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Managing third-order change: The case of the Public Power Corporation in Greece
Abstract
To understand the management of strategic change, organizations must be situated in their broader institutional contexts. This article focuses on ‘state-political firms’, companies owned or heavily influenced by the state and operating in state-dominated business systems, and explores the management of third-order change in the Greek state-owned electricity utility, the Public Power Corporation (PPC). Managing change in such firms is highly recursive, in that organizational change involves simultaneous change to the broader institutional environment, and the firm becomes both the focus of change and a medium for broader cultural change.
The article argues that a successful change process must first disrupt the self-referentiality typical of state-political firms, and that such disruption happens mainly through externally-generated behaviour-shaping information. In the case of PPC, market liberalization (externally mandated by the EU) prompted a stock market floatation to seek fresh capital. Properly handled, such external and apparently technical mechanisms can have considerable discursive potential, helping to create momentum for change and to extend it throughout the organization. Insights from the effective management of strategic change in PPC are of relevance to other state-political firms worldwide.
... Ref. [35] argues that the new values are seemingly more aligned to aspects of modernity, such as "efficiency, performance management, accountability, transparency". For example, the privatization of a state-owned organization to transform it into a more customer-and performance-oriented entity is one example of second-order change [39]. ...
... At that time, Greece was receiving substantial American aid as part of the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe, and American experts were active in various social and economic activities, including the energy industry. EBASCO, an American firm, was in charge of the corporation's organization and management, significantly impacting energy policies and investment plans and passing down modern management methods and organizational policies [39,83]. Similarly, the new public organization HELLENIC CA-DASTRE was founded at the end of the turbulent decade of the sovereign debt crisis in Greece, in which reforms were enacted under policy conditionality and the support of foreign technical assistance [31,32]. ...
... The authors of [39] argue that the transformational change of the PPC in the opposite direction at the beginning of the 2000s decade, reflecting the values of a "conventional" rather than a state-political firm, following the energy market liberalization, involved a simultaneous change in the broader institutional environment as the organization transformed itself, and constituted a third-order change. However, the current study found that the transformational change of the LAOs will not complete the HLAR and the transition to the HCS through creating the HELLENIC CADASTRE and its regional cadastral offices. ...
Land administration is the managing of spatial and legal data pertaining to land. Land administration organizations provide services for land ownership and are essential to a well-functioning land administration system to secure land and property rights for all and support real estate markets. This article reviews the case of the Hellenic Land Administration Reform and the associated changes in the land administration organizations during the economic crisis period (2009–2018). We qualitatively analyze these changes and their actual effects through a set of legislative initiatives according to the orders of change of the enactive theory of reforms and the concept of isomorphism. The study is informed by interviews with key informants involved in the land administration policy domain, and by secondary data, such as legislative documents and reports. Findings show that the legislative initiatives aimed to bring efficiency, transparency, and rationalization to the land administration policy domain by centralizing the collection of land transaction fees and nationalizing the land administration organizations., The enacted legislative initiatives encompassed organizational (second-order) changes within a short period, instead of incremental technical or managerial measures (first-order) to improve ineffective practices and services for citizens. They ended with a drastic organizational transformation, resulting in “premature load bearing” in the involved organizations, which complexified the implementation of an ambitious land administration reform and impacted the smooth operation of the real estate market. The article increases the current insight on the merger of land administration organizations and its implications. It contributes to the land administration scholarly literature on the establishment of new organizations to create a modern cadastral system from a public policy perspective through the orders of change of the enactive theory of reforms.
... The definition of educational change and its challenging nature Various classifications exist of the size and scope of change (e.g., Bartunek & Moch, 1987;Lewis & Sahay, 2017;Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005). The present position paper uses a classification of first-second-, and third-order change. ...
... Second-order change refers to large transformational or radical changes that call organizational assumptions into question (Lewis & Sahay, 2017). This is a 'paradigmatic' change that requires new knowledge and skills as well as adaptations in the prevailing values and norms (Waters et al., 2003;Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005). Finally, third order change "not only involve[s] the transformation of the organization in focus but, through it, impacts on the broader institutional environment of which the organization is a member: the organization changes its institutional environment as it changes itself" (Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005, p. 81). ...
... An example of third-order change is the implementation of the US Common Core. Thus, both second-and third-order change refer to transformational changes, but the former occurs within the boundaries of the organizations whereas the latter occurs (partially) outside the boundaries of the organization (Kuipers, Higgs, Kickert, Tummers, Grandia, & Van der Voet, 2014;Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005). ...
This position paper provides an alternative theoretical framework of sustainable second-order educational change. Here, sustainability refers to: 1) substantial changes made that affect the core of educators’ everyday practice; 2) a longitudinal process that begins when educators contemplate making changes and ends when satisfactory achievement on the other characteristics is reached and overt learning efforts are stopped; 3) a process of individual and organizational learning as well as changes in behaviors; resulting in 4) significant positive effects on student outcomes. Thus, this definition focuses on educators and their schools, not on professional development programs. Methodological considerations are provided.
... Within second-order change, how something "new" can be developed when it is understood within the "old" is a systematical challenge (Bartunek & Moch, 1987). Similarly, Bate (2000) asks how to achieve cooperation within the context of competing clinics, pointing towards the recursive notion when the medium becomes the outcome and vice versa (Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005). In a similar fashion, Denis, Langley & Rouleau (2007) shows how interventions feed back on the change agents through the evoked reactions of the organization or its environment pointing out a boomerang effect of leadership practices It seems as if paradoxes have become integral to organizations (Clegg et al., 2002;Neuberger, 1992). ...
... Second-order change processes follow a similar logic: Change becomes necessary because of the daily organizing but is impeded by the very same daily organizing. The medium becomes the outcome and vice versa (Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005) as the result becomes its own condition to begin with (Bate, 2000). As the envisioned "new" contradicts the practiced "old", change processes are paradoxical themselves (Barrett, Thomas, & Hocevar, 1995;Lewis, 2000). ...
... Some understand change as shifting conversations through conversations (Ford, 1999;Taylor & Robichaud, 2004). Others include the different perspectives of change agents (Beech et al., 2004;Denis, Lamothe, & Langley, 2001;Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005) or change recipients (Balogun & Johnson, 2005;Orlikowski, 1996). Focusing on one perspective at the expense on the other, though, obscures the elaboration of how to handle paradoxes because "[…] the paradoxical dimensions of experiences are created and recreated in different patterns of interacting" (Beech et al., 2004). ...
In today’s complex world, handling ambiguity, contradictions and paradox becomes important, while organizations face continuous change. We explore how to handle the paradox ,within processes of second-order ,change ,from an organizational perspective. Apart from the need to provide stability and change, change processes are paradoxical: How can a “new” ,organizing develop ,when ,it is understood ,within the “old”? The medium becomes,the outcome ,and vice versa. The result turns into its own ,starting condition. With regards on how to handle such a catch 22, we know of individual coping strategies, see the results of handling paradox, became aware of communication at the centre stage and know conceptually that handling paradox is situated in practice. But, there are very few works that explore the process of unfolding,paradox in change from an organizational perspective. How can the paradox of change ,processes be unfolded? The research focuses on communicative, practices, rooted in social systems theory within a single, longitudinal and contextualist case
... Public organizations are increasingly being confined to regulatory activity, while operations are left to external companies. The previous organizational mission is often radically transformed, with a more business-oriented mission being introduced (Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005), producing a significant impact on the modus operandi and employee profile of public organizations. ...
... The PLGA's name changed again, to Port of Lisbon Administration (PLA), and a more businessoriented mission was introduced (e.g. Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005): 'to administrate concessions and to give support to the concessionaires' (1987 Annual Report). The administration of all docks, quays, and terminals was not a responsibility of the PLA anymore. ...
Policies have been introduced in the public sector to increase efficiency. Following a privatization, there is a split between operational and strategic control. In this study, we explored how a public organization restores its identity after losing its operational structure. Based on a case study of a seaport, we found that when the self-defining properties were lost, the organizational identity dissolved into a managerial public identity. The organizational meaning that provided security and guided behavior was lost and the new identity was unable to serve as a provider of meaning. Implications for new public management policy and practice are discussed.
... Successful public reforms will be again activated, if a highly politicalsymbolic process appears. That change process must first disrupt the "selfreferentiality typical of state-political firms" (Tsoukas and Papoulias, 2005). Such disruption appeared in Public Power Corporations (DEKO) in Greece (1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002), but not yet in health services. ...
... Each of them employs almost 3000 people, accepts 100.000 patients and spends 150 million Euros every year. Strategic change in state-political firms is more than "paradigmatic" -it is constitutive, "third order", change following a. policies & strategies, b. governing values, c. symbolic beliefs & management practices (Tsoukas and Papoulias, 2005). These organizations need new top management teams (not only a solo manager) assisted by some elements being in place simultaneously (political support, specialised systems, economic discipline, coherent processes, employees' and users' participation or even information, etc.). ...
... The concept of the strategic change management process in public organisations encompasses a number of indicators (Senge, 1990; Osborne, Gaebler, 1993; Ott, 2001; Lewis, 2001; Doherty, Horne, 2002; Kubr, 2002; Brown et al., 2003; Arnaboldi et al., 2004; Tsoukas, Papoulias, 2005; Sznelwar et al., 2008): (1) new horizontal organisational design; (2) wider control span; (3) empowered roles of employees; (4) flattened organisational hierarchy; (5) flexible relations between public administration agencies; (6) boundless -virtual organisational relations and e-government models; (7) decentralised decision-making process and decentralised governmental policies; (8) decentralised decision-making power from high to lower hierarchical levels; (9) dissemination of information among the entire public administration; (10) horizontal integration of information and strategic management issues between individuals and public organisations; (11) co-operative strategy formulation of government; (12) adaptable organisational relations and new dimensions of multicultural relations within the public sector in the EU; (13) outsourcing of consulting activities and other issues of public sector services; (14) networking and connectivity of public administration entities; (15) involvement of public organisations in the modern borderless knowledge-based EU economy; (16) establishment of an information technology platform for effective e-government programmes; (17) empowering of workers and teamwork development; (18) connections between international governments within the EU in a virtual system; (19) focusing the public sector management process on private-public partnership development; and (20) designing the basis for continuously developing concept of knowledge management experiences within public sector organisations and the public administration. ...
