Papers

Long Range Planning, Vol. 19, No. 6, pp. 105 to 115, 1986 Printed in Great Britain

0024-6301/86 $3.00 + .OO Pergamon Journals Ltd.

105

Managing Integrated
Colin A. Carnal1

Strategic Change: Approach

An

This paper sets out to identify and discuss an integrated approach to the management of strategic changes. Managing effectiveness, dealing with organizationalcultures andmanagingorganizational politics are discussed, focusing upon how to do so in order to encourage risk-taking, creativity and learning and to build self-esteem and performance. Such an approach allows the achievement of major changes in ways which lead to employees developing a fuller understanding of the nature of the business, its problems and its future.

Introduction
Implementing organizationalchange effectively. This is one of the managerial challenges facing all of us. In both the private sector and the public sector, in manufacturing, banking, health care and education, this challenge is presented, often in very stark circumstances. We are concerned about value for money, the development and marketing of new products and services, flexibility, whether of design and manufacture (throughcomputer-aided design, robots, flexible manufacturing systems), or in organizational structure and managerial style. We are increasingly concerned about product/service performance and quality. Customers and clients are ever more vocal and critical. Often they can ‘vote with their feet’. If the automobile I buy tomorrow performs poorly and unreliably 1 am unlikely to buy that make again. Ineducation we talk of ‘parent involvement’, of ‘parent power’. The central focus of management is switching from internal concerns and the development of professional disciplines in isolation. For example, engineering designers, who might once have sought optimum technical solution alone, are paying real attention to design as a synthesis of technical, commercial, product and aesthetic considerations. Allorganizations face challenges like these. A foodThe author is Director of the MBA Programme at Henley-The Management College. He previously worked in the mechanical engineering industry.

processing firm faces social changes such as new attitudes to diet, commodity market pressures, as supply problems mount, competitive pressures and the problems of bringing up to date what had been a companywhich had always been paternalistically managed. Banks face de-regulation, technological change and an increasingly international competition. Health and education face pressures for greater accountability, both for the use of resources, and for the quality of the services they provide. Can the professional autonomy of doctors and teachers company remain unchanged ? An engineering (manufacturingpackaging machinery) develops marketing and new products and leads a drive for quality as a means of re-building its position in world markets. Analysed simply we could divide the concern over the management of major changes into two main questions. ‘What changes should we implement?’ and ‘How may we implement them successfully?’ To develop answers to these questions requires specific skills. Todiagnose the need for change. To audit performance. To develop a vision of improvement. To describe or define new strategy. Achieving change also requires the skill to get things done, to achieve action. It is often disturbing and disruptive. By definition change upsets the ‘status quo’. Leadership is central because to achieve effective organizational change requires us to elevate analysis overconsensus. Easy options are in short supply! Implementing major organizational change demands the combination of action and analysis into a new managerial synthesis. In this paper we propose to discuss this new managerial synthesis necessary for effective change. We propose to develop two main themes as follows: What are the managerial skills required for effective organizational change? We will...