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Management Styles and Roles:Change Agent Roles, Levers for managing strategic Change

<< STRATEGIC CHANGE:Nature of Change, The Importance of Context, Force field Analysis
SYMBOLIC PROCESSES:Political Processes, COMMUNICATING CHANGE, Change Tactics >>
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Change Management ­MGMT625
VU
LESSON # 27
Management Styles and Roles
·
Education and communication involve the reasons for and means of strategic change. Educating
and communicating about strategic change might be very time consuming activity, and direction
might not be clear to managers especially in large organizations. Change may be ineffective
owing to misinformation and ineffective communication. For strategic change to take place
reliance on top down communication processes may be problematic.
·
Collaboration or Participation in the change process is the involvement of those who will be
affected by strategic change in the identification of strategic issues, the strategic agenda, the
strategic decision making processes or the planning of strategic change.  This can help in
increasing ownership and commitment to change and change process. It may entail the setting up
of project teams or task forces. Nonetheless, this may prove to be more time consuming process
but would lead to enhance the quality of decision. Strategy workshops can be quite useful for
cross levels of management to work on particular strategic problems, provide solution within a
larger strategic framework and drive change mechanisms down to routine aspects of
organizational change
·
Intervention is the coordination of and authority over processes of change by a change agent who
delegates elements of the change process. Change agent retains control though interventions. For
example, at particular stages of change such as idea generation, data collection, detailed planning,
the development of rationale for change and the identification of critical success factors are
delegated to project teams. If such teams do not take full responsibilities of the change processes
then change sponsors tries to ensure the monitoring of change progress.
·
Direction involves the use of personal managerial authority to establish a clear future strategy and
how change will occur. It is essentially top down management of strategic change. It may be
associated with clear vision or strategic intent developed by someone seen as leader in the
organization. There are different styles of managing change. Two broad categories are directive
and participative styles. Different stages in the change process may require different styles of
managing change. Directive style is speedy and effective but runs the risk of overall acceptance
while participation or intervention may be helpful in gaining wider acceptance and commitment
across the organization but at the same time tends to be slower in its pace. If the organization
corresponds to the kind of adhocracy, network or learning organization, it is likely to employ
collaboration or participation based styles. In the most extreme for directive style becomes
coercive, engaged in the imposition of change. This is a type of forced learning entailing explicit
use of power but may be necessary for the organization facing crisis or concerned with large scale
and rapid organizational transformation. Such type of transformation is least successful without
crisis or creating crisis.
·
Change Agent Roles
Change agent is an individual or group that affects strategic change in organization. In simple words
change agent is the creator of change or strategy. These may be senior executives or CEO, middle
level managers, and outsiders like consultants. Traditionally it is the external consultants, especially
in the Western economies who are hired for their specialized job and expertise to come and visit
organization to diagnose the ailment and give prescription for corrective measures in strategy or
structure. Another type of change agents are internal consultants or senior executives, and can be
identified as strategic leaders who are well verse with organization's problems and policies. The
approach of such in-house strategic leaders could be legal, bureaucratic, transactional or
transformational. Nonetheless the common prescription is that strategic change could take place
meaningfully if the CEO or strategic leader is visionary. Therefore we need a transformational or
visionary leadership in order to have strategic change. The question of course now will be what the
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Change Management ­MGMT625
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attributes of such type of leadership are. From our own cultural perspective one such prescriptions is
given by our national poet as
The attributes of a leader as someone who is a visionary , true communicator ­ a communication
which touches heart and full of empathy and commitment ­ who stands committed and can have
feelings of others
Another perspective is MOUND model of change management which emphasizes greater role for the
middle level manager as change agent. Therefore, recall your memories for Z theory of management
which says policy making, implementation and organizational actions will be most effective at
middle levels of management instead of top down ( theory X) or bottom up (theory Y). This
essentially is known as "ringsei" in Japanese language which means consensus oriented decision
making. The logic is that is the middle level managers and their network who have greater levels of
collegiality, communicability and placed strategically between senior executives and lower level
workers and supervisors to bridge the gap and hence make organization effective in seeking its goals
and objectives effectively. The MOUND model is illustrated below:
T he Mound Model for Change
MIDDLE
OUT
UP
DOWN
This means ay idea or strategy which is conceived by middle level of any one function area or
department quickly moves out at the same horizontal level to middle level managers in other function
areas or departments. The idea or strategy soon moves upward to senior executives and CEO, and
once they get convinced by newer suggestions make part of organization wide policies. Hence the
new idea or strategy then quickly moves downward. The MOUND model seems more appropriate for
managing change in large organizations and bureaucracies where distances between top level
managers and implementation levels are very high.
Recent concept of change agent might include lower level managers and workers, especially from
knowledge worker and knowledge management perspectives. The concept of knowledge worker is
that all members of the organizations are considered knowledge workers even those who are the
shop-floor level, have tacit knowledge and know their job best, and can contribute effectively for
organization through a conducive learning environment.
3. Levers for managing strategic Change
The followings are different levers that can be employed to manage strategic change:
·  Structure and Control Systems
Changing aspects of structure and control of organization are considered important aspects of
strategic change. But most of the time top managers may change strategy but behaviour and
assumptions remain the same, with the result that change programme tends to be ineffective. What
is more important is that whether the proposed strategic change brings in conformity of thinking
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Change Management ­MGMT625
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values and system or promotes and incorporates criticality? Generally when we talk of system we
mean to stress uniformity, conformity and stability but systemic thinking also tend to incorporate
different views of reality and critical thinking. Because system itself is composed of various
subsystems having different demands and functions. Therefore it is important for change agents and
change leaders while designing structure and control system that it should not just be considered for
manufacturing consent instead should be directed to promote knowledge and values appropriate for
strategic change.
