diagnosing the internal need for organisational change

Diagnosing the Internal Need for

Organisational Change

Consultancy Report

James Daw

Student No. 15841285

HR386: Managing Organisations

Submitted to University of Brighton

Business School on 4th May 2016

James Daw 15841285 HR386: Managing Organisations

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Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 2

Review of Relevant Literature ..................................................................................................... 2

Change Management ................................................................................................................... 2

Organisational Diagnosis through Scanning ............................................................................... 3

Stakeholder Management through Communication .................................................................... 3

Human Resource Management and Change Agents ................................................................... 4

Recommendations ......................................................................................................................... 5

First Recommendation ................................................................................................................ 5

Second Recommendation ............................................................................................................ 5

Third Recommendation ............................................................................................................... 5

Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 6

Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 7


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Introduction

This consultancy report will offer information and advice in the field of change management.

The report will investigate how an organisation can recognise and assess the need for internal

change. The report will address the literature surrounding change management, organisational

diagnosis, stakeholder management, and the relationship between Human Resources (HR) and

change agents. It will also consider the literature of change agents given the consultancy nature

of this report. Furthermore, the report will use the existing literature to reveal parameters in the

provision of recommendations to the chosen organisation. The chosen organisation is a

horticultural retailer in the UK, with 153 centres geographically spread across England and

Wales, which is undergoing a period of organisational change. The nature of the organisations

operating structure allows the author of this report to use a single centre, based in the south-east,

as the organisational setting on which it will devise the recommendations.

Review of Relevant Literature

Change Management

It can be advocated that change in an organisation is the transition of one organisational state to

another (Hayes, 2010; Hughes, 2010). Hayes (2010) suggests that the rate of change in an

organisation is continuous but not a constant, with varying degrees of change. Jansson (2008)

suggests there is difficulty in defining the management of change, because the term is an

umbrella notion, encompassing a wide range of business aspects. However, seminal theories

surrounding the nature of change, such as Lewin’s Unfreeze-Change-Refreeze model, indicate a

definition, that an organisation operates in states and achieves perfect alignment (Cummings et

al., 2016). Supporting Jansson (2008), Hughes (2011) proposes, the nature of organisational

change is rooted in ambiguity, with unanticipated outcomes, uncertain environments, and

differing rationales on the measurement of success. The past couple of decades have seen a

growth in social constructivist perspectives on organizational change (Marshak & Grant, 2008;

Woodman, 2008). This perspective highlights the intangible nature of change, and the difficulty

in quantifiably measuring its success rate. Determining this, recommendations will be made

following the nature of change management as continuous, but not constant. Additionally, the

change will be treated as a process of phases and states in attempting to achieve perfect

alignment with its environment.


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Organisational Diagnosis through Scanning

Hassin (2014) suggests the key to establishing effective transformative change in organisations

lies in the early phases of diagnosis. Hassin (2014) defines organisation diagnosis as a process

that improves an organisation’s capacity to assess and change inefficient patterns of

organisational behaviour, to provide the foundations for greater operational effectiveness.

Werner (2014) reveals the human aspect of organisation diagnosis, suggesting that diagnosing

the environment is an assessment process, which should provide focus on determining the

readiness for change in a group of employees. Despite this report focusing on the internal

diagnosis of the need for change, qualities from environmental scanning as an assessment can

still be adopted (Mintzberg et al., 2009). Davies & Brady (2016) propose the relationship

between the capacity for external scanning, and the capacity for internal scanning, also known as

the ambidexterity between dynamic and project capabilities. This is further reinforced by

Volberda & Lewin (2003) who advocate that an organisation’s survival, involves managing

internal rates of change, to adapt and align with the external changes in the environment. Ben-

Menahem et al. (2013) highlight the inter-dependency between external and internal rates of

change, suggesting organisations will become stagnant or disappear if these rates of change do

not align. While Hassin (2014) provides a general overarching definition of organisational

diagnosis, it is important to realise the interdependency between diagnosing the external

environment, and to realise the need for internal change. Therefore, this report will consider

internal scanning as a form of diagnosis for internal change, through comparing the external

environment to the internal structure of the organisation.

Stakeholder Management through Communication

As discussed earlier, change management is the managing of transitions between states of the

organisation. According to Hughes (2011) the nature of organisational change is rooted in

ambiguity, where unforeseen outcomes, non-predictable environments, and contradictory

judgements on the measurement of success, contest the collective belief of a 70% failure rate

(Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008; Parker et al., 2012). Helin et al. (2013) suggest organisations can be

treated as political arenas in the management of their stakeholders. This is reinforced by Hayes

(2010) with the notion that stakeholders are a key aspect of managing change. Helin et al. (2013)

further advocate the use of communication through managing change with stakeholders, and

suggest the filtration of communication to stakeholders is used to instigate change. This concept

of filtrated communicative interactions is further emphasised by McCellan (2011) who proposes

the perspective that the world is perceived in the use of language and that stakeholder’s language

can be used to describe it. Additionally, this language influences and develops the perspective of

how something is perceived (McCellan, 2011). Therefore, using Helin et al. (2013),

representation of organisations as political arenas, and the communicative nature of politics, it

can be asserted that a strong proponent of managing change is through communication. Arnold

(2010) proposes that further recognition of the need for change, can be achieved through the

development of continuous communication channels with stakeholders. These communication


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channels can provide the advantage of expanding the scanning activities discussed previously,

through the development of the knowledge base and opening of perspectives (Arnold, 2010).

