Searching for effective change interventions for the transformation into a high performance organization

Abstract

Purpose

In recent years, the concept of the high-performance organization (HPO) has gained interest among organizations seeking to outperform their competitors and ensure business continuance. However, despite an increasing number of studies on high performance, the literature still does not present a clear organizational change approach with change interventions that effectively transform “ordinary organizations” into HPOs. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature by identifying change interventions that have proven themselves in practice, i.e. they actually increase commitment of managers and employees to the HPO transformation process.

Design/methodology/approach

This study consists of developing a theoretical HPO change approach based on the change model of Whelan-Berry and Somerville (2010), followed by testing and applying the resulting 21 change interventions at a case company going through an HPO transformation.

Findings

The research results show that 75 per cent of the applied change interventions were either effective or very effective. Also, 25 per cent of the interventions were not very effective; most of these were individual-oriented.

Research limitations/implications

The change interventions with positive outcomes in this study can be applied by organizations during the HPO transformation. Future research should be performed in multiple industries and countries to investigate whether industry and country factors affect the effectiveness of change interventions.

Originality/value

Although much has been written about approaches for organizational change interventions, no change interventions specifically for creating an HPO are mentioned in the literature. Thus, the relevance of this study is that it constitutes the first step toward filling the gap in current literature on effective change interventions. This study provides a set of effective change interventions that drive successful HPO transformations.

Citation

de Waal, A. and Heijtel, I. (2016), "Searching for effective change interventions for the transformation into a high performance organization", Management Research Review, Vol. 39 No. 9, pp. 1080-1104. https://doi.org/10.1108/MRR-04-2015-0094