SOME COMPLEXITIES OF CHANGE:Superstitious Learning, Solution Driven Problems

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Change Management MGMT625

LESSON # 22

SOME COMPLEXITIES OF CHANGE

The above six factors are closer to real life organizational dynamics; demonstrate the complexities

of routines of real life. While he interaction amongst these five phenomenon makes change

complex which are listed below:

1. Unanticipated Consequences of Ordinary Action

2. Solution Driven Problems

3. The Tendency for Innovation - And Organisations to Be Transformed During the Process of

Innovation

4. The Endogenous Nature of Created Environment

5. The Interaction amongst System Requirements of Individuals, Organizations and Environments

1. Unanticipated Consequences of Ordinary Action

First, the rate of adaptation may be inconsistent with the rate change of environment. Unless an

environment is perfectly stable, organization can not learn appropriately. This means organization

always lag behind environment. Where an environment changes quickly relative to the rate of

organization adaptation, the process of adaptation can easily lose its sense to be sensible and

relevant. At times organization anticipates ahead of time. Example can be given from marketing. A

product was launched by one sugar firm in Pakistan as liquid sugar. The idea seems too fine and

advanced a concept but failed miserably given the cultural context of Pakistani society. Similarly,

some products that are technologically too advanced also liable to fail because they are ahead of

time. Similar is the case with changing organisation strategy and organisation when situation/ time

or environment /market is not mature enough to absorb change.

Therefore, it is possible for an anticipatory process (problem-solving) to result in changes that out

runs the environment and thereby become unintelligent. Second, the causal structure (cause and

effect as seems obvious to us to external) may be different from that is implicit in the process.

While changing through following and imitating we tend to focus external effects and ignore causal

links which are benign or hidden. Since we have an incomplete picture or false model of causality,

therefore eventually change can result in unanticipated outcomes. Third concurrent or parallel

processes (changes at times stay parallel) appear to carry sense may combine to produce joint out

come that are not intended by any one, and counter the interests motivating the individual action.

For example the retention of a manual system besides going for the automated (New) one. Though

avoided but these unanticipated outcomes are quite common.

Examples Competency Multiplier

Oorganizations have procedure to involve relevant people in processes such as decision-making,

planning, budgeting or the like. Individual vary in their knowledge, skills and interests about a

problem. Initial participation rate vary and participating individual turn out to be slightly more

competent than others. This induces them to become even more competent. Before long, the de

facto composition of the group can change dramatically (than initially conceived). More generally

organizations learn from experience, repeating actions that are successful. As a result they gain

greater experience in areas of success than in areas of failures. This seems sensible and logical. The

sensibleness of such specialization depends on the learning rate and rate of change in environment.

The process can easily lead to misplaced specialization if there are infrequent, major shifts in the

environment (increased specialization lead to increased dependence and hence org. is vulnerable to

change)

Another example of unexpected outcome from org. routines is related with satisficing behavior of

individual and organization. According to March and Simon, organization seek alternatives that

will satisfy target goal rather than to look for the alternative with the highest possible value.

Satisficing organization can be viewed as the organization which tries to maximize the probability

of achieving targets. But it is not necessary to assume that satisficing organization will follow

Change Management MGMT625

decision rules, that are, risk avoiding in good times, and, risk-seeking in bad times. For e.g.

organization that are facing bad times will follow riskier means and riskier strategies, thus

simultaneously increasing the chances of their survival through the present crisis and reducing their

life expectancy simultaneously.

As a result organization efforts to survive in fact speed up the process of failure. Risk-seeking

behavior transformation that needs some qualification, experience and mindset to manage risk

which was never cultivated earlier in organizations. Second, most of the time organization exhibit

risk-avoiding behaviour by its very nature. Because, if organization goals vary with organization

performance and performance of comparable organizations, then most organization will be termed

reasonably good most of the time. The above example depicts how routine can lead to un-intended

surprise outcome

Another example identified is of performance criteria. An organization measures the performance

of its participants. Common criteria for business firms are to reward their managers on the basis of

calculation of profits warned by different parts of the organization. The performance-reward

linkage is to be made precise and visible for organizational control purposes as well. However this

practice may lead to ignore long term consequences for organization since it is more efficient in

short term because efforts are devoted to accounts rather than to performance. This may lead the

participants to manipulation and maneuvering in organization.

