Read the summary and the most important questions on Organizational Change for Pre-MSc

• 1 Chapter 1: Organizations and their changing environments

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• Organizations (Tony Watson, 2002):

  organizations have goals which act as a glue holding together the various systems used to produce things.

• Brooks (2004) sees the environment as

  a general concept which embraces the totality of external environmental forces which may influence any aspects of organizational activity’. To some extent the environment is a construction of reality. Similar organizations in the same sector while battling with the same forces may construct the significance of events quite differently.

• PEST (external) factors and organizational change:

  • Political factors 
  • Economic factors 
  • Socio-cultural factors 
  • Technical factors 

• Organizational response to change Organizations operate in at least three types of environment, which together make up the total ‘operating environment

  • Temporal environment: historical developments bringing changes over time. This is an environment that influences the organization in at least two ways: 
  • Through the cycles of industry-based innovation > major series of developments 
  • Through the cycle of the organizational itself > history built up from its founder days through periods of expansion and decline 
  • PEST framework (external) 
  • Internal environment: consists of those organizational changes that are the first-line responses to change in the external and temporal environments

• The dynamics of any organization’s environment have also been described in terms of the degree of environmental turbulence. A firm’s performance is optimized when its aggressiveness and responsiveness match its environment (Ansoff and Mc Donell, 1990). Five levels of environmental turbulence:

  1. Predictable
     
  2. Forecastable by extrapolation
  3. Predictable threats and opportunities
  4. Partially predictable opportunities
  5. Unpredictable suprises

• (Ansoff and Mc Donell, 1990). Five levels of environmental turbulence: 1 predictable

  stability of markets; change is slower than the organization’s ability to respond; the future is expected to be the same as the past.

• (Ansoff and Mc Donell, 1990). Five levels of environmental turbulence: 2 Forecastable by extrapolation

  complexity increases but managers can still extrapolate from the past and forecast the future with confidence.

• (Ansoff and Mc Donell, 1990). Five levels of environmental turbulence: 3 predictable threats and opportunities

  complexity increases and the organization’s ability to respond becomes more problematic; however, the future can still be predicted with some degree of confidence.

• (Ansoff and Mc Donell, 1990). Five levels of environmental turbulence: 5 unpredictable suprises

  turbulence increases with unexpected events and situations occurring more quickly than the organization can respond.

• 2 Chapter 2 : The nature of organizational change

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• Grundy’s (1993) varieties of change

  • Smooth incremental change: evolves slowly in a systematic and predictable way;
  • Bumpy incremental change: characterized by periods of relative calm, punctuated by acceleration in the pace of change
  • Triggers: both the environment and and internal initiatives such as the periodic restructuring that organizations go through to improve efficiency.
  • Associated with the means by which organizations achieve their goals, rather than as a change in the goals themselves.
  • Discontinuous change: change which is marked by rapid shifts in strategy, structure, or culture, or in all three.
    
  • Triggers: response to sudden and unpredictable high levels of environmental turbulence.