The Concept of Change Management - Essay Example

Topic: Lecturer: Presentation: Introduction The only constant thing in postmodern organisations is change. Organisations are influenced by the internal and external environment in which they operate hence have to continually adapt to these changes while fulfilling the demands of diverse stakeholders at the same time. This is especially so for postmodern organisations which are faced with pressure from different interest groups such as human rights activists, consumer groups, press and media to be socially responsible especially in the way they treat employees. In view of this, organisations have resorted to organisational storytelling as a tool to build and maintain corporate image and reputation, as a tool for change management and for communication with stakeholders. Storytelling organisations are defined by Boje as “collective storytelling systems in which storytelling expressive performance is key part of members’ past-present-future sensemaking” (2012, 254). In a sense, everyone is engaged in storytelling in one way or another. Stories may be real or fictitious and often have a plot, beginning, middle, ending and a moral lesson. Stories may be narrated by the person experiencing or witnessing an event or another person on his/her behalf hence it has narrators and audiences. In the case of the organisation, the story is about the organisation and its activities. Storytelling in organisations can be traced back to Aristotle poetics but in this case, the focus will be on David Boje’s quantum physics of storytelling and John Kotter’s change model. This essay will demonstrate how storytelling research can inform understanding of managerial sensemaking and responsible management using a practical study. The essay will be divided into three sections. The first section will discuss the theoretical concepts. This will entail discussing organisation storytelling and Boje’s main concepts (narrative, living stories, antenarratives).This will be followed by an explanation of what quantum physics of storytelling means for change management and finally, an explanation of Kotter’s 8-stage model of change to show how storytelling can help in managing change successfully. The second section will cover indepth analysis of theoretical concepts using a practical study with variety of narratives. Lastly, a brief summary will be given. Storytelling research shows that storytelling is increasingly becoming important in organisations. Postmodern organisations are experiencing interpenetration of post-industrialism with postmodern culture leading to a paradigm shift. With emergence of transnational corporations, management has become more complex requiring new ways of managing diverse stakeholders and change which is inherent in the system (Kotter, 1996).This has elevated the role of storytelling in organisations especially as a change management technique. Boje’s theory of quantum physics of storytelling recognises three genres of stories: narratives, living stories and antenarratives. Storytelling is thus “the intra-play of narratives, living story webs and various antenarrating” (Boje, 2012, 256). A story is different from a narrative in that it is chronological and without emplotment but narrative requires plot and coherence. Boje describes narrative as a theory that organisation and theorists use with stories to see how narratives and prenarratives are acts of commodification, exchange and consumption (Boje, 2001b, 2).This is because narratives are often used to maintain the capitalist mode of production that relegates workers to the background without a voice. Narratives help to transform events into historical facts since it functions as completed story with a beginning, middle and end. It is retrospective in that it focuses on the past in sensemaking. Living storytelling is not linear like narratives but rather fragmented, and polyphonic (many-voiced) and collectively produced. Living stories are the individual memories of lived experience and are in the present or unfolding in the ‘Now’ (Boje, 2012, 256). They also have no beginning or end; one tells a story in the middle of telling another. Since they represent unfolding occurences, they are often crowded out by narratives which represent a strong corporate culture. In modern organisations, people are divided into different professions and whatever function members of a profession (e.g accountants, managers) do is the living story. Postmodern organisations are not linear as dominant narratives suggest but are chaotic and fragmented. In this sense, antenarratives are better placed to narrate events. Boje views an antenarrative as “fragmented, non-linear, incoherent, collective, unplotted, pre-narrative speculation, a bet and an improper storytelling” (2001b, 1). It thus comprises of ‘ante’ of a ‘before’ a narrative and ‘ante’ of a ‘bet’ on the future or speculation. Contrary to narratives which entail retrospective sense making, antenarratives are retrospective as well as prospective in nature. However, Boje argues that these classifications are suited for modern organisations and not postmodern organisations which are more focused on change management. Change management is more about the future-making than sensemaking of the past hence requires new modes of antenarratives which Boje calls antecedent and anteriority (Boje, 2012, 257). Boje’s article on What Does Quantum Physics of Storytelling means for Change management will be used to illustrate change within organisation and how it is related to storytelling. According to this article, “the objective of change management is to discover storytelling path of one or more storytelling organisations, and when needed, facilitate new pathways by doing strategic storytelling interventions” (Boje, 2012, 254). The quantum physics of storytelling that takes account of the complexity and fragmentation in postmodern organisations thus is crucial to understanding what is involved in change management. The paradigm shift to quantum physics from mechanistic and relativity physics has challenged the notion of time, space and matter and consequently change management. Now organisations will cease to rely on grand narratives to handle stakeholders and concentrate on involving them in storytelling. Change affects organisation members in