Organizational Change and Relational Resources


Book Description

Transitioning organizations to the new normal following environmental shocks, economic upheavals and technological innovations is a challenge to classic organizational management, because no single organization knows with precision what the target of change is. Resources created and operated in relationships can support the organization in overcoming its constraints, changing faster, and adapting better. This book takes a relational perspective on how organizations adjust and adapt to their turbulent environment. Drawing from a broad literature and empirical studies, this book offers novel insights into how businesses create, grow, and manage relationships with partners to support strategic change. It discusses the benefits of cooperating with partners and relying on shared resources, while controlling relational risks. It presents key relational processes including organizational intelligence, open culture, knowledge sharing routines, motivation, co-creation, and communication. It discusses focus areas: longevity of family firms, improving health and safety in medical services, crisis management, public administration reforms, and relational risk management. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and students in the fields of organizational studies, organizational change, technology, and innovation management. Managers and entrepreneurs can find inspiration, motivation, and strategies for implementing and managing relationships along the value chain.




Relational Inequalities


Book Description

Organizations are the dominant social invention for generating resources and distributing them. Relational Inequalities develops a general sociological and organizational analysis of inequality, exploring the processes that generate inequalities in access to respect, resources, and rewards. Framing their analysis through a relational account of social and economic life, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Dustin Avent-Holt explain how resources are generated and distributed both within and between organizations. They show that inequalities are produced through generic processes that occur in all social relationships: categorization and their resulting status hierarchies, organizational resource pooling, exploitation, social closure, and claims-making. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, Tomaskovic-Devey and Avent-Holt focus on the workplace as the primary organization for generating inequality and provide a series of global goals to advance both a comparative organizational research model and to challenge troubling inequalities.




Organizational Change, Leadership and Ethics


Book Description

Organizations and societies are facing extreme challenges that require action (IPCC, 2021). The UN's sustainability goals, demographic change, and the green shift are knocking on the door, while traditional education, and ways of leading and managing this development, often fail to keep up. Organizational Change, Leadership and Ethics challenges leadership orthodoxy, assumptions, and myths currently preventing the further development of theory and practice. It encourages intelligent disobedience in support of greater leadership capabilities and capacity in organisations and societies. As such, the book is written for everyone who wants to be MAD – to Make A Difference - students, scholars, and practitioners alike. Chapter 5 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license




Organizational Behaviour and Change Management


Book Description

Humans are social animals, and change is a social process. To understand this social process and explain the thoughts, feelings, and behaviours of individuals, knowledge of how the presence of others influences people is crucial. In this regard, bias is a concept with a lot of potential. Because cognitive and social biases influence human thinking, feelings, and behaviour, these provide insights and knowledge that are helpful, if not essential, for the field of organizational behaviour and change management. The preceding statements may seem obvious and self-evident, but practice as well as science show that they are neither. Organizational Behaviour and Change Management: The Impact of Cognitive and Social Bias aims at unleashing the potential of cognitive and social biases to develop a more effective change management theory and practice. To do so, we analysed and assessed thousands of scientific articles. The most prominent biases are structured by using a practical and comprehensible framework based on five core social motives (belonging, understanding, controlling, trusting, and self-enhancing). With its evidence-based, systematic, and integrative approach, this book provides scientists and practitioners in the field of organizational behaviour and change management with the best-available evidence, linking biases to organizational behaviour and change and further enriching the field of change management.




Transforming Relationships for High Performance


Book Description

A guide to using positive organizational change to do more with less, from the acclaimed author of The Southwest Airlines Way. Whether from customers, supply-chain partners, policymakers, or regulators, organizations in virtually every industry are facing calls to do more with less. They are feeling compelled to provide higher-quality outcomes, more rapidly, at a lower cost. This book offers a road-tested approach for delivering these outcomes through positive organizational change. Its message comes just in time—for too many companies have gone the way of low-road strategies, such as cutting pay and perks, and working harder not smarter. Drawing on her pathbreaking research, Jody Hoffer Gittell reveals that high performance is fundamentally relational—rooted in both human and social capital. Based on this insight, she provides a unique model that will help companies build meaningful relationships among colleagues, develop smarter work processes, and design organizational structures fit for today’s pressure test. By following four organizations on their change journeys, she illustrates how “relational coordination” unfolds in real-world settings. In addition, tools for change guide readers as they learn how to implement this new model in their own workplaces.




