Editor's introduction

Citation

Magala, S. (2007), "Editor's introduction", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 20 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jocm.2007.02320caa.001

Editor's introduction

The organizational change is all around us and it is duly noticed, studied and theorized upon in spite of the fact that it is heavily over-psyched and easily under-socialized. This imbalance is best illustrated by the shrinking of the shelf space for sociological books in academic bookshops, accompanied by the broadening of the shelf space for books in psychology (or, for that matter, in philosophy). What does this imbalance reflect apart from the lack of embedding of a civil society, whose members observe markets and states fighting above their heads? It reflects the relative neglect of the power struggles (yes, yes, including the class struggle and the struggle of the sexes). It also reflects the relative professional power of psychologists and sociologists, respectively, (which can be measured, for instance, by the fact that the latter are relatively less frequently asked to consult for companies and as of late even for the governments). There are many complex reasons and many streams of interwoven contextual constraints, which must be studied in order to understand how we arrived at the present predicament, but it appears that one of the main underlying constellations of causal factors has to do with the spread of formal professional organizations as the privileged way of shaping social processes. To put it in a nutshell: we would like to identify ourselves with the avant-garde elites of the knowledge intensive firms and institutions, but we would also like to feel the warm solidarity of the populist appeals fired by our professional activities and spreading sustainable wealth, sophisticated culture and democratically distributed power to the previously excluded, locked out, “nickel and dimed.” Managers and sponsors, bureaucrats and gate keepers cannot see what we as professional researchers refuse to see and to study with due diligence. Can we correct this one-sidedness, reduce the imbalance, offer a more credible and sustainable promise?

Most authors in the present double issue of the regular potpourri edition of JOCM would probably place themselves closer to the critical management studies than to any other recognized and stabilized mainstream school of thought or academic platform. Ali Akgun applies Giddens' structuration theory in order to gain leverage in understanding organizational intelligence in a somewhat less biased, psychologically defined approach. He expresses hope that structuration theory will help researchers and managers to operationalize organizational intelligence. The next authors, Martin Harris and Victoria Wegg-Prosser, offer us their analysis of 44 semi-structured interviews with the key BBC professionals involved in “producer choice” change program, noting the ambiguous nature of actual changes and the regular ebb and flow of increased managerial control or of surges of creativity. Perhaps the most astonishing finding is that in spite of all the change rhetoric and marketization or digitalization campaigns, the head count of 25,000 full time employees in 2005 does not differ from the one in 1977, before the change campaigns had started. Does it mean that professional cultural bureaucracies are more resourceful than their nominal – political and economic-masters? That culture and cultural expertise offer more niches and modes of resistance than theoreticians of organizations dare to imagine? Rene ten Bos and Stefan Heusinkveld would have answered the above question in the positive. For them, an organizational change requires managers, consultants and temporary holders of a separate “status” namely “gurus” who turn fads and foibles of managerial sciences into standards of choice and taste, thus setting the trends for learning organization, communities of knowledge or fifth disciplines. Sarah E.A. Dixon and Anne Clifford examine one such emergent standard of managerial preferences – namely the ecopreneurship (or ecologically and socially sustainable entrepreneurship) trying to plot the practical framework for social and green entrepreneurship with the successful Green-Works case study from the UK. Not only ethical, but also aesthetic values influence and color our decisions about designing and running business organizations. Mathieu Weggeman, Irene Lammers and Henk Akkermans discuss the influence exerted by the “beautiful” product, elegant process and aesthetic sensibility of employees and clients upon organizational performance and the very shape of organizational realities around us. Their quote from Arthur Danto (“Beauty is an option for art and not a necessary condition. But it is not an option for life. It is a necessary condition for life as we would want to live it”) deserves attention not only of change “gurus,” but also of everybody concerned with the relative lack of attention paid to the aesthetic impact of organizational environments upon individuals and communities. Gilles Arnaud and Stijn Vanheule tackle the problem of an individual sensibility from a different point of view, namely by discussing the relevance of Lacanian psychoanalytical theory for generating insights into change processes. They focus on the individual dissatisfaction with work processes and a relative neglect of individual subjectivity (“intimate dimension”) in managerial discourses (lip service to differentiated individualized psychological contracts notwithstanding). They evoke Burkhardt Sievers on love and death in organizationas as well as studies of Enriques on sex and power and opt for a future “possible psychoanalytic ecology of human resources.” It is a bold claim, but a respectable one – ever since Zizek demonstrated the uses of Lacan in political and ideological analyses. Jennifer Frahm and Kerry Brown bring us back to the empirical testing grounds for theoretical claims and follow a change project linked to the new technology diffusion in a non-profit, public organization. They focus on organizational communications, trying to determine the relationship between the nature and frequency of communications on the one hand and receptivity to change demonstrated by employees on the other. The attribute the decreased receptivity to change, manifested in cynicism, contempt, uncertainty and frustration to a lack of formal changes in communication strategies and the absent, silent CEO. Emmanuel Ogobonna picks up the issue of an organizational change linked to the diffusion of a new technology, but focuses on communication technologies, internet and intranet, as underlying determinants of the organizational cultural dynamics. He pays special attention to the emergent subcultures (internet operations unit, aptly nicknamed “coterie” or “subculture of nerds”) and the attempts of their members to increase their visibility and influence within the organization as a whole (an attempt hotly contested and opposed by those threatened by the emergent subculture).

Sarah Gilmore and Clive Gibson tackle a different issue in their case study of an elite sports organization, namely the ability to detect and preserve an uneasy balance between a necessary short-term radical change on the one hand and the “long-term gestation of value through asset protection and acquisition” on the other. They stress the importance of longitudinal and contextual data for studying the background and backstage processes accompanying organizational change. A similar set of conclusions has been reached by Matthew W. Rutherford and Daniel T. Holt in their study of corporate entrepreneurship based on responses of 264 employees of a single company to a web questionnaire. They investigated the influence of three variables – process, context and individual characteristics upon desirable individual outcomes (job satisfaction, affective commitment, turnover intention) as indicative of an organizational ability to innovate, initiate entrepreneurial projects and successfully implement change. Finally, picking up an aesthetic theme, Saku Mantere, John A.A. Sillince and Virpi Hamalainen write on “Music as a metaphor for organizational change.” The theme comes hardly as a surprise after a well-known polemic between Mary Jo Hatch and Carl Weick devoted to this problem, a few years ago. Participants in this discussion wondered if the breaking away from an iron cage of classical music did indeed set jazz musicians free to improvise and create without restrictions or imprisoned them again in the velvet cage of dominant stars (Miles Davis prevented his band from rehearsing in order to “force” improvisation out of them) and new, quickly emerging and hardening conventions. Mantere, Sillince and Hamalainen ask if an organizational change can be a pleasing experience for organizational members and if the “discomfort of change can be controlled through structured sensemaking?” They attempt to make their point by looking for behavioral equivalents of changes in harmony, rhythm, volume, form or texture of patterned interactions in organizational context. The issue closes with the book review by Kate Trygstad – which is devoted to “Retreats that Work” or a guide for facilitators aiding them in a creation of “safe space” for teaming up and stimulating group learning. Readers who survive this double load of creative insights into organizational change processes, will – hopefully – be better equipped to tackle real change in their respective environments, contexts and circumstances.

Slawomir Magala