Seminar 5

Perspectives on Implementing Technological Change

Required Reading

• Burnes, Chapters 9 and 12
• Buchanan & Huczynski, Chapter 20.
• Morgan G, Images of Organization, Chapter 11, The Multicom Case, and p.281.

Introduction

The multi-layered, systems and contingency perspective on change requires us to understand the environmental factors, structure, technology, operations, culture and staff resources of a given organisation.Ê It is useful in this regard to compare the planned, behavioural science organisation development and political process approaches.

The PowerDoc case suggested that successful approaches to the management of change require:

• a broad view of the organisation and its environment
• willingness to look at problems from different angles both 'hard' and 'soft'
• ability to consider the claim rights and power of various stakeholders
• treating change as a process over time rather than a one-off event.

Automate and Informate

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) improve our capacity to routinise and automate control production and service operations.Ê In a sense such technologies enable more sophisticated forms of scientific management - which we might today term information systems engineering. Such automation readily substitutes for people in accomplishing tasks or functions or adds to the functions that a persona can perform.Ê In the 'lean factory which uses robots and computer integrated manufacturing' or 'in a distributed, virtual, remote office' fewer employees use software and database systems to process technical and economic transactions more flexibly and quickly. The 'cashless society' is manifested, from the petrol pump to Internet banking, in more self-service activity as customers themselves directly use the machine technologies without the intervention of a front of shop human server. The back room becomes more important. Ê However we have considered the view that

• the characteristics and capabilities of technologies do not, of themselves, determine changes in the nature of work or the design of organisations, rather
• new technologies 'trigger' or open up new social and managerial choices with regard to how work is organised and controlled. The front-of-shop, back-room division is an example.

Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine (1988), coins the term 'informate' and and argues (op.cit pp.9-10) that "Activities, events, and objects are translated into and made visible by information ". The technology informates as well as automates. She distinguishes between the 'automating' and 'informating' capabilities of ICTs and argues that

• automation is one option only for managerial decisions
• applied exclusively to new ICTs, all productive and social benefits may not be realised.
• the possibilities offered by ICTs are applied to automation of operations with a logic little different from that applied in 19th-century factory systems
• substituting mechanisation for people is design to achieve more efficiency, reliability, quality, continuity and control
• IT also generates more information about productive and administrative activities and performance extending managerial control benefits.

Think of recently introduced technology in your workplace, or any business familiar to you.

• How does it automate?
• How does it informate?
• how have activities, events, and objects been translated into and made visible by information?

Electronic Point of Sale Technology.

• further automates retail cash transactions.
• self-scanning by customers may so complete the automation that no check-out operator is required.
• new 'on-line' information is generated. Data is captured, stored, manipulated and distributed that was previously unavailable. EPOS systems generate information about stock levels, customer spending patterns, flows at check-outs etc. This informs marketing, buying, stock control, staffing decisions and so on.

Zuboff posits that ICT investment not cost reduction offers real competitive advantage. Once one retailer gets on board the ICTs development train - other retailers must follow to maintain their position.

However over emphasis on simply using technology to reduce costs by automating out human intervention in processes undermines this possibility. The scope of new ICT investment to informate as well as automate work has major implications for the management of technological change. The assumptions of technological specialists and management about the objectives and purpose of adopting new technologies need careful examination.

Zuboff's view suggests a new 'paradigm' or way of knowing and thinking about technology, technological change and ways of organising and controlling work operations.

• Is there really a "new paradigm" or is this a glossy, hyperbolic, sales pitch?
• Zuboff distinguishes between informate and automate approaches to technical change.Which of these corresponds most closely to the approach taken by management at PowerDoc?
• Were the Powerdoc events necessarily the most effective way of addressing the problems faced by the organisation?

