J.H. Pieterse
Fontys University / J.M. Ulijn Open University / A. van Wagenberg Office for Human Environments andreas@officeforhuman environments.nl
Abstract - The purpose of this paper is to investigate how strategic vision of change is communicatedby managers and howthis affects the discourse behavior of service engineers. The case study describes the consequence of variations in professional discourse of managers and employees (mostly engineers) working together in a public housing foundation. The data suggest that interaction between different professionalsusing different discourses can be a source of misunderstanding. As a consequence behavior of the professional seems to impede cooperation. It is recommended that future research regarding change management should incorporate linguistic discourse analysis. Investigating social interaction processes in change programs could be done comprehensively paying attention to differences in professional cultures in cross-functional cooperation. A managerial implication of our study is that understanding differences in professional discourses reflected in communication is a constant point of attention in facilitating processes of organizational change.We argue that change programs contain both objective and subjective dimensions, of which the linguistic dimensions might give reasons for better understanding the difficulties in implementing change in new ways.
Index Terms –Discourse, Linguistics, Organizational change, Professional groups, Working cultures,Organizational culture.
Introduction
In today’s economy customers are more aware of their options, and expect tailor-made products and services. This development calls for changes in organizations’ culture and employee mentality. This paper discusses change from a discourse perspective combining change management and linguistic literature. It is argued that the role of language and discourses in change processes has not been an object of study in mainstream change management literature until now. Therefore, it is suggested to incorporate linguistics as crucial to a better understanding of change. The case study illustrates, in addition to the contemporary literature on change, that change processes and difficulties with cooperating in a specific change project can be related to unarticulated misunderstanding ofprofessional discourses. The theoretical contribution of this study is that we combine change management literature with linguistic literature about professional discourse. In this way we provide an original approach to analyzing change processes by concluding that in interactions between professionals unarticulated differences in discourse can be a reason for a lack of cooperation and change. Often studies about discourse analysis of organizational change take a ‘vertical’, hierarchical perspective. We additionally investigate the horizontal dimension of interaction involving peer groups. The methodological contribution of our study lies in the simultaneous use of different discourse measurement tools. We performed word-count analyses on written texts and discourse analyses on speech acts, negotiation styles as well as conversation styles. Using these tools together and analyzing the research data in both a quantitative and qualitative way enabled us to uncover the sense makings processes among different professionals.The value added by the study lies in the linguistic analysis of a case study involving the implementation of a management vision on customer orientation of employees in a Dutch public housing foundation. Differences in professional discourse and professional cultures of management and employees participating in the change process are discussed. Techniques from linguistics and change management research were applied to study the ‘shift’ in behavior as a technical employee becomes customer oriented.
Despite all the research and literature about organizational change and change management effective organizational changes are rare [1,2,3]. Several studies indicate that most change efforts are not maintained, and that change should ideally continue until objectives are achieved [4]. Recent statistics, derived from a global survey of businesses by two McKinsey consultants, reveal that only one-third of organizational change efforts were considered successful by their leaders [3]. Nearly two-thirds of all change efforts failed [5], whilst one of the world’s leading management consultancies, Bain & Co, claims the general failure rate is around 70 per cent [1]. Within Dutch organizationsmore than 70% of the change efforts were not completed on time, within budget or achieved the expected results [6].‘This is perhaps why managers consistently identify the difficulty of managing change as one of the key constraints on the increased competitiveness of their organizations’ [1].To summarize, we see reasons why change fails in goals and strategy, culture and leadership, technology and systems, (political) behavior, resistance to change, and skills, and finally in the change management process itself [7].
Considering the different reasons mentioned above for failure and/or success we conclude that change processes in organizations do not work out well in terms of generating and sustaining positive effects that are accepted and valued by both managers and employees. Until now change management studies have not yet been able to fully explain the reasons for failure or suggest possible solutions. ‘To many, this must seem paradoxical. On the one hand, there is now more advice (e.g. consultancy, scientific and business literature) on how to manage change than ever before. On the other hand, the failure rate of change initiatives is astronomical’ [1].
Literature review
In the literature review we focus on change management,discourse and language use. We describe two perspectives on change because, depending on the change approach, the function of conversations and language are quite different. After these two perspectives we focus on discourse and language use.
Change processes in organizations can work out differently to what was expected.Much research has exploredwhy change programs fail: asense of urgency for change was missing [8];the tempo of the change programs might have been too fast or too slow [5]; some leaders are too dominant[7], whereas others have indicated insufficient autonomy to finish the job [9]. Furthermore, it might that change processes fail because of insufficient readiness to adopt the change, or because the organization’s capacity for change is insufficient or because of the limitations to anchor change outcomes. On the other hand, authors also describe factors for successful change; creating a vision, developing (political) support, sustaining momentum, and employee involvement [10]. Others mention the managerial skills and the personal competencies of the change agent [11]. Change success also ‘depends heavily on the organization being ready for change’[10].Readiness for change has beendefined in the literature in various ways.However, elements like willingness, motives, realistic aims and also beliefs regarding the appropriateness ofsupport for, and value of the change are considered important [12]. Alsosignificant are‘sensitivity to pressures for change, dissatisfaction with the status quo, availability of resources to support change, and commitment of significant management time’ [10].
