2	Context, Culture and Politics: The Development of Strategic Change

A central conclusion of the previous chapter was that the theory and practice of change in organisations would continue to remain as circumscribed and ill-developed as it has been for as long as change is studied and thought about as episodes and projects separate from the ongoing processes of continuity and change of which those change projects are a part. The episodic, or project and programme, view of change has treated innovations as if they had a clear beginning and a clear end and divorced change not only from its antecedent conditions, but also from the more immediate and distant context which supplies the enabling conditions for the changes’ birth, a framework of opportunity and constraint to guide its development and continuing legitimisation; and possibly still further conditions to bring about the demise of the change. Implicit also within this acontextual treatment of change, has been the failure to ask the kind of how and why questions about the dynamics and processes of innovation from which would emerge empirical patterns and theoretical propositions not just about change, but about the patterns and dynamics of changing. These methodological and analytical omissions and their theoretical and empirical consequences add up to rather more than a discussion of scholarly niceties; they also have had a profound impact on the practice of change. Nord (1974:567) has made this point with some eloquence: “the impotence of the modern human resource management strategies stems, at least in part, from the failure of their adherents to recognize that their own givens are the same forces which produced and continue to sustain the situation they wish to change.” A major objective of this research on change in ICI is to use the available depth of contextual data, and extended sequence of longitudinal data, in order to offer a comparative analysis which provides an expanded focus on changing, which gives a central explanatory place to many of the givens in the existing research on change. Chief amongst these will be the role of business and economic factors outside the firm and historical, cultural, and political processes inside the firm, together with the interplay between those two sets of contextual variables, as providers of both the necessary and sufficient conditions for continuity and change.

The central, guiding theoretical influence on this research is the author's continuing work on organisations as systems and subsystems of political action (Pettigrew, 1972, 1973, 1975a, b, 1977, 1979, 1980). The possibilities and limitations of change in any organisation are influenced by the history of attitudes and relationships between interest groups in and outside the firm, and by the mobilisation of support for a change within the power structure at any point in time. The impact of OD in ICI will be examined as part of an analysis which takes into account not only the beliefs and actions of internal and external OD consultants and their clients, but also the varying organisational cultures and power structures which exist in different parts of ICI, and the capacities of the OD interventions to acquire legitimacy or disfavour from associations with such cultures and political processes. The outcomes of debates about specialist or managerial-led changes in the firm are, therefore, a consequence not just of rational problem-solving processes, or of the weight of technical evidence and analysis, or even just managerial drives for efficiency and effectiveness, though on the surface the custom and practice of persuasion may dictate that initiatives for change are publicly justified in the above ways. Rather changes are also a product of processes which recognise historical and continuing struggles for power and status as motive forces, and consider which interest groups and individuals may gain and lose as proposed changes surface, receive attention, are consolidated and implemented, or fall from grace before they ever get off the ground.

Furthermore, it is important that such intraorganisational processes are not only studied comparatively through time but also with a frame of reference which recognises the enabling and constraining circumstances of changing business, political and economic contexts. Questions are asked in this research not only about how changing economic circumstances in the United Kingdom over the period 1960–83 impacted on different divisions of ICI, but also how different kinds of economic circumstances influenced the quality of relationships and balance of power between management and trade unionists, and the repercussions of changing power balances on the timing and processes of managing change. Connections will also be made between the differing levels of economic performance of the ICI divisions and the birth, evolution, impact, and development of OD groups and their activities, and ultimately on the substance and timing of strategic changes in ICI.

Finally it is recognised that organisations exist in a societal context which is itself undergoing change. The content of OD work, its techniques, language, values, and the systems of justification used to give it legitimacy have changed in ICI over the period 1965–83. Social and political commentators of various persuasions have noted the rise of optimistic, idealistic values about people and progress in Western democracies in the 1960s, and their displacement by tougher more pragmatic rationalities in the 1970s and early 1980s. An attempt will be made in this book to connect over time the processes of legitimisation and delegitimisation which have surrounded OD activities in ICI, both to reports by commentators and academics of changes in UK society, and to the perceptions of the actors in the change processes that they themselves were indeed actors in and users of a wider social and economic context.

