Change Management Perspective Research Articles

Partnership Sourcing: An Organization Change Management Perspective

SUMMARYThis article highlights the organization change implications for organizations that are attempting to develop collaborative relationships with their suppliers. The research focuses on four dimensions of collaborative relations including joint buyer‐supplier cost reduction, supplier involvement in new product development, delivery and logistics management, and core business strategy. A case study is presented which outlines how an organization adopted a strategy that led to extensive outsourcing and the adoption of more collaborative relations with its key suppliers. The pursuit of this strategy has acted as a stimulus for change within the organization. The article identifies a number of issues that must be addressed, including the adoption of an integrated approach to the management of strategic change, the pivotal role of senior managers as facilitators of this change, and the involvement of those most affected by the movement toward more collaborative buyer‐supplier relationships.

Supply Chain Relationships: Making the Transition to Closer Integration

The development of closer relationships in supply chains is investigated from a change management perspective. Based on theory and previous research, five critical elements of the interaction process between parties in the supply chain are identified. Specifically, these elements relate to the interface between organisation-internal processes and the inter-company relationship transformation. A case study focusing on the relationship transformation process of a retailer and 40 of its suppliers is used to explore these elements empirically. Drawing upon the insights gained, a framework is developed encompassing the most important areas for advancing the state-of-practice and for guiding further research.

Managing the school improvement journey: the role of continuing professional development

Although the factors that make a school effective are well established, understandings of the process of managing change in order to improve effectiveness are not so well defined. While the change management perspective on school improvement is increasingly evident in the literature, research into the change process grounded in the experiences of those managing change are relatively few in number. The findings reported here are from a larger project which has looked at the emerging themes in the process of school-based change implemented to enhance pupil achievement in a group of schools in South Wales. The findings illuminate the nature of the school improvement ‘journey’ from the practitioner's perspective and indicate pre-acceleration, acceleration and post-acceleration stages in the changes associated with improvement. The findings also illustrate the role that professional development plays during that journey and the way that role is varied and adapted during the different stages

The strategic regeneration of manufacturing by changing routines

Uses theory and empirical data to develop further the understanding of the strategic regeneration of manufacturing companies. Reviews literature relevant to the areas of management and manufacturing strategy and organisational learning, identifying the importance of taking “resource based” views of strategy as a point of departure for aiding understanding of the process of manufacturing regeneration. Argues that regeneration can be understood from a change management perspective as a redefinition of tacit and explicit organisational routines. Reports the further development of earlier work and uses one exemplar case to describe and help begin understanding the complex process of strategic regeneration using an ecological, perceptual/cognitive, and structural analytical framework. Finally, draws some tentative conclusions on the nature and process of strategic regeneration and regenerative strategy, and notes the value and potential of taking a perspective based on the notion of “organisational routines” in attempting to understand this complex phenomenon.

Communicating on the edge of chaos: a transformation and change management perspective

SUMMARY ‘What is chaos, that we should be mindful of it?’ (Josepth Ford). Chaos will always be a mystery. Perhaps the ultimate, allencompassing mystery. To paraphrase Churchill's famous remark, it is a paradox hidden inside a puzzle shrouded by an enigma. It is visible proof of existence and uniqueness without predictability. In the Greco-Roman tradition philosophers used logic and introspection to impose mental order on the universe. Newton, Francis Bacon and the scientists of the Renaissance chose a different path when attempting to find truth and understanding nature. In the twentieth century Einstein, Bohr and others (with quantum physics and mechanics) changed the path again, making reality even more subtle and complicated. Then, in the past twenty years, along came chaos theory. This theory, and the ways that natural processes move between order and disorder, brings us closer to understanding the planetary orbits, the shape of clouds, that phenomena never repeat themselves exactly, and even the complexity of changing and learning organisations. It is the insights and extensions of chaos theory that could carry us technologically, philosophically, socially and individually into the Age of Aquarius and possibly through our own African Renaissance. Most managers are naturally susceptible to wishful thinking. They believe what they want to believe in spite of obvious evidence to the contrary. They try to forcefully manage and control to create balance and order in the workplace. The time has arrived for South African business leaders, managers and corporate communicators to buy into the notion that a butterfly stirring the air in Johannesburg can create a twister in New York! This article describes chaos theory and examines how it can be utilised to provide insights into managing and communicating during times of change in chaotic organisations.

Project management system design: A social and organisational analysis

Project management systems are seen as important tools in an industrial enterprise in terms of providing management information to effectively plan, monitor and control, material and labour resources. While much project management, and indeed, technology management literature is concerned with rationalistic or hard systems analyses, rarely does the commentary consider the social and organisational impacts influencing technical change, or indeed the rationalities that lie behind the utilisation of project management systems. In this paper using case study evidence I stress the importance of the need to develop a more critical perspective of project management software and technology change management.