All change? Managers' experience of organizational change in theory and practice

The Authors

Jane Andrews, Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

Helen Cameron, Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford, UK

Margaret Harris, Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK Birkbeck University of London, London, UK

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the usefulness of organizational change theory for management practice.

Design/methodology/approach – The authors present an exploratory, empirical study of managers who were taught organizational change theory as part of a postgraduate degree. Building on the study findings, they analyse managers' subsequent experiences of organizational change; of how they use change theory in practice and the impact on their practice of their earlier formal study.

Findings – The paper finds that the complexities of managing change in practice reflect distinctive organizational environments and cultures. The skills and knowledge which managers found most useful were those that enabled them to “make sense” of the organizational change they subsequently experienced. The main impact of their earlier studies was to prompt informative, discursive and reflective approaches to change management.

Practical implications – The paper discusses the implications for future teaching of organizational change and the development of organizational change theory.

Originality/value – The qualitative findings of the study add to, and help to explain, earlier research findings on the questions of how managers' experience change, how they use organizational change theory and its impact on their practice.

Article Type:

Research paper

Keyword(s):

Change management; Education; Public sector organizations; Managers.

Journal:

Journal of Organizational Change Management

Volume:

Number:

Year:

2008

pp:

300-314

Copyright ©

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

ISSN:

0953-4814

Introduction

This paper focuses on the usefulness of organizational change theory for management practice. Building on data from an exploratory empirical study of managers who studied organizational change as part of a postgraduate degree course, we discuss how managers' experience organizational change and how they use change theory in their practice. We also consider the implications for future teaching on organizational change and the development of organizational change theory.

We begin by reviewing recent literature on managers' use of change theory and consider the various explanations offered for associated problems of practice. We then describe our own recent qualitative empirical study in which we explored managers' experiences of organizational change and organizational change theory. We set out our findings under thematic headings which emerged from the data. Building on those findings and the earlier literature, we consider which change theories and which approaches to change theory appear to have most practical utility for managers. We conclude by reflecting on whether what is now needed is a change in the teaching of organizational change and in organizational change theory itself.

How do managers use organizational change theory?

Earlier academic literature has shown that, in spite of the multiplicity and variety of change theories available in handbooks, textbooks and courses, the practice of change management is problematic. In this section of the paper, we review available literature in three broad areas: the characteristics of managers and the contexts within which they work; the way organizational change theory is taught and learned; and the nature and accessibility of available theory. Each of these offers an explanation as to why organizational change theory appears not to have optimal impact on management practice.

Characteristics of managers and their work contexts

Caldwell (2003) sees a key inhibitor to the successful implementation of change theory as being the complex interaction that takes place between different change agents within an organization. It is no longer common for a single “hero leader” or “organizational development consultant” to be charged with implementing a linear change processes (sometimes referred to as “n-step” approaches to implementing organizational change – see, for example, Connolly et al., 2000; Siegal et al., 1996). Contemporary reality is that four distinct types of change agent may be involved in any particular change process, namely, senior leaders, middle managers, external consultants, and teams; each having different experiences and perspectives (Caldwell, 2003). Other authors have also pointed to the differing experiences of middle and senior managers and the complexity of their interactions as being a problematic factor in implementing organizational change (Balogun, 2003; McWilliam and Ward-Griffin, 2006; Rouleau, 2005).

As regards the broader context within which managers have to implement change, Doyle et al. (2000) suggest that public sector managers have much less satisfactory experiences of change than their private sector counterparts. They attribute this largely to the nature of public policy which they describe as “based upon ministerial edict (combined with threat), highly controversial in substance, tight and non-negotiable timescale, no planning window, no consideration of the logistical and political implementation issues” (p. 67).

The way organizational theory is taught and learned

Many authors have confirmed that postgraduate business students do attempt to apply the skills acquired at university whilst employed in managerial positions within their respective organizations (Porras and Bradford, 2004; Savage and Hazen, 2002; Colbert and Levary, 2000). But both Doyle et al. (2000) and Collins (1998) are critical of the way in which organizational change theory is taught. Doyle et al. (2000) argue that the most common qualification for managers is an MBA, but that MBA programmes are not as useful as they might be because they tend to focus on teaching techniques rather than concepts. Managers who encounter situations where a technique does not work, do not know how to move beyond it because they lack the necessary concepts for thinking creatively or adapting theories for their particular work context. Doyle et al. also argue that managers faced with multiple changes necessarily become preoccupied with action. They have little time for reflection on how theory might help them solve problems. Employing organizations rarely have systems which encourage learning for the benefit of the organization itself.

