Essay On Organizational Change

What is organizational change and can it be managed/led?

Combinations of different experiences and education have developed a variety of assumptions about how an organisation works. The use of metaphors when describing organisation movements and change is an important way in which we express these assumptions (Cameron and Green, 2012). Gareth Morgan’s (1986) work on organizational metaphors is good for understanding the different assumptions and beliefs about change that exists. He identifies eight organizational metaphors; machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons and flux and transformation (Morgan, 1986).

Organisations as machines, political systems, organisms, and flux and transformation are particularly common assumptions that are often used by managers, writers and consultants to make sense of how organizational change works. In reality most organizations use combinations of approaches to tackle change and not just one of the above, however these provide useful insights into the process of organizational change (Cameron and Green, 2012). This essay will try to make sense out of these assumptions to understand what organisational change is. By doing so, insights will be drawn on how organizational change can be managed and led.

It is useful to pull the above-mentioned metaphors apart to see the difference in the activities resulting from different ways of thinking (Cameron and Green, 2012). Table 1 gives a brief description of each metaphor. Each individual metaphor outlines certain limitations in the assumptions taken, and when applied under a change model, these can aid in gaining a more in-debt and realistic understanding of organizational change.

To begin with, with a machine like metaph...

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...n provide a shared direction” (Jacobs and Heracleous 2006, 211). Such ambiguity of meaning, encourages organisational members to discuss the suitability and practicality of different meanings, thus potentially creating new knowledge and shaping new behaviour influences. Yet there is a threat of fragmentation among organizational members and the associated risks to the success of organisational change management (Reissner, 2011).

A metaphor gives the opportunity to broaden our thinking and enhance our understanding, thereby allowing us to see things in new ways and act in differently. However as a metaphor always creates distortions as well, we have to accept that any theory or perspective that we bring to the study of organization change management, while capable of creating valuable insights, might also be incomplete, biased, and possibly misleading (Morgan, 1986).