... To assure the validity and reliability criteria in qualitative research process, different techniques and multi-methodological procedures were taken through the process of qualitative casestudy research analysis of this paper, including (Bryman, Stephens, Campo, 1996; Travers, 2001; Yin, 2002a Yin, , 2002b Brannen, 2004): first, the secondary analysis of archived data was conduced in the parts of the paper, where theoretical overviews of concepts and approaches of strategic change management in public sector are outlined (especially in parts: 2, 4.1, 4.2, 5.2). A systematic review of most relevant topics academic journals (Arnaboldi et al., 2004; Brown et al., 2004, Hood, 1991 Lewis, 2001; Tsoukas, Papoulias, 2005; Sznelwar et al., 2008), books (Anheier, 2003; Yin, 2002, 2004) has been obtained. Consequently more than thirty references were analysed and integrated. ...
The paper focuses on the Slovenian case of strategic change management process with emphasis on the movement towards the implementation of Lisbon Strategy goals. The EU will be "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based econ-omy in the world", capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. These are crucial priorities of the Lisbon strate-gy. These changes in public sector organizations have enormous significance for regional development in Slovenia. The aim of the paper is to consider and discuss the development of Slovenian public administration priorities in the process di-rected towards the implementation of Lisbon Strategy goals. Paper also highlights recent achievements of Slovenian e-administration strategy. In the paper the ex-planatory case study research method was used (Yin, 2002), with focus on longitu-on longitu-dinal and pre-post methodological techniques. The research findings outline, that strategic management methods applied in the case support the implementation of Lisbon Strategy goals in Slovenia.
... Public organizations are increasingly being confined to regulatory activity, while operations are left to external companies. The previous organizational mission is often radically transformed, with a more business-oriented mission being introduced (Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005), producing a significant impact on the modus operandi and employee profile of public organizations. ...
... The PLGA's name changed again, to Port of Lisbon Administration (PLA), and a more businessoriented mission was introduced (e.g. Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005): 'to administrate concessions and to give support to the concessionaires' (1987 Annual Report). The administration of all docks, quays, and terminals was not a responsibility of the PLA anymore. ...
... is order of change o en includes broader sociopolitical projects to deliberately modernize institutions (Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005) by engaging the perpetual evolution of organizational culture. Change agents (internal or external) build the capacity to transcend existing ideas, interpretations, or practices to design change strategies that extend beyond normal conceptual limits (Bartunek and Moch 1987). ...
In this chapter, we propose that “serving and engaging broader constituencies in a way that is easily integrated into an actionable, adaptive approach” (AFWA 2019:19) requires fish and wildlife agencies to transform into social learning institutions (Campbell 1991). Section 13.2 details why an organizational focus should be considered now, and section 13.3 details the steps involved, the types of organizational transformation needed, the linkages between change and governance, and how to build, honor, or let go of the past, as necessary, and move forward with requisite cultural change. Section 13.4 considers the challenges associated with organizational transformation in the context of historic fisheries and wildlife management, in particular discussing
how attending to design can inform a legitimate fish and wildlife governance in the challenging decades ahead. We summarize the need for agencies to become social learning institutions
in section 13.5. Throughout the chapter, we draw from research on organizational transformation, institutional analysis, and design principles, with the goal to explore agency transformation
as a means to increase agency relevancy and affect positive change through statutes, rules, and policy. Further, this chapter is situated within new or even radical conservation visions
and movements that problematize our “traditional” ways of conserving biodiversity in order to create a more sustainable and just world (hopefully, before the clock runs out). Hence, we argue
that serious consideration be given to altering the current paradigm to define relevancy in a way that meet these ends. The ideas presented herein are intended to guide, invigorate, and mobilize change agents; stimulate discussion and debate; and clarify a range of options available not just to achieve bureaucratic efficiency or enhanced constituent satisfaction, but to build organizations better equipped to meet the pressing challenges of the world.
... Changes in the public sector can be systemic, aimed at reforming the public sector (Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005), organizational (Van de Ven and Poole 1995) or can target components of organizations (Carol Rusaw 2007). ...
Practice and research describe the public sector in general and public administration in particular as highly resistant to change. However, the current crisis triggered by the coronavirus and its inevitable repercussions on the economic, social and behavioral field, have triggered and continue to trigger structural and functional changes across public administration organizations. The article proposed aims, on the one hand, to highlight the structural and functional changes in the organizations mentioned, mainly due to the so-called principle of "social distancing" and, on the other hand, determining and substantiating strategic principles designed to strengthen administrative capacity in emergency or risk situations. The research methodology has included both an in-depth desk research and socio-empirical investigations carried out in Romania and in other Eastern European countries. The bibliographic research will insist on the complex and specific reality of public administration in the SouthEastern European states, their relatively low level of institutional robustness compared to western European public administrations. At the same time, socio-empirical investigations will have as central topics the need to open the public sector, in general, and public administration, in particular, to change, to trust in government and public authorities, understanding and addressing emergencies, management culture under conditions of risk and uncertainty. Subsequent topics will address telework in public administration, participation in the public decision of the citizen and decision-making transparency. The changes identified were generated by a special, unique situation, such as we are unable to estimate their sustainability and the extent to which the end of the health crisis will lead to their preservation. The study is offering proof of the degree of change within public organizations, change generated by a pandemic crisis. In addition, it places these changes in a recognized theoretical model.
... Such changes are generally not confined to just the organisation in question, but affect larger societal changes. As described by Tsoukas & Papoulias (2005), 'the organisation needs to be seen in its broader institutional context, not as a self-contained economic entity (p. 80).' ...
From every corner of society, we are observing an increasingly greater awareness of the need to seek out renewal and change when it comes to important economic and social themes. Organisations are playing an ever larger role in these changes. Organisations who dare to take a progressive role in these transformative changes are called thought leaders. Thought leaders have an inspiring ideology (‘thought’), and using the power of imagination, they succeed in giving meaning to a new reality and in mobilising themselves and others to create this. It is during this process of sensegiving that the communications professional fulfils an indispensable role. Now, more than ever, we need professionals who have the analytical, strategic, directorial, creative and connecting abilities to make a new, workable reality visible, and to mobilise people to change and innovate.
... First, it requires distancing from existing, legitimated institutions and persuading other members to adopt new practices that break with well-established patterns (McNulty and Ferlie 2004). Second, taking into account the specificities of public-sector organizations and the unique mission they have (Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005;Kuipers et al. 2014;Perry and Porter 1982), public organizations confront wider and more conflicting expectations from external constituencies. Accordingly, public-sector organizations-more than private ones-need to obtain legitimacy from the public in order to avoid eroding public and private confidence in their operations (Schraeder et al. 2005). ...
Universities are recognized as a particular type of public organization. Due to the important role they are acquiring in the development of regional economies, universities are facing significant pressures to become more entrepreneurial and similar to private sector organizations. This new role requires universities to engage in substantial change activities in order to get legitimacy from their ecosystem. Change management literature has mainly assumed that changes in public-sector organizations are the result of top-down initiatives as well as the exercise of political clout. Instead, the role of agency and bottom-up dynamics in explaining change in public-sector organizations is still overlooked. Based on a longitudinal case study of a young university in Italy, this research explores its bottom-up process of internal transformation to become more entrepreneurial and fully legitimized in its local innovation ecosystem. In doing so, we contribute to existing literature in several ways. First, we add a process lens for understanding the transformation of a public actor not from the perspective of environmentally imposed changes processes, but through proactive interactions, role definition and activities. Second, we demonstrate that the entry of a key actor in a regional system unfreezes the existing equilibrium, by changing the distribution of competences and the awareness of other actors’ activity. Third, we show that bottom-up processes favouring bandwagon effects are particularly appropriate for change processes of public institutions that are not affected by a substantial crisis (as usual trigger for change processes).
... However, as part of the economic adjustment program, the PPC's share is going to be decreased to 50% by the end of 2019, meaning that radical changes are about to occur in the country's electrical sector. This long-term process faced significant issues towards the liberalization which is properly documented by Tsoukas and Papoulias (2005). The authors explored the peculiarities of the management of third-order change in the Greek state-owned electricity utility. ...
Driven by the liberalization of the energy market that began in the 1990s, the European Union aims to unify its internal market and achieve price convergence among all European economies. The majority of European countries have successfully established power exchanges, aiming to conduct cross-border transactions in a transparent and reliable manner. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of prior literature on the market design of the European Power Exchanges. It also identifies recent developments in the electricity market in Greece and describes the structure of the Hellenic Energy Exchange and the markets that will be formed in the future. These upcoming markets are expected to provide greater flexibility to all market participants. At the same time, the Hellenic Energy Exchange is expected to facilitate the integration of Greece into the rest South East European electricity markets.
... Third-order changes involve the transformation of the organization's identity. That is, it involves the change in "the form of ownership and the constitutive rules that have historically defined it as an organization" (Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005, p. 81). Third-order changes differ from second-order changes in that the former challenges the broader institutional-cultural template at the same time. ...
The role that change recipients play in response to organizational change has been a perennial concern for scholars and practitioners. The extant literature posits that one of the primary determinants of the extent to which organizational change efforts can succeed is how change recipients respond to change efforts both in public as well as private sector organizations. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to understand the circumstances under which change recipients respond positively, and if possible, proactivity to organizational change efforts initiated by others.
In this dissertation, I investigate the factors and actors that affect change recipients’ responses to change initiatives implemented in public organizations in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. More specifically, I investigate the concurrent role of change content, context, process, leadership and individual attributes in understanding employees’ reactions to change. Firstly, I draw on organizational change as well as public management research to conceptualize and empirically test a model of the antecedents of change recipients’ affective commitment to change. Secondly, I draw on employee proactivity, public management as well as broader organizational research to model the change recipient proactivity framework.
