Thompson Work Organisations A Critical Introduction (3rd ed)

252 • W O R K O R G A N I S AT I O N S

organisations that don’t work well with creaking systems and not enough money. For many staff and managers, old realities exist. They do not experience change as transforming the everyday job, simply making it more difficult.

(Goss, 2001: 154)

As the extract above indicates, employees may reject or resent the ‘subjectification’ process. That is not to say that change does not or should not take place, merely that we need a deeper, more balanced understanding of it.

Change and stability

What is often lacking in both theoretical models and real-world change processes is an awareness of the importance of continuity to individuals and groups involved in change. Alvin Toffler (1970: 342–3) argued that to cope successfully with change we need zones of stability. Toffler, who was one of the first advocates of managing rather than suppressing or adapting to change, identified factors such as close family ties and habits as ‘patterns of relative constancy’ (1970: 435) which provide us with what we would term a redoubt against the relentless pressure to change. However in organisational terms, such zones of stability might represent the very factors managers and change models identify as sources of resistance to change. Thus we have a catch-22 in the fact that the implementation of change demonstrably lacks concern for the very factors that might make individuals tolerate it. It is often held that people prefer technological to cultural change, and in zones of stability we can see why.

The management of change rather than the experience of change is the focus we find in mainstream OB. Hosking and Anderson (1992) cast doubts over this perspective, arguing that it produces an ‘illusion of manageability’. They cite Ernecq on interventions often being ‘usurped by outcomes which were neither expected nor intended’, and Crouch et al. on their study on the ‘myths of managing change’ to the effect that:

a common response to environmental change was for managers to initiate endogenous changes in their own organisations, which often result in pleasant feelings of coping with anxiety-provoking events. (Hosking and Anderson, 1992: 7)

Change as conceptualised by OB appears to be a process of attitudinal adjustment, behavioural change and outcome evaluation. Change processes are presented as value neutral in much the same way as decision-making processes. Such political neutrality has an ideologically normative value for management (see Hosking and Anderson, 1992: 8–9). This reinforces the value to be had from cost and efficiency benefits, but ignores the problems raised by the tensions between stability/pressure to change, strategy/execution and autonomy/interdependence noted above. According to King and Anderson (1995: 86), what managers will increasingly demand in the future is ‘evidence of rigorous evaluation of different intervention strategies’. From our point of view, this should bring us full circle to the concerns of those such as Rowntree and Myers noted above. Constant change programmes, coupled with the constant

L E A R N I N G , C H A N G E A N D I N N O VAT I O N • 2 5 3

experiential change to which individuals and groups are exposed, should put change fatigue to the fore as the focus of the study of change. However King and Anderson argue that managerial demands will lead instead to more research on factors such as team building for innovation and creativity training

Innovation: necessity or luxury?

Defining innovation

The typical response to ‘hitting the wall’, as one senior manager in a case study company put it, is to reinvent the programme: a perspective driven by a problematic of ‘change’ rather than innovation. Yet innovation is regarded as increasingly important, primarily because it is taken to be a key indicator of how successful organisations are in adapting to more rapidly changing and complex environments. The innovation literature is overwhelmingly focused on the problems of initial design and development, and then of implementation and diffusion (Slappendel, 1996). In part, this is because of the continuing bias towards products and technologies. But even in the organisational sphere, the distinguishing feature of innovation is conventionally seen as newness or novelty, partially as a means to make distinctions from conventional change. As Anderson and King observe, ‘By far the largest proportion of research into the organization as innovator is concerned with identifying factors which help or hinder the introduction of innovations’ (1993: 7). In practice, this results in problems of poor implementation. As a leading consultant with Arthur Anderson said of UK managers, ‘They’re good at leaping into new ideas, not so good at finishing them off’ (quoted in Financial Times, ‘Innovation Does the Rounds’, 18 September 1995).

