear as a result of acquisition by other firms or mergers or the like. At the same time, more firms commence operations each year than are discontinued. Without more information, we cannot be sure of all the implications of these figures. Nevertheless, they suggest very strongly that the turnover among business organizations is very high.² If other kinds of organizations have corresponding experience, conditions that would be considered epidemic for complex biological organisms seem to be the norm for human collectivities.

This state of affairs is in some respects precisely the opposite of what we might expect. Biological organisms, after all, have many fixed and (up to now) unalterable traits; no matter how clever they become, no matter how ingenious they are at compensating for the limitations imposed by their fixed characteristics, they cannot escape them. In a dynamic world, it is understandable that these might in time prove lethal.

Biological organisms also have limited life spans. Sooner or later, excepting perhaps some species that reproduce exclusively by fission, they all must die.

Taking both factors into account, large numbers of deaths among complex biological organisms are to be anticipated.

Human organizations, on the other hand, are not self- evidently locked into particular characteristics as fixedly as organisms are by their respective genetic heritages. Theoretically, armed with all the knowledge and wisdom they can mobilize, they should be able to modify them selves, structurally and behaviorally, as a swiftly changing environment requires, and thus continue indefinitely once they have been started.

Moreover, they are not burdened, as far as we can tell, with fixed life spans. To be sure, why the life spans of organisms are limited, and why each species has its own distinctive limit, is still something of a mystery. Like organizations, organisms are open systems that continuously replace their constituent elements as these elements are used up or cast off. There are no universally accepted explanations of why the process, once begun, stops. That it should stop in human organizations, which enjoy so much freedom and discretion in the choice and deployment and use of materiel and personnel, is even more puzzling.

Yet organizations do cease to exist, and apparently in droves. Their rate of cessation probably equals or exceeds the death rates of human beings, at least in the industrialized parts of the world.

I do not propose to offer a comprehensive explanation of this curious set of circumstances. The causes of organizational death are doubtless too numerous and complicated to be treated briefly. All I shall do is indicate why it is that organizations, which presumably labor under fewer built-in constraints on structure and action than most organisms, are often in fact far less capable of changing than the presumption implies. In view of the fact that we live in a constantly changing world, it is reasonable to infer that the limitations on organizational change are contributing factors in the demise of some organizations. The discontinuation of organizations for this reason, even though it is not the only cause or even the most common one, has implications for organization theory; I shall explore these in the closing section of the book.

Let me emphasize that I am not contending that organizations must change continuously or die. It is conceivable (and perhaps probable, if the record of biological species is at all applicable) that an organization comes to occupy a relatively stable ecological niche in which it can survive and flourish for long periods without altering its structure or practice in any significant way. When this happens, change could be harmful and even fatal.

Nor do I intend to imply that change in organizations always conduces to the introduction of a new order. One can imagine, and doubtless find in history, cases in which immense inventiveness and resourcefulness were employed to preserve the status quo. Old orders may be maintained as well as transformed by originality and innovativeness.

In short, I am not saying that organizational change is invariably good or bad, progressive or conservative, beneficial or injurious. It may run either way in any given instance. But it is always confronted by strong forces holding it in check and sharply circumscribing the capacity of organizations to react to new conditions—sometimes with grave results. To seek the lessons in those forces and their consequences is the object of this little volume.

Barriers to Change

The causes of failure to change the behavior and/or structure of organizations when such rigidity turns out to be disadvantageous or even fatal can be grouped in three broad categories: acknowledged collective benefits of stability, calculated opposition to change, and inability to change. Let us look at each of them in turn.

Collective Benefits of Stability

Life in groups, especially in groups engaged in cooperative undertakings, is inconceivable without regularities of behavior, which is to say repetitive behavior. No group can stay together without such regularities; the absence of such regularities (if such a state can be imagined) would be the ultimate in disorganization. To live in association with other creatures thus requires acceptance of constraints.

Yet people apparently prefer living in groups to any imagined alternatives. Why? Some theorists answer in terms of rationality—the computation of the benefits of social living as contrasted with life in isolation, the blessings of security and enrichment one enjoys as consequence of cooperating with others. Some theorists explain this preference in terms of mankind’s social nature, which is to say the inseparability of human characteristics and achievements from the societies in which humans are nurtured. The theorists who rely on rationality to account for the formation of collectivities believe that individuals would choose to live together even if they could live apart. The others deny that human beings could live completely apart and still be human; they really do not have that choice. Whatever it is that brings and holds people together, however, all theorists agree that living together requires a great deal of regularized behavior. Social critics may object to a particular pattern of regularities, or to the ways the regularities are maintained. But even the most ardent individualists accept the need for regularities of some kind as a condition of human life.

