Organizational Role Analysis: managing strategic change in business settings

Abstract

The search for the paradigm of change that would transform ideas into actions took through the Group Dynamics Movement, the T-Group Movement, Tavistock Group Relations Conferences, The Milan Family Therapy Centre, and the Systems movement. Group Dynamics provided tools and techniques for managing group processes. To that degree it was very helpful and insightful. However, in the author's experience, it has little impact in changing ideas into action. The Group Dynamics strategy is to provide an ah-ha experience. It assumes that insight leads to action. The result is that most group dynamics programs are a series of unrelated exercises or role-plays, each of which provides some insight. Next came the Tavistock Group Relations process, which was brilliant and quite effective, but so punitive and brutal in its impact that it created as many negative reactions as positive experiences. Changing the role can theoretically bring almost instant change in behaviour.