Given the unsatisfactory way the existing literature on organisational change and development has been connected both to developments in organisation theory and analysis and to broader thinking in the social sciences this chapter will begin by placing the novel analytical approach in this research within a brief and critical review of the field of organisation theory and behaviour. The implication of connecting this work to more general trends in organisational analysis is that the historical, processual, and contextual character of this research may have something to say not only to some of the premature critics of the field of organisation theory, but also positively contribute to the general development of the field outside this particular topic of strategic organisational change and organisation development. After the necessarily brief attempt to connect this work with some general analytical trends in the field of organisation theory and behaviour, the backbone of this chapter will lay out in detail the frame of reference, levels of analysis, and study questions of the present research.

CRITICISMS OF ORGANISATION THEORY AND BEHAVIOUR

Even a cursory glance at recent academic journals and books in the linked fields of organisation behaviour and theory indicates there is a growing industry of criticism. (Benson, 1977a; Clegg and Dunkerley, 1977; Weinstein, 1979; Salaman, 1979). Some of these critics follow familiar enough paths. Thus Weinstein (1979) asserts that while covering their pronouncements and theories in the sheep's clothing of organisations as purely neutral administrative entities, most organisation theorists adopt the problems and perspectives of management as a predominant bias. Clegg and Dunkerley (1977:3) meantime attack organisation theory for its simple-minded positivism, where organisational life ends up being “analyzed, paralyzed, and reduced to a series of quantifiable variables”. Roberts et al. (1978:136) take up and extend the positivist theme: “The continued emphasis on narrower and narrower views of responses made by individuals in organisations, concentration on individual differences to the exclusion of environmental effects, or concentration on organisational variables to the exclusion of individual differences or societal variables, will generate more precise knowledge about increasingly trivial matters”. Meanwhile Crozier and Friedberg (1980:2) with true French elan criticize the cross-sectional statistical methods of American organisational sociologists, the crude attempts to develop organisational laws, the unduly deterministic nature of structural contingency theorists, and the inappropriateness of American theorising and about organisation, first of all for French conditions, and then for American organisations as well!

Now even the above collection of gratuitous swipes have their value, not just because of the kernel of truth which exists in them all, but because they represent an attempt to begin a critical tradition in organisational analysis where none has existed before. If organisation theory is to emerge from a period of self-questioning of the kind which wonders how much of value do we know about organisations after the last 20 years of research, and a feeling that while much has been written, how much is actually being said, then a period of criticism of existing theories, concepts, and methods seems appropriate and beneficial.

Of the critical approaches in evidence, two seem promising to aid the theoretical refocussing of the field. One, represented by the excellent book by Burrell and Morgan (1979), offers through its paradigmatic metaphors a way of categorising and drawing out the implicit and explicit theories in use in the field, in such a way as to reveal which parts of the range of theories have been used, overused, and abused, and which available theoretical paradigms have hardly been drawn on at all. The other emerging critical tradition is either expressed through Marx's analysis of capitalism, while not being a slave to all the categories and arguments of that analysis (Benson, 1977a, b; Burawoy, 1979), or is self-consciously Marxist in its language and statement of problematic (Salaman, 1979; Esland and Salaman, 1980).

The most succinct summary of the radical structuralist attack upon organisation theory is offered by Burrell and Morgan (1979:366–367). In summary form they list the following points:

Functionalist theorists in general and organisation theorists in particular, have been accused of being the mere servants of the capitalist system; of being mindlessly empiricist; of neglecting the historical dimensions of their subject; of ignoring the whole body of social thought reflected in the works of Marx; of underplaying the importance of class relationships in contemporary society; of ignoring the importance of the state; and of adopting analytical models which are generally orientated towards the presentation of the status quo, as opposed to accounting for the phenomena of ongoing social change (Burrell and Morgan, 1979:365).

