Change literature identifies various change targets in organizational settings, like strategy, people, relationships, processes, and technology (Seo, Putnam, & Bartunek, 2004). Perceiving an organization as a dynamically complex social system can help focus limited change resources on individual, group, and culture. These dimensions of an organizing system are not separate parts but also are dynamically interconnected dimensions that build on the previous level: individuals form the group; individuals and groups form the culture. However, this influence not only radiates from individual to group to culture but dynamically interacts among all social dimensions within an organization’s boundaries, affecting the organization’s ability to adapt to the environment outside its boundaries.

Starting with these assumptions, this section will explore the following:

• Emerging understanding of targets for social change in organizational settings;
• Common intervention approaches for each social dimension and;
• The viability and risks of isolating dynamically interrelated parts of an organizing system for intervention.\

The individual as a target of change

Because organizational change cannot occur without individual change, organizational change research typically focuses on individuals' role in organizational change (Jex, 2002). Woodman and Dewett (2004, p. 33) argue that considering the inverse of the individual à change à organization perspective is an ignored but vital part of understanding how to drive organizational change. Despite stability in personality and differences across time, people change in predictable ways throughout their lives. Work experiences are among the factors that shape individual characteristics and outcomes. The complex interaction between the individual and the environment implies that the individual not only changes the environment but also that the environment also changes the individual. This interactionist perspective focuses on reciprocal influences that influence change and “behavioral potentialities” (p. 33), meaning the developmental journeys of individuals and organizations.

Woodman and Dewett (2004) proposed a change model that shows organizational influences on individual change (see Figure 1 in the appendix). Individual change means the changes in employee behaviors and characteristics related to organizational functioning and effectiveness. Behavior includes on-the-job behavior. Characteristics include the individual’s job-related knowledge, attitudes, and motivation. Three interrelated dimensions of change modify how specific organizational phenomena influence individual change: changeability, depth, and time. Changeability means the degree to which a characteristic may change. Depth means the degree to which a new behavior differs from the original behavior. Time means how long it takes the change to occur. Change in individual behavior influences organizational outcomes like performance, creativity, intentions to leave, commitment, and resistance to change.

The model identifies four important influences for individual behavior and characteristics: socialization, training, managerial behavior, and organizational change programs. The congruency among these sources of change influences how individuals respond to them. Congruency can strengthen antecedent influence on individual behavior, while incongruent forces can create a conflict that can diminish change potential or cause unintended change, like dissatisfaction and stress.

The organizational influences on the individual change model (Woodman & Dewett, 2004) offer important implications for change management practice, especially in relation to understanding systemic change, commitment to change, and ethics of change.

Regarding systemic change, the model emphasizes the dynamic interaction between individuals and organizations, supporting research that effective and lasting change must be systemic and congruent with subsystems [See section titled “Assumptions of whole system intervention”].

Regarding resistance, the dimensions of individual change—changeability, depth, and time—provide change managers with additional vocabulary for understanding and dealing with resistance. According to Woodman and Dewett’s model, the least changeable characteristics will likely cause the strongest resistance and take the longest time to change. Understanding organizational influence on individual change can provide a richer understanding for dealing with resistance and facilitate positive change throughout the system. Commitment reflects the strength of individual attachment to the organization, which influences the individual’s willingness to pursue organizational goals.

Commitment is an important change force; regardless of the change strategy, change efforts will likely fail if the employees lack a  commitment to the organization and the change process. Woodman and Dewett’s (2004)  model can enhance understanding of employee commitment, which can guide change decisions and processes. Regarding ethical issues, the model can help employees understand organizational influences on their behavior so they can make informed decisions about their participation in change interventions. The model can also help change agents to consider the psychological health, job satisfaction, stress, and other detrimental influences change efforts can have on employees.

Individual interventions

Leaders generally conduct individual-level interventions as training programs to influence performance (Jex, 2002). Examples of individual-level interventions include job redesign (Hackman, 1980), teaching intervention (Huy, 2001), and T-Groups (Bradford, Liebowitz, & Benne, 1964).

Job redesign.

Job redesign is an intervention that alters jobs to improve the productivity and quality of work for individual employees (Hackman, 1980; Latack & Foster, 1985). The job redesign process typically involves changing job specifications to give an employee additional autonomy in planning, implementing, and monitoring work, making decisions, and dealing directly with clients.

Job redesign can also involve combining simple jobs into one job to enhance efficiency and productivity while creating a more meaningful position. A job design can also create a more enriching position to enhance employee motivation and satisfaction. Hackman (1980) argues that correctly implemented job redesign can increase employee satisfaction and motivation, can improve the quality of product and service, and sometimes increases the quantity of work (p. 449). However, focusing on individual positions may treat symptoms while ignoring mezzo and macro-level problems. Jex (2002) asserts that job redesign can also have unpredictable and adverse consequences throughout the organization. This could result from equity issues that can emerge when other employees perceive special treatment (Adams, 1963), and from the organization treating symptoms without addressing larger problems.

