ABSTRACT
In Chapter 3 we briefly introduced the organizational process school of strategy, associated with such major authors as Pettigrew (1979; 1985; 1992: Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991), Hinings and Greenwood (1988), Greenwood and Hinings (1993), Van De Ven et al. (1999) and Garud and Van de Ven (2006), which became prominent in the 1980s and 1990s. Miller and Freisen’s (1984) ‘quantum view’ of organizational change has similarities with this approach, positing the idea of periodic radical reconfiguration or paradigm shifts rather than continuous or incremental change. One of the present authors has written in this tradition (see Pettigrew, Ferlie and McKee, 1992; McNulty and Ferlie, 2002; Ferlie et al., 2013) so this chapter is a good opportunity to take a retrospective review and look forward to a prospective research agenda. One explanation for the rise of the process school is that it addressed and commented
on the major economic and public policy phenomena of the 1980s and 1990s, leading to major shocks and discontinuous change in the private and public sectors alike in many countries, and certainly in the UK. Old established British firms such as ICI were coming under challenge from globalization and marketization (Pettigrew, 1985) with a loss of their traditional and protected markets. British firms were increasingly under pressure to become more internationally competitive in a variety of sectors (Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991), presenting an opportunity for analysis of the micro dynamics of how they sought to achieve this state. Top down shocks were also apparent in the UK public sector, given a sustained period of radical right or Thatcherite governments (1979-97). There were major policy shifts within the public services to managerialization (Pettigrew et al., 1992), performance management and then the introduction of quasi markets and corporate governance shifts to strengthen the role of the board (Ferlie et al., 1996). The central focus of this school is the behaviourally and historically informed explanation
of forms of – and also resistance to – strategic change across whole organizations and seen over time. The focus moves beyond the previous concentration on continuing but incremental change (Quinn, 1980) or localized change or pilots within particular settings to examine the dynamics of large-scale and systemic change. Change and metamorphosis (the radical changing of shape) is a major theme across many academic disciplines: taking biology, a phenomenon to be explained is how a caterpillar mutates into a butterfly. Garud and Van de Ven (2006, p. 207) provide a definition of the basic term of organizational change by suggesting that: ‘most organization scholars would agree that change is a difference in form, quality or state over time in an entity.’ Authors in the school draw on a range of interesting wider social science theories and ideas (Garud and Van de Ven,
2006) which enable them to construct a typology of different change categories (e.g. planned vs. unplanned; incremental vs. revolutionary) which gets beyond a simple linear model of planned and perfectly implemented change. This intellectual curiosity and roots in wider social science is an attractive feature of this school which helps reconceptualize strategy processes in imaginative ways. Van de Ven and colleagues (1999) represent an important set of American process
researchers who examined patterns in the diffusion of innovations, including some in health care. Here we will review their theoretical work on generating a typology of different perspectives. Garud and Van de Ven (2006) examine different theories of organizational change from a process perspective. They note the increasing pace and complexity of current organizational change processes, seeing them not as a discrete shift but rather (p. 206) ‘as nested sequences of events that unfold over time in the development of individuals, organizations and industries’. How should such sequences be analyzed? To give one example of such broader theoretical thinking, Garud and van de Ven (2006)
discuss a family of ‘dialectical’ theories of organization change (taking basic ideas from the discipline of philosophy) which assumes (p. 209): ‘the organization exists in a pluralistic world of colliding events, forces, or contradictory values that compete with each other for domination and control.’ There is here a contest between different power blocks, interpretations and rationales, the outcome of which may be unpredictable. Dialectical process theories explain stability and change with reference to the changing balance of power between opposing entities. The status quo or thesis (A) may be challenged by an antithesis (Not A) and it is possible that the resolution of the conflict produces a new synthesis, which incorporates both A and Not A yet is beyond both. The synthesis becomes the new status quo/thesis and then the cycle of dialectical change may start again. The creation of a desired synthesis may be an optimal win/win situation but is not assured as either the status quo or the antithesis may win (so these are possibilistic as opposed to necessitated dialectical processes). Applications of dialectical thinking to organizational analysis (Garud and Van De Ven,
2006, p. 214) place limits around the search for consensus and internal cohesion often held up as a preferred organizational goal, at least where environmental conditions are fast moving, uncertain or ambiguous. Under these more complex conditions, disagreement may provide a helpful resource for innovation, radical change or renewal:
dialectical change processes are becoming increasingly relevant as organizations become complex and pluralistic. Dialectical processes are generated as actors with different bases of power and from different cultures interact with one another to influence organizational directions and compete with one another for scarce organizational resources. In a multi cultural context, a change effort may produce counter reactions that affect the balance of power and associated social structures.