Implementing Informate/Automate

We readily automate to change by

1. being aware of new and emergent technology and evaluating it considering available machines (and software solutions)
2. identifying business improvement requirements (where unit costs can be cut, more efficient methods and quality can be secured).
3. defining technical requirements ensuring that the new technologies are well tested, they will work (as a support solution to the organisations business requirements)
4. ensuring that they fit a well-analysed, socio-technical system perspective

• the organisation has the social capacity in terms of expertise and acceptance to adapt to the new technology and its associated methods - both at the point of technical development and introduction and on cut-over from the old to the new system and in subsequent maintenance and up-grading
• if jobs are to change then these are mad carefully with staff support and training. We often assume that fewer jobs are likely to be needed and that output qualities and response times will improve - or so we calculate - but these assumptions may be premature. New jobs emerge and others are redefined.
• Managerial control is secured through redundancy, redefinition of contracts of employment, regrouping of 'teams', persuasion and training for job redeployment and training.

Typically an automate strategy is announced as "progress" and egalitarians label it as a contemporary application of exploitative Taylorism - but this is a gross oversimplification and too damning particularly when we see the technology and its application to organisational production as being a remarkable example of continuing human ingenuity.

The thinking and effort associated with human creativity from gathering data, measuring, defining new methods and implementing new practices should not be perjoratively swept aside rather we should be aware of the incredible contribution such ingenuity has made to our modern world, our quality of life and wealth.

A full 'informating' strategy is more difficult to implement than mere 'automation' i.e. buy and install the machines. Informating - as an organisational process enhancement - calls for

• awareness of the nature of information and application of knowledge,
• it is likely to involve job redesign and changes in organisational structure
• it relies on changes in behaviours and attitudes i.e. cultures of enactment
• management need to support all organisational members with various tactics and programmes that take account of:
  • the overall context of change
  • the substance, inormation and informating content of the changes considered
  • the process of change management.

Tactics

What tactics are we talking about? For implementation of change we might expect to

• appoint a prime mover and co-opt key players
• inform, educate, involve, counsel and support employees
• form coalitions and build group consensus
• negotiate
• disseminate and embed - try to spread success quickly

Clearly the data processing manager at PowerDoc had a narrow perspective in reading the overall context of change. He failed to see that success criteria as integration, quality and responsiveness oriented rather than just cost based.A focus on the former gives a different reading of the content and context of the changes required.How the changes were handled could also have been handled differently.

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Re-evaluate the PowerDoc case and write notes on the process of change management in terms of:

• the range of participants and their possible objectives and positions in the early decision making stages
• the ways in which change was imposed.

What impact did the changes have on

• employee commitment and turnover
• effects on the quality of the product and service?

How would you have approached it differently and why?

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Participative Approaches

Stress on the human factor is the idee fixée of 'managing change' largely because of the human relations commitment of the 1960s and 70s organisation development school.It may be that management at PowerDoc may have benefited by a more open, participative approach - widening the range of participants in the decision making in the analysis, design and the implementation of the new system.The DP manager, with senior managers taking more of a back seat, had 'expert power' to impose a restricted, centralised view of change.This had a 'separating' effect on employee commitment and disgruntlement amongst the various parties rose.ÊSubsequent project manager and researcher 'progress chasing' of poor quality and inaccurate documentation suggests that the quality of the final product may have suffered.

As an example, participative issues in information systems design and development have been elaborated since the early 1980s as systems analysis and design techniques and tools were promoted for those engineering large, multiuser computer-based information systems. Participative commitments are evident in

• the SSADM (structured systems analysis and design methodology) and
• PRINCE project management frameworks.

Prescriptive theory in the domain of information systems engineering, has not neglected these matters albeit that managerial experience of project implementation often, for various reasons, does not come up to the idealised behaviours that are recommended (see de Marco).

This problem of 'the technical' neglecting 'the human' reflects 'human frailty' and the complexities involved in balancing traditional 'top-down, hard-engineered prescriptions' and participative approaches. Checkland seeks to pick this up with his soft systems methodology.

Why Participation?

Participation is inherently fraught with human variability and limitation. Yet in many "systems methodologies" and project management approaches, promotion of participative commitments can be seen.We routinely argue for technical specialists involved in implementing change needing to give the fullest attention to

• opening up the scope for owner and user participation in the analysis, design and particularly at the planning and implementation stages.Ê
• influencing and approving decisions, design choices and change outcomes.

