Different Perspectives of Change Development in Organizations - Literature review Example

Student Name: Tutor: Title: Research Paper Course: Introduction Many organizations adapt slowly to change since internal forces promote continuity of the current situation: inertia. This results into a strategic drift as well as a mounting a clash with the external environment. By and by the clash forces organizations to adopt in some kind of radical transformational change in order to catch up. Organizations that implement change progressively or are continuously adaptive go through incremental change defined by gradualist paradigm. However, other perspectives view change as episodic and on-off event. Four articles being discussed in this paper present different perspectives of change development in organizations and emphasize on change as being manifested in daily organizational routines. Managers as being the actors of change present a planned perspective of change. Feldman (2000) begins by observing that change happens in organizational routines that form part of the organizational behavior. Tsoukas and Chia (2002) support this perspective and present an argument that change has to be naturally treated as normal condition in the organizational life. Orlikowski (1996) challenges stability approach to change and further explains that change should be part of the organizational life. Weick and Quinn (1999) present a detailed description of continuous and episodic perspective to change and call for a reconciliation or harmonization of the different views. The perspective that change happens in a gradual and incremental way over time seem to be favoured by many authors. This paper compares perspectives in four articles by Feldman (2000), Tsoukas and Chia (2002), Orlikowski (1996) and Weick and Quinn (1999). Discussion Feldman (2000) argues in her paper that organization routines possess the potential for change although they are more often than not viewed and defined as unchanging. The author describes routines as structures that are temporal which are applied as a means of achieving work in the organization. Routines form part of organizational behavior. According to Feldman (2000) routines within organizations are not given full recognition since their capacity for change has been explored to a small extent. Although change is not viewed as dominant concerning the organizational routines, various scholars have talked about its importance. Some sources of change happening in habitual routines include experiencing failure, coming across a novel state of affair, getting some intervention which calls the attention of members to the norms within the group, achieving a huge achievement in the life of a group or its work, and having to deal with the change within group’s structure. New ideas in the industry or financial crises force routines to somehow adjust to change. Technology is an obvious impetus that triggers changes in the manner in which an organization plans the work’s accomplishment. An ecological or evolutionary view on routines also implies a role of change within routines. Routines are also impacted by a number of factors within the organizational setting. Apart from routines being influenced by changes in job, they are also impacted upon by changes in these jobs’ incumbents and by the mistakes and ideas of existing agents. Responsibility accumulated by a person can be a means of reflection on organizational change by means jobs redefinition. Such changes are shaped by factors at the environmental, organizational and individual levels. Feldman (2000) view has been supported by Tsoukas and Chia (2002), Orlikowski (1996) and Weick and Quinn (1999) in their articles. Feldman uses a study of members of an organization to highlight the potential change in routines that is widely ignored. Participants involved in routines sometimes change them. When action does not result into the desired outcomes there is need for change hence change in routines. Change can also occur when actions give outcomes that are undesirable. If the outcomes create opportunities that are new, the workers have the chance of expanding. The routine can be changed to take full advantage of emerging possibilities. People who take part in a routine continually alter the routine in order to allow them to accomplish a task in a better way. Feldman (2000) in her study used an emic approach that allowed the individuals within the organization to point out what fitted in the definition of routine. The same manner in which English grammar permits speakers to come up with various sentences, organizational routines permits members to display various performances. Changes within routines are involved in new regulations that impact the choice and availability of repetition. New policies or rules suggest that routines that are new are introduced to members in the lower hierarchy of the organization by those members in the upper level of the organization. Change within organizations cannot mean only external environment responses but also involves internally generated knowledge. The view on organizational change in organizational routines discussed by Feldman (2000) provides more information on the agency’s role in the manner in which structures are modified and transformed by processes of daily life in the organization. The author shows that routines in an organization have the potential of change. Feldman (2000) has identified the ability of change within the internal variants of the routine. Routines cannot be considered to be static when they are full of life like variations elements of organizations. Individuals will breathe life within the routines they participate in owing to the link between their ideals and plans