Managing Change Enquiry and Action

Introduction

In this concluding chapter we revisit the enquiry–action framework in the light of the ideas, techniques and cases that have been discussed. We explore how the framework can be used in leading and managing change and we consider how the separate practices of the framework can be integrated. The aims of the chapter are to:

• elucidate the practicalities of the enquiry–action framework;

• discuss the integration of practices;

• identify connections between the enquiry–action framework and the theories of change introduced earlier in the book; and

• explore implications for the nature of leading and managing change.

Fineman, Sims and Gabriel (2005) introduce the metaphor of a river as a way of thinking about organizations, or, rather, the set of practices that constitute organizing. This relates to a perspective on organizations as being in flux (Chia, 1995) as actors act, interact and react within a socio-economic climate that is typically changeable. In some senses, this may appear to be unsettling. In this way of thinking we never reach the ‘refreezing’ part of Kurt Lewin’s (1947) model of change (unfreeze, change, refreeze), and hence there is never a finished conclusion or a point at which we can objectively say that a change was a success or a failure. Although this might be disconcerting, we see it as being of more practical help than a traditional way of thinking of organizations as objects, machines or closed systems (Marshak, 2009). There is constant motion but at the same time an identity and a set of meanings that are conserved over time. Viewed by a swimmer in the river, it is a place of constant change. Viewed by a cartographer on a series of maps drawn over time, it is an incrementally changing feature of the landscape. Hence, it is not only that there is a core of organizing practices that remain the same over time and a periphery that changes. Rather, what changes, what is core and how these ideas are interpreted will vary from different perspectives (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002). For example, in the Oticon case one can ask whether manufacturing hearing aids is the company’s core or if the core as experienced by designers is a combination of innovation, speed and hearing aids – that is, the core might reflect the values introduced by the CEO Lars Kolind.