In Study 1, I use a cross-sectional survey questionnaire design to investigate the antecedents of employees’ affective commitment to change based on a sample of public servants working in five public sector organizations. In Study 2, I collect data from another sample to develop and validate the emerging concept of change recipient proactivity scale. Study 3 examines the predictors and work-related outcomes of change recipient proactivity based on another sample of employees working in two public organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan Region.
The findings provide empirical support for the role of the change process, context and leadership in understanding employees’ affective commitment to change and that most of the change theories originated in the Western countries are valid in non-western and Islamic settings like the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Results also indicate that change recipient proactivity is distinct from the more traditional constructs usually used by scholars and practitioners to measure employees’ reactions to change. Rather than merely being passive recipients of change, the findings of this dissertation indicate that, given the right dispositions and contexts, change recipients can engage in proactive and constructive behaviors in response to change initiative to ensure successful implementation of the change.
Key words: Organizational change, change commitment, public sector, leadership, proactivity, Kurdistan Region of Iraq
... In this context, the organisational adaptation aspects of electricity distribution have been explored to a limited extent, despite the evident importance of facilitating organisational change and business model innovation as part of the energy transition [104][105][106][107]. Contributions from business model adaptation-oriented research have focused mostly on the impacts of market liberalization [107][108][109][110], whilst fewer efforts are visible on understanding the ability of DSOs to adapt to a smarter and more sustainable electricity sector [106,111]. ...
This paper brings together several contemporary topics in energy systems aiming to provide a literature review based reflection on how several interrelated energy systems can contribute together to a more sustainable world. Some directions are discussed, such as the improvement of the energy efficiency and environmental performance of the systems, the development of new technologies, the increase of the use of renewable energy sources, the promotion of holistic and multidisciplinary studies, and the implementation of new management rules and "eco-friendly and sustainable" oriented policies at different scales. The interrelations of the diverse energy systems are also discussed in order to address their main social-economic-environmental impacts. The subjects covered include the assessment of the electricity market and its main players (demand, supply, distribution), the evaluation of some urban systems (buildings, transportation, commuting), the analysis of the implementation of renewable energy cooperatives, the discussion of the diffusion of the electric vehicle and the importance of new bioenergy systems. This paper also presents relevant research carried out in the framework of both the Energy for Sustainability Initiative of the University of Coimbra and the Sustainable Energy Systems focus area of the MIT-Portugal Program. To conclude, several research topics that should be addressed in the near future are proposed.
... Rather the content, timing and successful passage of reforms also depends largely on the acceptance and diffusion of policy ideas by political actors, who, driven by political ideology, push certain policy solutions through. We also see value in the thesis of Tsoukas and Papoulias (2005), which argued that a successful change process must first disrupt the selfreferentiality typical of state-political organizations, and that such disruption happens mainly through externally generated behaviour-shaping information. ...
... 70). Second, authors such as Kuipers et al. (2014) and Tsoukas and Papoulis (2005) have identified an under-representation of public sector change research within the change literature. Many public sector organizations adopt models and processes developed within the private sector, even though the public context offers particular difficulties due to its environmental and structural characteristics. ...
This article reports on the management and outcomes of a radical change programme within a public sector agency. The findings reveal a significant divergence between management and employee experiences of the change process and significant differences in outcome perceptions. While management remains adamant that radical change has been achieved, employees report much more limited, incremental change – a position supported by the research findings. Using a grounded theory approach, the article seeks to explain the reasons for radical change failure and based on these proposes a ‘Radical Change Engagement’ model for use during such periods. While based on public sector research, it is contended that the model has implications and applicability for any organization undergoing radical change.
... Literature review An initial literature review evaluated the adequacy and impact of different areas of consideration previously deemed relevant to policy-adaptation options and the future of electricity distribution (Pereira and Silva 2016). These areas included organisational, technological, and institutional aspects (Dubois and Saplacan 2010;Kiesling 2016;Kossahl et al. 2012;Markard 2011;Persideanu and Rascanu 2011;Praetorius et al. 2009;Trygg et al. 2007;Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005) Industry insight collection We collected industry insight in drafting the initial scope of topics for the Policy Delphi survey. This process involved four interviews with six representatives from three DSO companies, and one interview with one representative from a NRA, see Appendix Table 15 for details Policy Delphi survey development Based on the perspectives gathered, the organisational dimension was further structured to focus on business model innovation. ...
The European Union (EU) transition to a smarter and more sustainable electricity sector is driven by climate change adaptation and technological developments. For the electricity distribution industry, this has contributed to a growing need to understand how these network monopolies should adapt their role, activities, and responsibilities for a redesigned electricity market, given the growth of distributed generation, and the increased control and monitoring capabilities. Considering this, a foresight study on business model innovation, technological adaptation, and market design policy alternatives is presented. A Policy Delphi method was applied, involving two iterative survey rounds and 207 European experts, which assessed 57 policy alternatives. The results highlight adaptation challenges for implementing new technologies and business practices. Experts support innovation and transition to new roles, and innovative services, while warranting that core electricity distribution activities are secured. This shift in roles is expected to be achieved through research and development (R&D) support policies, innovation friendly regulatory frameworks, and concerted actions at the EU and Member States level. The results provide policy-adaptation guidelines for electricity distribution industry stakeholders.
... Οι Doetter και Götze (2011) [71] σε μελέτη τους διαπίστωσαν ότι, οι οικονομικές κρίσεις ως παράθυρο ευκαιρίας παίζουν μικρό ρόλο στη μεταβολή των πολιτικών, ενώ σημαντικό ρόλο κατέχει η επικοινωνία, η συμμετοχικότητα και η νομιμοποίηση των αλλαγών. Επίσης, οι Tsoukas και Papoulias (2005) [72] αναφέρουν ότι η επιτυχία τους εξαρτάται σε σημαντικό βαθμό από τη διατάραξη των παγιωμένων σημείων αυτοαναφοράς των θεσμικών, τυπικών ή μη, διαμορφωτών πολιτικής. Ο εθελοντικός χώρος ως ένας από τους κατ΄ εξοχήν διαύλους έκφρασης της πολιτιότητας, απαιτεί την ανάκτηση της αυτονομίας και της νομιμοποίησής του, στόχοι που δύναται να πραγματωθούν με τη συμβολή του εκσυγχρονισμού των εθελοντικών οργανώσεων υγείας, καθώς και με την υποστήριξη και ενδυνάμωση της αναδυόμενης δυναμικής στην εισαγωγή πολιτικών ΔΑΠ. ...
Σκοπός της έρευνας ήταν η διερεύνηση των στάσεων των
εθελοντικών φορέων και των μελών τους που δραστηριοποιούνται στον τομέα
υγείας, έναντι της εισαγωγής πολιτικών Διαχείρισης Ανθρωπίνου Δυναμικού
(ΔΑΠ).
To explore the attitudes of voluntary organizations and their members
that are activated in the health sector, towards the import of Human Resources
Management (HRM) policies.
... It employs a frame that incorporates these critiques within the analyzes of the examined papers. Furthermore, it explores the contextual challenges associated with the implementation of changes within the public sector given its under-representation within the overall change literature (Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005). ...
... Υιοθετώντας την προσέγγιση των Tsoukas and Papoulias (2005), ότι μια επιτυχημένη διαδικασία αλλαγής θα πρέπει πρώτα να διακόπτει την αυτο-αναφορικότητα που είναι τυπική σε κρατικούς οργανισμούς και ότι μια τέτοια διακοπή συμβαίνει κυρίως μέσω διαμορφωτικών της συμπεριφοράς πληροφοριών που προέρχονται από εξωτερικές προς το σύστημα πηγές, προτείνουμε μια τροποποιημένη εκδοχή της θέσης των Doetter and Gotze. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, συμφωνούμε ότι πράγματι οι εσωτερικές ανεπάρκειες του συστήματος υγείας δεν επαρκούν για να ερμηνεύσουν τις υγειονομικές μεταρρυθμίσεις. ...
... Rather the content, timing and successful passage of reforms also depends largely on the acceptance and diffusion of policy ideas by political actors, who, driven by political ideology, push certain policy solutions through. We also see value in the thesis of Tsoukas and Papoulias (2005), which argued that a successful change process must first disrupt the selfreferentiality typical of state-political organizations, and that such disruption happens mainly through externally generated behaviour-shaping information. ...
The financial and economic crisis has had a visible but varied impact on many health systems in Europe, eliciting a wide range of responses from governments faced with increased financial and other pressures. This book maps health system responses by country, providing a detailed analysis of policy changes in nine countries and shorter overviews of policy responses in 47 countries. It draws on a large study involving over one hundred health system experts and academic researchers across Europe. Focusing on policy responses in three areas – public funding of the health system, health coverage and health service planning, purchasing and delivery – this book gives policy-makers, researchers and others valuable, systematic information about national contexts of particular interest to them, ranging from countries operating under the fiscal and structural conditions of international bailout agreements to those that, while less severely affected by the crisis, still have had to operate in a climate of diminished public sector spending since 2008. Along with a companion volume that analyses the impact of the crisis across countries, this book is part of a wider initiative to monitor the effects of the crisis on health systems and health, to identify those policies most likely to sustain the performance of health systems facing fiscal pressure and to gain insight into the political economy of implementing reforms in a crisis.
... Although some authors (e.g. Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005) refer to an abundance of case studies examining organizational change, there are few case studies of changes managed using Kotter's Process (Appelbaum et al. 2012, p. 776). The weight of research that references Kotter's work does not investigate how the process can be used, but instead either discusses Kotter's writing in the context of the broader literature on change management, or uses the process as a framework for conducting a post hoc analysis of a change (e.g. ...