as well as their behavior. Tsoukas and Chia (2002) present an account of change in their study where it should naturally be treated as a normal condition of organizational life. Change they argue; is the putting together different actor’s habits and beliefs of action in order to take in experiences that are new accrued by interactions. Change is part of human action as well as organizations present sites for a human mind that is continuously evolving. If change is understood in comparison to stability then one loses focus of the unique micro-economic changes that support while at the same time corrupting stability. When change is only regarded as the occasional episode in the life of an organization, then the pervasive nature of change is completely lost. This perception of change support Feldman (2000) view of change even happening in daily routines within the organization as opposed to radical transformation. Questions of transformation remained to a large extent behind as organizational practice and thinking engaged in a discussion preoccupied by stability questions. There are difficulties in getting to understand the correct form of concepts like improvisation and the not-easily-noted changes in the context of organizing unless someone views change within its own dimensions as opposed to a special case of routine and stability. The view of change to be ongoing as opposed to stability enables researchers to get a clearer comprehension of the elements of change at work. To properly comprehend organizational change a person has to get ready for surprise and emergence meaning. Further he has to consider the chance of organizational change giving outcomes or implications and consequences far beyond those planned or imagined. Change programs work as long as they are adjusted and fine-tuned by players in various settings. Without a view of change as a process that is ongoing, a course of situated initiatives, and a stream of interaction than a mere set of episodic events, it would not be possible to deal with the challenges that come up during implementation of change discussed in literature. The authors have discussed change as continuous and gradual or incremental as opposed to being a one-time event. The main impediments to redefining change are the epistemological and ontological commitments that are projected in the research in this subject. Tsoukas and Chia (2002) agree with Feldman (2000) argument that structures are modified and transformed via processes of everyday organizational life. The authors take further Feldman argument that scholars have to stop giving ontological priority to organizations. This approach makes change an outcome of exceptional effect that is produced in particular circumstances by certain people referred to as change agents in the process. The approach has to be that change is indivisible and pervasive hence the significance of life lies in its character that is continuously changing. Tsoukas and Chia (2002) take an energized process-oriented approach when it comes to organizational change. Just like Feldman the authors argue that change has to be viewed as an ongoing process. However, the authors observe that traditional perception concerning change are not absent from the previous scholars explanation. Change should not be considered as being a property of organization, Tsoukas and Chia (2002) explain. It should be noted that organization is the emergent belonging of change. Orlikowski (1996) in his paper takes a perspective on organizational transformation which views change as engraved in the organizing practice. Change is created via the situated practice of organizational actors through innovations, improvement and adjustment of work routines over a period of time. The author also emphasizes Feldman approach where change is registered in daily routines that are used to accomplish work in an organization. Orlikowski (1996) uses an empirical study that explored the use of a new information technology in an organization over a period of two years. Feldman (2002) in her study he examined four routines in an organization within a period of four years. In Orlikowski (1996) study a series of not-easily-noticeable but significant changes were implemented over time as organizational actors absorbed the new technology into their work practices. They then explored local innovations. Unanticipated contingencies and breakdown were responded to while opportunistic shifts in coordination and structure mechanisms were initiated. Various cognitive, procedural, and normative variations were improvised to deal with their evolving use of the technology. The author observes that the issues of transformation remained at the backstage while organizational practice and thinking participated in a discourse that inclined more towards stability. It is important to examine the kinds of models that shape the understandings of organizational transformation and look at their importance in the face of new organizational stage. Most of the previous perspectives on change were built on the discourse of stability but in the current world change is not considered as an activity in the background. Change has become part of organizational life. In his paper Orlikowski (1996) discusses three perspectives which have influenced studies concerning technology-based organizational transformation. These perspectives comprise of punctuated equilibrium, technological imperative and planned change. Planned change model assume that managers are the basic source of organizational change. The actors initiate and implement deliberately changes to respond to perceived opportunities to enhance organizational performance or cope with the environment. The author says the models have been dominant