A different perspective on the teaching of change theory is offered by Aram and Salipante (2003). Building on the ideas of Nonaka (1994), they argue that the successful transmission of theory depends upon understanding the relationship between tacit and explicit knowledge. They distinguish four learning processes:

socialisation, where managers exchange tacit knowledge;
combination, where managers combine their explicit knowledge with new explicit knowledge;
externalisation, where managers make explicit formerly tacit knowledge; and
internalisation, where managers take explicit knowledge and absorb it into their tacit ways of knowing and practice.

They argue that the education of managers focuses too much on socialisation and combination processes and fails to trigger the externalisation and internalisation which makes knowledge usable in practice.

The nature of organizational theory

Some authors have argued that it is the nature of available theory itself which limits its usefulness for practice. Starkey and Madan (2001), for example, pick up the debate within the discipline of management about whether it is developing “scientific knowledge” or “practitioner knowledge.” Building upon the distinction made by Gibbons et al. (1994) between Mode 1 knowledge (how the world works at a theoretical level) and Mode 2 knowledge (knowledge of what works in practice), they argue that management as a discipline should be concerned with Mode 2 knowledge which needs to be developed in an inter-disciplinary way and by collaboration between universities and managers. This requires changes in research and teaching by academics as well as greater engagement with the research process by managers. Only knowledge produced in this way, they argue, can be of practical use to managers.

Aram and Salipante (2003) on the other hand argue that Starkey and Madan (2001) are sacrificing academic rigour and the hope of generalisable knowledge in their approach. They call for a “bridging epistemology” that connects rigour and relevance, the general and the particular, deductive and inductive knowledge. Drawing on the ideas of Dewey (1929), they argue for developing theory using a hermeneutical circle that constantly cycles between the whole and the parts, the general and the particular, interpreting each in terms of the other, with new ideas creating new realities.

Grubbs (2000) offers a further (critical) perspective, arguing that current organizational change theory reflects instrumental motivations and reasoning. He challenges the usefulness of such an approach and points to three different forms of “organizational imperialism”: cultural domination, cultural imposition, and cultural fragmentation. In rejecting imperialist approaches to the management of organizational change Grubbs (2000, pp. 231-2) proposes an alternative approach to conceptualising change management based upon “cultural emancipation” and “shared meanings.”

Sturdy and Grey (2003) offer an even more vigorous critique of organizational change theory. For them, it assumes “managerialism” and so ignores the power differentials and struggles which are part of social reality. It claims to be general and predictive and so fails in particular situations. It accepts the ubiquity of change and so is not open to the occurrence or desirability of stability and continuity. They argue that it is an illusion that change can be managed, let alone controlled. Collins (1998) takes a similar line. He argues that organizational change theory is “under-socialised” and needs to be put into the context of history. Similarly, writers who have taken up the “chaos” metaphor of organizational life share this scepticism about the possibility of control of organizational change (Streatfield, 2001; Shaw, 2002).

Study approach

In the light of the earlier literature and the variety of suggested reasons for the low impact of organizational change theory on management practice, we planned a new empirical study the aim of which was to explore in a qualitative way the complexities of the use of change theories by managers. We aimed to draw out from managers their practical experiences of managing organizational change after they had completed a postgraduate module specifically focused on organizational change theory and the management of change.

Guided by the previous literature, we wanted to explore questions such as which theories and approaches to organizational change they had found useful in practice; what problems they had faced in implementing change; and how they had coped with them. We hoped, finally, to be able to reach some conclusion about what changes are needed to the study and teaching of organizational change theory and to organizational theory itself in order to increase the usefulness of theory for those who have to implement organizational change.