T-Group.

T-Group training is an individual intervention conducted in a group context with the goals to increase interpersonal skills, to enhance awareness of how individual behavior affects others, and to increase understanding of group dynamics (Bradford, Liebowitz, & Benne, 1964). T-Group training aligns with Lewin’s (1951; 1947) force-field theory [described in Cultural Interventions / Force Field Analysis] by creating a social environment designed to unfreeze an individual’s habitual behavior, move behaviors by encouraging the individual to experiment with alternative behaviors, and then refreeze new behaviors through reinforcement and encouragement. The T-Group lost favor as an organizational change intervention because it lacked empirical support, proved mostly ineffective in real-world applications, and introduced ethical questions about forcing employees to participate (Jex, 2002).

This does not mean that the T-Group is dead; it has been repackaged and integrated into other intervention techniques. For example, NTL Research (NTL Institute, 2008), a research organization that was founded by Kurt Lewin and that pioneered the intervention method, markets T-Group-based services and workshops in appreciative inquiry, coaching, leadership development, and diversity training. Intervention consultants like Learning for Living (2010) package similar services to American secondary education systems in the form of leadership training and compulsory diversity training programs for children.

Teaching intervention and change in beliefs.

The teaching intervention guides people to collaborate in changing their own beliefs and behaviors. Huy (2001) offers the psychic prison as a metaphor for the teaching intervention, meaning that it assumes that members mean well but are cognitively deficient.

The analytical framework for the teaching intervention is cognitive-focused OD action research that puts outside change agents in the role of uncovering and changing beliefs. The change agent fills the role of a missionary who imparts truth that liberates change targets to learn, innovate, and adapt. The goal is to create a community of responsible and mindful people collaborating to learn and adapt in an uncertain environment. The intervention theory proposes that exposing assumptions serves as a prelude to changing behaviors.

The change agent is an outside consultant and action researcher who acts as a teacher and a psychologist to uncover assumptions and teach targets correct practices using empirical rational change tactics. The teaching intervention approach is best for changing beliefs and is used to develop organizational capabilities in the moderately long term. A limitation of the teaching intervention is that it does not always lead to long-term behavioral change; changing individual cognition rarely extrapolates to organizational levels.

The group as a target of change

Classic discussions of group development revolve around identifying predictable stages of group development and operation. Despite a label of group development theories, staged theories tend to focus on group task performance, not long-term group development (McGrath & Tschan, 2004). Tuckman (1965)  proposed that groups advance through fixed phases of forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Theorists like Hill and Gruner (1973 [in McGrath & Tschan, 2004])  and Poole and Baldwin (1996) argue against fixed stages and propose a cyclical, multistage model that suggests groups go through different phases but may recycle through similar phases several times in an unpredictable sequence depending on contingency factors.

Bion offered a work and emotionality theory that described phases of group work as emotional preoccupations: dependency, fight-flight, and pairing. Rather than seeing group development as a sequential process, Wheelan (1993 [in McGrath & Tschan]) proposes that group development is a process of achieving maturity through the following stages: dependency, counter-dependency, conflict, work, and termination. Worchel (Worchel, 1996 [in McGrath & Tschan, 2004]) offered a developmental-stage theory that predicts intra-group behavior and intergroup perceptions that considers the value the group serves in meeting member needs and interests. Through this model, groups repeatedly recycle through six stages: discontent, wake up, identity and dependence, productivity, individual needs, and decay.

Levine and Moreland (Levine & Moreland, 1991 [in McGrath & Tschan, 2004]) considered the socialization process as an aspect of development that concentrates on the relationship between the group and the individual. Their model proposes that groups and their members evaluate how the social environment fulfills their needs. Members go through different transitions that alter the relationship between member and group through a two-way evaluation process. Typical transitions include group entry, acceptance, and exit. Socialization steps can have a logical sequence but can recycle between full and marginal member status.

A core assumption of group development theories is that groups change over time. Most assume that groups achieve greater maturity or need to resolve problems at different phases. Whether a group develops in stages, cycles, recycles, or transitions, each phase identified by these development models offers opportunities for analysis and intervention within the perspective of the practitioner. The object of intervention for these group-level interventions is generally to facilitate the group toward performing in the optimal phase of group development.

Complex action systems theory

McGrath and Tschan (2004) argue that accepting classical assumptions that groups achieve greater maturity as they change through developmental phases is a simplistic notion that requires dependency on too many factors to generalize to all types of groups. Integrating action theory and complex systems theory, McGrath and Tschan propose a theory of groups as complex action systems (CAST) for analyzing the operational, developmental, and adaptive processes that continually and interdependently operate in groups [See Figure 2].

CAST (McGrath & Tschan, 2004) shows that group action occurs at three levels: Purpose, Planning, and Performance. The purpose is a knowledge- and intention-based macro level that consists of selecting the group’s projects, and allocating resources. Resources include time, members, and tools available for the project. Planning is the lore- and logic-based Meso-level at which the group organizes work processes. This involves articulating a network of relations among members, tasks, and technology.

