CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Change Management

Reference in Harvard Referencing Style

Simpson, P. (2012). "Complexity and change management: analyzing church leaders' narratives", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 25 Iss: 2, pp.283 - 296

Synopsis

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel approach to the analysis of individual and co-constructed change management narratives, utilizing a framework derived from the theory of complex responsive processes.

Design/methodology/approach - The research project explored change management through the analysis of narratives arising from participation in group conversation. This comprised a six-month intervention with a group of six leaders from the Church of England. An action research method was employed that required the leaders to bring a case study from their work that required a change management intervention. The focus of the research study was not to “solve the problem” but to practice a particular method of conversation. Transcripts of the conversations were analyzed for change or continuity in the organizing narratives. The analytical framework employed comprises three paired categories of organizing narrative themes, namely Legitimate/Shadow; Formal/Informal; and Conscious/Unconscious.

Findings - The analysis focuses on both the interactions between these organizing themes and upon the iterations, over time, in the narratives. Following the theory of complex responsive processes, the practice of change management and its consequences are understood not as cause-effect but rather as participation in emergent narratives. It is suggested that such narratives do not merely contribute to change management within an organization but that from the perspective of complex responsive processes theory such conversational life is change management

Assessment of Methods

Organizational uncertainty and change sometimes requires leaders to practise the art of engaging with “not knowing” (Raab, 1997;Simpson and Burnard, 2000). At its simplest this art constitutes the act of moving forward with the conscious awareness that decision making is based on information that is incomplete or even entirely absent. However, typically in organizations the prevailing dynamics encourage both leaders and followers to favour characteristics of “knowing” in leaders. The leadership literature has been dominated by the myth of the “leader as hero”, most prevalent in some of the literature on the leadership of transformational change. It is commonly assumed that such leaders must know something that others do not.

However, there has been a growing realisation that the complexity of organizations is never going to be “knowable” or “controllable” (Stacey, 2009) and that we need a greater appreciation of post-heroic leadership. This challenges the notion that leaders can guide the organization through change by means of superior knowledge and based on their knowledge they can educate their subordinates so that they can learn from the experiences of their leaders. It might be that some individuals do have capabilities that are helpful in times of uncertainty but it is not possible that they can know what cannot be known. Consequently, if we are to understand what contributes to effective change management then it is necessary to investigate not merely what leaders know but also how they engage with not knowing (Simpson, 2010).

This paper reports on one study in a series that have looked ...