Kotter’s eight stage process for creating a major change is one of the most widely recognised models for change management, and yet there are few case studies in the academic literature that enquire into how this process has been used in practice. This paper describes a change manager’s action research enquiring into the use of this Process to manage a major organisational change. The change was initiated in response to the organisation’s ageing workforce, introducing a knowledge management program focusing on the interpersonal aspects of knowledge retention. Although Kotter’s process emphasises a top-led model for change, the change team found it was necessary to engage at many levels of the organisation to implement the organisational change. The process is typically depicted as a linear sequence of steps. However, this image of the change process was found to not represent the complexity of the required action. Managing the change required the change team to facilitate multiple concurrent instances of Kotter’s process throughout the organisation, to re-create change that was locally relevant to participants in the change process.
... The discourse of economic rationality, a discourse that has gradually emerged within state-owned firms (e.g. utilities, airlines), largely as a result of the country's efforts to reduce its public deficit in order to become eligible for entering the EMU (Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2004), did not have much purchase within ESY. As the announcements of doctors' unions and of the majority of the political parties show, the foundational discourse of 'egalitarianism' and 'democracy', the defining features of ESY since its inception, still holds sway. ...
Several critical studies in accounting have approached the introduction of accounting systems in the public sector in terms of enforcing and sustaining competition-based resource allocation mechanisms. In this study, we reverse the question and ask: why has accounting not been used in certain public bureaucracies as much as it might? We investigate the extent to which accounting systems have been used in the management of the Greek National Health System (ESY) and find that accounting has played a marginal role in its development. Attempting to explain this puzzling feature we first note and then contrast the main underlying features of accounting systems with those of the Greek political system in general, and ESY in particular. Briefly, our explanation is that the historically high politicization that has characterized the Greek political system has tended to over-shadow the economic-cum-managerial dimension of running public bureaucracies, favouring overtly political evaluation criteria of organizational and individual performance. In such an institutional environment, accounting has low symbolic significance and its use does not contribute to enhancing organizational legitimacy - hence its marginal role.
... It employs a frame that incorporates these critiques within the analyzes of the examined papers. Furthermore, it explores the contextual challenges associated with the implementation of changes within the public sector given its under-representation within the overall change literature (Tsoukas and Papoulias 2005). ...
This article presents a review of the recent literature on change management in public organisations and sets out to explore the extent to which this literature has responded to earlier critiques regarding the lack of (public) contextual factors. The review includes 133 articles published on this topic in the period from 2000 to 2010. The articles are analyzed based on the themes of the context, content, process, outcome and leadership of change. We identified whether the articles referred to different orders of change, as well as their employed methods and theory. Our findings concentrate on the lack of detail on change processes and outcomes and the gap between the common theories used to study change. We propose an agenda for the study of change management in public organisations that focuses on its complex nature by building theoretical bridges and performing more in-depth empirical and comparative studies on change processes.
... Given the size and the importance of the company, its restructuring was not an internal organizational issue only, but involved key outside actors, most important of which was the government. From a management-of-change point of view, the transformation process of a state-controlled organization, like the HTO, should be seen within its broader institutional context, focusing on a number of interdependences among the different stakeholders (e.g., Johnson et al., 2000; Tsoukas and Papoulias, 2005). The transformation process of the company involved a high degree of complexity, difficulties and conflicts. ...
This paper analyses the evolution of Corporate Governance (CG) mechanisms and organizational changes of the Hellenic Telecommunication Organization (HTO) and has two objectives: to enrich the debate and to contribute to the increasing body of literature by examining and analyzing the organizational and institutional changes taken place in the HTO; and to place the HTO's case within the international debate regarding the privatization of state-owned companies and the importance of CG mechanisms as instruments of change. It is argued that the privatization of state-owned companies, when is accompanied with appropriate reform measures, can produce multiple positive effects. CG reforms were the main instruments that used in order to prepare the telecommunications incumbent to face the open and competitive markets.
... Amidst this mixture of responses, we also found at least three attempts to transform other organizational values practices, each of which invoked the honor code and its values discourse as a way of justifying the desired transformations. In this way, the honor code became associated with practices unrelated to classroom activities, resulting in unanticipated effects on other values practices throughout Beta (Czarniawska, 2008;Tsoukas & Papoulias, 2005). ...
Existing cognitive and cultural perspectives on values have under-theorized the processes whereby values come to be practiced in organizations. We address this lacuna by studying the emergence and performance of what we call values practices. Drawing on an analysis of the development of an honor code within a large business school, we theorize the multiple kinds of values work involved in dealing with pockets of concern, knotting local concerns into action networks, performing values practices, and circulating values discourse. We conclude by discussing some opportunities and challenges that values work implies for future organizational scholarship.
... In general, this movement could be seen as a transformation from public bureaucracy to a model of more flexible administration [48] applying business process redesigns frameworks. New Public Management principles include redesign of key procedures for serving citizens, setting of quality standards for public services, efficiency improvements of human resources management procedures, and introducing a number of initiatives inspired by the business world ( [44], [59]). ...
A great number of recent studies in the e-government area focus on investigating how technology-induced changes in the public sector connect with the New Public Management (NPM) reform, envisioned by many politicians. Researchers in this field contend that e-government denotes a structural and process-oriented change of governmental organizations, with the objective of getting them to run more efficiently. Adopting this perspective, this paper revisits a well-established business process change (BPC) methodology for the public sector and applies it to analyse the Greek initiative of Citizens Service Centers (CSCs) towards a one-stop hybrid (physical and electronic) government model. Considering the particularities of public organizations, we position our research as dealing fundamentally with ex-ante planned incremental changes at the micro level, being part of either a revolutionary or evolutionary transformation program at the macro level. We argue in favor of extending the six stages of the initially prescribed BPC methodology with an additional stage, named 'institutionalize change'. This serves the need of applying BPC to implement changes that enable multi-agency collaboration at a national level.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the impact of agencification on the process of administrative reorganization in Greece. It is suggested that agencies tend to create a parallel administrative space that operates disjointly or even detached from the central bureaucracy. This hypothesis is tested and elaborated in relation to Greece's centralist administrative tradition.
Design/methodology/approach
The analysis identifies the critical junctures of the domestic agencification pattern and seeks to explain its evolution on the basis of historical-cultural factors, rational choice explanations and country-specific variables. The methodology combines quantitative and qualitative research. Along with a review of existing literature, data were collected through semi-structured interviews and the Registry of Entities and Agencies.
Findings
The findings show that agencification never became a coherent policy reform tool, while its outcomes were filtered by the centralist and politicized tradition of the Greek state. The effect of agencification was proved to be highly path-dependent and contingent upon the broader administrative tradition. The agencification policy does not follow a clear direction and has been shaped as a random combination of ad hoc decisions, external pressures and domestic politics.
Research limitations/implications
The paper provides some generalizations of the agencification experience. However, they do not cover all specificities and particularities of agencies and their applicability varies. Further research could consider these variations.
Originality/value
A novelty of this study is that it links the agencification effect with three key aspects of the administrative reform process, namely, decentralization, debureaucratization and depoliticization. In addition, no single study exists regarding agencification in Greece; thus, the paper is the first to provide an overall view of the Greek arm's length bodies.
Over the past two decades, utilities policy in Greece has been steadily shifting towards privatization and liberalization. This shift signified a critical reconsideration of the boundaries and the dynamics of the relationship between the state and the market in network industries. Public debate usually focuses on issues of ownership of public enterprises and economic performance. On the contrary, this book places the emphasis on the socio-economic implications of utilities policy for citizens. A key issue is the impact of privatization on the relationship between government (state), public enterprises (market) and citizens (society). The study covers the period from the post-war state monopolies to the current circumstances of mixed/private ownership of public enterprises and liberalized markets. The main questions addressed in this book are the following: What is the rationale (legitimization) for government intervention in the utilities sector? What are the politics of nationalization and privatization? How different policy contexts affect the institutional, organizational and regulatory framework of the utilities sector? Who are the key-stakeholders and policy actors? What is the role of citizens? What is the (re)distribution of utilities policy costs and benefits among stakeholders?
Decision-making in pluralistic organizations, like hospitals, is a fragile process, particularly when they span professional boundaries, as in change or merger projects. The fragility is often explained by divergent goals, knowledge-intensive work processes and dispersed power structures. Due to the high autonomy of different actors decisions need to be made collectively and to a certain degree the consent of those affected by the decisions is required. In addition, decision-making is a cyclical process as decision effects feedback on the decision-makers.
However, the question of how actors carry out decisions over time has not been widely explored in management and organization theory. Traditional theories of rational choice do not incorporate the social and cyclical nature of nature of decision-making. We turn to literature of the process perspective that suggests understanding decision-making as a pattern of action unfolding over time. Emphasizing the role of time decisions emerge from the temporal proximity of challenge, solutions and decision maker. This paper uses a process lens to examine how different actors enact different decisions practices in order to enable collective strategic actions.
Although various scholars have established decision-making as a central concern of organizational science, less attention has been paid to the actual decision practices/processes in pluralistic organizations. Apparently, it is assumed that the ways of decision-making do not vary across a pluralistic organization. This paper addresses this gap by analyzing the diverse decision practices of different professions within a hospital.
This paper extends existing understandings of how distinct decision practices shape the process of strategic actions. We elaborate on the role of the professional background in making decisions, based on analysis of a longitudinal case study of a merger process between two hospitals. Our data show distinctly different decision-practices within a hospital: fast and personalized decision-making by surgeons, collaborative decision-making that appeals to the nurses' notion of caring, consensus-seeking understanding of emerging patterns that fits to the routines of internists and bureaucratically pre-planned project management by administrators. Our study makes two contributions: first, reaching a strategic decision and generating organization action around strategic goals is not only difficult because different interest groups pursue their own goals. But also, it is because the decisions practices within a pluralistic organization differ significantly; second, decision-making is heavily shaped and legitimized by the way actors perform their daily work. Such referencing stabilizes a specific decision-practice inside a professional domain. At the same time, organization-wide decisions during which different ways of decision-making join, making decisions becomes ambiguous.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyze change process perceptions of public service employees and document how change readiness belief salience fluctuates and evolves throughout the implementation of a major organizational restructuring effort.