At the organizational (as compared with the societal) level, this implicit understanding is the justification for routines, standard operating procedures, prescribed behaviors, and mandatory ways of communicating. If anyone would change them, the burden of proof is normally on him.³ What exists may have its defects, but disruption of the ongoing regularities could be even worse. Collective wisdom favors the status quo. Since some regularities are needed, and all required regularities have unpleasant features, why risk known imperfections for unknown ones? Why gamble an established imperfect order for possible disorder? The logic of collective life thus has a conservative thrust; it lends authority to the system as it stands. Even disadvantaged members of organizations or societies ordinarily acquiesce grudgingly in the systems that treat them badly; “all experience hath shown,” says the Declaration of Independence, “that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Moreover, it is easier to do nothing than to do something, and inaction sustains prevailing arrangements. The respectability of familiar institutions sanctioned by time, the ordinary distaste for “chaos,” and the strategic advantages of the defenders of what already obtains aid the consensus on the need for stability to keep organizations from introducing changes which postmortems inform us they should have adopted.

Calculated Opposition to Change

Over and above this general predisposition against change in the social climate of most organizations, specific proposals for change are almost sure to encounter vigorous obstacles in the form of organized resistance from individuals and groups both inside and outside. Some resisters will be intent on protecting advantages they derive from things as they stand. Some will be agitated about the possible erosion of standards of quality in goods and services they treasure. Some will resent having to bear the costs of change.

Prevailing advantage. Without claiming there is a fixed fund of organizational benefits such that any increase in benefits for some participants inevitably reduces the benefits for others, we may safely assume that it is a rare change (or one of negligible proportions) which does not affect someone adversely in some respect, at least as he sees his interests. Most people who perceive adverse effects on them and who link them, rightly or wrongly, with a proposed change can usually be counted on to resist as mightily as they can. I do not deny that there are altruistic people who readily surrender advantages they possess in order to benefit those less fortunate. In most cases, though, the advocate of innovation is well advised to prepare for opposition. In fact, people sometimes seem to resist innovations even when they cannot identify any results harmful to them, simply because they grow anxious about consequences they cannot foresee that might injure their interests. Occasionally they resist even when they know they will suffer no injury in order to exact concessions or other advantages in return for their acquiescence.

The range of rewards that induce people to contribute to organizations is so broad and intricate that it is virtually impossible to design any change that avoids reducing some of them. To compute just the material rewards of employment is difficult when, in addition to pay, working conditions, convenience of work-site location, leave and retirement policies, insurance plans, and other such considerations are taken into account. And when intangibles are considered, the only thing one can be quite sure of is that some people will feel threatened and deprived by any change. Status, influence, fame, ideology, compassion, security, pride, fear, hatred, loyalty, moral obligation, intellectual challenge, love, and every other sentiment known to mankind play their roles. Job title, job classification, physical location, reputation of product or unit, race or nationality or religion of coworkers, for example, may influence as profoundly as salary a given person’s individual decision to contribute to an organization or to sever relations with it. Similarly, customers and investors and suppliers and lenders may be as much influenced by consideration of an organization’s hiring policies, or its efforts on behalf of pollution control, or its race relations practices, or its overseas branch locations as they are by pricing or interest or dividends records. Seldom, therefore, does any change avoid impinging negatively on some interests.

In addition, strategic position and access often provoke opposition to a change even when no direct payoff or loss follows. Thus, bureau chiefs commonly resent reorganizations that put new administrative levels between them and their department heads. Interest groups inveigh against changes that disrupt the relationships they have established with the old structure. Professional associations try to restrict practice of particular trades, or appearances before tribunals, to their own members, and often seek to confine qualifications for specific offices to their own ranks. Not all innovations affect strategic relations, but any that do will most assuredly provoke strenuous resistance on the part of those who see themselves disadvantaged by proposed changes, even if the impact is not immediate or concrete.

