IN THIS PLACE

I want to continue with my efforts in reviewing what is involved with implementing change in an organization.  To date, I have offered some factors that affect decision-making by individuals in the midst of a political situation.  That is, what is it that moves a person to behave as he or she does when confronted with the challenge of either being asked or commanded to change behavioral patterns – protocols – in an organizational setting?  I described this decision-making as a “rumble in the mind” of various images and sensations that originate in a person’s culture, sense of morality, knowledge, beliefs, emotions, and physiological makeup.  I suggested a process but emphasized while one can impose a logical progression to the process, the actual thought patterns can be highly unordered – a rumble.  The suggested process was as follows:  a contextual inheritance (genetic inheritance and sociocultural inheritance) sets the stage within the person’s purview.  That purview is basically composed of three domains, the ideal – the real – the physiological domains.  Each of these domains adds to the total perception a person formulates and that engages that person’s emotions.  Emotions can vary greatly and need not be logically related to the question or demand under consideration.  This inspires which mode of behavior the person adopts which are one of only two possibilities – demand or support – but is expressed as one of four options – individual action seeking immediate self-interest, individual action seeking long term interests, collective action seeking immediate self-interest, or collective action seeking long term interests.  Last, the person selects the tenor by which to communicate – parent tenor, adult tenor, or child tenor.  You are invited to review the last four postings where each of these factors is described and explained.  What one needs to consider next is the immediate environment in which a specific episode of change transpires.

When those appropriately responsible for deciding that a change of any importance needs to be implemented, that person or group must begin a process that is time consuming and occurs over a number of episodes or events.  To be clear, I am not referring to a simple deviation of some process, but a change that calls for a different protocol and/or perception of how things are done in the organization.  For example, and the reason this blog has moved in this direction is a call for the adoption of a new curricular approach – from a civics curriculum guided by a natural rights construct to one guided by federation theory construct – demands that a school staff redefine to some meaningful degree what the members of that staff teach and even how the school is administered.  This is a tall order and one that cannot be done successfully in the short term.  Such a change is more than likely to meet with resistance.

This resistance takes place in a variety of ways and in a variety of places.  It can take place during planning events or in implementing events.  I have experienced efforts at change in which all involved voiced unquestioned support for the change effort, but when it came time to implement, individuals simply reverted to previous behavior patterns.  My focus is not so much the point of implementation, but events in which change strategy is developed.  A few postings ago, I expressed a preference for normative-re-educative strategies.  My following comments are in line with this preference.

I am not a change expert, so what follows is based on my readings concerning change theory and my own experiences; a word on the latter.  I was assigned to a school that instituted a school-based management effort that was imposed by the school district.  That took place during the 1990s.  Yours truly got seriously involved.  What was missing was any training or an implementation period of time.  We had time to develop a “model.” Then we implemented the model.  Needless to say, the effort, while it lasted a few years and was not a total waste of time, was not successful.  I learned one thing for sure:  organizational change and its challenges should not be underestimated.

What I want to share is a listing of concerns that a change agent should consider when working with a call for change.  By a change agent, I am not referring to a professional change agent, but an in-house staff member who is designated as a team leader or some sort of an assistant to ease the process.  I visualize this person holding a graduate degree.[1]  What follows is an array of specific areas of concerns such an agent should be consciously looking at and asking what the status of the change process is and how the participating staff members are expressing their perceived needs and wants.

I will organize these concerns as either associating with one of two general environments that can characterize a political situation.  But before identifying these two, let me share a quote by the sociologist, Philip Selznick, that I believe is very relevant to these concerns.

At times, repressive authority is in truth the only means of establishing order or accomplishing a morally worthy task; in the circumstances the alternative may well be utopian and self-defeating.  But it is more often tempting to claim there is no other way and to rely on repression as a first rather than as a last resort.  For its part, participatory authority requires very congenial conditions and may readily degenerate into weakness, negligence, and undue permissiveness.  Yet it holds the greater promise, not only for moral development but for high levels of personal achievement.[2]

What Selznick highlights is that politics is not always nice and congenial, but it can be, it can be legitimately, coercive.  If a change is calling, for example, a change that relates to safety, then there is little room to be collaborative or compromising.  But more likely, what would be considered is less demanding and time sensitive.  And if the change is quality sensitive – the change is dependent on staff being committed toward achieving success – then what will probably be essential is genuine changes in attitudes, beliefs, and dispositions.

These concerns I am about to list are presented as either/or options.  They, in reality, are not either/or conditions.  There are degrees between them and what a more talented change agent can do is determine not only the presence of a condition, but also determine to what degree that condition exists.  This takes sophisticated training that is bolstered by the appropriate experiences.  With those qualifiers in mind, let me begin.

The first and most overarching condition, and therefore concern, is whether the situation exemplifies an arena or a square.  An arena is a place where some form of competition or combat takes place.  An environment more resembling an arena is a place in which those participating in the change are in some form of expressing competing interests.  I should add that those are interests that are self-defined and subject to being misinformed or misdirected.  On the other hand, they can be well-informed and legitimate.  As opposed to an arena, a square is a place in which the participants congregate to share and coordinate efforts toward some object or aim.  Here, the participants mostly see their individual interests being advanced by belonging and taking part in a united effort for which the collective was formed.  In our case, instituting curricular change, they generally see the effort toward change as a good thing.  The stronger such a sentiment prevails, the more of a square quality the environment enjoys.  The rest of the concerns are listed as either supporting an arena environment or supporting a square environment.  Again, I am not a priori judging those concerns associated with an arena environment as negative and those associated with a square as positive.  It depends, but as Selznick points, the general direction of a change effort is to encourage and work toward establishing a square.

An arena is supported by:                  

·        Ego challenging interactions

·        Coveting attitudes and behaviors

·        Competitive approach

·        Vertical power relations

·        Formal roles

·        Structured processes

·        Strange physical and social surroundings

·        Definite expectations 

A square is supported by:

·        Ego accommodating interactions

·        Soliciting attitudes and behaviors

·        Collaborative approach

·        Horizontal power relations

·        Informal roles

·        Spontaneous processes

·        Familiar physical and social surroundings

·        “See what happens” expectations

I will address in upcoming postings several of these dichotomous pairings.  To repeat, what I am asking is that those who are sensitive to the challenges of change hold these concerns as important and ask the logical and appropriate questions of the environments in which change episodes take place.  Such sensitivity will enable a normative-re-educative strategy to be utilized.

In addition to addressing some of the above pairings, my next posting will look at a generic process in which an overall change strategy can take place.  This will not be a definitive process, but one that will highlight some of the major issues a change process need to overcome.

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[1] A person can either get his/her teaching credentials through completing a course of study at the undergraduate or graduate level.  I argue that those who choose the graduate level should receive education in change and curricular theory.  In any given urban faculty, a sizable portion of those faculty members have received their teacher training through a graduate program.  Therefore, most staffs can have a number of teachers who can function as these in-house change agents.

[2] Selznick, P.  (1992).  The moral commonwealth:  Social theory and the promise of community.  Berkeley, CA:  University of California Press.  Quotation on p. 268.