different ways and in most cases, changes always fail. The 8-stage model by Kotter will thus be used to show how storytelling can help us manage change effectively. The 8 stages include: sense of urgency, creating guiding coalition, developing mission and strategy, communicating vision, empowering employees for broad-based action, generating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing more change and anchoring new approaches in the culture (Kotter, 1996, 35-158). Application The quantum physics of storytelling is crucial in helping us to understand managerial sensemaking. Traditionally, the dominant form of storytelling in organisations was the narrative. In this case, corporations developed a strong corporate culture as the grand narrative and only excecutives were engaged in storytelling thus acting as a bridge between corporate consumers, shareholders and workers. The organisation strategy thus focussed on assessing opportunities and threats and narratives helped to “overcome threats with strengths and finding opportunities to supplant threats” (Boje, 2012, 260). Narratives include financial reports, sustainability reports, and employee handbooks, employment contracts, codes of conduct, policies and procedures and strategic plans. However, today organisations have become more complex due to globalisation. Management today spans across countries and cultures and this in turn has elicited ethical issues. Boje (2001a, 7) acknowledges that in postmodern era, “stories are harder to tell as experience is fragmented and full of chaos”. As such, fixing meaning is a fiction. There is need to break the grand narratives into small stories or multistories in order to make sense and manage responsibly. Moreover, organisations are faced with the myriad factors that put pressure of organisations to change and this requires effective storytelling if it has to be succesful. This kind of storytelling for Boje is the antenarrative which is more fragmented, retrospective and prospective. The antenarrative has four sorts of causalities: linear, cyclic, spiral and assemblage or rhizomatic (Boje, 2012, 258-259). Linear antenarrative assumes the end is known and organisation works towards achieving that end without any barriers on the way. For example, all companies have a strategic plan that outlines what is to be achieved in a period of time such as 5yrs. Whatever success has been achieved or failures is traced back to where the narrative started hence it is retrospective. In other words, the past impacts on the future (p. 258). For example, a middle manager will often have agreed targets to be achieved by workers and which forms basis of performance appraisal. All actions such as training and development and other learning methods are aimed at achieving the set targets and in case the worker fails to meet target, failure is attributed either to goal setting (unachievable goals) or to worker behaviour such as laziness.To change such behaviour, the worker needs to be punished. Managerial sensemaking in this case, involves retrospection-prospection. However, it fails to account for other factors that can impact performance such as work environment, health issues, and work/life balance issues among others. Cyclic antenarratives causalities entail “stage-by-stage logic of retrospective-narrative-representation and impression that bear on prospective-cyclic-antenarrative-sensemaking” (Boje, 2012, 259). This more or less refers to the organisational life-cycle which entails stages of birth, maturity, decline and dissolution. The cycle is assumed to be normal or recurrent behaviour. An example is where a middle manager may expect a highly performing employee to continue performing highly but this is not always the case. Cycles are unpredictable hence it is not easy to predict behaviour of employees. This has implication for change management in organisations as a strategy that has worked well today may not always work well tomorrow and a change that has worked for one subsidiary in one country may not work in another subsidiary or country. For success, the management need to change strategy every time it embarks on effecting changes in the organisation (Kotter, 1996, 67). Spiral causalities are neither linear nor cyclic but instead deviate from norm. Boje (2012, 259) argues that spiral causality conforms to dialectic of deviation-amplification with deviation-counteraction. Behaviour in this sense may be attributed to factors in the environment such as societal upbringing or actors and actants hence it is participative in nature. In this case, to change behaviour (anticipated future), management sensemaking involves enacting actions of caring and in-being. In-being is about get involved with something or someone and showing caring concern for it. It is ontological storytelling .This style applies the uncertainty priciple and observer effect which views matter as not static or absolute certainty (Boje, 2012, 255). Matter is dynamic and can change any time depending on the situation. For example, if an employee is involved in an unethical practice such as fraud, or corruption or is all of a sudden not perfoming as expected, what the middle manager can do is getting involved with that employee to find out his/her experiences and what drives them to do such acts. By getting involved, the manager can be able to develop measures to curb such behaviour in future. For Boje, spiral causality involves prospective sensemaking that anticipated a possible future by enacting particular sort of actions of caring and in-Being (2012, 259). In case of an organisation, these can be rules, regulations and procedures that guide behaviour. Understanding employee behaviour involves getting involved with them and having them share their problems. In this case, Kotter advocates creating a guiding coalition and empowering employees as key to successful change management (1996, 101-117). The final causality is assemblage or what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) called rhizomatic process. Boje (2012, 259) views this antenarrative as actor-actant-network-theory. The cause of behaviour in organisations using this style is attributed to a network of interconnections with other antenarratives or causalities; it is a web of interconnections involving actors and actants in search for