in organizational change as well as development literatures. Technological imperative perspectives give little importance to managers or any specific organizational actors. Technology is viewed as fundamentally and relatively autonomous force behind organizational change. Adoption of new technology comes with anticipated changes in organizations’ work routines, structures, performance and information flows. Punctuated equilibrium developed to counter gradualist models that present organizational change as being slow, incremental as well as cumulative. Punctuated equilibrium models present change as being episodic, rapid, and radical. Long periods of stability are alternated by combat periods if metamorphic, qualitative change. Punctuated discontinuities are basically precipitated by modifications that happen in the internal or external conditions like process design, new technology, or industry regulation. The prevailing discourse on technology-based organizational transformation and support assumptions which are problematic concerning an organizational discourse focusing on flexibility, emergence, and self-organization. A view that fronts change as opposed to stability as a means of organizational life can provide a suitable lens within which to comprehend change in contemporary organizations. The perception of change as being ongoing improvisation agrees with the emphasis on situated action taken by practice researchers. Change is attained through ongoing variations that come up frequently even imperceptibly through improvisations and slippages of everyday activity. Weick and Quinn (1999) reiterate that episodic change is often compared to continuous change with regard to implied metaphors of analytical frameworks, organizing, intervention theories, ideal organizations and the change agents’ roles. While episodic change adopts the sequence of unfreeze-transition-freeze, continuous change conforms to the sequence free-rebalance-unfreeze. Stability understanding is viewed to emphasize the choice to comprehend change as continuous or episodic. The authors state that planned change occurs as a result of failure of people to come up with organizations that are continuously adaptive. Consequently organizational change often happens within the setting of failure or some sort. Losses prompt a plan for change. The authors look in detail at episodic change and continuous change. Weick and Quinn (1999) say that change is triggered by failures to adopt and hence change cannot be thought as starting since it never stops. However reconciliation of the opposing themes gives impetus to ongoing energy and tension in prevailing research. The classic machine bureaucracies have to be frozen to be improved. Some of the organizations have individuals within them who are already adjusting to changes in the brought about by the conditions of the new environment. The big challenge is to get acceptance of change as being continuous within the entire organization in order for the isolated innovations to spread and be viewed as relevant to a greater change of purposes at hand. Research has demonstrated that change is not an on-off affair or event. Change’s Trajectory is often open-ended or spiral as opposed to being linear. The authors urge researchers to focus on changing and not change if all the insights are to be kept in play. A shift to changing means more acknowledgment that change is ever on. The chains of causality are less determinate and longer than anticipated. The various authors have observed that change is continuous and incremental as opposed to being a one-time event. Weick and Quinn (1999) have taken a slightly different approach to analyzing change by comparing continuous and episodic perspective instead of promoting continuous change as observed by Feldman (2000), Tsoukas and Chia (2002) and Orlikowski (1996). Conclusion Feldman (2000), Tsoukas and Chia (2002), Orlikowski (1996) and Weick and Quinn (1999) all support change as being realized in daily routines manifested in daily improvisations and slippages that are sometime not easily noticeable. The notion of managers as being actors of change and change being episodic and planned can be misleading. Changes in routines to achieve new ways of accomplishing work gradually amounts to a huge source of change in organizational life. Weick and Quinn (1999) call for reconciliation between the continuous and episodic perspectives of change. Whether gradual or episodic, change happens within organization through daily routines. Feldman (2000), Tsoukas and Chia (2002) and Orlikowski (1996) have all emphasized change being seen as occurring in continuously in daily routines. Weick and Quinn (1999) look at continuous and episodic perspective concerning change with a detailed insight. The view that change is emergent and episodic is not necessarily true. Change happens through improvisations and slippages that happen every day in the organization. The authors agree that change has to be part of organizational life. It is important for research to focus on change rather than stability when studying transformation in organization. Change most of the time happens in small ways through routines as noted in the four articles. References Feldman, S.M. 2000, Organizational routines as a source of continuous chance, Organization Science, 11 (6): 611–629. Orlikowski, W.J. 1996, Improvising organizational transformation over time: A situated change perspective, Information System Research 7 (1): 63-92. Tsoukas, H. & Chia, R. 2002, On organizational becoming: Rethinking organization change, Organizational Science 13 (5): 567-582. Weick, K., & Quinn, R. 1999, Organizational change and development, Annual Review of Psychology 50: 361-386. Read More