Protection of quality. Changes in organizational struc ture or behavior may be opposed on the ground that they would impair the quality of goods or services rendered. Some of the resistance to open enrollment and to elimination of grading in universities, for example, was based, rightly or wrongly, on the conviction that the outcome would compromise advanced education and lower the average of student performance. The opposition of the medical profession, rightly or wrongly, to practitioners of the “naturopathic” healing arts is unquestionably stimulated by concern for safeguarding the public as well as by anxiety about potential competitors. The reluctance of judges to let the accused in criminal cases present their defenses themselves instead of through lawyers is motivated at least as much by considerations of justice and maintenance of the integrity of the judicial process as by any wish to protect the monopoly of the legal profession on representation in courts. To distinguish between self- interested and public-interested action is extremely difficult, but in seeking the origins of opposition to change only the most Cynical would automatically dismiss all motives other than personal or group advantage.

Psychic costs of change. The advocates of change naturally concentrate so heavily on the benefits to be derived from their recommendations that they sometimes lose sight of the personal effort and agony of people who have to accommodate to the new patterns. Over and above the advantages lost and the penalties inflicted by opponents, beyond the humiliation of becoming a raw novice at a new trade after having been a master craftsman at an old one, and in addition to the expense of retraining and retooling, is the deep crisis caused by the need to suppress ancient prejudices, to put aside the comfort of the familiar, to relinquish the security of what one knows well. Put aside the social and financial incentives to stand fast; they are treated in other parts of this discussion. After those are excluded, it is still hard for most of us to alter our ways. The psychic costs of change can be very high, and therefore go into the balance sheet on the side of keeping things as they are.

In addition, the psychic risks of pressing for an innovation are substantial. If the change is adopted and fails, the embarrassment and loss of stature and influence can be chilling to contemplate; the costs and benefits of the old ways are at least known. If battle is joined on behalf of change, the proponents are likely to be belabored from all sides—often by people who never thought about the issue before. Some critics will accuse the advocates of being too timid in the struggle, while others will portray the campaign as evidence of hunger for power; some will call them tools of vested interests while others depict them as running amuck; some will complain of the innovators’ readiness to experiment wildly at the expense of those they serve while others ridicule them for unwillingness to try anything more daring than marginal adjustments. To win allies, the proposed reforms must be amended and weakened and compromised until the expenditure of effort seems hardly worthwhile. Meanwhile, the drama of the struggle often arouses expectations among the beneficiaries out of all proportion to the realities of the improvement; instead of winning applause and gratitude, the innovators often reap denunciations from those they thought they were helping as well as from their adversaries in the controversy. And anyone with any experience in such contests is aware that he may end up with obligations to supporters whose purposes he does not share, and with fleeting credit but lasting enmities.⁴ On balance, then, the members or other contributors to any organization are presented with much stronger incentives to act warily than daringly. Precedent serves as a valuable guide because it clearly defines the safe path; in a minefield, wise men step exactly in the footprints of predecessors who have successfully traversed the hazardous area.

The collective benefits of stability and the calculated opposition to change thus weigh heavily against innovation even when the dangers of inflexibility mount. Even more massive hurdles, however, are raised by two sets of factors that prevent change rather than merely discourage it. Let us call one set mental blinders, the other systemic obstacles to change.

Inability to Change: Mental Blinders

Programmed behavior. In all social groupings, regularities of behavior essential to collective life and enterprise are programed into the members of the groupings by the groupings. That is not to say that every organization or society employs precisely the same programming methods. Some, for example, rely heavily on family instruction or tribal indoctrination, others on specialized instructional corps (teachers, training officers), still others on apprenticeship techniques, and a few on police and thought control. In every case, since much of the programming takes place by imitation and observation and other informal means, a good deal of it is inadvertent, and may occasionally run counter to what the leaders would prescribe if they could. A great deal of programming, however, is deliberate, particularly in organizations of great complexity.

Some social scientists believe there are fundamental behavioral programs common to all social groupings that must be instilled in all members. At a high level of generality, the proposition seems to be true. In specific organizations, however, what is impressive is the special twist given behavioral regularities adapted to the particular circumstances of the individual case.

The behavioral programs of participants in complex organizations are usually specified in great detail as a result of intensive division of labor. Every component must perform according to specifications or else there is a danger that the entire operation will be disrupted. People are therefore screened and groomed for the positions they will occupy, especially if the positions provide opportunities for the exercise of discretion. Incumbents are “fitted” into the ongoing system. In spite of criticisms, the process continues, probably even in the organizations to which the critics themselves belong. The imperatives of complex organization make it seem inescapable.

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Índice

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Classics in Organization and Management Series
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction to the Transaction Edition
• 1 Why Organizations Tend Not to Change
• 2 But Organizations Do Change
• 3 Why Change is Damped
• 4 Some Theoretical Implications of the Argument
• Appendix
• Notes
• Index