Performance is the action- thought- and word-based micro-level at which members carry out acts that relate hierarchically to project goals. Recurrent cycles of orient à enact à monitor à modify occur at this level, allowing the group to modify actions to remain on target. If the modification does not realign the action toward goals, the modification process is elevated to the planning level to change the structure of the process by coordinating the network of relations. If modification at the planning level is insufficient for realigning the process, the modification process is elevated to the purpose level, where the group reconsiders the selection and allocation of tasks, time, tools, and members. Thus, orient à enact à monitor à modify cycles at the action level can expand to higher levels of the hierarchical array. These processes occur fluidly, at times without blatant attention by group members. Complicating the process is that many groups have multiple concurrent projects, causing multiple interwoven sets of action cycles.

In CAST, McGrath and Tschan (2004) offer a different approach by proposing that a group’s development history can be understood through a matrix that considers the modes of a group’s life course against causal dynamics. The modes of a group’s life course are formation, operations, and metamorphosis:

• Formation means that the group forms.
• Operation means what groups do.
• Metamorphosis means that the group dissolves or transforms into a different system.

The levels of causal dynamics that continually and simultaneously influence the group’s energy are local, global, and contextual. Local dynamics are the complex interdependencies among members, tasks, tools, and features of the environment as they play out over time. Global dynamics are the system-level processes that emerge from and shape or constrain local dynamics. Contextual dynamics are the complex interplay between events in the group’s embedding contexts and the system’s responses to events. The causal dynamics map to the operational, developmental, and adaptive processes discussed earlier.

Groups form through a mix of forces, including external versus internal forces, and planned versus emergent forces. These forces combine to create four prototypical kinds of groups: concocted, founded, self-organized, and circumstantial. Group formation introduces the foundation member-task-tool pattern, which becomes more articulate in operations mode, then becomes specified as a member-task-tool-time process structure. The group modifies the structure as it develops.

From the perspective of CAST, the group’s action process engulfs the group structures of member, task, tool, labor, role, and job subnetworks that emerge from the group action. This means that a structure is a complex set of relations that emerge from group action, then guide and constrain subsequent action; group development depends on the variations among project, member, and technology. Except for the abstract modes of formation, operations, and metamorphosis, a fixed set of developmental stages does not exist (McGrath & Tschan, 2004).

Group interventions

As organizations adopt team-based structures, group interventions are becoming increasingly popular. Huy (2001) describes interventions that enhance the quality of social relationships among members to enhance performance. Specific group-level interventions for changing relationships in and performance of groups include the T-Group intervention, discussed earlier, and team building. I will also describe the Team Stages Exercise, an intervention approach I designed for developing learning teams in adult higher education, which may also be a useful tool for developing workgroups.

Team-building.

Team-building approaches vary by organization, but Liebowitz and DeMeuse (1982) summarized the essence of team-building interventions as a process by which groups of people identify, diagnose, and solve their own problems. Liebowitz and DeMeuse define a team-building process that starts with scouting to determine if a team-building intervention is necessary, then entering into a relationship between the change agent and the team. The change agent collects data by interviewing, surveying, observing the team, and reviewing archive records to gain an understanding of how the group works together. The change agent summarizes and communicates the data to the team. This creates an unfreezing experience that encourages team members to examine closely how they function while laying the foundation for the group to analyze the data to identify performance barriers and to form solutions.

The team develops an action plan to address the problems. The plan becomes a tangible product of the group’s collaboration, serving to enhance individual commitment to the group process. The team then implements the plan. Implementation is challenging because the group must replace old patterns with new behaviors and thoughts. Finally, the team evaluates the process by assessing progress toward the action plan. Failure to follow up to reinforce or adjust the plan can allow the group to revert to old patterns.

Team Stages Exercise.

The Team Stages Exercise (Duncan, 2006) is a team intervention and development tool that I developed for helping established learning teams assess individual and group perceptions about team development to identify strategies for enhancing and maintaining group performance in a collaborative learning environment. Each individual member in the classroom receives a “Team Stages Exercise” worksheet that includes objectives, instructions, a team stages survey with tally sheets, questions about the team development process and teaching materials about Tuckman’s stages of group developments and intervention approaches for each stage.

The survey is a list of 27 statements that describe the behavior that teams exhibit at each group development stage defined by Tuckman (1965): forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Each individual rates the behavior of his or her team by indicating the degree to which each statement accurately reflects the current state of the team. Each member calculates his or her results on the Individual Tally Sheet, which shows his or her perceptions of the dominant stage at which the group exists.