This theoretical orientation is at odds with the practical experience of organisations. The main priority for management strategy is to create the conditions – institutional and cultural – for sustainable innovation through self-generating processes and learning mechanisms in the workplace. Yet organisations often do not get through to this stage of development. Instead they get delayed and diverted by problems of diffusing innovation through organisational layers, functions and units. Typical definitions reflect the concern for newness and novelty:

•‘the commercial application of knowledge or techniques in new ways or for new ends’ (UK House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology).

•‘innovation at the organisational level is defined as the adoption of an idea, or behav-

iour new to the adopting organisation’ (F. Damanpour, 1996).

•‘the intentional introduction and application within a role, group or organisation of ideas, processes, products or procedures, new to the relevant unit of adoption, designed to significantly benefit the individual, group, organisation or wider society’ (West and Farr, 1990: 9).

We can also distinguish between potential and actual innovation: ‘Potential innovation occurs when an agent or system alters its dominant schema. . . . Actual innovation occurs if this alteration is beneficial to the agent or system’( Stacey, 1996: 288). ‘Beneficial’ in these terms is regarded as the delivery of what is considered the ‘price for further interaction’. Additionally, while it is useful to distinguish between phases of innovation, we should also recognise that there are key organisational domains with

254 • W O R K O R G A N I S AT I O N S

distinctive tensions and choices: most notably the labour process, employment relationship and governance. In other words, innovation does not take place abstractedly in the organisation, but on particular territories that do not necessarily operate with the same dynamics and agents. Moreover, as we outlined in Chapters 11 and 12, private-sector research has shown that it is in the ‘interaction effects’ between these spheres that innovative work organisation is most effective.

Diffusing innovation: change agents and agencies

As Anderson and King observe: ‘By far the largest proportion of research into the organization as innovator is concerned with identifying factors which help or hinder the introduction of innovations’ (1993: 7). This emphasis on the nature of the diffusion process has traditionally been researched in terms of inhibitors and facilitators.

There is considerable emphasis on the characteristics of innovators themselves, who are frequently seen as self-directed agents guided by a clear vision, or champions of products and processes. Often this involves trying to identify personal qualities: ‘this “trait approach” assumes that certain individuals have personal qualities which predispose them to innovative behaviour’ (Slappendel, 1996: 110). Again this indicates a bias towards science and technology; innovators are akin to the ‘heroic inventor’ of the past. More broadly, as Mathews notes, ‘in the business and management literature, organisational innovation is still conceived generally in terms of the characters, personalities and qualities of the people involved . . . this is equivalent to the “great man” perspective of scientific and technological progress’ (1994: 299). There are clear parallels also with the change literature. As Buchanan and Badham 1999: 23) note, ‘change champions’ are often presented as heroic figures at the expense of the wider cast of characters.

While key individuals are important, this way of looking at things separates individuals from their context and neglects other participants. The latter are only brought into the picture as potential ‘resistors to change’ with a predisposition to be hostile to novelty. Whether we are identifying the positive (for example, teams) or the negative (professional or functional groupings) it might be more accurate to talk in terms of agencies, as well as agents. Successful diffusion tends to require that action moves from specific projects and ‘change champions’ to durable networks and alliances between organisational functions and interests (Marks et al., 1998).

Climate and culture

As Anderson and King note (1993: 14): ‘The lessening of interest amongst innovation researchers in leader characteristics and structural variables has been matched in the last decade by a growing emphasis on the role of organisational climate and culture in facilitating or inhibiting innovation’. A focus on the wider climate and culture for innovation is a way of emphasising the collective and contextual nature of action. The conventional wisdom of research is not surprising: climates should provide support for new ideas, willingness to tolerate failure and challenge convention, freedom to act, constructive controversy and risk-taking.