Different perspectives on change
Although many failure/success factors are mentioned, and knowing that the failure rate is high for organizational change “the planned approach to change has been, and remains, highly influential, not just in the USA but across the world. This is still far and away the best developed, documented and supported approach to change” [1].“The ‘danger’ of Lewin’s planned change approach is the emphasis that the consultant is the provider of expertise that the organization lacks. This might lead to passiveness of the change adopters who become recipients of external, supposedly, objective guidance towards the‘correct’ solution” [1].
Recently, in research attention has been focused on how change is perceived and experienced by change participants (both managers and employees) and how this determines the relative success of the change process. Success is not determined by how change is described, explained, or understood by academics but by how it is experienced and what it means to those directly affected [13]. The same change may be viewed and appreciated by different recipients and actors in quite diverse ways. When people undergo change, it is filtered through their own preferences and appreciated and accepted, or resisted accordingly [13]. Organizational change is perceived as a result of sense-making processes undergone by the actors involved. In these interaction processes factors like emotions [14] and power [15] are ‘central features of change, but they arise from the socially constructed nature of organizational life’[1]. ‘In a sociallyconstructed world, responsibility for environmental conditions lies with those who do the constructing’ [16]. This latest perspective on organizational change creates new insights into the dynamics leading to change. The ‘senders’ and ‘receivers’ of change, seen in the planned change approach, are now considered as ‘holistic’ groups. The way change unfolds is based on how all participants communicate and converse about the transition they are experiencing [17]. In other words, social interaction and sense making processes of change are of key importance in the intra- and inter- professional dialogue of all participants. For example the complexity perspective ‘rejects cause-and-effect, top down, command-and-control styles of management’ [1]. Many others [18,19,20,21] point out that the consequences of change interventions for those who are participating in making sense of these interventions plays a central role.
This study does not consider one perspective superior to another . ‘Organizations come in all shapes and sizes, provide a vast variety of products and services, and face an enormous array of challenges’ [1]. Planned changewas considered to be the best way of managing change, and many organizations still use this approach. However, in a world of rapid and unpredictable change, this approach was criticized. The complexity perspective can be seen as the opposite in a ‘change-continuum’ and ‘has also been criticized for its over-emphasis on the political dimension of change and its view that all organizations operate in a dynamic and unpredictable environment [1].
Discourse and language use
In all change approaches managers and employees need to communicate. In the planned change approach this might have a ‘top-down character’ whilst the complexity perspective might see organizational change as ‘an ongoing improvisation enacted by organizational actors trying to make sense of and act coherently in the world’ [1]. A key term in this perspective is ‘discourse’ [22,23]. Discourse analysis provides an alternative approach for studying organizational change management [22], and it has become an important methodological instrument in organization studies [24,25,26]. Organizational discourse can be defined as “the structured collections of texts embodied in the practices of talking and writing that bring organizationally related objects into being as these texts are produced, disseminated and consumed” [26]. This perspective is based on the idea that organizations are made up out of discourse [23]. That is, organizational communication leads to narratives which are made and remade, and are combinations of “talk” in formal (e.g. meetings, public discourse) and informal (e.g. coffee breaks, sub-public discourse) settings. Language is regarded as a vehicle to construct meaning instead of a medium to transmit information [27]. However, language is an essential part of individual and collective sense-making processes. Talks, conversations, and use of language are expressions of one’s beliefs, and reflect the social community of practice to which one belongs. Most functionally oriented organizations contain various discourses [28]. In fact, each professional develops his own professional language based on education and experience, which is further developed by interacting with peers.
Discourse analysis of organizational change has been undertaken mostly from a ‘vertical’, hierarchical perspective. For instance language and rhetorical strategies top managers use to convince lower level employees of the importance of change projects have been studied in two research projects [29,30]. Furthermore, discrepancies between management and employee discourses with regard to change endeavorshave been identified in other studies, which reveal the tug of war between professional groups[31,32,33,34]. This tension is reflected in discourses, and has implications for the (in)effectiveness of organizational change.
Discourse problems also emerge in the horizontal dimension of interaction, involving peer groups, e.g., project team members of different departments who have to cooperate in projects. When people from different professional backgrounds interact, the same words might be interpreted differently, which prohibits the development of shared mental models. Conversations continue without real mutual understanding, leading to confusion. The confusion fuels negative emotions and resentment, which in turn might lead to ‘mental withdrawal’, i.e. not being receptive to the ideas of others, declassification and negative thinking about ‘the other’. From then on cooperation is difficult, proposed changes meet resistance, and the change project is doomed to fail.
