CHAPTER 1

Organisational Effectiveness: New Agenda for Organisational

Development and Human Resource Management

Organisational Development: A new agenda for organisational effectiveness. OD

is both the field of applied behavioural science focused on understanding and
managing organisational change to increase an organisations effectiveness and
viability, and a field of scientific study and enquiry. Insight-driven HR encourages
students and practitioners to consider context sensitive and evidence-based
arguments to enhance their own HR practice, it aims at stretching current
thinking and practice about the notions of organisational effectiveness and
added value typically framing prescriptions about how HR functions might
contribute to organisational performance.
The concept of organisational effectiveness is difficult to pin down; we argue that
these largely derive from unitarist thinking which assumes that what is good for
the organisation is good for employees, and vice versa. Richard et al define OE
as capturing organisational performance that includes usual external business
indicators broadening this to a corporate social responsibility.
We recognise that what we propose challenges established ways of viewing
power, status, leadership and management, the nature of employee relations
and accountability, as well as the role of HR.

The Paradoxical nature of organisational effectiveness

Short-term Long-term
Competition Collaboration
Descentralisation Centralisation
Entrepreneurship Control/Accountability
Taking Risks Avoiding Failures
Flexibility Efficiency
Task Orientation People Orientation
Planned Opportunist

We noted earlier that New OE challenges orthodox views and analytical

frameworks about what makes for effectiveness in work and employment
practice. In doing so, it combines technologically enhanced methodologies with
more standard HR/OD tools and theories.
This argument draws attention to the significance of language, power, and
politics in strategic decision-making, which tends to be poorly treated in
mainstream modelling of HR. Whereby leadership responsibility is dissociated
from formal organisational roles, and the action and influence of people at all
levels is recognised as integral to the overall direction and functioning of the
organisation.
Since the 90s the focus is on outputs and behaviours, described as results-
driven ; these are based on the view that organisations can achieve
fundamental change in employee behaviours in the short term through hard
structural change strategies that are all more task-driven. They are based on
the assumption that behaviour change will in the longer term become rooted in
social norms and shared values as the changes that work are institutionalised,
and links between the new approaches to work organisation and improved
performance become clearer.

THE TREATMENT OF LANGUAGE

This view challenges conventional wisdom that language simply represents what
is going on in organisational life, somehow separate from action and reality.
Organisational talk is recognised as being far from purely instrumental and value
free, and plays a key role in promoting new meanings and mind-sets within the
organisation. Here, attention has been placed on shifting mind-sets through
emotionally and contextually driven conversations.
Organisational change is largely seen as socially constructed and understood in
terms of discourse and dialogue, characterised in terms of bottom-up
approaches to change, which evoke new sets of metaphors, and that saw
increasing use in the 80s. These treat organisations as living systems, in which
managers are like gardeners, seeking to nurture people, consistent with models
of leadership that emphasize strategic visions and have emotional appeal, rather
than operation management and control. OD practices, which adopt a discursive
or conversational approach place particular emphasis on the treatment of
organisations as dialogic, thereby focusing on changing frameworks that guide
what people, say and think, rather than seeking to change behaviour directly.
Keegan and Francis work draws attention to the political relations inherent in
language use which is downplayed or ignored in conventional and more
contemporary approaches to OD and HRM.
POWER AND POLITICAL STRUCTURES
Contemporary OD techniques have significant potential for generating new
possibilities and innovations, they have been criticised by some as nave, failing
to take sufficient account of the constraining effects of power and political
structures. Change leaders can be so focused on arriving at a consensus that
genuine opportunities for surfacing multiple perspectives may be limited, or the
opportunities for them to translate new ideas into practice are heavily
circumscribed by deeper political and discursive structures. Consequently the
potential for real employee agency is reduced.
Our view is that these new social media technologies should be used in the
design and implementation of change initiatives, as an accelerant in shaping the
language-practice dynamic. This is an important feature in a dynamically
changing context where the senior team is often impatient to achieve some kind
of culture change and organisations increasingly expect to see rapid results and
returns on their investments in their change initiatives. This dash for results and
hard outcomes tends to minimise the importance of the softer side of change
management, and HR plays a vital role in intervening to shift such mind-sets at
senior level about the language of change in order to build a high-performing
culture informed by humanist and democratic principles. We are mindful of the
arguments presented by critical scholars on what has been described as the
ethics and practicalities of culture control.
This combination of a constructionist outlook and realisation of the more
concrete and constraining aspects of organisational life resonates with the
critical realist perspective which lies at the heart of New OE. It is based on a
social ontology (wherein the worl is taken to be open, layered, transformational
and consisting not only of human agents but also structures, institutions,
mechanisms, resources, rules conventions, powers, as opposed to a flat ontology
of events and experiences.

RECONSIDERING THE LANGUAGE OF CHANGE

A significant paradox is emerging here. While there is a rowing body of literature
about bottom-up or eruptive models of organisation and change, these
models will struggle to take hold in practice because they continue to rely on a
vocabulary of change framed by conventional mind-sets and approaches. The
change process is treated as being more or less neat and tidy and the
complexities of organisational politics and cultures are downplayed or ignored,
including the emergent unintended dimensions of change. Changes are seen to
result from decisions and directions from senior managers. The language of
change is typically framed by mechanical metaphors as managers are urged to
find levers for change and drive communications to effect change. Consultants
have a toolkit used to implement new ways of working. However we have
choosen to stick with the analogy of toolkits, recognising the importance of
providing practical tools of action for our readership, while remaining faithful to
the richness and complexity of New OE.
The content of the language used here is in stark contrasdt to new mindsets
around organisational development and leadership noted earlier. However, the
language of top-down models persists, and as a result much of our existing
language of change is encumbered with concepts developed in more stable
environments, therefore acting to preserve the status quo.

MORPHING MINDSETS
Marshak talks of the need to create new words that better express continuous
whole system change, described, in terms of a morphing mind-set that could be
used as a generative metaphor or analogy to advance our thinking about
managing change. The key principles of morphing are outlined below:
-Creating limited organisational structures and principles such that there is both
enough form and fluidity for rapid, organised action.
-Creating resource flexibility in terms of both availability and application.
-Ensuring organisational learning to quickly develop and deploy new
competencies.
-Bridging from the present to the future with clear transition processes while
avoiding focusing on the future to the detriment of the present.
-Having top management mind-sets that fully embrace the concepts of
continuous change and flexible organisational forms.

THE SHIFT IN FOCUS FOR HR

We follow Pfeffers argument that the ability to identify and help others discover
their mind-sets and mental models, and the capability to change these when
necessary, are probably among the most critical capabilities and HR professional
can have or acquire. Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions that affect
the way individuals think about people, situations and organisations.
This requires a sensitivity to language, power and politics in shaping processes
and outcomes of change efforts.
We argue that it is important, therefore, that change leaders are conversationally
responsible, that is willing to take ownership of the way they speak and listen,
and the practical and ethical consequences of this.

BRIDGING THE KNOWING-DOING GAP

Pfeffer observes the relatively limited diffusion of ideas and business models in
contemporary organisations, commenting that this may appear a strange
conclusion within a world where there are entire industries set up to spread new
concepts and practices such as Six Sigma and Total Quality Management.

NEW OE MINDSET