It may also be useful to examine the way in which successful change projects are based on the formation and diffusion of cultural capital. Adapting the concept of Bourdieu (who uses it to explain comparative educational advantage), the spirits

L E A R N I N G , C H A N G E A N D I N N O VAT I O N • 2 5 5

industry research referred to previously (Marks et al., 1997) found that United Distillers recruited managers who had experience of leading change programmes, rather than for their technical or sectoral experience. This infusion of managers constituted a key cultural resource. The change programme, Towards World Class (TWC), was conceived by the senior operational executive team and defined through 18 months in often gruelling meetings, facilitated by consultants. This constituted both a crucial learning period for senior operational managers and an intensive socialisation into the new expectations of United managers. Six cross-functional project teams

– Assets, Competencies, Standards, Service, Suppliers and Culture – acted as the foci of an integrated change effort, tied into matrix reporting. TWC became a vehicle that compelled managers at all levels to become embedded into networks whose triple purpose was improved performance, learning and innovation. The cultural capital accumulated by key agents at the beginning was diversified across plants and functions, TWC compelling managers to ‘reinvent’ themselves, delegating to wider layers and promoting changes in values.

Sustaining innovation

Diffusion, successful or otherwise, is not the end of the story. Where does innovation go from here? There have been various attempts to conceptualise the stages or evolutionary sequence of innovation. For example, Anderson and King (1993) note problem recognition, idea identification, initiation, adoption, implementation and routinisation; West and Farr (1990) similarly cite recognition, initiation, implementation and stabilisation. There seems to be a problem here about the ‘final stage’ of innovation. Even when a model moves away from a simply linear sequence, it is essentially cyclical. In other words we are back to the problem of what to do when you ‘hit the wall’. This implies that organisations are condemned to replay and reinvent change programmes. Even organisations with some success in diffusing innovation will be faced with a distinct set of problems in sustaining it. The only literature routinely addressing these issues is that on the learning organisation. Whatever its weaknesses, as outlined above, it picks up where the innovation debate tails off by focusing on the need for an internal dynamic of continual transformation. However, in the next section we suggest that the literature on creativity might be a useful source of ‘added value’ to the innovation debate.

Creativity

Forester notes that innovation ‘has been used interchangeably with the term “creativity”’ (1995: 3), though fundamental differences exist, for example, over the question of novelty. The role of newness or novelty is seen by Bouwen et al. (in Hosking and Anderson, 1992) as part of the ‘dialectic process between old and new’ (1992: 124) and as one of the three tasks of innovation management. These tasks exemplify the tensions between dominant logics, characterised by continuity – and inclusive of culture, structure and task strategies (1992: 127) – and new logics, characterised by novelty. These are resolved in the innovation process through the third task, transition, characterised by emergent, shared meanings and organisational learning. Novelty is likewise a key definitional component of creativity, although it is qualified by situational appropriateness and the degree of uniqueness

256 • W O R K O R G A N I S AT I O N S

as judged variously by the creator or by relevant social groups (King and Anderson, 1995: 12–13).

The critical point here is that creativity/innovation is endemic in both formal and informal work organisation. We have to be creative both to ‘make out’ and to perform labour, and much of our creativity is deviant in the view of organisational hierarchies, coming under the heading of what Ackroyd and Thompson call organisational misbehaviour (1999: 4, 29, see Chapter 21). At the other end of the scale, the everyday fate of creative outcomes is to be appropriated routinely by colleagues and management with no guarantee of mutual gain for the creator. In this sense, any strategy for the promotion of innovation/creativity is another form of intervention aimed at what we refer to as ‘engaging the intellect’ in Chapter 20.

