Abstract
Every organisational change creates some organisational stress and makes personnel both winners and losers within the organization. To a large degree this is a result of the inevitable change of the organization perspective as well as ensuing organisational restructuring. In this paper we investigate the organisational perspectives generally adopted by top management, and explore the consequential stresses generated in the attempt to implement the ensuing prescriptions for change. We stipulate that middle management will feel themselves the most threatened by processes of organisational change instigated from above. We demonstrate how they transfer this feeling further down the hierarchical ladder. A major factor here is a virtual break in communication within the organization resulting from the radical change of the communication context. We illustrate how situation is further aggravated by middle management assuming the role of interpreters of top management’s intentions and of the sole guardian of the power of the organisational unit they manage and hence of the protector of its personnel. In this way the previous organisational structure becomes an infrastructure for the pockets of tacit resistance to organisational change that may frustrate its purposes in the long run. On the basis of the model for problem formulation and choice developed by Nappelbaum, this situation is examined and is related to the issue of implementation design for a strategic decision taken by the upper management. It is stipulated that team building is an inherent part of this process and should involve not only those who instigate the change and prepare corresponding decisions but also every echelon of the organisational management. This understanding imparts a new flavour to the notion of participative management and imposes new requirements on organisational communications and on computer support for organisational change. In this respect the concept of variable precision modelling of knowledge about local enactment processes (developed within SASOS by Humphreys and Berkeley) becomes especially relevant. Within this framework, however, the notion of zooming is to be rethought from aggregation/disaggregation to reflection and analytic reinterpretation and creative synthesis. Theoretical ideas to be presented here are illustrated by the recent experience of attempts at organisational transformation and business development within the Hungarian reform process and Russian perestroika. We consider that the experiences reported here are quite relevant to organisations in general, wherever in the world they are located.
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Humphreys, P.C., Nappelbaum, E.L. (1997). Structure and communications in the process of organisational change: Eastern European experience and its general relevance. In: Humphreys, P., Ayestaran, S., McCosh, A., Mayon-White, B. (eds) Decision Support in Organizational Transformation. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35348-7_4
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