Course Instructor: Sarah Mir

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Carry notebook and pen for taking notes for EVERY SESSION. Presence of stationary will be part of grade. You may submit your notes at end of semester for evaluation and possible grade enhancement.

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Managing Change-Cases and Concepts.

Second Edition Authors: Todd D. Jick Maury A. Peiperl

Managing Organizational Change-A Multiple Perspective Approach

International Edition Authors: Ian Palmer, Richard Bunford, Gib Akin

Introduction Module 1: Forces for Change

Technology Customer Focus Globalization

Change is not made without inconvenience, even from better to worse. -Richard Hooker An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly understood. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly understood-GK Chesterton
We do not have to change, because staying in business is not compulsory. W Edwards Deming

Change in its broadest sense is a planned or unplanned response to pressures and forces. It has caused organizations to modify for years through technological, economic, social, political or competitive forces.

Text of managing Change will introduce the processes of envisioning, implementing and receiving change as interrelated activities. The cases and reading will introduce change as an integrated process, not to present the stages as separate activities.

The drivers of change are many too many to list which is why managing change is more of an art than a science Yet there are recurrent themes in change whose effects can be seen time and again in changes from the smallest of changes to the biggest ones. The largest of these 3 forces are
Technology Customer Focus Globalization

Technological progress used to be measured over decades and years; now its happening in the course of months and weeks. Firms that were at the cutting edge of technology only a year or two ago find themselves threatened with decline if they fail to stay innovative or entrepreneurial. In the 90s this was exhibited by the introduction of the web and the changes that it brought with it. More lately it is manifested through introduction of ERP, CRM, wireless technology, Business Process reengineering etc.

Examples: Pieper aircraft sought to increase productivity by employing a CRM system to coordinate communications between its 17 suppliers and 70,000 customers. Delta Airlines introduced a new technological platform to provide real time information for flight operations. Implementing of new technologies is not straightforward.
20 % of firms expenditure on corporate IT fail to achieve its purpose. Impact of new systems may not be manifested for a long time Social aspects of implementing new technologies need to be paid attention to such as the way they can disrupt informal social patterns within the firm.

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Goal Synthesis: identifying its place in the organization. Choice of Technology: finding platforms that serve the firm as a whole Identifying political barriers: these may occur because of perceived loss of control or authority The IT team: getting the IT team and corporate to work as a team Communication: communicating the direction of and the process for implementing the change is crucial. Time Frame: short term vs long term technological change? Contingency Planning: planning for the future as well as maintaining the day to day operations. Relaxing normal operating rules during the change process as well as answering what if questions.

Traditional ways of thinking about change are based on the 3 stage model of
Unfreezing: establishing the need for change Change/Movement: to new behavior through cognitive restructuring Refreezing: integration of new behaviors into social & organizational relationships.

According to this model, the firm prepares for change, implements the change, and then strives to regain stability as soon as possible. It treats change as an event to be managed during a specified period.

This traditional theory works for stable firms and situations but today the environment is more turbulent and flexible. This is especially true when the technology being applied is open ended and customizable e.g. groupware technologies. Or when firm use IT to make complex changes like global integration etc. For many firms, such initiatives represent a new ball game, not only because they haven't played the game before but also because most of the rules are still evolving.

Hence an alternative model is suggested for change management called the Improvisational Model. It reflects the uncertain, flexible and open ended nature of the technologies that are causing change. It sees change management as an on going improvisation than a staged event. It rests on 2 major assumptions:
When the technological changes are implemented, it is an on going process rather than an event with an end point after which the firm can return to its steady state. All technological and organizational changes made during the on going process cannot be anticipated ahead of time.

Given these assumptions, our model recognized 3 different types of changes:

Anticipated: Changes that are planned ahead of time and occur as intended. E.g. implementation of email software has the intended result increasing quicker communication. Emergent: Changes that arise spontaneously from local innovation an that are not originally anticipated or intended. e.g. use of email network to disseminate rumors throughout the firm. Opportunity based: Changes that are not anticipated ahead of time but are introduced purposefully and intentionally during the change process in response to a an opportunity event or breakdown. E.g. as firms gain experience with the internet, they are finding opportunities to leverage it in ways they did not anticipate before.

Figure 1 Page 16

Important to remember is that this model is not a predefined program of change charted by management ahead of time. It is simply a recognition of the fact that technological change will be a series of different changes, many unpredictable at the start.
Using this model will therefore require a set of processes that recognize the different types of changes as they occur and to respond effectively to them.

One of top 50 software firms in US. Produces and sells powerful software products for decision support, executive info and marketing analysis. Customer Service (CSD) provides technical support which is often complex via telephone to clients, consultants and resellers. In 1992 CSD bought Lotus Notes groupware technology within which it developed incident tracking support system (ITSS). This is used to help log customer calls and keep a history of progress towards resolving the customers problems. Introduction of the ITSS system was accompanied by anticipated changes: the full details of each incident had to be captured so the focus of the managers work shifted from research to both research as well as documentation.

Many positive consequences intended as well as unintended resulted from implementing the ITSS. Some of these were:
Documenting calls took time, but it also saved time by providing a rich database of info that could be searched for potential resolutions. This database served as an informal learning mechanism. Managers began to rely on ITSS data to evaluate specialists performances. Documentation skills became a factor in the hiring processes.

As CSD gained experience with the new software they introduced some structural changes to better make use of the ITSS. This change had not been planned prior to its launch. Calls were distributed between first line and second line specialists. Incoming calls were taken by first line i.e. junior specialists and if they were overloaded o had difficulty they transferred the call to senior specialists.

This partnership idea did not work so CSD introduced another opportunity based change by creating a senior specialist position who was responsible for mediating between the two and monitoring the work of the juniors. Another structural change that was introduced after one year was installation of ITSS in overseas offices and a bug tracking system was also introduced. Both changes had been planned but their timing had been left unspecified. Other emergent and opportunity based changes that occurred were better collaboration between employees, use of ITSS as a training tool for newcomers, development of an access and control policy for who had access to the ITSS database.

Anticipated Changes: expanding specialists work to include documentation Emergent Changes: Managers paying attention to documentation skills in hiring Opportunity based changes: Creating junior/senior partnership to take advantage of shared database and then adding the intermediary role when problems arose. Zetas change model cycled through anticipated, emergent and opportunity based changes through the second year too.

Fig 2 page 20

There were certain aspects of Zeta organization that enabled them to effectively adopt an improvisational model. 2 critical enabling conditions are:
Aligning Key Dimensions Dedicating resources to provide on going support for the change processes.

This refers to the relationship between 3 dimensions: The technology Organizational context (culture, structure etc) Change model used to manage change

Ideally the interaction between these 3 should compatible.

An on going change process requires dedicated support overtime to adapt both the firm and the technology to organizational change. Opportunity based change in particular depends on the ability of the organization to notice and recognize opportunities, issues, breakdowns and unexpected outcomes as they arise. Commitment to noticing and responding to changes should not stop after the implementation of the technology. This responsibility should be assigned and owned by appropriate members of the firm and they should be given the authority and resources to implement the on going changes.