Burrell and Morgan (1979) acknowledge both that some scholars within their definition of the functionalist paradigm have criticised their colleagues on some of these grounds (cf. Silverman, 1970; Pettigrew, 1973), and that radical structuralists have not always provided a critique upon all the above grounds. Trying to be a little more specific than Burrell and Morgan (1979) it seems, for example, Burawoy (1979) concentrates his criticisms both of organisation theory and industrial sociology on their lack of historical relativism – for not restoring their timeless generalities to specific historical contexts. While Salaman (1979:7) focusses his critique on the rationalism and goal-directed-ness explicit in much of organisation theory, and the failure to understand that organisations are not just neutral goal-directed entities but “they also constitute the modern means of exploitation, domination, distraction, and knowledge construction”. Organisations are, therefore, seen as structures of control, the mechanisms through which powerful interests pursue sectional objectives. Power within organisations can only be properly understood if related to the distribution of power outside the organisation. The inequalities of organisation reflect the inequalities of the host society.

Now this is an appealing enough statement about the validity of connecting the micro- and the macro-analysis of power – yet it would have more appeal if it could be restated and empirically examined outside the logic of this simple determinism. Salaman (1979) offers no theoretical language or logical argument of why and how societal and intraorganisational power and political processes are interrelated. Where is the discussion of processual and structural mechanisms through which power outside is connected to power inside the organisation?

Yet before using this particular example of the analysis of power relationships as a vehicle for deflating Marxist attempts to bring society back in, we should consider more seriously the role of the societal level of analysis, for it is in highlighting the importance of social and economic determinants that the Marxist theoretical position has the most to say of value for the future development of organisational analysis.

Wassenberg (1977) has argued that in spite of the contribution that the famous three (Durkheim, Marx, and Weber) have made to the analysis of organisations, and in the main through forms of conceptualisation that was sensitive to social and economic forces, organisation theory has gradually lost its analytical capacity and interest in the impact of social and economic forces on organisational functioning. Wassenberg (1977) backs up this broad statement by the pertinent observation that what better example of the isolationism of organisation theory can one find than its inability to comment on how the post-1973 economic depression affected the political and economic context of organisational functioning. A central precept within this concern with social and economic forces is the Marxian concept of totality. Transferred to the study of organisations this implies that organisations can only be understood after the total social formation which provides their raison d’etre is conceptualized. For some Marxian influenced scholars this puts in doubt the very existence of the organisation as a unit of analysis, although paradoxically most of the authors who would have us abandon the ontological status of the organisational level of analysis, are quite happy to continue to use the term organisation even in the title of their books (Clegg and Dunkerley, 1977, 1980).

But given the primacy of social and economic forces, what kind of novel questions and topics emerge for examination? For Clegg and Dunkerley (1980) the expressed need is to locate the analysis of organisation process within a general theory of class structure, state power, and world capitalism. For Esland and Salaman (1980:1) the agenda for analysing

the politics of work in capitalism insists on the relationship between work structures and events, and the structure of interests and power and values in the society at large. It analyses the role of ideology in mystifying and buttressing work hierarchies and irregularities. It seeks to discover the interests that lie behind the claimed rationality and neutrality of much work-based deprivation. Most important of all, it retains and applies a sense of outrage.

So the traditional, and admittedly often bland, treatment of organisation-environment relationships within organisation theory in terms of inputs, outputs, needs, pressures, interdependencies and adaptations, is to be replaced with the vocabulary of class, interests, ideology, and the domination by state power and world capitalism. Through this language it is hoped to offer new perspectives on processes of organisational change and control, the relationships between substructural and superstructural elements of organisation, and new typologies for understanding the role of, for example, multinational corporations within the wider social formation.

This kind of macro-level problematic is both important and manifestly underutilised in thinking about organisations, and in the all-too-rare occasions it is harnessed to ethnographic studies, displays memorable analyses (Beynon, 1975; Burawoy, 1979). The problems of “critical” and “radical” organisation theory are, however, legion and many of these are traceable to the spring from which much of this thinking has emanated, the writing of Marx and his successors, developers, and protagonists. This is not the place to provide a review either of contemporary currents in Marxist theory or its potential applicability to organisational analysis; the former has been attempted recently by Burawoy (1978), and the latter by Burrell and Morgan (1979), and Clegg and Dunkerley (1980). Given, however, the central place that a broad contextual analysis incorporating economic, political, and business forces outside the firm, and conflicts and power relations within the organisation have to play in the theory of change represented in this work, some critical treatment of Marxian attempts to link superstructural and substructural elements of organisation is both relevant and necessary. This is all the more important for as we shall see many of the analytical weaknesses of radical organisation theory's attempts to deal with environment and change are also shared by two of the more recent attempts to conceptualise organisation–environment relationships found in “conventional” organisation theory. I have in mind here, the theoretical writing on organisation–environment relationships and organisation change offered by Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) and Aldrich (1979).