Design/methodology/approach
This research is a longitudinal multiple-case study of a major transformation initiative in a large North American public recreation organization. Over the course of 15 months, the authors conducted four rounds of personal interviews with 19 participants (65 interviews in total, each lasting 25–45 min). Additionally, the authors analyzed internal e-mail correspondence, memos, and meeting agendas, as well as external stakeholder communication. Finally, the primary researcher spent a significant amount of time collecting field notes while shadowing high-level managers and employees and attending meetings.
Findings
Overall, the authors documented a clear hierarchy of change readiness dimensions. The relative strength and temporal persistence of these dimensions can be traced back to various public organizing particularities. Moreover, the authors found that an initial focus on some readiness dimensions facilitated subsequent sensemaking processes whereas others hindered such engagement with the change project.
Research limitations/implications
This research is the first to empirically document temporal fluidity of change readiness dimensions and salience. Moreover, it offers a rare in-depth look at a changing public service organization.
Practical implications
This research helps change agents in developing tailored change messages and to better understand potential sources of frustration and resistance to change efforts.
Originality/value
No similar efforts exist to document the underlying dynamism of evolving change readiness perceptions.
This paper provides an overview of the major State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in Greece with the aim of identifying the key features of the dominant paradigm and the critical turning points in its evolution. The process of SOEs’ reform is analysed with reference to corporatization, restructuring, privatization and liberalization policies. Drawing on theoretical and empirical evidence, the paper explores the impact of these reforms on the ownership, governance and public mission of SOEs, also addressing their current social and economic role. The hypothesis of a ‘paradigm shift’ is tested within the changing context of government intervention, market structure, management relationships, public service and control and accountability of SOEs. The case studies include 15 major enterprises in key economic-industrial and utility sectors. The paper concludes that over the past two decades the SOE sector has shifted towards new governance and organizational patterns that have substantially affected the traditional SOE paradigm.
INTRODUCTION
The voluntary offer may decisively contribute to the development of the survival conditions and particularly in the health domain during periods of financial crisis. The aim of the present study was the research of the voluntary movement in the health domain in Greece. Some other objectives were the recording of the voluntary organizations and volunteers’ characteristics, the changes that happened to them due to crisis and the investigation of a “better” environment putting emphasis on the professional operation’s features.
Methodology
A systematic bibliographical survey was conducted initially to limit the investigatory field and to reprint the modern state of the volunteering. Then, a study was carried out with a data collection from voluntary organizations (n=36) and volunteers (n=213) from the municipalities of Komotini and Alexandroupoli. The data collection was fulfilled with the creation of questionnaires which were raised after the systematic bibliographical survey. A pilot study was also happened with which the reliability and validity of the questionnaire were confirmed. The analysis of the data was accomplished with the use of IBM SPSS 21.0 (Statistical Package for Social Sciences).
Results
Twenty-one voluntary organizations were located in Komotini with 5,228 active member and fifteen organizations in Alexandroupoli with 7,012 active ones. Their action is continuous mainly in a local level with only 33,33% to co-operate with other organizations. 41,17% of the organizations offered during last year to 50 people. It was noticed that the crisis has caused an increase on the number of the organizations (50% established after 2008) and a tendency for volunteer offer (53,11% volunteer after 2010). The crisis enforced the commitment with the organizations (mean=4,07) and the subject of the voluntary action (mean =4,07) even though a part of mobility (33,17%) and a low commitment with between the organizations (23,4%) and the object of offer (25,62%) were detected. The organizations noticed a change on the characteristics of the voluntary movement due to the crisis (mean =3,60) and a need to increase their flexibility (mean =3,84) even though both the organization and their function still remain unchangeable (mean =3,25). The voluntary organizations consider that their role in relation to the state’s, should be independent and more active, mainly in the way they force situations (mean =4,10) and co-operate (mean =4,00) for the implementation or the configuration of the politics, the advisory or consultative role (mean =4,06) and the satisfaction of needs that the state cannot fulfill (mean =3,97). Relatively to the volunteers, it was found that the crisis hasn’t increased significantly the obstacles in the voluntary offer (mean =2,89) even to the health sector (mean =3,38). The crisis caused a slight increase on the motives (mean =3,50) and the results on the voluntary action giving emphasis on the acquisition of experience (mean =3,73). According to the results of the multivariate leaner regression the increase of the given time were related with the increase on the motivation score while the volunteers whose families had members to burden the household had also greater motivation score. Moreover, the volunteers with insufficient income to support basic needs and the volunteers whose families had also members to burden the household had greater obstacles score too. The reduction of the years of the voluntary offer was related to the increase of the outcomes score while the volunteers whose families had also members to burden the household had greater outcome score. Finally, the increase on household members related to the increase on the environment score while the volunteers whose had a close member volunteer had greater environment score.
Conclusions
The financial crisis consists a “window” for the implementation of changes in the voluntary section so that it will become autonomous and not dependent on the state, to work in a more efficient and cooperative base and to gain the recognition it deserves. To fulfill these changes, both an alteration on the sectors’ organizational culture and the enactment of a clear and legitimate framework are required which will transmute the expression of the citizenship in an efficient social project inside an open, collaborative but autonomous space too.
دراسة تحليلية لواقع إدارة التغيير لدى القيادات الرياضية بمحافظة المنيا ، حيث يهدف البحث إلى التعرف علي واقع إدارة التغيير لدى القيادات الرياضية بمحافظة المنيا،حيث استخدم الباحثون المنهج الوصفي أسلوب الدراسات المسحية ، وكان مجتمع البحث من القيادات التي تعمل في المجال الرياضي بمحافظة المنيا في قطاعات التعليم الجامعي , التربية والتعليم , والشباب والرياضة والبالغ قوامها ( 355 ) ثلاثمائة وخمسة وخمسون فرداً وكانت عينة البحث بالطريقة العشوائية وكانت قوامها ( 155 ) مائة وخمسة وخمسون فرداً من الجنسين يمثلون نسبة مئوية قدرها ( 43.66 % ) من مجتمع البحث ، وكانت أدوات جمع البيانات استبيان إدارة التغيير (إعداد الباحثون )، وكانت اهم نتائج البحث
عدم وجود واقع فعلي للهيكل التنظيمي بالمؤسسات الرياضية.
الواقع الفعلي في المؤسسات الرياضية لا يتسم بالابتكار والابداع من القادة الرياضيين.
عدم الاستعانة بتكنولوجيا المعلومات في إدارة التغيير بالمؤسسات الرياضية.
عدم تنميه الموارد البشرية لأحداث عمليه التغيير بالمؤسسات الرياضية.
عدم وجود أهداف واقعيه لإدارة التغيير داخل المؤسسات الرياضية.
توصيات الدراسة
ضرورة التطوير المستمر للهياكل التنظيمية داخل المؤسسات الرياضية للمساعدة على إنجاز الاعمال مع تحديد واجبات ومسئوليات الافراد داخل الهياكل التنظيمية بما يتماشى مع أهداف المؤسسة.
تشجيع القادة الرياضيين على المبادرات الابتكارية لتحقيق التغيير.
استخدام وسائل التكنولوجية الحديثة التي تتناسب مع متطلبات العمل ومواكبه التطورات الحديثة، وضرورة تدريب العاملين داخل المؤسسات الرياضية على استخدام الأساليب التكنولوجية الحديثة.
ضرورة عقد دورات تدريبيه لإقناع القيادات الرياضية بالتغيير.
التأكيد على تفعيل ادوار الرقابة التشريعية ومتابعه اللوائح والقوانين الحديثة المنظمة للهيئات الرياضية.
The role of electricity distribution system operators (DSOs) in the European Union (EU) is changing. This paper aims at identifying the determinant factors for change at the DSO level. This is achieved through a two-staged research approach. Firstly, an exploratory analysis of the existing literature is conducted to identify candidate determinants. Secondly, the candidate determinants are evaluated, in terms of their adequacy and impact on DSOs, through a stakeholder consultation aggregating the perspectives of 30 experts. Through this study 22 determinant factors, within the regulatory, institutional and organisational dimensions were identified and validated as causes of organisational change for DSOs. Policy makers can build on these findings for the development of policies that take the organisational dynamics into account which can result in a more robust understanding of the necessary policy framework to facilitate the ongoing transition at the DSO level.
In transition times leaders should be aware of the hidden and intangible assets of their organizations or communities. While linear-analytical assessment tools face major difficulties in meeting this challenge, we suggest that the use of archetypal models as knowledge systems can be of help. A new tool, based on the use of geometrical patterns and aiming to reveal and assess a system's capacity and maturity for change, is presented here.
The main objective of this study is to deepen the understanding of business network development processes and their antecedents. In addition, the study aims to clarify how strategic intent and shared identity can be formed at the business network level. To this end, the practices related to network strategy and sense-making processes in three different business networks were compared. The study applies the system approach to networks and examines how network structure and internal mechanisms influence the development process. The goal of the study is to utilise knowledge management and an organisational change approach in business networks and their development. The framework is two-sided, consisting of the network development cycle and the typology of knowledge management within strategic business networks. The framework is constructed in light of earlier research and utilised in the selection of cases. At the conceptual level, the concepts of business network, strategic intent and shared identity are also clarified. The empirical part describes network development processes in three different technology industry networks. Case A (and, to an extent, Case B) represents vertical production networks managed by the core company; Case C represents an innovation network between equal partners. The case studies lasted between one and two and a half years. The development path of each different case network was constructed on the basis of the theoretical framework. Case data were reviewed using the key questions related to this processual phenomenon: "why", "how" and "what." Based on the case studies and the theoretical framework, two models of network renewal were constructed. These models can be used by managers of business networks to evaluate their networking and development practices. As a result, the network renewal models can also deepen the understanding of network development and change. Nonetheless, knowledge management practices and knowledge types in different networks or different phases of network development are obvious topics for future research. Examining entrepreneurship and SMEs could also shed new light on business networks as a strategic choice. Network strategies can serve to structure, organise and give meaning to the complex operations of business networks. A common sense-making process facilitates the formation of shared identity and norms between network members. The study is structured as follows. Chapter 1 introduces the research objectives, methods and data. The key concepts, such as business networks and network organisations, are defined in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 briefly reviews the existing research on business networks and presents the preliminary framework of network typologies. Chapter 4 delves more deeply into the theory of network management and development. Chapter 5 presents the theoretical background of organisational change and knowledge management. Chapter 6 outlines the research methods and provides empirical evidence of the network development in the three case networks. The observations are discussed in Chapter 7 in light of the theoretical framework. Chapter 8 concludes with the network reform model, the evaluation of research and the implications for further research.