Our study approach was to interview a sample of practising managers who had taken a similar module on organizational change in one of seven years as part of a postgraduate degree (usually an MSc or MBA) at our own Business School. Reflecting earlier findings about the particular pressures on managers who implement change in the non-business sectors (Doyle et al., 2000), we chose to study graduates of a module that had been taught only to managers in the public and voluntary sectors (i.e. non-profit sector managers rather than managers in the business or for-profit sector). We also chose to interrogate students of a module which had been intentionally designed (by two of the authors of this paper) to move beyond prescriptive tools and techniques (although these were referred to) and to approach learning about organizational change from a theoretical, conceptual and contextual perspective (Collins, 1998).

Our expectation was that by making these methodological choices we would maximise our response rate and also maximise the possibility of uncovering rich data about the way in which organizational context impacts on change management and about the way in which prior learning about organizational theory impacts on change managers. In order to minimise bias in interviewee responses, the teachers of the organizational module did not themselves conduct the interviews or interact with interviewees in any way. The interviews were conducted and analysed by the third author of this paper.

A list of 72 former students who were known to be managers in the non-profit sector and who had completed the postgraduate module on organizational change between 1999 and 2005, was obtained from the university alumni office. All these former students were sent, by regular mail to their last known address, information about the study, together with the module description and a form asking for their consent to being contacted by telephone. A substantial proportion of those to whom we wrote were no longer contactable but we finally obtained agreement to participate in the research from 18 (25 percent) of them (all based in the UK). Eight (44 percent) were employed in the National Health Service; eight (44 percent) in other public sector positions (local authorities including social services, police, probation services); and two (12 percent) in the voluntary sector.

As regards their management experience, the sample was varied. Half of the study participants were senior managers; their remit involved the interpretation of public policies and the development of appropriate organizational change management strategies to facilitate their implementation. The rest were middle managers; their role involved the implementation and management of a wide variety of organizational change strategies.

Telephone interviews were conducted over a four week period. The interviews were semi-structured. Fully structured interviews would have been inappropriate for a study such as our own with an explicit exploratory purpose but, equally, unstructured interviews were not considered suitable because of our intention to focus the content of interviews on organizational change topics. We decided, therefore, that a semi-structured interview format would be most appropriate for our study purpose. It would give provide a clear focus for the interviews whilst also giving the interviewer the flexibility to explore in detail issues of interest and allowing study participants to fully articulate their experiences and perceptions (Strauss and Corbin, 1998; Maxwell, 1996).

Study participants were invited to describe recent experiences of managing change and to focus in the first place on just one or two episodes of change they had managed or been involved in managing. They were asked to say what, if any, change theory they had used or referred to. They were also asked to reflect on areas in which they felt they were missing techniques and/or theories to help them manage change.

The interviews yielded rich qualitative data which was analysed using a system of open coding and themes which emerged from the data itself. The findings are presented and analysed in the following four sections of this paper. We use verbatim quotes from interviews to illustrate key points; identifying the type of organization in which participants worked at the time of the interview and whether or not they were “senior managers” as defined earlier (responsible for interpreting public policy and developing appropriate organizational change responses).

Experiences of managing change

The complexities of managing change within the public and voluntary sectors were reflected in participants' varying descriptions of the political and organizational environments within which they were responsible for implementing and managing change:

I led and implemented a complete change in the department. From leadership, management, to service provision and the reaching of national targets […] This resulted in change on the ground for the consultants [senior medical staff] and the patients (NHS: Senior Manager).

Children's Services are tasked with the implementation of a shared framework. This means integrating all the children's services, through schools, offending teams, social service (Local Authority: Manager).

I've led on developing the NSF [National Service Framework] for mental health. This involved developing three new services across the organization; crisis resolution; home treatment and early intervention; and assertive outreach. This organizational change was across the whole system – across health, social services and primary care trusts (NHS/Local Authority: Manager).

In some cases the problems of implementing change reflected long-standing distinctive organizational cultures or distinctive public sector issues surrounding the employment of professionals within bureaucratic governmental organizations:

I was involved in implementing a new pay reform for medical staff. [They] didn't respond to being paid extra money in return for extra work […] I had to tackle ingrained issues surrounding why professionals want to work in a certain way when the organization wants them to work in a different way (NHS: Senior Manager).