·
Routines
Routines are the organizationally "specific ways to do things around here" which tend to persist
over time and guide people's behaviour. Routines may also be considered as a double edge sword
in the sense that it may lead organization to carry its operations in distinct ways and achieve its
competitive edge, but also present a risk to act to block change and creativity, and may lead to
strategic drift.
Changes in organizational routines can be a powerful signal of and stimulus for change because
change in strategy should correspond to change in implementation or operations. But then routines
are closely related with the existing paradigm, hence changing strategy means changes in taken for
granted assumptions and taken for granted routines and ways of doing things that are the cultural
elements. Routines are even considered more powerful than even education and communication
technique of changing people. Thus changing routine is a good technique to change behaviour
which may help people in evaluating and changing their beliefs and assumptions. Therefore it is
suggested for managers who are trying to effect strategic changes to take personal responsibility not
only for identifying changes in routines, but also for monitoring that they actually occur. The
changes may appear to be mundane but they can have significant impact.
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Table of Contents:
  1. COURSE ORIENTATION:Course objectives, Reading material, Scope of the subject
  2. BENEFITS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT:Traditional management domain
  3. KURT LEWIN MODEL: ASSUMPTIONS AND IMPLICATIONS:Change Movement, Refreeze
  4. IMPLICATIONS OF KURT LEWIN MODEL:Sequence of event also matters, A Critical Look
  5. SOME BASIC CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS:Strategic change, Logical incrementalism
  6. TRANSACTIONAL VS. TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP:Micro-changes, Organisation Development
  7. THEORIES OF CHANGE IN ORGANISATIONS
  8. LIFE CYCLE THEORY:Unit of Change, Mode of change, Organisation death
  9. TELEOLOGICAL THEORIES OF CHANGE:Unit of change, Mode of Change, Limitations
  10. DIALECTICAL THEORIES OF CHANGE:Unit of Change, Strategic planning
  11. A DIALECTICAL APPROACH TO ORGANISATIONAL STRATEGY AND PLANNING:
  12. LIMITATION OF DIALECTICS; DA AND DI:Overview of application of dialectics
  13. THEORIES OF CHANGE IN ORGANISATIONS
  14. APPLICATION OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY:Managerial focus
  15. FURTHER APPLICATION OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES:Criticism
  16. GREINER’S MODEL OF ORGANISATIONAL– EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION
  17. GROWTH RATE OF THE INDUSTRY:CREATIVITY, DIRECTION, DELEGATION
  18. COORDINATION:COLLABORATION, The Crisis
  19. ORGANISATION ECOLOGY:Structural Inertia, Internal Structural Arrangements, External Factors
  20. CLASSIFICATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL SPECIES:Extent of Environmental Selection, Determinants of Vital Rates,
  21. FOOTNOTES TO ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE:Stable Processes of Change, Rule Following, Conflict
  22. SOME COMPLEXITIES OF CHANGE:Superstitious Learning, Solution Driven Problems
  23. ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTATION:The Entrepreneurial problem, The Administrative Problem
  24. PROSPECTORS:Analyzer, Reactors, Adaptation and Strategic Management
  25. SKELETAL MODEL OF ADAPTATION:Determinants of Adaptive ability, The Process of Adaptation
  26. STRATEGIC CHANGE:Nature of Change, The Importance of Context, Force field Analysis
  27. Management Styles and Roles:Change Agent Roles, Levers for managing strategic Change
  28. SYMBOLIC PROCESSES:Political Processes, COMMUNICATING CHANGE, Change Tactics
  29. STRATEGIC CHANGE:Pettigrew & Whipp’s Typology, Context on X-axis (Why of change)
  30. STRATEGIC CHANGE:Attributes of SOC Model, Implications for Management
  31. STRATEGIC CHANGE:Flow of Information, Recruitment, SOC Process
  32. Determinants of a Successful Change Management:Environmental, Management Orientation, Management Orientation
  33. Higgins 08 S Model – An Adaptation from Waterman’s Seven S model:Strategy, Systems and Processes, Resources
  34. IMPLEMENTATION AND STRATEGIC CHANGE: CONSTRAINING FORCES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF STRATEGIC CHANGE (CASE STUDY OF XYZ COMPANY)
  35. IMPLEMENTATION AND STRATEGIC CHANGE: CONSTRAINING FORCES IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF STRATEGIC CHANGE (CASE STUDY OF XYZ COMPANY)
  36. WHY IMPLEMENTING STRATEGIC CHANGE IS SO DIFFICULT?:Change Typology, Technical Change
  37. IMPLEMENTATION APPROACHES:Attributes of incremental change,
  38. IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE
  39. IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE:Definition of Leadership, Follower Work Facilitation
  40. IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE:Recognize the challenge
  41. IMPLEMENTATION: RADICAL OR TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE
  42. IMPLEMENTATION: PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM MODEL:Features of Radical Change, Theory of P-E model
  43. CHANGE IMPLEMENTATION: OD MODELS:The Transactional Factors
  44. CULTURE, VALUES AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE:Significance and Role of Values, Values Compete
  45. ORGANIZATIONAL VALUES, CULTURE AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE:Issues in Change Management