Once the individuals have calculated their results, they join with their team members to combine scores using the Team Tally Sheet. The team reviews their individual and group scores against the teaching materials to understand what the results mean and to develop strategies for enhancing or maintaining performance levels. The facilitator has each team prepare a class presentation during which they present their discoveries to the class, discuss their strategies for enhancing and maintaining team performance, and address one of the questions provided in the worksheet. This step is vital for reinforcing learning and commitment by immediately applying the lessons learned and strategies developed during the exercise. The facilitator combines the team evaluation scores and strategies into a class score and strategy and then communicates the entire results to the class. The facilitator emphasizes the importance of collaborating to create a high-performance learning culture that engages individuals, groups, and systems in mutual development.

Although I originally designed this tool to teach Tuckman’s (1965) stages theory, Team Stages Exercise has evolved to be an effective team intervention tool in collaborative learning environments, while also providing important insights about group development as a dynamic versus staged process. Designing the survey responses to reflect degrees rather than dichotomy helps to demonstrate how groups develop in dynamic phases of relative prepotency rather than in fixed stages. This means that forces of each phase exist simultaneously, but that one phase may emerge as dominant over the emergent potential of the other phases. For example, the forces of forming and storming may lie dormant in an established team with a dominant performing domain; however, underlying storming forces can quickly emerge as dominant if the team confronts challenges that lead to dysfunctional conflict. In such a case, the learning materials recommend that the team re-engage in forming exercises to develop strategies for tapping the conflict as a development force to enhance productivity.

Another important aspect of the Team Stages Exercise is that it engages each individual in developing the team, while it commits the team to develop each individual member. Further, the exercise provides individuals and teams with a clearer understanding of how each individual and team contributes to the development of the entire classroom. Finally, the exercise illuminates how classroom-level development contributes to the development of groups and individuals. Follow-up interviews with participants indicate that the exercise is an effective tool for strengthening individual commitment to developing the team and team commitment to developing the individual while enhancing understanding of how classroom-level interactions contribute to the development of teams and individuals.

A limitation of the Team Stages Exercise is that it requires skillful facilitation. Students who were so satisfied with the results of their classroom-level intervention that they attempted to implement the Team Stages Exercise in their own professional environment generally reported that they lacked the expertise to “pull it off”. Similarly, providing the intervention tool for other faculty has not proved fruitful, typically because it is “too complex”. This does not mean that the tool is without value; rather, as with other intervention techniques, Team Stages Exercise requires training.

Socializing intervention and change in social relationships.

Socializing interventions change the quality of relationships among members to change long-term behaviors that improve task performance. Huy (2001) offers the organism as a metaphor of the socializing intervention, with the organization as an organic open system. Social technical systems and social learning theory provide the analytical frameworks for the socializing intervention. The goal is to create a democratic community of perpetually learning and innovating workgroups that are able to adapt in uncertain environments.

Using an empirical normative, the change agents are self-motivated organizational members with a long-term perspective who work to forge relationships that alter values and behaviors. This is a slow process that empowers people to change themselves, starting with the internal change agents changing their own behaviors, then convincing others to cooperate by changing their behavior. The socializing intervention approach is best for changing the relationships in the organization to improve organizational capabilities for the long term. Huy points out that a key weakness of this approach is that socializing can create anarchy as different groups fight for limited resources with no apparent leadership. In addition, informal groups that indulge in social learning can lose competence, creativity, and energy.

The culture as a target of change

Organizational culture is increasingly gaining attention as a target of organizational change. Writers of organizational literature traditionally focused mostly on culture as a stable force that resists change, moving only through management intervention. In a review of organizational change literature, Hatch (2004) concluded that most of the organizational change literature emphasizes the benefits of changing organizational culture to enhance performance by pitting stability against managerial demands for adaptability. However, classic writings from sociology and anthropology offer a different perspective that organizational change practitioners are starting to notice.

Rather than being just a force of resistance, sociologists and anthropologists have documented interacting forces of stability and change in culture, noting the evolution and dynamics of culture. Early anthropologists of cultural dynamics understood the importance of considering change in relation to stability while noting that different cultures move at different rates. Hatch (2004) proposes that the sociological and anthropological perspectives suggest two important keys for unlocking organizational dynamics. First, just as change is a constant force in humanity, change is also constant in organizational cultures. Second, just as different parts of human culture change at different rates, parts of organizational culture change while other parts remain stable. Stability and change simultaneously exist in organizational culture.

Another important lesson from anthropology is that change comes from within and from outside the culture. Observing the introduction of European culture into Africa, Malinouski (1948 [in Hatch, 2004]) argued that change among institutions is a reciprocal process, with each culture satisfying needs in different ways with different techniques using the same resources. This exchange process is important for organizational researchers because it explains how cultural change is not simply the consequence of adding to or mixing cultures, but a complex reaction that creates autonomous change leading to new cultural realities. Sevon (1966 [in Hatch, 2004]) uses “variation” to explain the process that creates conditions for stability and change to interact simultaneously in a culture. Variation is “repetition with a difference” (46). Culture stabilizes behavior that accommodates change.

