Leading major change in the Asia Pacific region: demanding but rewarding?

Citation

Dufour, Y. and Steane, P. (2013), "Leading major change in the Asia Pacific region: demanding but rewarding?", Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration, Vol. 5 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/apjba.2013.41505aaa.001

Leading major change in the Asia Pacific region: demanding but rewarding?

Article Type: Editorial From: Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Administration, Volume 5, Issue 1

Leadership is usually seen as a key success factor in implementing major change. In the first paper of this issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Business Administration (APJBA) Suhaiza Ismail highlights the critical success factors of public private partnership (PPP) implementation in Malaysia. There can be little doubt from what can be seen throughout the Asia Pacific region that major change is generally uncertain, often threatening for those affected by them, and, therefore, difficult to achieve successfully. During the process of change conflicting interests will usually come to the fore. It is then somewhat difficult for the key people in charge to sustain the change process. Leading major change can, at best, be extremely demanding and more often than not unrewarding, although good leadership is vital to raise the necessary enthusiasm to achieve change. A good leader should both show the way ahead and enable other people to feel enthusiastic about it. Change can then become positive, exciting and challenging rather than discouraging and threatening.

One of the most striking features of leadership in implementing major change is that although what people are trying to achieve is often very similar from one organisation to another as well as from one country to another, the way key people implement change differs substantially. Analyses as to why the rate and pace of change differs in contrasting contexts have been performed by a number of academics around the world and they have generally highlighted an observable difference in the processes higher performing firms used to manage change compared to average performing firms over time. In the higher performing firms, change is the result of uncertain, emergent, and an iterative process. There are no grand blueprints for long term success in managing change. The process relies on the development and use of less visible capabilities – “intangible assets”, which include knowledge about markets and technologies on how to exploit them, as well as brand and reputation for quality of products, services and human resources. Such knowledge is often difficult to get. In the second paper of this issue of the APJBA Elsie Chan addresses methodological frailties in IT outsourcing survey. Other fundamental intangible assets include organisational capabilities to learn and to reinvent. Firms that develop such capabilities will be able to grasp opportunities quickly. The process in developing these skills, however, can to be measured in years rather than months.

For one thing leadership behaviour in implementing major change throughout the region usually appears to be much less dramatic than it is often pictured in the media and the popular business press. Leadership behaviour in managing the change has usually much to do with routine processes as opposed to extraordinary episodes of imagination, persistence or skill. Neither success nor change requires dramatic action. The conventional, routine activities that produce most sustainable organisational change, more often than not, require ordinary people to do ordinary things in a competent way. That is an idea well developed by Sooksan Kantabutra and Gayle Avery in the third paper of this issue of the APJBA. The main tasks of leadership in managing this process are about the resolution of patterns of interwoven problems that requires a combination of planning, opportunism and the appropriate timing of interventions. It further involves, developing a strategy, particularly on how to enlist the necessary support for change.

Leadership is very often shared by different individuals. In the fourth paper of this issue of the APJBA Som Bhattacharyya explains the process leading to strategic shared leadership. The idea of sharing leadership in implementing change is not new. For a number of years it has been suggested using the term “leading change” rather than leadership to contrast the collective and multi-faced aspect of the process with its image of individualism and heroism. The critical leadership tasks in managing change can be much more fragmentary and incremental than popular images of business heroism allow. This type of change leadership involves action by people at every level of the business. The overall lesson for any manager in the Asia Pacific region – but particularly the senior ones – is that there are different aspects of leadership and that these often will – and should – be shared.

The evidence throughout our region indicates that two key aspects of leadership remain: championing the change proposal and leading the change process. These tasks are often fulfilled by people of various hierarchical levels. From what we can see manifesting in our region, it is often personalities and personal resources rather than formal status and rank within an organisation that are important. The key role of personality in celebrity endorsements is highlighted by Subhadip Roy in the fifth paper of this issue of the APJBA. In such a division of work, the champion provides the vision and points the way forward whilst the leader responsibility is to mobilise enough support and commitment to garner action from other members. The availability of a champion is a necessary but not sufficient condition for successful implementation of change. Furthermore, what is required are broad teams to meet regularly and monitor progress during the various phases of the change proposal and find solutions to practical problems as they arise. One of the ways in which this situation is often overcome is to bring together a group of people who are committed to the change proposal. A similar pattern could also be found in the idea advocated for some time now by some academics of “receptive contexts” for change, in which the leader’s task of building a team of complementary assets and skills is stressed above other skills. It is a critical mass of enthusiasts with shared values that is important, rather than one individual champion of change. This network is partly formed organically and partly it is orchestrated by judicious appointments.

In sum the pattern that can be found in the Asia Pacific region broadly supports the counter intuitive view expressed in some recent studies on leading change showing that clear indications and strong commitment to action coupled with a broad vision as opposed to a detail blueprint can contribute to the task of leading change. Broad visions have been found to have greater impact in terms of building commitment and allowing interests groups to commit to the change process. It allows top-down pressure to be matched with bottom-up concern as the field gets scripted in rather than scripted out.

Yvon Dufour, Peter Steane