Organizational Development Interventions - Essay Example

Running Head: ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT Organizational Development Interventions of the of the Organizational Development Interventions Introduction The evolution of an organizations structure is integrally related to the evolution of its culture--and vice versa. Structure and culture coevolve: each shapes and is in turn shaped by the other. The emerging role for organization design and organization development (OD) specialists--and for organizational leaders--is to attend to the dynamics of simultaneous structural and cultural change. For this, a "both-and" model of change and change management is required: one that can realize a synchronicity and complementarity between cultural and structural processes within an organization. OD Interventions Planning The idea that organizational change needs to be coordinated across a number of dimensions--of which structure and culture might be seen as the two most fundamental-is not in itself very new, and has become conventional wisdom in change circles since McKinsey published its well-known Seven S framework, and Peters and Waterman (1982) first aired their excellence truism, "soft is hard." Yet within this literature it is clear that some alignments have generated more interest and debate than others. OD Interventions Control From this point of view, organization design--or to be more precise, designing--is concerned with more than neat pictures and "hard" abstract configurations of roles and responsibilities on paper. It is about putting "the human side of change" back into the design process. Changing an organizations structure, from this perspective, implies paying attention to the underlying, emergent processes and systems that connect and activate structural frameworks. In practical terms, this means combining traditional organization design with more sensitive, microlevel interventions designed to open up and reconstruct the organizations underlying working structure. The organization has an institutional own life, which is notoriously difficult to control and manage. (Barley, 1997, 101) OD Interventions and Leadership It has long been accepted that leadership is a critical factor in the success of change programmes. Much of the literature on leadership and change, however, has tended to concentrate on capabilities and qualities required of key executives and change managers, and to overlook the notion of leadership as a process, the property of a system rather than a single person. Such a view can be highly problematic, leading to a rather overromanticised perspective on change, and the hope that a magical, quasi-mystical leader will somehow emerge to take the organization out of the wilderness. It is assumed that structural change can only be made to happen or that cultural change can be brought about by force of charismatic leadership, and that without such leadership in place it is hardly worth even attempting the endeavour. Integrating Structure, Leadership and Culture The discussion just presented, and encapsulated in Figure 1, raises a number of broad propositions, which we take with us into the case study. Central to the argument is the way the "total systems" emphasis of the model suggests that unequal attention to one or other sphere is likely to fail to achieve real and lasting corporate change. Usually referred to as the clinical-process model of development practice, and very much in the mould of classical OD, it typically includes activities such as team development, culture workshops, counseling, training and an abundance of rhetoric on improving processes and relationships and transforming culture. Though valuable and necessary, such activities are not, on their own, enough. They represent development without design, a positive process which often lacks a positive or lasting outcome, since it is not consolidated or institutionalized in hard design changes. If attention shifts to left sphere thinking (design as the ruling paradigm), this can lead to a process described as empty restructuring. In this case, regular and repeated restructuring takes precedence over the more challenging issue of realizing change in the management styles, organizational cultures and corporate processes which define, circumscribe and contextualise organizational life. After the brief shock of adjustment, life, culture and the social process drift back into their original patterns, or into new, perverse and unintended forms: hence culture and structure can become diachronous, or misaligned. Gaps spring up between the way things are formally structured and the way they are really done. This is design without development, a positive process again but which often results in the same people, differently arranged, facing an unchanged set of problems. Design without development, and development without design both point to the essential paradox of organization design. On the one hand, design creates nothing. Yet on the other hand, it creates everything since the organization design will have a fundamental framing effect on peoples expectations and perceptions, setting the context for the organizing activity--the social construction of roles and relationships--through which structure is enacted. Thus, organization design without organization development may be likened to an empty temple and organization development without organization design to a tent blown away in the wind. The high failure rates of organization change programmes provide the background to this assertion. The problem may lie with the frame of reference which is brought to the change process, the kind of "either/or" mentality which encourages change leaders to think in terms of polarities: structure or culture, hard or soft, design or development. This lack of a "bothand" model addressing structural and cultural dynamics simultaneously in practice is mirrored in academic theory. (Barley, 1997, 114) Writers on organization design tend not to engage with