América Latina y el Caribe necesita un cambio de paradigma, que conlleva la re-ingeniería de la escuela y del sistema educativo para ofrecer educación de mejor calidad para todos, con costos al alcance de los recursos económicos con que cuenta cada país. El desafío es que los sistemas educativos desarrollen las competencias del siglo XXI, pasen del aprendizaje superficial y memorístico a la comprensión, se apoyen en pedagogías y experiencias para el aprendizaje que se adapten a las necesidades de cada estudiante
Organization scholars have often criticized the discipline of being distant from practical managerial problems. In this article we discuss another form of distance: from citizen's problems. The recent financial crisis in Europe, especially in the South, made manifest formidable needs for massive state reform. The challenge, from a process view, is that previous reform attempts have often failed, with each new failure leading to less readiness for future reform. We discuss the possibility of state reforms being trapped in a pattern of vicious circularity, thus articulating two fundamental yet under-explored topics in European management research: state reform and the vicious circle.
This study explores what organizational strategies are employed to initiate and facilitate organizational change in higher education institutions in the increasingly complex and competitive postsocialist environment of Bosnia-Herzegovina. By studying organizations trapped between their inert socialist-era legacies and desired organizational models, the findings revealed a politicized nature of sense making as a main facilitator of organizational change process. In particular, in arenas of collective sense making, the promotion of change initiatives depends on the ability of the organizational elite to coordinate action toward ambiguous goals.
This qualitative study analyzes service-oriented architecture (SOA) from a business perspective. The business is divided into different decision levels for clarification of the liability limits for the affected actors. The study of SOA covers the areas from development to implementation. The work has been conducted in order to contribute to a business perspective for how a SOA affects an entire organization, as published literature is more technically oriented. During the discussion and analysis of the empirical material did three reoccurring concepts emerge; ownership, communication and competence. These concepts were therefore discussed and analyzed within each decision level, and its adherent SOA-domains.
Purpose
– This invited article aims to show how the papers in the special issue highlight the advantages of using discourse analysis in order to contribute to our understanding of organizational change.
Design/methodology/approach
– The article begins by exploring the traditional perspectives used to make sense of organizational change including the behaviorist and cognitivist views. It then discusses how the papers in the special issue highlight the advantages of using discourse analysis.
Findings
– Compared to either the behaviorist or cognitivist perspectives, a discourse analytic approach is shown to offer greater potential for understanding the nature and complexity of organizational change, especially issues pertaining to the construction of stability and change, and the role of agency.
Originality/value
– Provides some insights into the advantages of discourse analysis in organizational change.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide explicit thinking about the organizational elements that support or hinder innovation in the government sector as it increasingly faces demand for innovative solutions to policy areas. The paper aims to present the development and findings of an evaluative case method conducted for an Australian state government department's organizational innovation program.
Design/methodology/approach
The evaluative case study was developed and conducted in two phases. First, an intellectual capital conceptual framework was applied to four independently sourced and discreet case organizations to represent multiple exemplars of innovation capacity building. These exemplars were suspended from their context in order to identify essential elements of the innovation capacity development process which in turn were then applied in phase two to the Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF), a Victorian (Australia) public policy organization.
Findings
The case raises critical distinctions between “innovation capability” and “innovation capacity”. The discussion offers insight into the process of developing innovation capacity for government policy organizations.
Research limitations/implications
The evaluation method incorporated a novel technique and trialed a phase development instrument for testing the embeddedness of organizational innovation. Both the technique and the instrument would benefit from further refinement, testing and development.
Originality/value
This paper develops work previously presented in O'Connor and Roos that considered the conceptual framework for using intellectual capital as an evaluation framework for organizational innovative capacity. It extends this work by piloting its application in a specific context and offers new insight into the organizational design issues of government organizations facing the challenge of producing innovative policy solutions.
In this paper, some peculiarities of a Southern European country are made explicit, namely, how the attraction of new, “global”, management practices combines with deeply persistent, thus traditional, ways of imagining organization. The dominant Anglo-Saxon and Protestant models of management may not be fully adequate to characterize management and organization in the Latin Catholic countries of the south, or those postcolonial societies that they inscribed in Latin America. We present an interpretation of why what are glossed by moderns as dysfunctional management practices persist, sometimes despite their recognized inadequacy. The contributions advanced here may thus be relevant to researchers interested in the route of transition from closed to open societies and who are concerned that all models
need to be appreciated in context.
Propelled by the driving forces of globalization and technology explosion, public institutions face the challenge of rapid and discontinuous change. Such change has come to undermine the relevance of traditional approaches on how an institution should be managed. We analyse a technology-driven change effort, the implementation of an Integrated Information System (IIS), that unfolds within the boundaries of the institutional context of the Hellenic Parliament. The purpose of our research, which reports on a qualitative field study, is to explore and understand how the particularities of technology-driven change on the one hand, and institutional change on the other, can be integrated, paying particular attention to how the different actors involved in the process interact and affect the unfolding of such a change effort. Our findings show that strong friction did indeed occur between old and new institutional factors, but that the key factor enabling the change effort to advance and finally gain legitimation was the encouragement and support in the institutional change process of opportunity-based and emerging changes, as proposed by the technological change literature.
This article synthesizes the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches. The analysis identifies three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based on normative approval; and cognitive, based on comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness. The article then examines strategies for gaining, maintaining, and repairing legitimacy of each type, suggesting both the promises and the pitfalls of such instrumental manipulations.
The ineffectiveness of several privatized firms within emerging economies underscores the importance of agency theory issues and their impact on the privatization-performance relationship. We argue that weak governance and limited protection of minority shareholders intensify traditional principal-agent problems (perquisite consumption and entrenchment) and create unique agency problems (expropriation). We suggest that postprivatization performance can be enhanced by using appropriate ownership, management, and corporate structures that mitigate agency problems in the context of weak governance, and we highlight avenues for research.
What is the best set of privatization policies to release entrepreneurial endeavors in transition economies? Policies of mass privatization in Central Europe were predicated on the belief that private ownership through securitization of property rights would provide powerful incentives for efficient restructuring. In retrospect, the more radical privatization programs not only failed to achieve the expected restructuring but also hindered the development of entrepreneurial activities. In this article we develop four propositions, arguing that entrepreneurship is better fostered through gradualist policies permitting negotiated solutions to restructuring, as opposed to market-driven reforms.
Traditional approaches to organizational change have been dominated by assumptions privileging stability, routine, and order. As a result, organizational change has been reified and treated as exceptional rather than natural. In this paper, we set out to offer an account of organizational change on its own terms--to treat change as the normal condition of organizational life. The central question we address is as follows: What must organization(s) be like if change is constitutive of reality? Wishing to highlight the pervasiveness of change in organizations, we talk about organizational becoming. Change, we argue, is the reweaving of actors' webs of beliefs and habits of action to accommodate new experiences obtained through interactions. Insofar as this is an ongoing process, that is to the extent actors try to make sense of and act coherently in the world, change is inherent in human action, and organizations are sites of continuously evolving human action. In this view, organization is a secondary accomplishment, in a double sense. Firstly, organization is the attempt to order the intrinsic flux of human action, to channel it towards certain ends by generalizing and institutionalizing particular cognitive representations. Secondly, organization is a pattern that is constituted, shaped, and emerging from change. Organization aims at stemming change but, in the process of doing so, it is generated by it. These claims are illustrated by drawing on the work of several organizational ethnographers. The implications of this view for theory and practice are outlined.
This article reconceptualizes the change process from a rational planning perspective to an interpretive perspective emphasizing the social construction of meaning. Discourse is viewed as the core of the change process through which our basic assumptions about organizing are created, sustained, and transformed. To illustrate the dynamics of meaning systems, examples are provided of organizations shifting from mechanistic assumptions to become more adaptive, responsive, quality-oriented organizations. Implications for researchers and managers are included.
It is argued here that the victory of Greenpeace over Shell in the North Sea, in June 1995, exemplifies the empowerment of small organizations in the semiotic environment in which organizations in late modernity increasingly tend to operate. More specifically, it is argued that in late modern societies risk production tends to be at least as important as wealth production. In the risk society, symbolic power is of great importance, at times more important than economic power; social reflexivity, unfolding within a public discourse which favours post-materialist values, is an integral part of societal functioning; and the role of mediated communication occupies a central place. In a semiotic environment, business organizations do not only compete in the marketplace but, increasingly, in a discursive space in which winning the argument is just as important. These concepts are used to throw light on the conflict that broke out between Shell and Greenpeace in the North Sea, over the offshore dumping of a defunct oil platform.
We attempt here to explain why reforming social systems is not an easy job and what can be done about it. Vickers' concept of "appreciative systems"is re-examined and further developed. It is argued that appreciative systems are socially established ways of perceiving, consisting of a set of cognitive categories, values, and interests which are grounded on social practices. The latter are constituted by certain historically developed self understandings shared by individuals. Social practices are self-referential and, therefore, particularly resistant to reform. It is argued that the role of policy makers should be seen as consisting of two components. First, inventing and supplying social systems with new appreciative systems, and secondly, regularly providing social systems with information about their own functioning as well as the functioning of other systems. That information, spread throughout a system, has potentially reforming effects. These claims are illustrated with examples from British and American public life.