This notion of creativity as a product of tension is reiterated by Stacey (1996: 256) who talks of the ‘space for creativity’ as a ‘state of tension between an organisation’s dominant schema, which is embodied in its legitimate system, and its recessive schema, which is embodied in its shadow system’. Stacey conceives this shadow system as interactions outside the legitimate systems of organisations, in which members ‘pursue their own gain, but also the arena in which they play, create and compare innovations’ (1996: 290). The utility of this view from the perspective of organisations as complex, adaptive systems is that it separates creativity and the innovation process from the purely institutional. This is similar to the way in which Ackroyd and Thompson (1999: 29) posit the ‘dialectic of innovation’ as existing between directive and self-organising systems in the production of misbehaviour at work. What Stacey adds (1996: 178–83), is identification of the control parameters mediating the tension between dominant and shadow systems as comprising:

•rate of information flow

•degree of diversity

•richness of connectivity

•level of contained anxiety

•degree of power differentials.

What this gives us, however, is a feel for the role of creativity in the process of innovation in organisational but not subjective terms. Ford (in West, 1997: 2) asserts that creativity is subjective, context-specific and judged on outcomes. The creative outcomes of both individuals and groups are necessary to the innovation process, but organisational innovation does not require involvement of all participants. For many, organisational innovation is at best adaptive learning as opposed to the generative learning supposedly found in learning organisations (see McGill et al., 1992 or McHugh, Groves and Alker, 1998) and at worst non-participative change. Experiencing innovation without creative involvement is likely to be simply the ‘exchange of one obligation for another’ – the meaning of innovation in Scottish law. Whether innovation is an inclusive experience will be dependent on factors such as the role of intrinsic motivation (Amabile, 1996) and discretion (King and Anderson, 1995: 61–4). These factors will in turn be contingent on perceived levels of ownership of the process as a whole, and on mutual outcomes – in terms of both interaction as noted by Stacey and mutual gains. This again follows Ford (West, 1997: 3) in that innovation is intentional and dependent on expected benefits, which may possibly substitute for the lack of creative involvement for many involved in change initiatives.

L E A R N I N G , C H A N G E A N D I N N O VAT I O N • 2 5 7

Social and organisational creativity

The most cited works on creativity are those focusing on techniques used to ‘increase’ creativity in decision-making, for example, variations on group-based techniques such as brainstorming and Synectics (see Hicks, 1991). Associated with this type of work is that of Adams (1979) on conceptual blocks to creative thinking, which he divides into:

•perceptual – for example, stereotyping, tunnel vision, problem isolation

•emotional – for example, preference for judgement, lack of motivation, fear of mistakes

•cultural – for example, logic versus intuition, taboos, management style

•environmental – for example, distractions, monotony, lack of communication

•intellectual and expressive – for example, inadequate language, skills and strategies.

(See Hicks, 1991: 41–50)

These same factors are also directly identified as blocks to change (see Rollinson et al., 1998: 617). In the same vein of socio-psychological research are the conceptual tools called KEYS developed by Amabile (1996), which are ‘designed to produce an inventory by assessing stimulants and obstacles to creativity in the organisational workplace’ (Roffe, 1999: 10). Once again we see the legacy of the Lewin Force Field model in organisational psychology, with the driving and restraining forces here being reified into conceptual categories of environmental factors. Perhaps more important in Amabile’s work is her focus on the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, which with relevant skills are the foundation of creative performance.

Her experimental work shows that creativity is fostered in environments where intrinsic motivation is high (1988) and where people are free from concern about social approval and evaluation (1987). A focus on extrinsic motivation or instrumentality is seen to hamper creativity, as can the presence of explicit contracts for rewards (1986). In terms of innovation, the main contribution organisational strategy and policy can make to enhance creativity would, according to Amabile, be in giving people time, freedom, support and interesting work. As Goss (2001: 169–70) notes of innovation and learning in the public sector, ‘Managers and staff need time to think, and spaces within which to try out new ideas, to experiment and test themselves’. The other major requirements are those of participative decision-making and flexible structure. Here, though, we must query at what participation and flexibility are directed; if they are directed simply at the strategic and operational ends of the organisation, then there is no guarantee that levels of intrinsic motivation will be high enough to encourage creativity. The real lesson from this strand of creativity research may be that flexibility has to exist for the employee, and not just for the employer.