Following this, the report will make recommendations for diagnosing the internal need for

change through the use of communication channels, and treating the organisation as a political

arena. This political arena is affected by the filtration of communication in managing

stakeholders.

Human Resource Management (HRM) and Change Agents

Literature advocates the positioning of middle to low-level managers as change agents within an

organisation (Jones, 2006; Antoncic & Hisrich, 2001). The complex nature of change and the

personal transitions involved in change have meant managers, with HR experience, perform an

ever increasing role in identifying the need for change (CIPD, 2015). Barratt-Pugh et al. (2013)

argue a strategic approach from HR would involve the communication, engagement, and

activation of employees within the change process, including diagnosis. Barratt-Pugh et al. (2013)

proposes that members of an organisation can be classified under two groups, change agents and

change recipients. However, Barratt-Pugh et al. (2013) generalise that managers are to be

considered as change agents, and employees as change recipients. However, when considering

the nature of communication in managing stakeholders, and treating employees as stakeholders,

the instigation of change through communication can propose the reverse positioning of

organisational members (Ford & Ford, 2009). This reverse positioning of employees as change

agents and managers and change recipients provides a platform for feedback to be used as a

means of diagnosis for the organisations top management teams (Ford & Ford, 2009; Simoes &

Esposito, 2014). Change agents and change recipients are argued to engage in scanning activities

in the workplace (Barratt-Pugh et al., 2013). The scanning involves the seeking of information,

where change agents seek to determine how to facilitate the change process, and change

recipients determine how they are affected by the change (Charles & Dawson, 2011).

Barratt-Pugh et al. (2013) suggest HR is involved with the behavioural aspects of change,

assessing and fulfilling the intrinsic needs of employees during change. This is supported by

Nesterkin (2013) who proposes organisational change challenges an employee’s ability to act

autonomously consistently and within the parameters of their deeply held beliefs. This is further

reinforced by Caldwell (2003) who advocates that resistance arising from this challenge is often

instigated by the behaviour of change agents. Barratt-Pugh et al. (2013) suggest resistance to

change can be considered a positive contribution to the change process. This positive

contribution, when considering resistance as a form of communicative feedback, highlights the

importance of continuing diagnosis through organisational change. Barratt-Pugh et al. (2013)

highlight of the importance of the HRM role in managing change, and the role of HR as change

agents will help form the recommendations for the chosen organisation. This in addition to the

growing trend of HR responsibilities in middle to low-level managers, further supports the

provision of these managers as change agents, and achieving internal diagnosis of the need for

change (CIPD, 2015).


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Recommendations

In this section, the report will suggest recommendations that the chosen organisation can adopt to

diagnose whether an internal change is needed.

First Recommendation

As stated in change management literature, the nature of change is continuous and not constant.

Therefore, the first recommendation is the adoption of continuous internal scanning highlighted

in literature to achieve organisational diagnosis. As mentioned in literature, this internal scanning

will look to compare the internal structure of the organisation to the external environment

(Jansson, 2008; Volberda & Lewin, 2003). Through this comparison, the vision of the

organisation can be developed in deciding what qualities of the organisation it needs to fit

(Mintzberg et al. 2009). As mentioned in the introduction, the nature and geographical spread of

the organisation allows this vision to be developed by the centre managers at a centre level. The

vision should encompass the macro-environment of horticultural retailing on a national scale, as

well as the micro-environment of local influences, and the internal capabilities of the

organisation locally, also known as organisational ambidexterity (Davies & Brady, 2016).

Second Recommendation

The second recommendation is the use of communication as a form of internal scanning. This

report has discussed the use of communication in the management of stakeholders (Helin, et al.,

2013; McCellan, 2011). Therefore, the second recommendation of the report involves the

understanding of communicative language from stakeholders, and using that to understand the

perspective from which they see the world. This understanding of different perspectives can

identify problems within operations and processes, or relations between employees, which might

not have been highlighted by a single perspective (Hassin, 2014). The use of communication

within organisations has been discussed as essential to the political nature of organisations (Helin

et al., 2013) Therefore, the use of communication channels, and the filtration of information,

should be emphasised within the centre’s teams to assess any needs for change (Arnold, 2010).

Third Recommendation

The third recommendation is the role of the centre’s management team as change agents. As

shown in the introduction, the report draws on literature to attain synergy with the first and

second recommendations. This is where the use of the management team’s HR responsibilities

can allow the positioning of change agents to effectively scan for information. This

recommendation also highlights the role of HR with the personal nature of change, and the role

of change agents in managing the diagnosis through communicative feedback (Barratt-Pugh et

al., 2013). The change agents scanning activities of the communication between stakeholders in


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the organisation can help achieve the diagnosis of the need for change through different

perspectives.

Conclusion

As set out in the introduction, this report has examined and discussed the literature concerned

with diagnosing the internal need for change. This has been achieved by using peer-reviewed

literature including; Jansson (2008), Hassin (2014), Helin et al. (2013), and Barratt-Pugh et al.

(2013). This peer reviewed literature has been critically analysed, using other peer reviewed

sources, to devise the parameters under which recommendations could be made. The first

recommendation is the continuous internal scanning of capabilities, and comparing them to the

centre’s environment. The centre management team would then need to implement changes to

achieve alignment with the organisation through the use of a visionary strategy. The second

recommendation involved the understanding of communicative language from stakeholders,

especially employees, in achieving multiple perspectives on the organisation. The third

recommendation highlighted the management team’s role as change agents in achieving the

scanning opportunities diagnosing the need for change through different perspectives.


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