Issues around organizational culture and professional norms were particularly evident in organizational changes involving collaboration or merger between two or more public sector organizations. Here, as reflected in earlier literature on the management of the public services (Daly, 2003; Newman, 2001) issues of governance and organizational control were further complicating factors:

We're transferring all of the social workers into the Partnership-Trust. Social workers are used to working with the Local Authority. Transferring people into the NHS is causing some problems […] the NHS is managed in a very different way from the Local Authority. Forcing social workers to fit into the NHS is difficult (Local Authority: Manager).

I'm working in a newly integrated social services and NHS Trust. At the moment it's a nightmare […] I'm part of a new management structure and have a mixture of county council and health service staff to bring together. This means integrating two totally different policies and systems (NHS: Manager).

Some interviewees, although well aware of the external and internal pressures to implement organizational change, felt that there was inappropriate emphasis on speed. This was particularly the case because one change was swiftly followed by the need to implement another:

Organizational change is about government driven external drivers. You're forced to move at an inappropriate pace […] The organization is always changing. It's constant […] (Local Authority: Senior Manager).

The speed of change is phenomenal […] It's difficult because things change so fast in the health service […] (NHS: Senior Manager).

Public and voluntary sector organizations have often been regarded as reflecting distinctive values such as “caring,” “justice” and “equity”; values which have in the past been seen as a motivator for working in those sectors (Anheier, 2005; Ham and Hill, 1993). Some of our interviewees, however, suggested that this values-base was under threat from the manner in which organizational change was now being implemented in the public and voluntary sectors:

There's a lack of integrity around the way organizational change is managed […] by the middle of April some people's jobs are going to be at risk. This has been known by senior management for some time […] (Local Authority: Senior Manager).

Because of funding issues they've withdrawn the service from people living in one particular area. It's ludicrous and has made me wonder about the values of the organization (NHS Manager referring to a voluntary organization).

Others we interviewed were concerned about their lack of control over changes which they were charged with implementing, and resulting uncertainties about what the final outcomes of change might be:

We don't know what type of structure our directorate will end up looking like yet. It's still very much in a state of change […] we're not sure how it will end (NHS: Senior Manager).

It's a mix and match for a while. There's a real organizational risk about what this change will mean. If it's done cheaply I have grave reservations about it […] (Probation Service: Senior Manager).

Many participants attributed their own negative experiences of trying to manage change to the fact that they were employed in organizations which were risk- or change-averse:

Implementing organization change in the City Council was very difficult. The council was risk averse […] (Local Authority: Manager).

Yes, my employers are very slow and reluctant to bring about organizational change. They just resist all attempts to bring in change (Local Authority: Manager).

And it was not only organizational norms and cultures which were described as obstacles to change management. Many interviewees encountered change resistance from colleagues and subordinates:

A younger person trying to bring about organizational change was a mismatch […] I wanted to look at structure, strategy and culture […] acceptance of those change areas was difficult for those [senior managers] around me (Voluntary Organization: Senior Manager).

I had to deal with issues of leadership. There was resistance. People didn't understand the issues. I had to sort out who should lead the teams, the budget and make sure people had their protocols sorted (NHS: Manager).

As well as being concerned about the way the speed of change was threatening traditional values in the non-profit sector, our interviewees were concerned about the way in which there seemed to be little attention to monitoring or evaluating the process and outcomes of changes they were implementing. In line with principles of “performance management” checks were generally made about whether specific change targets had been achieved, but there was little interest, it appeared, in broader monitoring of how organizational changes as a whole were changing the broader structure and culture of organizations. Interviewees felt that learning opportunities were being lost:

I view change as being continuous and complex […] it's difficult to manage in a continuous way […] it needs to be discussed and analyzed otherwise there's the potential to create utter chaos as well as to make things better (Local Authority: Senior Manager).