Third-order change in organizations refers to attempts to help
organizational members to transcend their shared schemata. It has not
previously been explored in depth. Uses mystical experience as a model
of how the third-order change process may occur. Discusses several
characteristics of mystical experience, focusing in particular on the
central characteristic of transconceptual understanding. Presents an
example of Teresa of Avila, a Spanish woman from the sixteenth century
whose mystical life was reflected in her organizing activities. Suggests
how mystical experience can inform understanding of the third-order
organizational change process and presents a preliminary model of ways
in which the third-order change capacity might be developed.
This article explores producing and managing change within conversationally constructed realities. Conversations are proposed as both the medium and product of reality construction within which change is a process of shifting conversations in the network of conversations that constitute organizations. In this context, change entails bringing new conversations into a sustained existence and the job of change managers is to create the conversational realities that produce effective action rather than to align organizations with some “true” reality.
Punctuated change is usually defined as a discontinuity in organizational development and is traditionally associated with environmental turbulence; it is also associated with step changes in the performance of an organization. Starting from Gersick (1991), we discuss the foundations of the punctuatedÃincremental change paradox, and lay out hypotheses regarding the moments when such change is adopted and its economic effect. We explore these ideas through a study of the UK water industry: a contrived macro experiment. Following privatization, the ten major companies all faced similar pressures to adjust, but adopted widely differing responses. We find that the response to privatization was not always punctuated change, and that punctuated change processes were not necessarily superior to continuous processes. We contrast our findings with Romanelli and Tushman (1994), exploring the reasons why our results are so dissimilar.
Novotel is one of the world's major hotel chains, occupying a leading place in Europe and with locations globally. We interpret Novotel's change management programme in the 1990s in three parts. First, we summarise the actions that managers took in terms of strategy and organisation. Second, we consider the sequence and timing of events, and how this resulted in rapid transformation in an organisation employing more than 30,000 people. Third, we emphasise the dialectical nature of the change processes: an element often ignored in the literature that likes to see things as an either–or rather than a both. We observed both deliberation and experimentation; both integration and differentiation. We also observed both preservation and transformation, as noted in our sub-title ‘Back to the Future’. Finally, we wrap up with a discussion explaining how our story can add to better thinking about change. We suggest that we can shed new light on some old debates and provide tangible guides for action.
This article synthesizes the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches. The analysis identifies three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based on normative approval: and cognitive, based on comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness. The article then examines strategies for gaining, maintaining, and repairing legitimacy of each type, suggesting both the promises and the pitfalls of such instrumental manipulations.
We use a dialectical perspective to provide a unique framework for understanding institutional change that more fully captures its totalistic, historical, and dynamic nature, as well as fundamentally resolves a theoretical dilemma of institutional theory: the relative swing between agency and embeddedness. In this framework institutional change is understood as an outcome of the dynamic interactions between two institutional by-products: institutional contradictions and human praxis. In particular, we depict praxis - agency embedded in a totality of multiple levels of interpenetrating, incompatible institutional arrangements (centradictions)-as an essential driving force of institutional change.
Organizational transformation in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe is qualitatively different from that observed in the West because of concomitant upheaval in the institutional context. Drawing on organizational change theory, organizational learning theory, and institutional theory, I suggest an inverted U-shaped relationship between institution-level change and transformative organizational change. By integrating three theoretical perspectives in the conceptual framework of this article, I more fully explain organizational transformation in a variety of institutional contexts.
This is an account of the US Naval Security Group Command's (NSG) search for strategic management during a time of unprecedented change. In response to dramatic shifts resulting from the end of the Cold War, Congressional pressures for cross-service co-operation, and the emergence of new technologies, the NSG engaged in a six-year strategic planning process. The process helped the group refocus and develop strategies better suited to new demands for military preparedness. The process was incremental and eclectic; early leadership came from middle managers, rather than top officials. The process began with a ‘quick and dirty’ planning session initiated by department heads to deal with an immediate crisis and gained momentum and top-level involvement as the first session and subsequent strategic planning efforts showed results. The process was guided by a strategic planning framework specifically designed for public and non-profit organisations and relied on a variety of strategic planning tools and techniques, including stakeholder analyses, SWOT analyses and capturing the insights gained from scenario planning using the newer cognitive methods such as cognitive and oval mapping. This article provides a chronology of events over a six-year period, explores some of the strategic planning tools and techniques used, details results achieved and discusses some of the major lessons learned.
The collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe has transformed many of the institutions governing state enterprises and was expected to lead to radical changes in enterprise structures and practices. This was especially so where ownership had changed. However, just as new constitutions do not create liberal democracies overnight, so too the withdrawal of the state from direct control over the economy and privatization does not automatically generate dramatic enterprise transformations. This study of 27 Hungarian enterprises in the early 1990s shows that products and the markets served changed remarkably little, and the employment and organizational changes that have taken place in most enterprises have been less radical than might be expected. Ownership changes have not always led to major shifts in control, nor have private owners implemented sharply different policies from state controllers. The highly fluid institutional environment limited the commitment to, and capacity for, major strategic changes in most substantial Hungarian enterprises. Where changes have occurred, they have been most significant in: (a) state enterprises that are in severe financial difficulties, and (b) companies controlled by foreign firms.
How do large multi-unit firms in a deconstructing world reconcile the conflicting forces of profits for today and flexibility to adapt for tomorrow? Profits for today requires order, control, and stability: adaptation for tomorrow requires flexibility and creativity in the value-added system. Large firms in many industries are confronted with this challenge of exploration and exploitation. In the European financial services industries these conflicting tendencies are increasingly obvious. Existing large financial players seem well placed to exploit the present but ill suited to adapt to the future. Why is this so, and what can be done about it? We consider the mechanisms of selection, adaptation and co-evolution that take place between levels within the firm and between the firm and its environment, and from this identify four ideal kinds of strategic renewal journeys that organisations can adopt as a way of coping with increasing environmental pressures. We label these journeys: emergent, directed, facilitated, and transformational. We show how these ideal types represent different options for top, middle and front-line managers, and we identify how each type differs in its capacity to cope with the changing environment. We illustrate our renewal journeys with examples from Dutch (ING and Rabobank) and British financials (Barclays, Lloyds and Prudential) and other organisations such as GE, IBM, Intel, Novotel and Philips. We suggest that for mobilising renewal in well-established financial institutions—once protected but now exposed to the winds of change—managers have to recognise that many of the current journeys are unsuitable for the future.
Corporative initiatives are an essential tool for improving an organisation's performance. They are they main vehicle through which the corporate centre creates additional value in its portfolio of businesses. However many initiatives are less than satisfactory and become “stuck”, diverting energies and straining relationships. This paper gives a framework with nine root causes which can diagnose why an initiative has become stuck. The framework enables corporate managers to take more targeted actions which can free the initiative more quickly and with less unintended damage than traditional fixes. The paper also addresses a key corporate dilemma of knowing how hard to push an initiative that is starting to stick. Is this resistance due to a dislike of imposed change or are there good reasons for resisting it?
This is an account of the US Naval Security Group Command's (NSG) search for strategic management during a time of unprecedented change. In response to dramatic shifts resulting from the end of the Cold War, Congressional pressures for cross-service co-operation, and the emergence of new technologies, the NSG engaged in a six-year strategic planning process. The process helped the group refocus and develop strategies better suited to new demands for military preparedness. The process was incremental and eclectic; early leadership came from middle managers, rather than top officials. The process began with a ‘quick and dirty’ planning session initiated by department heads to deal with an immediate crisis and gained momentum and top-level involvement as the first session and subsequent strategic planning efforts showed results. The process was guided by a strategic planning framework specifically designed for public and non-profit organisations and relied on a variety of strategic planning tools and techniques, including stakeholder analyses, SWOT analyses and capturing the insights gained from scenario planning using the newer cognitive methods such as cognitive and oval mapping. This article provides a chronology of events over a six-year period, explores some of the strategic planning tools and techniques used, details results achieved and discusses some of the major lessons learned.
In this article the necessary links between the macro-logic of socialist socio- economic systems and key organizational features are explored. The ideal types of capitalist and socialist systems are first described and their implications for organizations are later discussed. Socialist socio-economic systems are conceptu alized as highly institutionalized environments which are postulated to be key causal influences on firms operating within them. The key characteristics of social ist firms are shown to be the following: the isomorphic relationships between socialist enterprises and the state caused by the structural and political-ideolo gical dependence of the former upon the latter; the prevalence of ceremonial management; the systematic decoupling of the formal system from actual organ izational practices and behaviours, as well as the disjuncture of the actions of economic units from their consequences. In addition, the structurally generated reliance of socialist firms on rules and hierarchies for organizational decision- making is noted. Socialist socio-economic systems also generate multiple lines of authority in enterprises which are managed through a combination of particip ative management, ideological campaigns, and coercion.
This article is based on Professor Tushman's well-received presentation at the 1997 international trategic leadership conference in Washington, D.C., in April
This chapter is about the institutionalization of organizational change. It is concerned with the persistence of organizational change. Lewin (1951) describes change in terms of three processes unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. Institutionalization is concerned with the process of refreezing. After a new policy or program is introduced into an organization, we plan to focus on factors that affect its persistence. A whole series of questions underlies this problem statement: What does institutionalization or persistence mean? How do we describe different degrees of institutionalization or persistence mean? How do we describe different degrees of institutionalization? What critical processes affect institutionalization? What are the critical predictors? These questions serve to organize this discussion.
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ABSTRACT†: This paper attempts to evaluate employee and social-group participation in the management of public sector enterprises, using evidence from a scheme introduced in seven public utilities in Greece, 1983-8. It describes the institutional background and the formal directives through which this participation scheme was implemented and assesses its effects. Difficulties arising from the wider political and administrative environment are discussed. Reasons for the observed disfunctioning of the scheme are given. These refer to the structure of the scheme itself, negligence of existing experience and tradition within the enterprises, and failure to associate participation with modernization. Suggestions are provided for the implementation of more effective participative management in future.