The emotional climate in organisations is also cited in relation to the promotion of creativity. Tran (1998: 99) sees emotionality affecting ‘organisational dynamics such as idea generation, creativity, adaptability to change, and facilitation of or inhibition of learning processes’. Lofy (1998: 5) ‘stresses the importance of attention to the affective dimension of employees’ lives as a factor in empowerment and creativity’. Rationality, and in particular critical thinking, also has a role here; Nickerson (1999: 397) notes that creativity and critical thinking are often thought of as opposites, but are best conceived of as independent dimensions. In other words, we

258 • W O R K O R G A N I S AT I O N S

need both at once for creativity to flourish. This concern has penetrated institutional thinking in the US to the extent that ‘many prestigious bodies, including the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business and the Accounting Change Commission, have asked accounting educators to improve their critical thinking skills’ (Reinstein and Bayou, 1997: 336), which gives a whole new spin to the notion of ‘creative accountancy’.

Conclusion: creativity, learning and sustaining innovation

The ability to sustain innovation and reproduce the conditions for creativity is inherently complex and fragile. Innovation in each of the domains thus develops its own dynamic, reflecting genuine differences in management requirements, workforce expertise and interests. Changes and uncertainty in the external environment, for example, takeovers and rationalisation programmes, may undermine both zones of stability and mutual gains. Yet there is a paradox here, in that we also have to recognise that an exclusive focus on sustainability may be deleterious to the creative aspects of innovation. The reasons for this can be discovered through research on identifying conditions under which creativity is seen to flourish. Pillinger and West (1995) identify low market share and teamworking, with classic organisational innovation supplying ways of dealing with such factors. The more prosaic factors of job cycle time, variety and responsibility for quality problems cited by West (1997: 87–8) usually produce responses of individual or group creativity, as in the kind of covert job design described by Runcie (1988, see Corbett, 1994: 33–4). Thus success in dealing with external threats or internal job design might remove the very spark needed for creative endeavour to contribute to sustainable innovation on anything other than a formal basis.

Further to this, Ward, Smith and Finke (1999) raise the role of imagery in creative cognition, citing evidence from Finke (1990: 204–6) that creativity is higher when faced with unexpected rather than predetermined categories through which to interpret data. This leaves us with the possibility that uncertainty may be as important to innovation as sustainability, and that systematised innovation processes may again hamper creativity. The difficulty here is in planning for long-term competitive advantage while providing the time, autonomy and support necessary to creativity. The upshot of this is that it may be possible for innovation to be best viewed as a necessity when situations are unfavourable, and a luxury in more favourable times.

Change, then, whether dependent on mechanisms of learning or innovation, seems to require the routine unfreezing or creative destruction of current attitudes and practices surrounding work. At the same time, there is no guarantee that this will not unfreeze the very values that led to identification with the organisation in the first place, even in the case of managers. Indeed many of the systems of action (Limerick et al., 1994) which operate to recognise environmental discontinuities and overcome what Argyris (1976) termed defensive routines, are aimed at managers:

Such routines ‘enable managers and others to stay within the relative comfort zone of the current deep structure’ (Argyris, 1976: 34) and it is the skills and feedback from the learning community which are proposed as the transformational trigger which can bring down such barriers to change. (McHugh, Groves and Alker, 1998: 210)

If ‘deep structure’ and defensive routines equate to Toffler’s stability zones, then change through learning and innovation must be backed up by participation and support to succeed. The further

L E A R N I N G , C H A N G E A N D I N N O VAT I O N • 2 5 9

tensions we have identified, between autonomy/direction, strategy/implementation and stability/contention, may make change a speculative enterprise at best, unless creative and innovative learning opportunities are provided for all involved. Unfortunately the factors most often employed in such endeavours represent the exercise of power through attempts to change perceptions rather than any mutual process. They are themselves phenomena which are regularly diagnosed as the source and solution of many organisational problems: communication and leadership.