Responses to the challenges of managing change

A variety of human responses to change have been noted by earlier writers (Elrod and Tippett, 2002). Some of our interviewees described how they had attempted to reduce the turmoil of organizational change for colleagues by adopting a mentoring or advocacy role; they tried to ensure that those for whom they were managerially or professionally responsible fully understood the reasons for the organizational change and its implications:

I've made presentations to the various centres about what being a multi-charity actually means […] I'm going to put together the processes of becoming a multi-charity and the different training they will need to achieve independence (Voluntary Organization: Senior Manager).

I've been asked to write letters on behalf of patient groups and have appointed a patient representative manager […] I'm involved with a lot of GPs. Getting them on-board is important. So is making sure everyone's views are heard (NHS: Senior Manager).

The importance of stakeholder involvement was repeatedly raised spontaneously by interviewees. Most of the participants referred to external stakeholders:

[Managing change] is also about asking people […] finding out whether they feel as if their area is a safe place to live […] We're looking at crime from the public's point of view […] (Police Service: Manager).

Some emphasised the importance of internal stakeholders; involving them to get support for the very idea of change:

I had to build up a team around me […] I took the time to get to know everyone individually […] The change is still ongoing, we're consulting with the public at the moment about the proposed merger (NHS: Senior Manager).

I think it depends on how change is managed. It should be about taking people with you, rather than doing it to them. You need to involve and consult people rather than force them into it (Local Authority: Manager).

Study participants referred to the need to promote “ownership” of change strategies and many of them described how, by promoting a multi-agency approach to organizational change management, they encouraged synergetic working and thereby improved the services provided:

Now we all work together to support people with chronic illnesses […] Before we all sat on our own patch […] Bed-blocking has been reduced by all the agencies concerned working together (NHS: Senior Manager).

Part of the change is to work closer with other agencies. We're all working with the same people, like vulnerable families who come into contact with all different partners, police, social services and health. It's about breaking down the barriers to give a stream-lined service. So people don't have to go to different agencies […] a one-stop shop if you like (Police Service: Manager).

The impact on managers of formal study of organizational change theory

Although it was made clear to interviewees that the fact that they were being interviewed was linked in some way to the postgraduate studies they had done, we did not ask them at the beginning of the interviews about their learning experiences. Our focus at the beginning was on their recent experiences of organizational change as practising managers. In that context, the repeated mention of mentoring and stakeholder involvement as personal responses to problems of managing organizational change was interesting to us; because it seemed to reflect “theories in use” (Salipante and Aram, 2003) about human response to organizational change (Elrod and Tippett, 2002) and about achieving effective organizational change through stakeholder involvement and through “bottom up,” participatory approaches (Sabatier, 1986). Later in the interviews, we asked more explicitly about what aspects and approaches of the organizational change module they had studied they had subsequently found most useful and applicable to the situations they encountered in practice.

For many interviewees, the module had enabled them to understand the policy drivers and context of the changes they were managing as well as the reasons for colleagues' resistance to change. Often they found that the fact that they understood the context for the change was a motivator for pressing ahead with change implementation, despite difficulties and obstacles:

Before the organizational change module I didn't fully appreciate why we were doing what we were doing or where it all fitted in […] [it] gave me a different perspective. I was able to see where people were coming from (NHS: Senior Manager).

The course helped me survive at work. It helped me stand back and understand […] what was happening and put it into some sort of framework (Local Authority: Manager).

What I learned gave me confidence […] The module helped me work around the barriers and network with other people […] It gave me confidence to make the change happen (NHS: Senior Manager).

Studying organizational change within the specific context of the public and voluntary sector had been especially helpful to the interviewees. Currently one of the key manifestations of organizational change in the public and voluntary sectors is in multi-agency partnerships (Sullivan and Skelcher, 2002) and having studied both the organizational and policy reasons for this trend was something that interviewees had found particularly helpful for their practice:

It was particularly useful to consider inter-agency issues around the voluntary sector and social services […] this has been useful because we're now in a position where the voluntary sector may be providing some of the services for mental health (NHS Primary Care Trust Manager).

The course helped me recognise how difficult partnership can be and why problems occur […] It changed my understanding of partnership working, particularly around cultures, resistance to change and forces for change (Local Authority Partnership Manager).