The Marxist theory of history, resting as it does on the derivation of social structures and conditions from the economic relations of production, has always been vulnerable both to accusations of determinism and the harsh but realistic unfolding of events. Isaiah Berlin (1974) in a brilliantly eloquent essay on historical inevitability fires so many intellectual darts into the sagging intellectual ballon of Marxist determinism that I am spoiled with choice for a quotation. Thus, while Marx has been careful to acknowledge that men and women make history, he has also been firm in stating that it is under conditions not of their own choosing. This provides Berlin (1974:169) with his spring-board

when Hegel and after him Marx, describe historical processes, they too assume that human beings and their societies are part and parcel of a wider nature, which Hegel regards as spiritual, and Marx as material, in character. Great social forces are at work of which only the acutest and most gifted individuals are ever aware . . . from time to time the real forces – impersonal and irresistable – which truly govern the world develop to a point where a new historical advance is due.

This notion of history and change behind men's backs is too much for Berlin (1974:164)

the puppets may be conscious and identify themselves happily with the inevitable process in which they play their parts; but it remains inevitable, and they remain marionettes.¹

However, as many scholars have noted, Marxism has long overtaken Marx, and there are now a plethora of Marxist alternatives, some of whom – for example Althusser (1969) and Bukharin (1965) – continue to assume that actions and historical events are determined fundamentally by the social formations in which they are located, while others – for example Salaman (1979) – attribute less weight to the ownership of the means of production, acknowledging in the face of empirical reality that variations occur between and within capitalist societies, regions, and even particular industrial plants.

This recognition of the variable expression of capitalist influences in differing contexts has not been picked up and analytically utilised by those scholars who explore two of the other key themes in the Marxist problematic, the role of the world system and the state, in creating hegemony. According to Wallerstein (1974), not only has capitalism pervaded the social and organisational life of Western societies, it has also become a world system, “an expressed totality, in which each nation is subordinated to and devastated by the expansion of capitalism” (Burawoy, 1978:52). The state has appeared as a macro-level variable in Marxian analysis to help to explain, or rather account for, the lack of appearance of the Marxist prognosis of the demise of capitalism and the rise of socialism. Thus when the market begins to fail under monopoly capitalism, the state appears to buttress the capitalist system (O’Connor, 1973). Appealing as the notion of a world system may be, and pertinent as state intervention may appear from observing events in many European countries in the 1960s and 1970s, the problem with such categories in Marxist analysis is the crude way they are defined and the unitary and deterministic fashion in which they are applied in analysis. Thus, the term “world system” is applied in a unitary fashion in such a way as to ignore the uneven development of capitalism, and the role of factors like nationalism in responding to and resisting the development of capitalism. One has some sympathy with Crozier and Friedberg (1980:215) when they criticise “simplistic, mechanistic, overly deterministic and rigid formulas which try to compress a whole economic or social system into a phrase”.

Burawoy (1978:58) is equally adroit in pinpointing the unsatisfactory functionalism in most interventionist theories of the state. “A crisis is identified, a functional gap discovered, a contradiction revealed, and the state is invoked as the agency of restoration.” Here again an abstract category is mechanically harnessed to account for change. There is no theoretical discussion of the dynamics or process through which one level of analysis, the state, is linked to another, a particular capitalist class. “How is it that the state does what it is supposed to do? How does it secure and protect its relative autonomy? What are the mechanisms through which it preserves the hegemony of the dominant classes?” (Burawoy, 1978:59).