Organizational Cognition


Book Description

Cognition is usually associated with brain activity. Undoubtedly, some brain activity is necessary for it to function. However, the last thirty years have revolutionized the way we intend and think about cognition. These developments allow us to think of cognition as distributed in the sense that it needs tools, artifacts, objects, and other external entities to allow the brain to operate properly. Organizational Cognition: The Theory of Social Organizing takes this perspective and applies it to the organization by introducing a model that defines the elements that allow cognition to work. This model shows that cognition needs the combined and simultaneous presence of micro aspects—i.e. the biological individual—and macro super-structural elements—e.g. organizational climate, culture, norms, values, rules. These two become practice of cognition as they materialize in a meso domain—this is any action that allows individuals to perform their daily duties. Due to the micro-meso-macro interactions, this has been called the 3M Model. Most of what happens in the meso domain relates to exchanges between two or more people, i.e. it is a social activity. This is usually mentioned in the perspectives above, but it is rarely explored. By bringing meso activities to the center of cognition, the book develops and presents the Theory of Social Organizing. Not only this is useful to organizational scholars, but it also opens a new path for cognition research.




Digital Technology and Organizational Change


Book Description

This book includes a selection of the best research papers presented at the annual conference of the Italian chapter of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), which took place in Verona, Italy in October 2016. Tracing various aspects of the ongoing phenomenon of evolution towards a global society, and consequently the ever-innovating digital world, it first discusses emerging technologies and the new practices in the information-systems world. It then examines the new businesses and ongoing business transformations. Lastly, it considers the economic and societal changes brought about by access to and exploitation of socio-technical networks. The plurality of views offered makes the book particularly relevant for users, companies, scientists and governments.




Agency, Change and Learning


Book Description

Despite the plethora of books on change, there appears a notable gap in the field; rarely is the authentic and candid voice of change agents heard. How often do academics or practitioners candidly state what they actually do when they are faced with managing change in their own organisations or when they are called on in a consultancy capacity? In this new book, the editors bring together a diverse group of contributors who have worked as Internal Change Agents in organizations to divulge what they really do and think about change. The authors draw on their own research work involving change agents and their change interventions and include current reflections on the post-Covid world of work, and the change required for achieving change interventions successfully. Each contribution offers perspectives from real change programmes, in both the public and private sector, offering a unique opportunity to move beyond theory and understand change in practice. The book offers valuable insights for academics and students of organisational change and behaviour, leadership and organisational development.




The Relational Imperative: Resources for a World on Edge


Book Description

We enter an era of the unknown - global conditions move with unprecedented speed, unpredictably, disruptively, and uncontrollably. Conflict is unceasing and increasingly polarized. Global warming and the spread of deadly diseases are a threat to all. How are we to go on? One thing is clear: in these perilous conditions working together is imperative. As Gergen advances in this clear and compelling work, successful collaboration requires a radical transformation in our understanding of relationships. So long as we cling to the view that relationships are made up of separate entities - persons, communities, organizations or nations - our survival will be threatened. Rather, as Gergen proposes, we must reverse our understanding: it is out of the process of relating that emerge what we take to be the entities and their character. Care for the entities must be replaced by care for the process. This brief introduction to a relational perspective is bountifully illustrated with innovative practices - in education, healthcare, organizational development, peace building and more. All function to enhance well-being through relational process.




Implementing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Management in Organizational Change Initiatives


Book Description

The social and political changes of this era have created a climate change and fundamental shift in how businesses view the impact of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in the workplace. It is essential to understand how leaders make significant, sustainable changes utilizing communication abilities, envisioning, conflict management skills, and innovative DEIB initiatives. However, leaders must be careful not to rely on anecdotal evidence as it does not always reflect DEIB realities. Implementing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Management in Organizational Change Initiatives analyzes how leaders implement DEIB organizational change initiatives. It provides an interdisciplinary perspective of how issues and challenges pertaining to DEIB management affect organization performance. Covering topics such as inclusive organizational identity, socio-intercultural entrepreneurship, and supplier diversity programs, this book is an indispensable resource for business leaders, managers, entrepreneurs, academic administration, students and educators of higher education, government officials, researchers, and academicians.