Side effects of corporate cultural transformations
Article Abstract:
As organizational leaders undertake cultural transformations to make themselves more competitive, they engender complex responses by those who lead and experience them. Some are intended, others not, and the latter, the unanticipated side effects of cultural agendas, can undermine - even defeat - the intended change process. Drawing on their observations of a diverse array of companies and managers that have undergone cultural transformations, the authors identify four leading side effects: (a) ambivalent authority, manifest in such directives as "ordering" employees to become "empowered"; (b) polarized images, evident in rhetoric that casts all that is new as progressive and all that is old as regressive; (c) disappointment and blame, seen in finger-pointing up and down the management hierarchy for the inevitable setbacks that accompany change; and (d) behavioral inversion, displayed in empowerment slogans that mask a reassertion of hierarchy. Cultural transformations generate fewer unwanted side effects when top managers openly address them during the transformation process. (Reprinted by permission of publisher.)
Publication Name: Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
Subject: Social sciences
ISSN: 0021-8863
Year: 1997
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Workplace Australia: lessons for the planning and design of multisearches
Article Abstract:
The search conference as a method of participative planning has been undergoing development for over 30 years. Its success depends on careful planning, design, and management. For groups larger than about 35, the multisearch has been invented. The Workplace Australia conference was the largest multisearch ever tried. This article critically examines the planning and design of Workplace Australia and isolates two interrelated weaknesses. The first was lack of conscious awareness of the organizational design principles and their effects. The second was inadequate appreciation of the need for search conference managers with conceptual knowledge and experience. Both contributed to planning failures, poor conference coordination, and loss of learning opportunities. There were, however, many successful features of this multisearch and much to be learned from its mistakes. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)
Publication Name: Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
Subject: Social sciences
ISSN: 0021-8863
Year: 1992
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Designing the social architecture of participation in large groups to effect organizational change
Article Abstract:
Health care organizations are facing dramatic changes. Given their complexity and the value of autonomy held by many of the key professional groups, much of the adaptation to these changes will require working in large groups with multiple levels and different units present. Yet it is known that lending large groups is difficult. They are either overstructured, thereby reducing the learning component, or they are understructured, thereby allowing participants' anxieties to lead to dysfunctional splitting, fight/flight, or dependency. This article addresses the challenges of structuring large groups, what the authors term the social architecture for participation. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)
Publication Name: Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
Subject: Social sciences
ISSN: 0021-8863
Year: 1992
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