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SOME COMPLEXITIES OF CHANGE:Superstitious Learning, Solution Driven Problems

<< FOOTNOTES TO ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE:Stable Processes of Change, Rule Following, Conflict
ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTATION:The Entrepreneurial problem, The Administrative Problem >>
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Change Management ­MGMT625
VU
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
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Change Management ­MGMT625
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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
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Change Management ­MGMT625
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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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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