Not only did their course-derived understanding of organizational change theory empower respondents to be consistent and persistent in implementing change, but they also often used their own increased knowledge to disseminate understanding about organizational change throughout their organizations; a process which itself facilitated the implementation of change:

I'm able to help others by using the theories with their own work situation […] (NHS: Senior Manager).

I now stop and ask people if they understand what is happening. When they say no I stop and explain. The module helped me think about this […] my approach has really developed (Local Authority: Senior Manager).

The module gave me confidence to check things out with people and say, actually change works like this […] (NHS: Senior Manager).

Learning about organizational change theory

The data we collected enabled us to start teasing out those approaches to teaching organizational change theory which practising managers subsequently find most helpful. From the data presented in the previous section, it seems that managers particularly value an understanding of the context within which organizational change occurs and the drivers of change. They can use such understanding not only to motivate themselves but also to motivate others to cooperate in change processes.

Interviews also suggested that students had found it helpful to learn about organizational change within an educational setting in which theory presentation is followed by opportunities to discuss the application of the theories to real life examples:

A lot of the theory made sense as I found I was able to link it to what we did in practice (NHS: Primary Care Trust Manager).

They valued being able to test out possible change strategies in a classroom setting with comment from peers and teacher. In this way, it seems, managers were able to challenge their own and others' previously held beliefs about good practice in the management of organizational change and also develop an awareness of the range of change strategies and theories available to them:

I have to remodel day services for older people, sort out health care and nursing. I'm planning to use all the theories and models […] I've developed a strategy as to where we want to get to […] (LA: Manager).

If I was going to introduce organizational change now I'd look at it from various perspectives; strategy, culture, work-levels and values. I'd bring all this stuff into analyse and critique the organization (Voluntary Organization National Level: Senior Manager).

Discussion

The qualitative findings of our study confirm, add to, and help to explain, earlier research findings on the question of how managers use organizational change theory and how relevant it is for their practice.

As regards the characteristics of managers and their work context, the findings suggest that, at least for those managing change in the public and voluntary sectors, the challenges are not so much to do with their position in the management hierarchy as to do with three features of their organizational environment: the fact that organizational change is mostly driven by external pressures; the speed with which change has to be implemented; and the frequency of change initiatives. In other words, they tend to confirm earlier arguments (Collins, 1998; Apker, 2004) about the importance of the wider organizational environment, or context, for change managers rather than findings about factors to do with internal organizational structures.

It could be that these findings reflect the particular nature of our sample of managers. Certainly it is well recognised that the introduction of “New Public Management” in the late 1980s and early 1990s introduced imperatives for fast and frequent change in policy implementation in organizations delivering public services; imperatives that were reinforced in the UK as New Labour governments introduced rafts of new policies from 1997 onwards (Ferlie et al., 1996; Harris, 2001). Further research is now needed to enable comparisons to be made between the experiences of organizational change we found and the experiences of managers in business. For the moment, we can note that some of the changes which most challenged the managers we studied, would also be familiar to their equivalents in business; in particular the need to see implementation of change as a constant reality of the management task (Burnes, 1996) and the need to seek out and implement strategic alliances and multi-organizational collaborations with other organizations (Austin, 2000; Cartwright and Schoenberg, 2006).

The findings of our study also throw light on several aspects of the question raised by earlier authors about how change theory is best taught and learned if it is to have salience for practising managers. As regards approaches to teaching of organizational change theory, our findings suggest that the ones which are most appreciated by students in retrospect and in the light of their subsequent practical experience, are ones in which formal presentation of theory is followed by opportunities in the classroom for discussion, internalisation and reflection; a finding which tends to support the arguments of Aram and Salipante (2003). Our interviewees appreciated particularly the opportunity they had had to “test out” in the classroom the application of taught theories to their own work experience, and equally, to the experience of their peers in the class; a finding in keeping with Pinington's (2005) that MBA students learn by being given the opportunity to develop and test their capabilities in the classroom. Our interviewees welcomed the opportunity to be intellectually challenged by theories and to be able to consider a range of theories in a supportive context in which they could “try out” new ideas and compare experiences. It seems that, in addition to being taught theories, practising managers need to be given a range of opportunities to “internalize” and “externalize” their new knowledge (to use the concepts of Aram and Salipante, 2003).