Yet the extent of participation may vary from little or no involvement (with changes imposed from above), to changes which involve everyone concerned. Walton (1989) offered a summary of factors influencing the level of participation for a given case.

• Feasibility considerations.Generally, the stronger the skills, attitudes, norms and established techniques within an organisation, the more likely that support for participation will be needed.Where these elements are strongly in evidence, organisational members are likely to perceive participation as a normal and acceptable part of the change process.
• Desireability consideration. The wider the scope and significance of the people implications of the system changes, the more the provision of deep participation schemes is desirable.

Desirability relates to functions that the participation performs.

1. to improve the quality of implementation.Design and installation planning can be enhanced by incorporating the requisite task and organisational knowledge.The more advanced the technology, the more complex the relationship between the users and the technology.This puts a premium on in-house expertise and the expertise of organisational development experts. It raises questions about outsourcing (buying in) technical expertise and its sustainability.
2. to generate user support and ownership of change projects.Computer systems 'informate' the organisation rather than merely automate and so change agents need to foster motivation, learning to higher order levels of knowlege and know-how and user support.
3. to increase legitimacy and credibility of the process beyond the user group.The wider the scope of the changes, the more vital the need for change agents to gain legitimacy in the eyes of members.

Western democratic values - the cultural expectation

The dominant Western value of democracy provides the context in which we 'expect' participation. It becomes our right and we are afronted when we are not asked and when other ride rough-shod over our experience and opinions. This is exemplified by 'Mr and Mrs Grumpy', the trade union blocker stereotype and the NIMBY (not-in-my-back-yard) protester.

• We generally think that wide participation enables changes to emerge from within (a healthy internal process) rather than being imposed from without.
• We resent being excluded from decisions and our reactions may range from
  • 'I wasn't asked so it isn't my fault, nothing to do with me, they did it without consultation so it is their problem' to ...
  • the claim right that 'they have no right to make these decisions without properly reflecting and protecting the rights (and job properties) of others'.

As an example when new technology was introduced into a European Social Security system, managers considered using an outside agency to provide systems training. However they then realised that an external contractor would have little knowledge of user needs, procedures or the culture of the organisation.Both the technical and the training aspects of the system were thus planned centrally, with local supervisors becoming responsible for new technology training.Local users had considerable influence over designing their own work. Such anecdotes however do not offer universal application across other situations.

In the EU social security care, technology was seen not just for its own sake but as a vehicle for developing the organisation.The outcome of the change management process included

• improved administrative competence
• reduction of specialism
• building local autonomy
• improvements in the quality of working life
• productivity gains

High levels of participation in local offices facilitated user influence, learning and commitment this illustrating the perceived value participative approach in a large government department.Such an approach may however be based on there being:

• underlying support for the aims of computerization
• a large number of affected parties - who are each pushing or pulling (force field analysis)
• significany differences of view on how the changes could be implemented
• user involvement vital in terms of providing experience and information essential for sound system development.

Less participative approaches may work where:

• the benefits of participation are low
• there is widespread support for computerisation and user expertise in IT such that the learning curves for new systems are short.
• the promoters of the system are strong and their vies are accepte
• there is such hostility to the system is such that participation is perceived to delay the implementation, serve little purpose as it is likely to go run and round in circles. Such a situation may suggest that unilateral management action may be a better option. Confrontation management however is a high risk option.

The Multicom and GovMIS Case Studies

Now read

• the Multicom Case Study in Morgan, Images of Organization, Chapter 11, pp.356-359.
• the GovMIS case study

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Multicom

1. Multicom has obviously changed over the years. Identify the key stages in the evolution of the firm.
2. The existing project-based organisation of work has features which the two senior partners now reject.Identify these.
3. Multicom provided a responsive service to clients who saw the company as a 'leading edge' innovator.The company is now moving towards a more stable market niche and bureaucratised mode of organisation.Is a move to a more bureaucratised form an inevitable feature of growth is it dictate by changes in the operating environment? What other explanation is possible?

• Can a dominant coalition of stakeholders be identified at Multicom?
• What strategic choices are evident in respect of the design of the organisation and the evaluation of performance?

