The process and implementation of strategic change

To understand the implementation of change is to place the management (and in the extreme, perhaps, the manipulation) of individuals at centre stage. This means implementing preconceived models of change, all with the aim of achieving a particular set of expected, predetermined and desired outcomes. To understand the process of change is to examine critically the context, the antecedent and the movement and history of change, keeping at the same time an analytical eye on the organization theories-in-use which inform such on analysis. Many authors attempt to span both process and implementation in their work (see Pettigrew 1985, Pettigrew et al., 1989, for example). Their argument is broadly that implementation is not solely the logical and point of a process of formulation, but rather the interplay of many iterative and discontinuous factors including management decision processes, environmental and business sector characteristics, as well as human agency. It is, nevertheless, the case that empirical data from such contextualist approach-es are, as yet, the results of analyzing and examining the more processual nature of change and to a lesser extent reflect implementation. This is not surprising, since the examination of context is a huge undertaking which requires a synthesis of understanding of the environment, the understanding and characterization of strategic decision-making processes (see Hickson et al., 1986) and the characterization of transformation and change in specific organizations. This leaves something of a conceptual gap in which contextualists seek the meaning and characterization of process, which those interested in implementation pursue the path of developing “appropriate” management roles, competences, skills and techniques geared to achieving predetermined objectives. Current work which falls somewhere in between these areas is rare. One exception can be found in Mangham’s (1986) metaphor of the management process as a dama, in which managers play out scenes. This “dramas” illustrate to some extent how roles are contextually derived, yet emphasize that performance (implementation) in the outcome of the learning and the interplay of roles in the current setting. Mintzberg’s attention has refocused in the 1990s on a revisitation of the nature of managerial work (Mintzberg 1973), again in an attempt to link current managerial action with past history. At the time of writing, published work is not available. To understand why the implementation-process gap has occurred, it is necessary to consider (albeit briefly) the role o organi-f zation theories in explaining strategic change and the limitations they have on the field generally.