A great deal of rhetoric surrounds the transformation from socialism to free-market capitalism. This paper explores to what extent the restructuring of Romanian companies has been an attempt to pay lip-service to prevailing rhetoric and to what extent it has been premised upon economic rationality. To restructure along structural, technological, financial but primarily managerial fronts has become a cultural value which is applauded, praised and heralded as the only way forward by the Romanian institutions of the transition. The companies under the study subscribe to such rhetoric only when they regard it as being embedded in economic rationality, as is the case with structural, financial and technological restructuring. Managerial restructuring, on the other hand, is not regarded as a technical necessity, given the view held by existing senior managers that skills and qualities acquired in the socialist regime are still appropriate to run a business successfully in the free-market economy.
The findings reported in this paper address problems confronting chief executives and functional specialists involved in turnaround situations. A comparison is undertaken of companies in which innovation was successfully started – called ‘pacesetters’– with companies which were less successful. Starting innovation was an important precursor for profitability in all the companies studied. Without change there would be no tomorrow. In pacesetter companies, chief executives used an unconventional approach to shock staff into action. They ruthlessly opened minds to market threats and opportunities. After administering shock treatment, they carefully returned responsibility to first line managers through a deliberate ‘managerial shift’. They insisted that the new style of managing they introduced be market-focused. In contrast, chief executives of companies which were less successful at starting innovation encouraged debate on alternative strategies as a prelude to any action. This apparently more logical approach led to frequent disagreements which sapped employee motivation. It lacked the urgency of an approach firmly grounded in the realities of the market place.
Explores how developments in the ground-breaking field of narrative family therapy might be applied to organizational change efforts. After an introductory discussion of some of narrative therapy’s key orientations and practices (e.g. postmodern notions of language and power, influence mapping, problem externalization, unique outcomes, audiencing), an extended example is given where a narrative approach was used to effect change in a health-care organization. The case is used to generate a series of research questions and directions.
As our understanding of processes of strategic management develop, it is clear that the problems of managing major shifts in strategy, which organizations face on occasions, are of a different order to the typically incremental strategy development they follow. It is also recognized that these problems are closely linked to cognitive and cultural dimensions of organizations. Research on the management processes associated with more fundamental strategic change is still sparse, but suggests that it requires substantial cognitive shifts in which intervention, often by new corporate leaders, and political and symbolic, as well as more substantial action, is likely. This paper draws together the author's and other research in related fields, to formalize explanatory models, which link organizational inertia of strategy, more fundamental strategic change, and in particular the symbolic management activities of corporate leaders as strategic change agents.
A call for “better” governance of the public sphere informed by reliance on management and accounting expertise has recently arisen in connection with a variety of legislative initiatives enacted in Italy. This paper looks at the nature and role of this “reform”, and in particular the call for the introduction of managerial accounting. It is argued that far from facilitating a comprehensive introduction of managerial vocabulary and knowledge into the public domain, the Italian legislative mechanism tends to hamper the expression of management and accounting as technically autonomous and coherent systems, while at the same time allowing more established audiences to deliberate on their nature and role. Although the reform was devised in terms of introducing the economic and the measurable into the domains of bureaucracy and formal compliance, its legal articulation seems to be informed by the very logic and ethos it is called upon to change.
Firms face increasing pressures to modify their strategies and adjust to rapidly changing environmental threats and opportunities. Yet strategic reorientations are difficult to achieve, especially as most methods fail to recognize the cognitive aspects of change. While some methods such as facilitated workshops have become increasingly popular to help top management teams better facilitate strategic change, these have largely evolved on the basis of successful experience rather than on an understanding of cognitive processes. This paper seeks to fill this gap, by drawing both upon theoretical literature and experience with successful change facilitation practices from Europe and the US. Its focus is on the cognitive aspects of strategic orientation and provides a practical guide to those who use this process.
Co-operation is the essence of an organization's existence and a key condition for its long-term survival: but change efforts can put such co-operation to a harsh test. Too often this is caused not by change itself, but managers' tendency to stick to oversimplified ideas or tools and to pursue their implementation to the exclusion of other factors. Lacking a stable beacon, managers are often led adrift by the momentum of the change they initiate. This article uses a 20 year long longitudinal study of Hydro-Québec, one of the largest power utilities in North America, to show how the dynamics of change led away from the need to maintain co-operation and thus tend to emphasize trivia. We argue that, in a major change effort, co-operation will only be achieved by maintaining a balance between Position in the environment, organizational Context and the behaviour of People in the organization's community. This three-legged PCP framework is proposed as a structure for understanding and managing complex change efforts. The dynamics of the PCP framework are also examined to derive patterns and recommendations for managers keen to avoid a drift towards trivia.
How do large multi-unit firms in a deconstructing world reconcile the conflicting forces of profits for today and flexibility to adapt for tomorrow? Profits for today requires order, control, and stability: adaptation for tomorrow requires flexibility and creativity in the value-added system. Large firms in many industries are confronted with this challenge of exploration and exploitation. In the European financial services industries these conflicting tendencies are increasingly obvious. Existing large financial players seem well placed to exploit the present but ill suited to adapt to the future. Why is this so, and what can be done about it? We consider the mechanisms of selection, adaptation and co-evolution that take place between levels within the firm and between the firm and its environment, and from this identify four ideal kinds of strategic renewal journeys that organisations can adopt as a way of coping with increasing environmental pressures. We label these journeys: emergent, directed, facilitated, and transformational. We show how these ideal types represent different options for top, middle and front-line managers, and we identify how each type differs in its capacity to cope with the changing environment. We illustrate our renewal journeys with examples from Dutch (ING and Rabobank) and British financials (Barclays, Lloyds and Prudential) and other organisations such as GE, IBM, Intel, Novotel and Philips. We suggest that for mobilising renewal in well-established financial institutions—once protected but now exposed to the winds of change—managers have to recognise that many of the current journeys are unsuitable for the future.
Conceptualizing privatization as the shift from one institutional template to another, the authors draw on the related literature of institutional theory and script development to explore the interactive effects of actors' behavioral scripts and institutional templates. In so doing, they address microlevel aspects of the macroinstitutional change of privatization and advance their understanding of the role of public sector managers in the privatization process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Academy of Management Review is the property of Academy of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
There is a growing awareness of the need for designers of organisational change to develop context sensitive approaches to implementation if change is to be successful. Existing change literature indicates that there are many aspects of an organisation's change context that need to be considered, and a wide range of different implementation options open to those designing change. However, these contextual aspects and design options are not currently pulled together in a comprehensive manner, or in a form that makes them easily accessible to practitioners. This paper builds a framework, called the 'change kaleidoscope,' which aims to achieve this. It illustrates the applicability of this framework in practice as an aid to managers in the development of context sensitive implementation approaches via a case study on the changes undertaken at Glaxo Wellcome UK since the early 1990s. This is an interesting case of a successful organisation that managed to change in a pro-active manner rather than in a crisis driven re-active manner. The paper concludes with the lessons for practitioners on the impact of certain contextual features and design choices during change as illustrated by the Glaxo Wellcome case, and a discussion on the use of the kaleidoscope in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Long Range Planning is the property of Elsevier Science Publishing Company, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
A successful reform of public enterprises would improve productivity in key sectors of the Greek economy, and thus provide essential inputs at lower cost to the economy as a whole. Reforms would need to address the factors that are responsible for the poor performance of Greek public enterprises. First, labour costs are high and productivity low in international comparisons. Second, there are wide technology gaps between Greece and other OECD countries. Third, Greece’s public enterprises fulfil heavy public service commitments without matching compensation. As a result, prices are often out of line with prices elsewhere. In recognition of the large drag on the economy, as well as the burden on the budget, the Government has embarked on a programme to revitalise inefficient public enterprises. The objective of this paper is to analyse the main issues concerning the public enterprise sector and assess the current policy framework, as well as planned changes to it. First, the key ...
Des réformes bien conçues des entreprises publiques amélioreraient la productivité dans les secteurs clés et assureraient ainsi la fourniture d’intrants essentiels à faible coût à l’ensemble de l’économie grecque. Ces réformes devraient s’attaquer aux facteurs qui sont à l’origine des piètres performances des entreprises publiques grecques. Premièrement, le niveau des coûts de main-d’oeuvre est élevé et la productivité faible. Deuxièmement, il y a des retards dans la modernisation des équipements. Troisièmement, les entreprises publiques assument de larges obligations de service public sans contrepartie financière. En conséquence, les prix sont souvent éloignés de ceux d’autres pays. Reconnaissant les effets inhibitifs sur la croissance et le poids sur le budget générés par un mauvais fonctionnement de ces secteurs clés, le gouvernement a engagé un programme de revitalisation des entreprises inefficientes. Ce document analyse les pr
The Politics of Economic Reform, The Social Market Foundation The Political Economy of Policy Reforms
- R Skidelsky
R. Skidelsky, The Politics of Economic Reform, The Social Market Foundation, London (1998); in J. Williamson (ed.), The Political Economy of Policy Reforms, Institute of International Economics, Washington, DC (1994).
The Meaning of the Market Process
- I M Kirzner
I. M. Kirzner, The Meaning of the Market Process, Routledge, London (1992).
Behind the Factory Walls
- P R Lawrence
- C Vlachoutsicos
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Unpacking institutional arguments The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis
- W R Scott
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The Politics of Ethics
- R P Nielsen
R. P. Nielsen, The Politics of Ethics, Oxford University Press, New York (1996).
The Unshackled Organization
- J Goldstein
J. Goldstein, The Unshackled Organization, Productivity Press, Portland, Oregon (1994);
The Rise and Fall of Marks & Spencer
- J Bevan
J. Bevan, The Rise and Fall of Marks & Spencer, Profile Books, London (2001).