Change from outside

Hatch (2004) observes that change from outside happens through diffusion, acculturation, and selective borrowing. Diffusion and acculturation describe the processes of cultural borrowing. Diffusion considers cultural transmission has occurred; acculturation considers cultural transmission as it is happening. Borrowing from other cultures is universal and usually occurs when a dominant group is influenced by the cultures they rule. Borrowing is a selective process; people borrow practices that seem worthwhile and discard those that seem impractical.

Herskovitzs (in Hatch, 2004) argued that cultural contact “is never a process of addition” (177); instead borrowing is a process that focuses on and reinterprets the rewarding aspects of a different culture, merging them with the existing culture to create something new. In short, cultures change through a negotiation process of conflict and compromise to build divergent meanings and behaviors.

This perspective provides insight into two important areas to consider as tools for facilitating change: focus and reinterpretation. Cultures may intensify focus on specific areas of change, which leaders can tap to facilitate additional change. Reinterpretation involves applying old meaning to new forms or giving new meaning to old forms. Re-contextualization is a similar concept that explains how cultures give new meaning to borrowed artifacts to minimize disruptions to the existing cultural pattern.

Change from inside

Enculturation explains how cultures remain stable and how cultures transfer symbols, practices, and meanings from one generation to the next (Hatch, 2004). In human development, enculturation involves conditioning to fundamentals and absorbing ethics, aesthetics, and group conventions. As humans reach maturity they have sufficient conditioning to behave within the limits of cultural boundaries and can make decisions about new forms of behavior presented by cultural change.

Herskovitz (1964 in Hatch) argued that enculturation leads to stability but can lead to a change in mature adults. Adults can learn, relearn, and unlearn culture by reconditioning responses to new stimuli and re-enculturating themselves. Late enculturation is a conscious process that creates an opportunity to change by examining alternatives for new ways of thinking and behaving. Organizational theorists call this socialization, meaning how new members of an organization make sense of the environment and learn its culture so they can adapt to its values, norms, and practices. Hatch says that this adaptation can be mutual. Just as individual peculiarities can be the source of cultural innovation, socialization can be a process by which individuals influence change while maintaining stability. Cultural innovation through socialization occurs partly because different people react differently to the same situation, and those different reactions can induce change (Barnett, 1953, in Hatch, 2004).

Cultural dynamics model

Hatch (2004) proposed a dynamic circular pattern in culture in which the individual and group mutually interact in existing cultural patterns while creating cultural patterns [See Figure 3]. Following Herskovits’s (1948, in Hatch 2004) circular notion about cultural processes supporting stability and change, Hatch reformulates Shein’s AssumptionsàValuesàArtifacts framework of organizational culture by redrawing the model from a symbolic-interpretive perspective and introducing dynamism into organizational culture theory.

Considering the relationship among cultural elements, Hatch’s (2004) cultural dynamics model proposes that culture consists of four interrelated and dynamic processes: manifestation, realization, symbolization, and interpretation. The reformulated model places assumptions, values, artifacts, and symbols in a wheeled framework, showing the relationships between the elements and the processes, as follows:

Manifestation processes. Manifestation is the process by which essence reveals itself, usually through the senses, cognition, or emotion. In the cultural dynamics model, assumptions appear in the perception, thought, and emotions of members.

Realization processes. Realization is the process by which something becomes real. In the cultural dynamics model, realization processes are proactive and reactive.

Symbolizing processes. A symbol is something that represents a conscious or unconscious association with a broader meaning. Logos, slogans, stories, actions, and metaphors serve as common symbols in an organization.

Interpretation processes. Interpretation is the process by which members apply meaning to an experience. The cultural dynamics framework puts symbolization experiences in context by giving members a reference for constructing meaning.

Integrating the model with the cultural focus concept provides a better understanding of management’s role in cultural dynamics by helping managers intensify efforts on readily changeable areas of focus. The processes in Hatch’s (2004) cultural dynamics model are constant, so changes should begin at the stage that best represents the desired depth of change. Placing the manager within the organizational culture suggests that the power of leadership lies with sensitivity to the symbolic meaning of being a leader. A leader's ability to influence a culture depends on his or her “knowledge of and relationship with the culture” (2004, p. 207).

Hatch’s (2004) cultural dynamics model suggests a different perspective on leadership in intervention processes. Regardless of what a leader does and how a leader intervenes, culture is a dynamic process in which stability and change are in constant motion. Contrary to traditional intervention approaches that put the leader at the top of the intervention process, this perspective recognizes that the leader is a participant, not the pinnacle, of the process. In addition, a dynamic model of cultural change suggests that stability and change cannot be predicted, they can only be interpreted and explained after the fact.

Cultural interventions

Force field analysis (1947; 1951) and Theory E / Theory O (Beer & Nohria, 2000) provide examples of common cultural intervention methods.

Force field analysis.