As regards the content of the module they were taught, few interviewees mentioned unprompted any particular approach to, or theory of, organizational change learned on the course which they had explicitly used in subsequent practice. Even fewer mentioned any particular techniques for implementing change and those few who did referred to “in-house” adaptations of “n-step” techniques – usually given new names which made it difficult to trace their theoretical roots. What interviewees had generally found most useful in practice was not particular techniques but broad explanatory theories that helped them to contextualize what they were experiencing in practice; for example, the apparent ceaseless necessity, driven by external forces, to implement new changes and to do so quickly. This finding reflects Weick's (1995, 2001) emphasis on the importance of allowing opportunities for considering “the bigger story” that lies beyond day to day experienced problems and, further, it confirms Weick et al.'s (2005, p. 410) argument that “… the concept of ‘sense-making’ fills important gaps in organizational theory.”

Not only did interviewees appreciate the opportunity to understand the drivers and context of the changes they were required to implement, but they also found that their increased understanding gave them the confidence in practice to implement changes with determination. In addition, many of them seemed to replicate the sense-making and contextual approach to teaching they had themselves received as students, with their own work subordinates. In other words, they used informative, discursive, reflective and mentoring approaches with the staff they managed in order to motivate and support them through necessary changes (Goby and Lewis, 2000).

Conclusion

The findings of our exploratory study, when considered in the light of earlier research, enable us to reach some tentative conclusions about our starting question – the usefulness of organizational change theory for practising managers.

In line with the findings of Starkey and Madan (2001), we found that some theories they had learned in the classroom were indeed of limited applicability to the practising managers we interviewed. On the other hand, some theories were found to be very useful indeed. What our interviewees found most helpful were theories which enabled them to make sense of, and contextualise, the change situations in which they found themselves. In addition, study participants valued theories which spoke directly to the distinctive features of their particular work situations. They also valued having knowledge about a multiplicity of theories, concepts and models so that if one approach did not “work” they had others to try, or to use in combination. Finally, they found most useful theory which did not reduce organizational change to a linear process and which took into account the non-rational elements in organizational change[1].

Contrary to some writers referred to earlier in this paper, the managers we studied did not reject the notion of being active agents in controlling organizational change; however, they were sceptical about prescriptive theories and non-reflective or non-contextualised approaches. Generally they had found that each situation required a considered, and possibly different response, as well as a willingness to be flexible and collaborative in approach to implementation of change. What they had valued from what they learned in the classroom were materials and approaches which enabled them to be “reflective practitioners” (Carr, 2000; Moon, 2000; Schon, 1990) in implementing change.

In line with their generally reflective approach to the implementation of organizational change, several interviewees commented on what they saw as an important gap in the development process of organizational theory; namely the failure to monitor and evaluate changes so that theory could be built on experience in practice. This finding reflects earlier management studies which have also pointed to the failure of organizations to evaluate change (Skinner, 2004) and suggests that further research is now needed into barriers to change evaluation.

The finding about lack of evaluation of changes implemented also supports the arguments of Aram and Salipante (2003) about the need for teaching and research to be driven by real world problems. Our interviewees wanted their experiences in practice to be recycled into an experiential learning cycle (Kolb, 1984; Goby and Lewis, 2000) such that organizational change theory could be refined and developed for the future. They were concerned about the failure to capture experiences of the practical application of theoretical knowledge; a confirmation of Starkey and Madan's (2001) argument about the need to make closer links between research and teaching on organizational change.

The findings of our study also provide some pointers for future research and theory development on organizational change. From the point of view of practising managers, it seems that what is needed is middle range theory which provides explanations of the context within which they themselves, as well as their organizations, have to work. This kind of theory helps managers to make sense of their roles and motivates them to implement change. They are also looking for theory which builds on their practical experiences; opportunities are being lost, it seems, for researchers to monitor how change is implemented in practice in organizations. Such research would not only enable individual managers and organizations to learn from experience but would also provide valuable materials to build theory and to use in teaching the change managers of tomorrow.

References

Anheier, H.K. (2005), Nonprofit Organizations: Theory, Management & Policy, Routledge, London, .