These resources are based on a Masters degree module entitled "Managing Organisational Change" that I taught early in 2003. Having prepared the lectures, it seemed a pity to leave them behind and not to make them available for those either teaching or investigating the notions and practices of managing change. So here they are.
I did not find the module I taught - in terms of the structure and coherence of the debate it sought to foster - particularly satisfying mainly because I couldn't establish my own "embedded" position quickly. By the end of the lectures I wanted to go back to the beginning and start again. I still feel this way. Life marches on and I have not had much time to reflect backand re-group. Perhaps this is characteristic of ordinary busy people? I found the theory debates of change management so limited and vacuous both in terms of the simplifications and obfustications of analytical explanation and in a practical sense also. I didn't find that it explained very much over and above the usual protestations about power, participation, messy management and obvious observations about evolutionary "learn as you go" change and the "not-particularly-controllable" aspects of real change. It did however enable us (me and my tutorial group) to challenge assumptions, to review managerial frameworks of thinking, evaluation and methods of application. We kept the problem of "Liza's bucket" in mind (arguments that leak) and the general thinness of managerial recipes for "how to take action to change things". Generally most of these are not particularly explicit in guaranteeing how to cook a tasty cake - yet - the tools in the "change management kit-bag' are still handy in suggesting directions and activities to get a handle on problems as perceived .... by the changers.
I didn't feel that the classes (other than encouraging critical thinking about multi-faceted and levelled cases that illustrate general "change" matters) would necessarily be that helpful to students who subsequently take up roles involving them as 'change agents' but then my natural critic comes through. It is too much to expect of 12 or so lectures and seminars that participants will take complex human activity systems - often technically or professionally specific something that the sociological and organisational change literature hardly references - by the scruff of the neck and do something to modify, reshape, improve or even close them down i.e. do something that they are currently not doing. It is more a measure of my own life position that by the end of the course, it seemed that all I could conclude is that "change is something that people do in the struggle to package up and improve their lives"...... interesting but perhaps too maudlin.
The people element and the notion of people being "resistant to change" abounds in the change literature. Are they? Some are and some are for a short while. many welcome it and most adapt and find their new role and expression within it. Who says that life ain't tough - but then - much of the literature hardly touches upon real people at all. People are kept at a distance. They are abstracted.
The contrast that people are resistant to change and are also very very flexible about change is hardly examined. In my own experience, I have come across so many situations where people gripe somewhat but generally don't moan much about change - they imply get on with it, accept it willingly or knuckle down and get on with it. Many of course bury their heads in the sand and hope it will go away. It is almost as though my own independence and autonomy of mind and willingness to accept that I cannot have it all my way all the time, limits the way I think about change.
I actually believe that I don't have a right to a job for life or to have things just as I want all the time. This does not deny my clarity and commitment to what I believe in, what is right conduct and what is not, what my obligations to others are or their obligations to me, what my life investments are and how I want to protect and nurture them. Too often the change literature - refers to "people" but then we do not find actual people being referenced - only some anonymous person or group whose character, aspirations, prejudices, fears and any other personal quality are represented as a summary abstraction by some pundit theorist. The change literature too does not easily deal with big scale market and macro governmental or institutional change. It does not deal well with the order from chaos or potential for disorder characteristics of socio-economic adjustrment.
The strategic management literature of competitiveness, balanced score card, marketing positioning, mergers and acquisitions and bankrupcies - is hardly referenced by the organisational behaviour change literature - as such it becomes "of-the-ether", detached and removed.
So - having declared this - treat these as "working documents". I may get time to rearrange them - to shape them into something more coherent so that I am happier with them. For the moment, I hope they are useful.
Chris Jarvis, June 2003
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