Guidance on SAQ

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OD and GovMIS Implementation of Technical Change

Desanctis and Courtney (1987), in an article entitled 'Toward Friendly User MIS Implementation', made a case for using an OD approach with its behavioural science and group dynamics techniques in the implementation of MIS.They argued that

• OD and MIS implementation have similar goals in needing to overcome resistance to change .
• The methods of technically oriented information systems developers have tended to underestimate the 'people' element in computer system implementation

Desanctis and Courtney argued that an OD tool-kit with its

• participative and interpersonal group techniques
• non-directive facilitator/OD consultant roles
• unfreezing and opening up, discussing and redefining actors' perceptions of problems
• consensus seeking values
• obtaining agreement etc

....might assist in redressing the imbalances in some technology inflicted, organisational change situations (Is there really evidence for this)?

Where an MIS is to be newly developed or updated then many tensions technical and socio/political may be present. The more extensive the MIS system change, in term of its interdependencies, the more resistance and scope for conflict there will be between the MIS, the supporters of the changes and other areas of the organisation.

There is considerable experience that frequently and often expensively, information system development failures, at the implementation stage, are due to inattention to human variables. Often users at many levels have been insufficently involved in systems planning and design.As technically oriented people, systems developers concentrate their art on technical matters. Their attention is not on other aspects of business enterprise, including human relations psychology and interpersonal relationships.However, from the 1980s onwards, as computer systems moved into the core of organisational communications, such training for systems analysts become crucial hence the rise of the study of human-computer interaction and the human-side of systems development.

The requirement for more specialists in systems implementation also necessitated the development of more generalist approaches by all parties involved in the implementation.This is the conclusion from the Landmark studies and from Walton's (1989) research discussed above.Desanctis and Courtney see systems analysts maintaining their 'hard systems' thinking methods with OD tools and techniques making a contribution to systems implementation and the management of change. Team building has particular relevance to the management of design and project teams.

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1. Refer back to the Multicom case. What role do you think might be played by an OD consultant.
2. What results would you expect to see from taking an OD approach to change management at Multicom?
3. The OD approach, while helpful for exploring the interpersonal side of change management, is unlikely to overcome the barriers to change which are apparent in the GovMIS case.Why? Identify what these might be?

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Bureaucracy and the Management of Change

Organisations structured and operating on tight bureaucratic lines display resistence.

Bureaucracies are not confined to the public sector.Concentration of business and corporate form involves

• functional specialisation,
• divisionalisation and
• other forms of role, policy and proceduralised organised on more or less bureaucratic lines.

Bureaucracy implies

• formalism and hierarchical compartmentalisation
• High volume transactions are carried out routinely
• the significant advantage of bureaucracy or 'hierarchy' is that it maintains vital elements of predictability and control.
• It ensures impersonality and consistency because of adherence to its rule governed modes of regulation.

Bureaucratic modes of organisation act to

• reduce uncertainty by means of particular routines and rules of thumb
• absorb or reject information in ways which reflect their hierarchial structure.

Change depends on innovations and innovators being legitimated by key stakeholders and power blocks. They need to take account of:

• Structure. Information is filtered and subject to different interpretations as it is passed up through the hierarchy. In the GovMIS case, the need was for cross disciplinary co-operation but the hierarchy was such that decision-making for investment in IT encompassed a very narrow range of issues. Innovators had no direct route to top management and there was no forum for to put their case.
  
  
• Power and politics. The management of organisational change is inherently 'political'. The ability to initiate action may depend more on accommmodating interests and mobilising political energy, than on getting the right answer to a problem. Political interests attach themselves to technical/organisational change initiatives, and in large organisations means and ends may become separated.
  
  
• Culture. Innovation may be blocked by ingrained organisational positions, channels and routines.
  
  
• Timing. Innovations need a gestation period, and proposals timed for best presentation. This reflects the agenda setting processes of decision-making. Innovation takes time, and needs a well-place champion who need not be identified with the technical specialism and the IT function i.e. a powerful sponsor.
  
  
• Uncertainty. Ambiguity and contradiction. There are contradictory perspectives on centralised and decentralised power. On the one hand, tight controls over IT spending and the scope of the changes are. On the other hand IT usage and access needs to be decentralised and people at the operational level "empowered".

