Considering Planned Change

Bartunek, J. M., Balogun, J., & Do, B. (2011). Considering Planned Change Anew:

Stretching Large Group Interventions Strategically, Emotionally, and Meaningfully. The

Academy of Management Annals, 5(1), 1–52.

The research paper tries to conduct a review that combines Scholarly Literature and Skilled Practice and thereby tries to initiate a dialog between them. Authors try to bridge the gap between a popular organization development practice called Large Group Interventions and contemporary academic organizing regarding strategy, emotion & sense-making. Large Group Interventions are the methods for involving “the whole system” i.e. both internal and external systems in a planned change process. Practitioners know about Large Group Interventions but they have very little knowledge about theorizing regarding strategy, emotion, & sense-making. Whereas, researchers have not much knowledge about Large Group Interventions but they are familiar with theorizing regarding strategy, emotion, and content. This research paper tries to establish linkages between OD practice and theory. The paper is divided into five sections. The first section gives a brief historical overview of links between practice, theory, and research. The second section describes Large Group Interventions. The third section summarizes theory in strategy, emotion, & sense-making. The fourth section explains LGIs with two big exemplars. And the fifth section answers various scholarly questions (about strategy, emotion; sense-making) related to large scale changes and then make conclusions. 

Organizational Development is a systemwide application and transfer of behavioral science knowledge to the planned development, improvement, reinforcement of the strategies, structures, and processes that lead to organizational effectiveness. The term OD was founded by Kurt Lewin and he believed that there is nothing as practical as a good theory. Historical studies show that OD interventions encouraged scholarly thinking and scholarly thinking fostered OD interventions. But the recent study does not show any linkages between OD practice and theory and is of the view that LGI has little impact on Organizational scholarship. This paper aims to establish links between the two.

Large Group Interventions are a whole system approach to organizational change. Organizations are open systems, future-oriented, with large networks are meaning-making systems. These four strands led to the evolution of LGIs or OD interventions. Large Group Interventions can be classified into three categories namely:

1) Focused on proactively creating a desired future together, 

2) Redesigning work together as a whole system, 

3) the Whole scale participative work. 

The “Future Search” “Whole Scale Change” are two important interventions used in organizational processes. They are well known by practitioners but academics are not aware of this. But a lot of issues are there in large scale interventions which academics & researchers are now concerned about for example Strategic element of creating future together in LGI, individual and collective sense-making of the intervention & feelings of participants. Therefore, there is a need that these practitioners become familiar with academic research that is relevant to these interventions. Academic research helps us to see those dimensions which we might have skipped earlier.

Human beings are involved in strategies i.e. there is strategizing of activities and practices by people, this led to research in strategizing activities & practices or strategy as practice (SAP). This research focuses not only on what organizations do but what people do. It focuses on day to day work activities and practices of strategists. SAP is the implementation of strategy as a “translation into collective action”. SAP research suggests certain questions like Do LGI address change of the complexity, scale & scope that characterizes strategy process research? Can LGI change the intended and realized strategy of an organization? Does LGI succeed in effecting change in the strategic direction of an organization and whether they can develop a new intended strategy and implement it? What is the role of political, cultural & social processes in the design and enactment of LGIs and their implementation? Are there any patterns in the sequencing that lead to successful change? Whether there is modularity? Are there any linking activities to ensure that all organization components are realigned? Are there any overlapping issues during the implementation of change? What are the different roles of the multiple actors involved in LGI? What are the patterns of behavior, interventions, relationships between different stakeholders as a result of LGI?

Since 1990’s academic interest in the cognitive and emotional processes of individuals in an organization has increased. Studies relating to sense-making and emotions have become more prominent and wider. Academic investigation of emotions and sense-making of change recipients suggests few questions like What various emotions are experienced by planners and participants in LGI? How are these emotions managed? How collective emotions and emotional contagion is manifested during and after the change? How do change agents work with these? What are the different occasions in which participants make sense during LGIs? How do sense-giving & sense-making interact during and after the interactions? How do positive emotions or positive meanings arise during LGI? How do they affect the outcomes of intervention & change? Two Large Group Interventions Future Search and Whole-Scale Change are addressed in this research paper. Future Search is a future-oriented planning conference developed in the 1980s by Marvin Weisbord, Sandra Janoff, and their colleagues. Its purpose is to “explore possible agreements between people with divergent views and interests and to do consensus planning with them”. It is based on the theory of action research regarding problem-solving and planning. Future Search usually takes place in three days conference with an average size of 60-80 people.

Six major tasks take place during the three-day Future Search conferences. 

1. The first task is for participants to focus on the past concerning the Future Search topic and other events. (Individually create timelines of key events in the world, in their own lives, and the history of the Future Search topic).

2. The second task is to focus on the present. The whole assembly makes a “mind map” of trends currently affecting the Future Search topic and identifies the trends most important for it.