Lewin (1947; 1951) proposed force field analysis as a tool for distinguishing between changeable and unchangeable variables in the situation and then focusing efforts on the changeable. Force field analysis assumes that social behavior is the product of two opposing forces. One side strives to maintain the status quo, an equilibrium state maintained by individual resistance and group conformity. The other side pushes for change toward the desired state. Lewin proposed that driving change in individual and social behavior is a function of reducing the forces maintaining the status quo while strengthening the forces for change. This process has three basic steps: unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. Unfreezing involves shaking up the status quo by increasing the driving forces that direct behavior away from the status quo while decreasing the restraining forces that attempt to maintain the status quo. With the status quo disrupted, change agents can “move” behavior and processes toward the desired state. Finally, once the behavior is at the desired state, change agents “refreeze” the new behavior to maintain it over time.

Through the unfreeze-move-refreeze framework, episodic change becomes a foundation of a planned process that organizations and people use to recognize and close the gap between the way things are and the way things should be. For example, John P. Kotter (1996) expanded Lewin’s model to provide a practical eight-step plan that organizations use to transform and control people, processes, and markets, as follows: (a) To “unfreeze” an organization: establish a sense of urgency; create a guiding coalition; develop a shared vision and strategy, and; communicate the change vision. (b) To “move” an organization: empower broad-based action by eliminating obstacles, changing systems, and encouraging risk; generate short-term wins, and; consolidate gains, and produce more change. (c) To “refreeze” an organization: anchor new approaches in the culture; monitor progress, and; adjust the vision as required.

Theory E and Theory O.

Beer & Nohria (2000) expose duality in OD perspectives by proposing Theory E and Theory O, change theories that represent bipolar values, goals, and actions. With shareholder value as the key measurement of organizational success, Theory E is a “hard” approach to change that uses drastic economic restructuring and incentives to drive radical change in the tangible structures of the organization. Theory E is a quick way to drive a turnaround through a radical transformation at the expense of long-term damage to organizational culture. With the key measurement being the organization’s ability to learn, Theory O is a “soft” approach to change that focuses on building organizational viability by addressing beliefs and social relationships while enhancing individual and organizational learning and continuous improvement.

Theory O preserves organizational culture but can slow change processes to the point that the organization has difficulty adapting, while loyalty and commitment to employees can prevent managers from making necessary business decisions. Although Theory E and Theory O represent bipolar approaches to change, Beer and Nohria (2000) believe they are not mutually exclusive. Organizations can risk fomenting distrust by jumping between cutthroat and nurturing behaviors; however, they argue, “Companies that effectively combine both approaches to change can reap big payoffs in profitability and productivity” (p. 131).

Action research.

Traditional change theory tends to assume that intervention starts with a diagnosis. Schein (1995) argues that separating the diagnosis from the intervention is a “fundamental error” because the act of diagnosing a situation changes the situation. Building on Lewin’s proposal that “one cannot understand an organization without trying to change it,” Schein argues that change agents should assume that “everything we do with a client system is an intervention… unless we intervene, we will not learn what some of the essential dynamics of the system really are” (p. 65). In other words, understanding and changing the system are interrelated acts.

This explains fundamental assumptions of Action Research, an intervention approach developed by Kurt Lewin (1946) that combines action orientation and research orientation to drive meaningful change.

• Action orientation means to change attitudes and behavior. Action orientation is important because the goal is to drive change, which involves diagnosing problems and implementing interventions to solve those problems.
• Research orientation means to test a theory. The change process is research-oriented because change agents apply a theoretical framework they think is applicable to the situation. This process involves diagnosing problems and evaluating how the theory works in practice.

In addition to being a tool for group interventions, Action Research is considered a systems approach to change because it recognizes that organizations have interdependent parts (McShane & Von Glinow, 2005). This makes change interventions a participative process that engages organizational members as collaborators in the diagnosis, intervention, and stabilization of the culture.

To diagnose the need for change, the organization gathers and analyzes data, and determines intervention objectives. The organization introduces the intervention by implementing the change strategy. Finally, the organization evaluates and stabilizes the change to determine the effectiveness of the change and refreeze at the new state (Lewin, 1946; McShane & Von Glinow, 2005).

Cooperrider and Suresh (1987) point out that action research has two key criticisms: negative focus and mutual exclusivity.

Regarding negative focus, action research starts with problems. Problems represent the negative aspects of group dynamics while ignoring the positive opportunities and potentials of the group. Appreciative Inquiry attempts to resolve this problem by focusing change efforts on opportunities and potential.

Regarding mutual exclusivity, the “action” in action theory is consulting; the “research” in action research is theory development. Critics assert that these are mutually exclusive concepts; the practitioner can do one but not the other. Cooperrider and Suresh said that Lewin avoided this conflict by being vague about how action theory could be simultaneously interpretive and creative. In practice, the consulting side of action research has proved dominant.

The system as a target of change  

Traditional intervention strategies focus on the individual and the group as change targets (Manning & Binzagr, 1996). However, the increasingly turbulent competitive environment is causing organizations to develop a systems perspective that allows them to recognize and influence the dynamic social interactions throughout the organization.