meaning. This is the Tamara antenarrative of organisations where spectators chase characters in search for meaning in different spaces sometimes shifting from being spectators to actors thus breaking barriers that exists between actors and spectators (Boje, 2001a, 2). In this sense, there are no whole stories but only fragments of stories hence managers need to dig deeper to find meaning of behaviour or situation. For example, if a middle manager wants to find out why employees are underperforming, he/she mit end up with a web of connections. One such reason may be complicity of employees, laxity of the manager himself, organisation culture that does not support high performance in terms of rewards, lack of motivation, and other factors. Some of these factors are direct while others are hidden thus effective and responsible management requires collective sensemaking. The implication of these antenarrative causalities is that if organisations aim at changing behaviour in organisation effectively, then they must learn to manage change effectively by engaging in strategic storytelling or what Boje calls ontological storytelling (Boje, 2012, 254). Change management invoves “sorting out what sort of antenarrative will realign with narrative past-nows, and living story Now-ness of Duree of immediate present” (p. 257). The goal of change is to cope with new, more challenging environment. This for Kotter involves eight stages. The first stage is creating a sense of urgency. The need for change is informed by organisation naratives such as technological trends, market postition, financial performance, or emerging trends. Storytelling (communicating dramatically) is then used to create a sense of urgency so as to gain cooperation from stakeholders (Kotter, 1996, 35-36).This also involves a frank discussion of the situation especailly if the leader is a good change agent, if not he can employ services of outsiders to create awareness of the problem such as customers surveys to make the problem look serious. Next stage is creating a guiding coalition (p.51). This involves getting a group of people some from senior management and others from other ranks thus breaking hierachical barriers and working in informal setting through discussions. The third stage is developing vision and strategy by the coalition (p.68). This helps to direct change effort and to come up with strategies for achieving vision. The vision is achieved through discussions and must be appealing to all stakeholders if it has to succeed. The fourth state is communicating the vision. This is aimed at changing people’s minds and hearts hence should detail how they are going to benefit from change and assurance of fair treatment (p.85-100). This is similar to the ontological storytelling advocated by Boje and which leads to in-Being care or in-concern (2012, 258). This allows the coalition to act as role models of the new behaviour. Fifth stage involves empowering employees for broad-based action. This involves engaging everyone in storytelling thus eliminating barriers that may hinder effective change. People are allowed to experiment new ideas and make mistakes without risk of reprisal. Sometimes it involves changing sytems and structures that are barriers to change. Ignoring the stories of ‘little people’ could be detrimental to change efforts (Boje, 2001b, 10). Sixth stage is generating short-term wins (Kotter, 1996, 117-131). This involves developing short-term goals from the vision such as yearly targets so that employees can realise they are making progress hence more commitment. This is like breaking a grand narrative into multistories that can easily make sense. The next step is consolidating gains and producing more change rather than declaring victory too soon. These multistories or fragments have to be combined to make sense. Manger cannot assume that since the first phase has been successful, the other phases will be successful too (cyclic antenarrative) they have to go deeper into rhizomic process to find connections and likelihood of any barriers and eliminate them (Kotter, 1996; Boje, 2001b). The last stage is anchoring new approaches in the corporation’s culture. This involves allowing new behaviours to be rooted in social norms and shared values hence become stable. Communication is important in helping people see connections between successful change and their improved performance. These eight stages by Kotter are a type of storytelling and are crucial in helping change agents to manage change successfully in their organisations. Without such stories, there is likelihood of underestimating or ignoring some steps leading to failure. Conclusion In this essay using quantum physics of storytelling by Boje and other narratives such as Kotter’s 8-stage change model, I have demonstrated how sotytelling research can inform understanding of managerial sensemaking and responsible management. Storytelling is a tool for organisations which allows the organisation to communicate effectively with different stakeholders thus influencing them to support organisational activities and also to understand managerial sensemaking. As such, it is a change management technique as well as a tool of influence. Modern organisations are fragmented and chaotic hence need reponsible management to steer the company forward by enacting changes and elicing a heart of in-Being care or in-concern in everyone concerned through collective storytelling and ontological inquiry. This also entails listening to ‘little people’s’ (workers) stories and acting on them. Involving them in change initiatives and change management process is crucial in developing new culture. Moreover, it allows employees and other stakeholders to see sense in management decisions hence commitment to them. This is what constitutes responsible management. References Boje, D.M. 2001a. Athletic Apparel Industry is Tamaraland, Journal of Critical Postmodern Organisation Science, vol., No. 2, pp. 1-15. Boje, D.M. 2001b. Narrative methods for organisational and communication research, London: Sage. Boje, D.M. 2012. Reflections: what does quantum physics of storytelling mean for change management? Journal of Change Management, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 253-271. Kotter, J.P. 1996. Leading change, USA: Harvard Business School Press. Read More