An important condition for convergence of meaning is the ability of people to reflect on their own and the other parties’ discourses, so that they can adjust their language in response to its effects on other parties. This ‘cooperative principle’ suggests that participants expect a “conversational contribution such as required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which they are engaged” [35]. We address here the four maxims which result from this main principle. People should agree to cooperate when they engage in change processes in an organization. The “conversational implications are being essentially connected with certain features of discourse”. Attention in conversations should be on four categories; quantity, quality, relation and manner which we all study. However, characteristic for professional communities is their collective use of a specific set of discourses, concepts, analytic reasoning styles and perhaps cooperative principles. Moreover, typically loyalty of professionals is geared towards their own colleagues who speak the same language and have the same mindset. This loyalty will cause professionals to orient themselves primarily on the discourse and language of their fellows, instead of members of other professional communities. This is known as “the social stock of knowledge’ in which ‘my knowledge of my own occupation and its world is very rich and specific, while I have only very sketchy knowledge of the occupational worlds of others” [36].
The outcome of not understanding each other’s thoughts and discursive worlds can cause cooperative change efforts to break down, ending in frustrated professionals who refuse to take the interests of the others seriously. In this study we analyze the vertical as well as the horizontal dimension of discourse dynamics. We regard management as a professional group using a specific discourse in addition to other professional groups that have their own discourses. In our view, the misalignment of these discourses can be a major source for failure of change processes in organizations. We argue that this misalignment is related to differences in professional values, mindsets and assumptions about the identity of other professional groups.
Methodology and data collection
We adopted a qualitative research design aimed at describing the communication among professionals during a change process. This allowedus to develop insights that may be hard to acquire through the use of other research designs employing survey data or public documentation [37,38]. A discourse analysis provides in-depth insights into the causes of change failure and/or success. Our case involved the development and implementation of a strategic vision for service engineers of a housing foundation in the Netherlands. The change process wasintensively followed over a period of nearly three years (2008-2010) using participatory action research, in which the researcher worked closely with internal consultants, and participated in and/or observed the change process. This case was chosen because it provided a setting in which professionals on different organizational levels (e.g. management, staff, shop floor) interact during a change process.
Data was gathered from(1) eleven semi-structured interviews (2) desk research, (3) observation of five interactive training sessions, (4) three informal meetings with employees, and (5) a meeting with the management team after the training sessions. The interviews took between 30 minutes and 90 minutes. Transcripts of interviews were validated by interviewees. The interviews allowed us to collect in-depth narratives of the professionals perceptions of the change process. The desk research included an analysis of strategic documents. We observed five interactive training sessions organized by the internal consultant and discussions and presentations given by employees and managers as well. The researcher (one of the authors of this article) observed and made notes. In addition, notes were made of one informal discussion and then coded and analyzed (see Appendix A).
Syntagmatic and semantic data collection
Strategic documents as well as interview transcripts were analyzed using syntagmatic analysis with WordSmith. Syntagmatic analyses of written texts analyze structure on the sentence level and relationships between discursive parts, which reveal the underlying conventions [39]. Additionally, semantic analyses were performed on the notes taken of informal meetings. Semantic analyses were used to identify meaning of humans in their use [40,41]. Attention was paid to (1) typical speech acts, including assertives,directives, commissives, expressives and declarations, based on speech act theory [40,41]; (2) negotiation style, including cooperativeness and non-cooperativeness; (3) communication style, including meta communication and general utterances[39]; and (4) conversation style, including initiative, understanding, performance and closure [17]. Table 1below provide the definitions. Whereas these analytical foci are mostly used separately in linguistic analysis, we combine them to provide a comprehensive insight into the interaction dynamics of professional groups.
TABLE 1: Definitions used in linguistic analysis
Speech acts: [17,40,]Assertives / Claims supported by evidence, true and false statements
Directives / Request, to get someone to do something (e.g. invitations, instructions, orders and commands)
Commissives / Promises or natural responses to a request committing a future action
Expressions / An affective state (e.g. worries, apologies, personal problems)
Declarations / Create a new set of opening conditions
Negotiation style:[39]
Non cooperative / The use ofutterances that criticize,denies, disapprove, object, reject, show indignation and/or irritation
Cooperative / The use of utterances that
Communication style: [39]
General / This supporting kind of speech acts use utterances that ask for understanding, confirmation, information to explain, request, stipulate and/or suggest
Meta communication / This supporting kind of speech acts use utterances that conclude, close, engage, offer, promise, remind, repeat, resume and/or specify
Conversation style: [17]
Initiative phase / This phase relies on assertions, directives, commissives and declarations
Understanding phase / Are generally characterized by assertions and expressives. Claims are made, evidence and testimony given, hypotheses examined, beliefs and feelings explored, and contentions maintained
Performance phase / An interplay of directives (requests) and commissives (promises) spoken to produce a specific result
Closure phase / Are characterized by assertions, expressives, and declarations to bring about an end to the interaction process
Data analysis