organization development issues and vice versa, and neither one seems particularly close to the bulk of leadership, particularly strategic leadership, accounts. Clearly this fragmentation of paradigm, language and practice offers a major obstacle to the achievement of the rounded, integrated process models of change favoured by an increasing number of contemporary change writers, as well as ourselves. Functional coordination and integration between the various elements of the governance hierarchy was poor. In particular, teamwork between the executive members was a major problem, failing the litmus test of mutual accountability for group results, collective or joint work products of clear performance value, and a sharing and/ or shifting of leadership roles among the members. In addition to their apparent indecisiveness, senior management were also seen to be distanced, isolated and removed from daily hospital life, unable to delegate power and responsibility, and to avoid all potential areas of conflict. Without clear and present leadership, the organization had begun to disintegrate. The management structure, though ostensibly hierarchical, had lost authority to a burgeoning political system of favours, threats, patronage and deal-making which operated alongside it. The formal structure had effectively lost its steering capacity, and a highly political system had evolved to fill the vacuum. The ability to add value, and the ability to exercise power and influence, had become disconnected from one another. The fragmented whole had become significantly less than the sum of its parts. Unlike many top-down reorganization methodologies, CSR emphasises the importance of continuous and collective learning and experimentation: change is seen as a process where the destination is unknown in advance, and where well-trodden routes or packages offer only vague guidelines to help organizations make their own paths. A second distinction concerns the centrality of culture in the change/redesign process. As Conner (1998) notes, there is a tendency both in theory and practice of organization change to treat culture as something to be implemented in a programmatic way--through a top-down regime of education, communication, workshops, and internal marketing--once the real work of restructuring has been done. Culture change is tacked on almost as an afterthought, rather than forming an integral element in the overall transformation. (Conner, 1998, 93) Arguing that organizational change comes last, not first, Kotter states that: "Culture changes only after you have successfully altered peoples actions, after the new behavior produces some group benefit for a period of time, and after people see the connection between the new actions and the performance improvement. Thus, most cultural change happens in stage 8, not stage 1" (p. 156). The rationale for starting with structure is undeniably powerful. Culture cannot be seen, defined, or measured, and certainly cannot be changed in the short term. Structure is altogether more visible and tangible a concept, and above all it can be shaped and controlled, almost independently of organizational reality itself. Put cultural and structural concerns together and the latter will win every time, inevitably emerging as primus inter pares in the change effort. Structure can be changed more quickly than culture, and can also be a powerful driver for cultural change. Conclusion In any organizational intervention, structures and cultures are both catalysts and residues. They are, and should be, co-produced. The only way to redress the balance, we believe, is to positively discriminate in favour of culture, at least in the short term, to make culture the first among equals, in the belief that as a result of this initial overcorrection, they may emerge from this as roughly equal partners. If simultaneous culture-structuring remains the ideal, then in practice, structure follows process and design follows development-not, as it usually is, the other way round. Most change programmes begin with restructuring, as previously had our organization. Even to get people to agree that culture is more important than structure is a cultural change in itself. References Barley, S, D. Tolbert. 1997. Institutionalization and structuration: Studying the links between action and institution. Organ. Stud. 18(1), 93-117. Barnes, L. B., M. P. Kriger. 2006. The hidden side of organizational leadership. Sloan Management Rev. Fall 15-25. Bartunek, J. M. 2004. Changing interpretive schemes and organizational restructuring: An example of a religious order. Admin. Sci. Quart. 29 355-372. Bate, S. P. 1990. Using the culture concept in an organization development setting. J. Appl. Behavioral Sci. 26(1) 83-106. Burke, W. W. 1994. Organization Development: A Process of Learning and Changing, 2nd edition. Addison Wesley, Reading, MA. Chorn, N. H. 1991. The "alignment theory." Creating strategic fit. Management Decision 29 20-24. Collins, D. 1998. Organizational Change: Sociological Perspectives. Routledge, London. Conner, D. R. 1998. Managing at the Speed of Change. Wiley, Chichester, UK. 89-99 Cooke, B. 1997. From process consultation to a clinical model of development practice. Public Admin. and Development 17 325-340. Fitzgerald, T. 1988. Can change in organizational culture really be managed? Organ. Dynamics Autumn 5-15. French, W. L., C. H. Bell Jr. 1984. Organization Development. PrenticeHall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Galpin, T. J. 1996. The Human Side of Change: A Practical Guide to Organization Re-design. Jossey Bass, San Francisco, CA. Kotter, J. 1996. Leading Change. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Meek, V.L. 1988. Organizational culture: Origins and weaknesses. Organ. Stud. 9(3) 453-473. Miles, R. H. 1997. Leading Corporate Transformation. Jossey Bass, San Francisco, CA. Mueller, F. 1997. Human resources as strategic assets: An evolutionary resource-based theory. J. Management Stud. 33 757-781. Read More