Organisational Change

Introduction

Change management is among the most involving tasks of managerial work because professionals have the necessary skills and competence (Seidl and Werle, 2017, p.1). Change in an organisation is a vital factor that the business must adapt to the global economic situation and the changing market demands (Seidl and Werle, 2017, p.27). Organisational change has emerged in the past decades as scholars develop models, plans, and theories to help understand the impact of adjustments in organisations (Immordino, 2017, p.129). Businesses and organisations need to evolve for them to survive, and thus, they should apply a change model to realise success and avoid taking anything to chance. Change models help businesses to organise resources, identify possible challenges, and keep the team of professionals informed about the progress. This work compares and contrasts three models of organisational change that include Karl Weick’s sensemaking perspective, Kotter’s change management theory, and the McKinsey 7-S model.

Organisational Change

Karl Weick’s Sensemaking Perspective

Sensemaking refers to creating a set of plans with interpretive possibilities instead of having a collection of knowledge (Weick, 1995, p.xi). The perspective is a recurring cycle that encompasses a sequence of events happening over a period that begins as people form conscious and unconscious assumptions and expectations to predict future events (Weick, 1995, p.4-5). This satiation suggests that failure to fulfil an expectation leads to the interruption of some activities. Therefore, the sensemaking approach helps to comprehend how individuals deal with disruptions (Weick, 1995, p.5). This perspective bases its actions on a sequence that people serve cues in the business, deduce the purpose and externalise these understandings through particular undertakings (Jalonen et al., 2018, p.2796; Weick, 1995, p.8). Sensemaking process includes constructing and relating the interpreted cues and revising the interpretations depending on actions and outcomes (Weick, 1995, p.8). This perspective helps people to identify problems, isolate things to attend to, and impose a coherence that enables individuals to rule out what is wrong and the directions to follow to implement the change (Weick, 1995, p.9). In this regard, problem setting involves managing identifies things that staff must attend and frames the context in which these activities will take place (Weick, 1995, p.9).

Sensemaking is a foundation of the changes and adjustments that influence the success and survival of organisations. Weick (1995, p.14) argues sensemaking is a process by which the virtue of establishing, framing, filtering, and developing facts lead to something tangible. Sensemaking perspective has seven properties that included being grounded in identity enhancement, social, ongoing, retrospective, plausible, enacting sensible environments, and focusing on extracted cues (Weick, 1995, p.17). Once individuals start acting (enactment) they produce tangible results (signals) in an environment (social), thereby helping to ascertain (retrospect) what is happening (ongoing), what needs explaining (plausibility) and the next actions to take (identity enhancement) (Weick, 1995, p.55). Taking steps brings about retrospect, while enactment makes sense to the things constructed in the development of an event. The success or survival of an organisation is dependent on what managers do other than what they plan, and therefore, people professionals should spend more time in acting (Weick, 1995, p.55). Organisations make strategic plans to animate and orient employees such that they produce good outcomes because they understand their current and future goals of the company (Weick, 1995, p.55). Individuals create environments to achieve what they had anticipated because actions develop conditions that require further work by the employees (Weick, 1995, p.34, 51). The sensemaking approach suggests that there are not ultimate results of organisational change because adjustments occur in a process. This situation means that sensemaking unfolds repetitively to help people create meanings, comprehend reality, and enhancing identity.

The sensemaking approach is useful because the perspective offers a means of exploring how managers can create and enact their understanding of realities, and thus, how they respond or react to change (Jalonen et al., 2018, p.2796; O’Connor, 2017, p.34). Sensemaking depends on human actions, and therefore, managers can realise organisational change by comprehending how people make sense of the current happenings (O’Connor, 2017, p.34). Sensemaking perspective is social and tends to produce, discuss and tolerate a shared sense while creating rational accounts that enable companies to take necessary actions and give directions (O’Connor, 2017, p.20; Seidl and Werle, 2017, p.4). Sensemaking is a constructive process that entails how individuals concerned with identities participate in ongoing events to extract cues and enhance plausible sense (O’Connor, 2017, p.29). Sensemaking can serve as an individual or corporate approach because the perspective enables people to create new meanings and enact a social environment through negotiated conversations (O’Connor, 2017, p.31; Seidl and Werle, 2017, p.4). The management can guide sensemaking to create and promote explanations and understandings of activities. Otherwise, managers or leaders may not control or organise discussions regarding the emerging processes as stakeholders raise issues and discuss the potential solutions (O’Connor, 2017, p.36).

Sensemaking impact on how individuals modify their knowledge structures as they identify and understand an equivocal event and organise a response to clarify the meaning of the recognised occasion (Kudesia, 2017, p.4). The sensemaking model functions as a perspective that helps people to engage in organisational contexts, thereby enabling them to view different aspects of a challenge (Kudesia, 2017, p.4; Seidl and Werle, 2017, p.4). Scholars refer to sensemaking as a model that supports an interpretive view of companies or organisations in gathering and processing information (Kudesia, 2017, p.10). This model helps the management to understand that attention to organisational changes also requires explanation and influence action (Jalonen et al., 2018, p.2813). Sensemaking allows managers to create meanings after they agree on the suitable frames for interpreting focal cues (Seidl and Werle, 2017, p.4). Kudesia (2017, p.14) reasons that sensemaking in institutions happens through “enactment-selection-retention” process. Enactment relates to the process of identifying and bracketing information and the behavioural process by which people shape organisations (Kudesia, 2017, p.14 Seidl and Werle, 2017, p.4). Selection describes how the management can draw on the past encounters to understand the bracketed information and look for workable interpretations (plausibility) (Kudesia, 2017, p.14; Seidl and Werle, 2017, p.5). Retention relates to how professionals negotiate outputs through interactions, analyse how they affect collective identities, and apply the changes continuously (Kudesia, 2017, p.14).

References

Immordino, K.M., 2013. Organisational assessment and improvement in the public sector workbook. CRC Press.

Jalonen, K., Schildt, H., and Vaara, E., 2018. Strategic concepts as micro‐level tools in strategic sensemaking. Strategic Management Journal, 39(10), pp.2794-2826.

Kudesia, R.S., 2017. Organisational Sensemaking. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology, pp.1-47.

O’Connor, M., 2017. Understanding sensemaking in organisational change: a cognitive mapping approach (Doctoral dissertation, University of Birmingham), pp.19-36.

Seidl, D., and Werle, F., 2018. Inter-organisational sensemaking in the face of strategic meta‐problems: Requisite variety and dynamics of participation. Strategic Management Journal, 39(3), pp.830-858.

Seidl, D., and Werle, F., 2018. Inter-organisational sensemaking in the face of strategic meta‐problems: Requisite variety and dynamics of participation. Strategic Management Journal, 39(3), pp.1-49.

Weick, K.E., 1995. Sensemaking in Organisations. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.