Woodman and Dewett (2004) argue that limiting change efforts to a single approach or a single subsystem will not be as effective as coordinating efforts in multiple areas. More positive and lasting change comes from using many programs, processes, and change levers. To increase positive influences on individual change, managers can pay attention to congruency across all social dimensions of the organization by making sure that socialization, training, supervisor behavior, and planned change all reinforce the behaviors and characteristics.

Manning and Binzagr (Manning & Binzagr, 1996) concur. Invoking systems theory (1969) they argue that market conditions require change agents to conduct whole system intervention rather than focusing on isolated parts.

System interventions

Appreciative inquiry, Senge’s (1990) learning organization, and various stakeholder ownership techniques serve as examples of system-level intervention techniques.

Appreciative inquiry.

Appreciative inquiry has become widely used worldwide since Cooperrider and Srivastva (2001) introduced it in the mid-1980s as a philosophy for creating revolutionary change to implement global sustainable development strategies. Appreciative inquiry assumes that people create their own reality through dialogue with others, social systems have multiple positive outcomes, and social systems can build consensus around positive aspects. Watkins and Mohr (2001) propose five generic processes for change, as follows:

1. focus on positive aspects of change;
2. explore stories of life-giving forces;
3. find themes in the stories that invite deeper inquiry;
4. create shared images of the preferred future, and;
5. find innovative methods to create the preferred future.

Seo, et al. (2004) say that the appreciative inquiry method focuses on the following targets of change:

1. individual, group, and system-wide processes, while not recognizing potential tensions;
2. internal drivers and capacity for change, rather than on external drivers;
3. human systems as the means and ends of change;
4. second-order more than first-order change.

As with the learning organization concept, appreciative inquiry exposes the limitation of the dichotomous perspective on change by not recognizing the natural change processes that appreciative inquiry attempts to manipulate. Through appreciative inquiry, change agents attempt to facilitate third-order change by facilitating large social groups to be aware of established schemata so the members can believe they are creating their own future alternatives.

Regarding the characteristics of change processes, Seo, et al. say that appreciative inquiry focuses on the following:

1. positive aspects without acknowledging the negative;
2. episodic and revolutionary change rather than continuous change;
3. strong preference for proactive processes over-reactive processes, and;
4. open systems over closed systems perspective.

The learning organization.

Senge (1990) offered the learning organization as a model for transformational change by arguing that a learning organization is “an organization that is continually expanding its capacity to create its future” (p. 14). Senge offered five disciplines for a learning organization: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, and team learning. Seo, et al. (2004) say that the learning organization concept focuses on

1. the individual, group, and organizational processes without recognizing tensions among them;
2. internal drivers and capacity for change rather than external drivers;
3. human systems as the means and the end of change rather than on technical systems;
4. second-order change over first-order change.

The learning organization concept helps expose a limitation of considering change through a dichotomous perspective between first-order and second-order change. Neither of these alternatives explains adequately third-order change, the natural change that occurs as organizational members develop the capacity to recognize when change is necessary so they can implement change themselves (Bartunek & Moch, 1987; 1994).

Third-order change is not planned and cannot be controlled, but understanding third-order change can help agents to influence or explain natural changes. Developing a self-perpetuating organizational learning system requires that change agents foster perpetual learning environments in which people are continuously aware of their assumptions and appreciate the alternatives (Hendry, 1996). The learning organizational concept also focuses on the following characteristics of change processes:

1. both negative and positive aspects;
2. continuous aspects in preparation for episodic processes;
3. proactively responding to changing environments, and
4. (d) open systems rather than closed systems.

Stakeholder ownership. Arguing that interventions must occur at the level of the whole system, Manning and Binzagr (1996) present an inventory of large-scale intervention approaches designed to engage all system members in the intervention process, including Future Search, Search Conferences/Participative Design, Open Space, Large scale Interactive Process Methodology, Sium-Real, and Fast Cycle Participation and the Conference Model. The philosophical foundations of these approaches are built on systems theory, socio-technical systems, social constructionism, and universal human values consistent with those proposed by Abraham Maslow (1987). Considering summaries of the Future Search and Open space intervention techniques provides a taste of the similarities that have emerged in techniques built on these foundations.

The future search intervention technique is designed to discern and enact the organization that members desire, allowing the organization to fit the collective dreams of members and creating an environment through which they can exercise collective free will. The technique involves holding a three-day conference during which selected stakeholders meet to establish common ground by analyzing data and creating a shared understanding of needs, issues, ideals, and actions. The members create an action list of assigned accountabilities and commit to working toward the common vision in their jobs. This creates a “future pull” designed to influence the entire system.

The Open Space intervention technique attempts to facilitate change by focusing and unleashing the energy of shared responsibility. Open space assumes that people who accept responsibility for enhancing the organizing system will energetically act to be part of the change process required for organizational success.

During an Open Space conference, facilitators invite individuals to share opinions, ideas, and suggestions on issues for which they are willing to take responsibility. Facilitators promote open conversation and debate, and encourage members with similar interests to join and develop specific plans to influence the whole system.

