cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

The underpinning theory• Individuals and groups need to be psychologically aware of the needfor change in order to adapt.• The response to a change in the environment can be designed andworked towards.• Participation and psychological support are necessary strategies forsuccess.What are the limitations of this metaphor? The idea of the organization asan adaptive system is flawed. The organization is not really just an adaptiveunit, at the mercy of its environment. It can in reality shape the environmentby collaborating with communities or with other organizations,or by initiating a new product or service that may change the environmentin a significant way. In addition the idealized view of coherence andflow between functions and departments is often unrealistic. Sometimesdifferent parts of the organization run independently, and do so for goodreason. For example the research department might run in a verydifferent way and entirely separately from the production department.The other significant limitation of this view is noted by Morgan, andconcerns the danger that this metaphor becomes an ideology. Theresulting ideology says that individuals should be fully integrated with theorganization. This means that work should be designed so that people canfulfil their personal needs through the organization. This can then becomea philosophical bone of contention between ‘believers’ (often, but notalways the HR Department) and ‘non-believers’ (often, but not always, thebusiness directors). See Burns and Stalker’s book The Management ofInnovation (1961) for the original thinking behind this metaphor.Organizations as flux and transformationViewing organizations as flux and transformation takes us into areas suchas complexity, chaos and paradox. This view of organizational life sees theorganization as part of the environment, rather than as distinct from it. Soinstead of viewing the organization as a separate system that adapts tothe environment, this metaphor allows us to look at organizations assimply part of the ebb and flow of the whole environment, with acapacity to self-organize, change and self-renew in line with a desire tohave a certain identity.104