An OD approach in the GovMIS case might be a useful tool approach. If the relevant parties can be got together. However it is not a good framework for understanding the essentially 'political' nature of change management. It also does it offer easy solutions to were there are intractable structural and cultural barriers to change.

These issues require a different perspective on the nature of organisations as provided by the strategic choice/political process approach.

Summary

We have reviewed the work of Zuboff and the concept of 'informating' and considered whether change management may be better served by a more participative approach. The concept of strategic choice is a recurrent theme and the Multicom case illuminates this further in a context of structural, cultural and task changes.

The strategic choice perspective provides

• a theoretically and practically useful way of analysing organisational change in relatively broad terms.
• it is closely related to detailed analyses of the politics and processes of negotiation - central to change management within organisations.

The GovMIS case study illustrates change issues in a bureaucracy and how structural and cultural factors may inhibit change management.

1. We can establish an 'evolutionary' chronology of events in Multicom as follows
   • Foundation period.
   • Expansion period.
   • 'Interregnum' period in which the tensions and dilemmas surrounding the question of how to organise become apparent.
   • Imposition of bureaucratic controls and the beginnings of factional infighting.
   • Departure of the junior partners, and finally moves towards stability/maturity.

2. Senior partners want Multicom to evolve in a way which will bring more stability and control to their working lives. Junior partners see the informal basis of work as inseparable from the 'creative chaos' that is Multicom, an organisation characterised by commitment, informality, ill-defined roles and a work-hard-play-hard culture of involvement. Under the existing project-based, client-centred organisation of work, flexibility and a healthy client list appears to have been achieved at the expense of internal controls and the overall coordination.

3. Walsh and Bridges want to redefine the company by developing longer-term relationships with existing clients. The move to a more stable market niche is being driven by the choices of senior partners even though structural characteristics of the environment have not changed. What has changed is the fit between Multicom and the environment and this is being redefined by Walsh and Bridges.
   
   
4. Beaumont and Rossi's breakaway company is formed in a similar way as Multicom when originally formed. We may see these developments as a natural result of evolutionary growth i.e. a determinist logic but this discounts human agency. Events are driven by actor choices. The market niches occupied by Multicom and Media 2000 also stem from ways in which key players define company activities.

5. 1. Walsh and Bridges, as senior partners, constitute the dominant coalition however this 'seniority' is challenged. They have opted for long-term stability, bureaucratic controls and divisionalisation but now Multicome is no longer seen as a cutting-edge innovator. They may want to gain economies of scale and compete on price rather than intrinsic client service quality. Control and coordination become the imperatives over searching for new and ill-defined projects.

   2. 'Strategic' choices involve environmental considerations as well as open ended choices. Multicom is in a state of transition and several reasons move it towards a more bureaucratic form. Walsh and Bridges seen unaware of unintended consequences which may follow from bureaucratisation. The management of change turns on how flexibility and control benefits need to be balanced. Senior partners could create profit centres to serve different market segments thus giving substantial control with autonomy and initiative/discretion for individual account managers and junior partners.

6. Issues such as structure, power and career interests are at stake and these tend to block change. A narrow focus on the pros and cons of particular technical solutions would be a mistake. Further modification is pssoble as a big investment has already been made but the organisation is locked into a vicious circle and new proposals are blocked. Technical specialists are unlikely to force the pace of change without understanding the dynamics of the bureaucratic form.
   
   
7. Questions of power and personality are on the agenda. An external change agent would need to account for Multicom's main structural and cultural characteristics. OD approaches have been used in many private and public sector organisations. An OD consultant/facilitator may offer advantages where personalities are 'trapped' into entrenched behaviours, procedures, systems and forms. But he/she will be an outsider.

8. The OD approach is suited to change management issues in small groups and there are differences in the assumptions of senior and junior partners at Multicom. An OD consultant may assist in opening up discussion of these differences, bringing underlying issues to the surface and so facilitate a resolution.

   But senior partners are in the ascendency over junior partners. Walsh and Bridges are unlikely to agree to changes they see as acting against Multicom's best interests.