Superstitious Learning

Organizations learn from their experience, repeating actions associated with good outcomes and

avoiding actions associated with bad outcomes (Learning by association phenomenon or

conditioning). This is successful in stable world. But the world is not so simple and stable all the

time, experiential learning can result in superstitious learning. Example reported one author here is

of pilots. The trainers reward pilots who make good landings and punishing pilots who makes bad

ones. They observe that pilots who are punished generally improve on the subsequent landings,

while pilots who are praised generally do worse. Thus they learn that negative reinforcement works

better than the positive one. The learning is natural but the experience is a confounded one. Let me

quote my own experience here about students. Students who perform better in the preliminary

examination and get rewarded well will tend to perform mediocre in the subsequent examination as

against the one who performs average in the preliminary examinations and improves more in the

subsequent emanations. Hence these examples illustrate the variation in behavior generated by

adaptive processes in a typical organization conditions which can lead to surprising outcomes.

2. Solution Driven Problems

Good examples for solution driven problems exist in our society. You can observe this in real life.

For instance go to doctor and you will find long, comprehensive multi-dimensional prescription at

hand. The solution is already with him without even giving listening appropriately to his patient. If

you go to computer technologist for problem solving with software or system etc., the solution

presented will be to reconfigure the whole system/ window etc In office meetings bosses or heads

of department or organizations frequently come up with statements starting with you all .All such

scenarios refer to the tendency to have a generalized solution in prior.

According to Cyert and March, "There is ample evidence of when organization performance fails to

meet objective then it search for new solution, that is new ways of doing things as changes often

seem to be driven less by problems than by solutions." Why this is so? Because organizations face a

large number of problems of about equal importance, but only a few solutions. Thus the chance of a

solution to a particular or unique problem is small. Consequently organization scans for solutions

rather than problem, and matches any solution found with some relevant problem.

Second reason is the linkage between individual solutions and individual problem is often difficult

Change Management MGMT625

to make unambiguously especially when causality and technology are ambiguous. Therefore what

we observe will be predicted by knowledge of solutions than by knowledge of problems.

Imperatively professional change their procedures and introduce new technologies because they

have knowledge of it. An organization that is modern adopts new things because that is what being

modern means. When a major stimulus for change comes from a sense of competence, problems

are created in order to solve them, and solutions and opportunities stimulate awareness of

previously un-salient or unnoticed problems or preferences.

3. The Tendency for Innovation - And Organisations to Be Transformed During the

Process of Innovation

It is observed that both innovations and organizations tend to be transformed during the process of

innovation. Different and multiple meanings exist for the intended change in the organization and

hence the standardization of meanings of change is a problem owing to inappropriate strategy or

poor analysis It is also a common problem that change policy or program gets started with some

intent and eventually end up with something else because of the fundamental ways in which

changes are transformed by the process of change. Organization also gets transformed in the

process. Organizations develop and redefine goals while adapting to environmental pressure; minor

changes can lead to larger ones, and initial intent can be entirely lost

4. The Endogenous Nature of Created Environment

General assumption is organization takes action due to environmental pressure, and that

environment is not influenced by organizational actions. But organizations create environment as

well, and the resulting complications are significant. For e.g. action of one competitor becomes an

environment of another, therefore each competitor determines its own environment. For example an

executive of a leading shoe firm revealed why their firm does not charge higher prices despite

producing a quality product of international standards? Because this will become an industry

standard and other competitors will follow without delivering the same quality. This type of

behaviour is inline with corporate social responsibility.

Hence adaptation is not learning about fixed environment but is to deal with continuously changing.

Therefore organizations are quite capable of influencing and creating their own environment by the

way they interpret and act in a confusing world. So what happens practically is that small signals

out of routine or adaptive processes get echoed back to organization (through environment) in an

amplified manner, and hence may result in changing organization simultaneously and endogenously

5. The Interaction amongst System Requirements of Individuals, Organizations and

Environments

Though this is oversimplification, nonetheless, it is possible to see an organization as an

intermeshing of three systems: individuals, collection of individuals (which is organization) and

environment (which is collection of organization). Conflicts might exist in the demands of these

three. While classical literature focuses on making individual and organization demands

compatible, but in the analysis of organization change it seems that individual in organization and

organization itself has different requirements in the collection of organization (which is

environment). The question is how to place all three in equilibrium? Finally organization is

complex combination of activities, purposes and meanings.

Even impressive integration of formal organization, should not however, obscure the many ways in

which organization is loosely coupled. Behavior is loosely coupled with intentions, and intentions

are loosely couple with actions; actions in one part of the organization are loosely coupled with

actions in another part; actions of today are loosely coupled with actions of tomorrow. Such loose

coupling does not appear to be avoidable. These do not relate to theory but pertains to adaptive

process of change.

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