17 Open to Persuasion: Communication and Leadership

An implicit assumption underlying these (sensitivity training) groups is that very little can be gained if someone tells us how we are supposed to behave, how we are supposed to feel, or what we are supposed to do with our lives. (E. Aronson,

The Social Animal, 1972: 240)

Aronson’s comments on the role of leader communication in awareness training accurately reflect the disjunctures between what we know about openness of communication and leader–follower relations, and the way these topics are often presented in mainstream organisational behaviour (OB). The role of the ‘leader’ in change and innovation processes is often in communicating precisely what Aronson indicates we should not: in other words, the vision of how things should be for the ‘good’ of the organisation. This chapter explores communication and leadership, with an emphasis on how fundamental psychological processes are turned to the task of moulding our understanding and behaviour within organisational contexts.

The power to communicate

In Chapter 15 we noted that perception and attribution processes can systematically determine or alter people’s interpretation of events, others and the attitudes they develop. Our understanding of this in the social world and the workplace is based mainly on the concomitant effects on the communication process: effectively, the way we send and receive messages. Such messages can be exchanged between individuals or groups, and can convey information, ideas or feelings. The problems that occur and the means of developing more effective communications have been a major component of the techniques through which the knowledge base of OB is applied in pursuit of organisational effectiveness. At its most basic, this relationship can be seen in the effects on the amounts and complexity of information being transmitted, or communication load (Gibson and Hodgetts, 1986). Both individuals and groups can be seen to undergo conditions of underload, overload or appropriate communication loading. These conditions are moderated by personal variables such as the ability and desire to communicate, and organisational variables such as levels of co-ordination, physical proximity, routineness of tasks, time constraints and the number and quality of decisions to be made. Appropriate loading is seen to enhance motivation and productivity, underload to lead to alienation, apathy and demotivation, and overload to cause increased stress, uncertainty and the tendency to make mistakes.

The study of communication in organisations traditionally examines the processes and flow of communications through channels and networks, and the content, sources and nature of messages sent, these last being particularly relevant to the study of persuasive communications. The variables involved in the basic interpersonal communication

O P E N TO P E R S UA S I O N : CO M M U N I C AT I O N A N D L E A D E R S H I P • 2 6 1

process are given in Figure 17.1. The level of variability possible at each stage makes it surprising that any successful communication happens at all. The characteristics of senders and receivers, coding, transmission and decoding systems are further complicated by the directions of flow and the levels of formality of the communications, as well as the various kinds of ‘noise’ that can interfere with communications at any time.

Such a model of communication has its drawbacks, in that it tends to view communication as a step-by-step rather than a simultaneous process, and consequently ignores the interpersonal dynamics of communication. This type of model needs to be augmented by sensitivity to the perceptions of the sender and recipient, as well as the overall social and organisational contexts that give rise to the shared meanings which allow communication to take place. The perceived status, competence and intentions of the sender and, for the receiver, the various factors that we earlier identified as possibly distorting perceptions (for example, halo effects and projection) need to be accounted for. Notions of shared meaning relate precisely to Schein’s (1985) model of organisational culture in that shared assumptions, beliefs and rituals constrain the communication patterns of organisational members, especially where cultural beliefs are embedded in notions of openness or those of formality. Conditions of openness and informality may reinforce open debate, rapid and effective communication and loyalty, but at the same time may increase interpersonal conflict and reduce the ability to set and maintain goals and schedules. Conditions of formality and closed, hierarchical

Context:

Organisational structure and culture; group and task characteristics; information from environment

	Communication:
	‘Noise’
Sender	Message	Receiver
(encodes message)	(channels and media)	(decodes message)
	Feedback
	‘Noise’
C o n t e x t a n d t h e c o m m u n i c a t i o n p r o c e s s		F I G U R E 1 7 . 1

Source: based on D. Fisher, Communication in Organizations, 2nd end, St Paul, Minn.:West Publishing, pp. 6–21.