3. The participants form stakeholder groups in which they discuss what they are doing now about these key trends and what they want to do in the future. (They report what they are proud and sorry about dealing with future research topic).

4. Forth task focus on future, diverse group’s imagines and describe their preferred future as if it has already been accomplished. 

5. The fifth task is based on hearing the preferred future, the groups post themes and discuss and agree on the common ground for everyone. 

6. The sixth and final step is action planning. After action plans are developed, volunteers sign up to implement them over the coming months.

Future Search conferences may bring a wide range of emotions both positive and negative. It is being used successfully by large organizations around the globe. For example- Boeing used a version of it in the design of its 777 aircraft; IKEA used Future Searches that started with a single product (a sofa) and that led to a review of the entire system and Future Search intervention helped 3M carry out union-management joint planning. An extended illustration of how Future Search was used with the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to address a crisis had been discussed in the research paper. 

Whole Scale Change was developed by Kathy Dannemiller, Robert Jacobs, and others. One of the distinguishing features of the approach is its flexibility in dealing with large and small groups and in addressing a wide variety of systems issues. Whole-Scale thinking can be used to unite and mobilize people in organizations and communities around nearly any kind of convening issue. It is based on the adaptation of Gleicher’s formula for change D X V X F R(DVF). This rubric posits that if an organization wants to accomplish system-wide change, it must work with a critical mass of the organization to uncover and combine member dissatisfaction (D) with the present state, uncover and combine yearnings for their Vision (V) of the future and the first steps (F) towards reaching the mission. The value of D, V, and F needs to be greater than zero to be greater than people’s resistance (R) to change. Whole-Scale Change steps include building a common database of information, determining what the data mean for the organization, agreeing on change goals, committing to specific actions, and taking time to check and measure what was agreed upon. Whole-Scale Change assumes that while emotions may be difficult at first, they will, as a result of the process, end up being very positive. Whole-Scale Change has been used in other settings, including the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency, HomeCare, a comprehensive home care services organization, and Ferranti-Packard Transformers, Ontario. The use of Whole scale change by Best Animal Society to create structure and professional management is discussed in detail in the research paper.

Although after understanding both Future Search and Whole Scale Change, they appear to have much in common like short term, careful intense and planned two- or three-days meetings and including stakeholders as participants. But they are not identical, and the differences between them are central to their designers’ conceptions. Whole-Scale Change focuses on the past year, while Future Search focuses on a longer time horizon. Future Search explicitly alternates diverse group experience with individuals working in similar stakeholder groups. This may or may not happen in Whole-Scale Change, depending on the type of issue being addressed. Future Search events are very democratic. Thus, leaders need to decide in advance what is on the table for discussion or not. In Whole-Scale Change, there is more opportunity for lower-level organizational members to interact with leaders. Planning takes place in both types of interventions. However, in Future Search the whole group develops something new, while in Whole-Scale Change a leadership group develops draft plans to which the whole assembly responds and the leadership group has the final say. 

The next segment of the research paper talks about Questions that are applied to Large Scale Changes. It has been evident that despite the many reported successes of Large Group Interventions, it is evident that organizational change often runs into problems, especially when it is major. It raises issues regarding their scope of change, the relationship between their formulation and implementation, and the experiences associated with various types of roles and timing issues. They begin with questions about the extent to which Large Group Interventions address strategically complex change such as that studied by strategy scholars. There are also questions about the implications of Large Group Interventions for what scholars know about the possibility of planned interventions affecting shifts in both the intended and realized strategies in organizations. The use of social, cultural, and political methods in the change process is also questioned. Doubt is also raised on the assumption of linearity in these change processes.

Questions about emotion and sense-making are also raised in a research paper that addresses a variety of experiences of change recipients. The questions also address the participants’ sense-making, including how it evolves and how it comes to be shared. First, there are questions about the relationship between Large Group Interventions and change recipients’ emotions, particularly the way the interventions generate, influence, and benefit from their participants’ emotional experiences. Another question is that, how do change agents work with collective emotions, especially if the shared emotions are not what would seem most desirable? How do Large Group Interventions contribute to decreased cognitive dissonance between old and new schemata? Do shared meanings of change emerge among participants through an iterative process between sense making and sense giving? 

Theoretical material presented in the research paper opens up several questions about the strategic processes accompanying the change efforts and the affective and sense-making experiences of participants in them. For future research, it would be obvious in the relationship between Large Group Interventions and academics for academics to study the effectiveness of Large Group Interventions. A second step might be joint academic-practitioner forums. Third, it is important to connect individual practitioners and academics. Fourth, it is important to create joint academic-practitioner communities for action and to have a sense of urgency about them concerning joint goals. Fifth, it is important to make sure that academic-practitioner interactions are fair, that one “side” does not have unjust advantages.

Submitted by: Shivangi Dhawan & Charu Sehgal, M.Phil. Research Scholars [OBD area]