The open space intervention serves as a prerequisite to a large-scale change effort by helping members make sense of historical actions, create a shared understanding of current actions, and define future outcomes. This approach can be particularly helpful for unfreezing organizations immobilized by inaction because it sets in motion the group’s bounded action.

Assumptions of whole system intervention

In their survey of systems-level intervention methods, Manning and Binzagr (1996) extract assumptions that are useful for guiding systems-level interventions, as follows:

1. Organizations are whole systems that are more than the sum of their parts. Since the parts of a system interact in a dynamic holarchy, implementing changes in one part can have unpredictable consequences throughout the emergent system and its interconnected parts and relationships.
2. The concept of organizations as whole systems requires a new dialogue among stakeholders. Developing awareness of the interconnected relationships within and outside the system boundaries helps to engage all stakeholders in system change to facilitate lasting change.
3. An organization does not exist, but processes and procedures do. This means that an organization is neither a tangible nor a static entity, but a reflection of tangible processes and actions. Understanding organizations as organizing processes helps to avoid perceptions of organizations as static entities.
4. Perceptions of reality become the organization. The organizational members collectively construct and maintain the reality of the organization. This reality shapes members’ thoughts about and behaviors in the organization. Understanding these mental models is a key to implementing change. Making changes within the dominant framework helps change agents facilitate consensus for change.
5. Individuals can self-organize and redefine reality. A change intervention that challenges the collective reality creates discomfort for a social system. Exploring competing paradigms helps individuals and groups self-organize around new realities.
6. The desire to be good and improve is a universal human characteristic that influences voluntary collective action. System-level intervention requires personal ownership. Aligning organizational values to the values of the members can strengthen the commitment of members while encouraging good citizenship behavior.

Systems thinking as “subtle reductionism”

The systems perspective seems comprehensive and inclusive, but it is not without limitations. From outside the field of organizational studies, philosopher Ken Wilber (2000) criticizes the systems perspective by labeling it as “subtle reductionism” (p. 147); postmodern flatland dogmatism that “is part of the disease we are trying to overcome” (p. 71). The systems perspective, Wilber argues, simply replaces reductionism with holism, while essentially disregarding all other perspectives. He argues that systems perspectives deny “the lifeworld of the interior dimensions” (p. 147).

While it claims to provide a unified theory of everything, Wilber holds that systems theory “leaves out half of the world” (p. 147). In other words, while the systems lens may be vital, a greater understanding of reality might be gained by integrating the best of all lenses, which Wilber describes as: “the very best of pre-modernity, the best of modernity, and the best of post-modernity” (p. 73). Applied to the social dimensions of organizational culture, this means to discover the right combination of intervention approaches that address the individual, social, and cultural development within the organizational boundaries while adapting to the demands of the environment. Such a philosophy does not lend itself to applying pre-packed intervention approaches but selecting the right mix of approaches for the context.

Conclusion

This section explored intervention methods through the social dimensions of organizing systems: individual, group, and culture. Woodman and Dewett (2004) illuminated the individual as a change target by offering a model for explaining how individuals influence organizations and how organizations change individuals. McGrath and Tschan (2004) provided insight into the group as a change target by integrating systems theory and complexity theory to propose a complex action systems (CAST) theory, which demonstrates the processes that continually and interdependently operate in groups. Hatch (2004) explained emerging understanding of the culture as a change target by offering a model of cultural dynamics that shows change agents how individuals and groups mutually interact in existing cultural patterns while creating new cultural patterns.

Considering various intervention techniques used on each change target helped to show the methods change agents can use to target specific social dimensions. However, this approach quickly shows the limitations of isolating targets for change. The approaches for one target are often also useful for others. For example, Lewin’s force field model, Action Research, and Appreciative inquiry can be used for targeting individuals and systems. Likewise, the approach that works in one situation may not work in another. For example, manipulating change by feeding emotional frenzy may work once but may not work once people have an opportunity to think about what they are doing.

The difficulty of categorizing the intervention approaches helps show why targeting specific parts for change can ultimately prove ineffective. The theorists who provided insight about the individual, group, and culture as change targets argued that the traditional approaches of isolating parts of an organization for intervention have limited effect and can cause unintended consequences for organizations. The social dimensions of an organizing system are not separate parts, they are dynamically inter-connected dimensions that build on the previous level: individuals form the group; individuals and groups form the culture. In other words, targeting one dimension affects the other dimensions.

Understanding the organization as an organizing system composed of dynamically inter-related parts interacting within boundaries to adapt to a dynamic environment (Manning & Binzagr, 1996) helps to illuminate the complexity of change interventions. Treating an isolated part while ignoring a system’s inter-related parts and environment can allow the disease to fester. Similarly, treating the system without considering its parts can cause disease. Effective and lasting change is not about targeting the individual, group, or culture; it is in recognizing and treating the dynamically organizing social dimensions within and around the organization.

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