Spirited response to change in Scotland

Citation

(1999), "Spirited response to change in Scotland", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 20 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.1999.02220cab.003

Spirited response to change in Scotland

Keywords: Competitiveness, Drinks industry, Innovation, Organizational change

New ESRC funded research byProfessor Paul Thompson and his colleagues at the Universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews, has looked at change programmes in two large Scottish spirits manufacturers - United Distillers and Allied Distillers. Both organisations are trying to innovate their way out of difficult market conditions where people and production have become not merely a source of profits but a prerequisite for competitiveness.

The research focused specifically on organisational innovation and how it is sustained. It revealed that United Distillers' Towards World Class change programme was particularly successful in pursuing a clearly defined vision and an integrated change effort - with senior management pursuing a strategy of linked changes in the three "domains" identified by the researchers: corporate structure, work organisation and industrial relations. It was clear that the advantages to be gained in high performance work systems stemmed largely from the "interaction effects" between the different domains.

Thompson and his colleagues identified a series of internal tensions associated with achieving the core objectives in each of the domains. For example, both companies sought to decentralise governance responsibilities down the managerial ladder. But the results offered no support for the conventional wisdom that innovation requires hierarchies to be replaced by networks. While there is plenty of involvement of managers in cross-functional projects, participants are clearly held accountable through vertical command structures.

While the research reveals limited cross-site mechanisms for organisational learning, the evidence, particularly from United Distillers, is that organisations that have had some success at diffusing innovation are then faced with a distinct set of problems in sustaining it. The characteristic tensions associated with sustaining innovation are at the interface between the three domains.

The key thing to understand however, is that the problems of sustainability are less the result of bad management or recalcitrant employees than the result of being inherent to the process. Creative tensions within and between the domains are inevitable and their effective management is vital.

For more information, contact Professor Paul Thompson, Department of Business Studies, University of Edinburgh, on 0131 650 5811; E-mail: PaulThompson@cd.ac.uk