There are then two principal analytical problems in amongst the promise, afforded by current Marxist attempts to radicalise organisation theory. First of all what we may call the problem of vertical analysis, and second, the problem of horizontal analysis. The root cause of both the vertical and horizontal difficulties lies in the determinist modes of thought peculiar to both. Thus at the vertical level, the problem of relations between levels of analysis, inert, abstract, unitary categories such as world system, state, modes of economic production, are said to cause phenomena at lower levels of analysis through processes and mechanisms which are neither specified, illustrated, nor explained. Because the levels of analysis are theoretically connectable one has to assume that they have been connected. But they have not. At the horizontal level the problem is often one of a facile retreat to historicism. As Cohen (1980) argues, it cannot be naturally assumed that understanding the present has been logically solved just by an appeal to the past, and especially if the connection between past and present is condensed, as it often is in Marxist thought, into a single and one-directional historical trend. After all, if the present is capable of being seen in terms of crises, complications, conflicts, contradictions, and ambiguities why must the pathways from past to present be analysed in such unitary, linear fashion? Except if in Crozier and Friedman's terms (1980:245) “such theories are ultimately no more than rationalizations useful for giving clear consciences to those who thus commit themselves to blindness”.

If Marxist attempts to radicalise or bury organisation theory by positing the ontologically prior status of society in relation to organisation in any theory of social and organisational change can be found wanting on some of the above grounds, what of the recent attempts within conventional organisation theory to posit organisation – environment relationships as part of a more general theory of organisation change? In this regard we must briefly look at the two important books by Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) and Aldrich (1979).

The incorporation of thinking about environments into organisational analysis has moved some way since early attempts by Katz and Kahn (1966) using elementary notions of inputs, throughputs, and outputs to focus attention on the open systems characteristics of organisations. The search for the next line of development after open systems analysis led to a brief and inglorious concern with grafting network analysis onto the study of interorganisational analysis (Evan, 1972; Negandhi, 1975), but the inert, actionless brand of functionalism in open systems theory, and the equally mechanical attempts to codify and measure inter-organisational relationships led nowhere. The Aldrich (1979) and Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) treatment of organisation–environment relationships are analytically very much more profound. Both books are highly contextualist in orientation, arguing that the birth and survival of organisations is highly problematic, and that survival and change can only be understood with reference to environmental characteristics and management.

Resting as it does on a population ecology, or natural selection model, the Aldrich (1979) book shares many of the problems of determinism identified in the Marxist treatment of the environment, although the links between populations of organisations and the organisation as the unit of analysis is treated in far more analytical detail by Aldrich. Although Aldrich (1979) argues for a balanced viewpoint between the importance of environmental constraints and individual choice in explaining organisational change, his treatment of change at the population level is consistently determinist. Change merely evolves from natural external conditions in the environment. This kind of analysis of change may be very powerful, of course, for as long as the analysis is kept at the macro- or population level, and for as long as the time frame of analysis is very long. But as soon as one of these conditions is relaxed, for example, taking the analysis down to the micro-level, it may be possible to trace the historical roots of change to the outcomes of past choices, and behaviours of individuals, interest groups, and organisations (Van de Ven, 1979). Such an analysis has been offered by Miles (1982) in his historical study of the strategic choices made by six major US tobacco companies as they faced the antismoking campaign. Apart from a useful discussion of market characteristics and economic concentration, there is no extended discussion in the Aldrich (1979) book of the impact of economic trends and fluctuations, or societal trends and values, on intra-organisational change processes.

The Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) book is much more avowedly action- and voluntaristic-orientated in its treatment of the relationship between organisations and their environment, and in this sense is much closer to the frame of reference being adopted in this book. Although emphasis is given to constraints in the social context, “management” is seen to have the capacity both to adjust and alter the social context surrounding the organisation and facilitate the organisation's adjustment to its context. Boundaries are placed on this capacity by a view of organisational process which recognizes the coalitional nature of management action, and the perceptual and information-processing limitations of individual actors. Thus once the organisational coalitions sort themselves out, “the organisation responds to what it perceives and believes about the world” (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978:89).

In spite of the heavy emphasis on the language of social context in relation to environment, the actual definition of environment used in the book either concentrates on behavioural processes, or confines the environment of a local organisation largely to the activities of other organisations. Thus the Marxist critique (Salaman, 1979), that organisation theorists continue to see organisations just in terms of other organisations and not in terms of the wider social and economic context in which they are embedded, is an accusation which still sticks with the Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) treatment of environment. To be fair, though, to Pfeffer and Salancik (1978), although their definitions of environmental boundary (page 32) and levels of environment (page 63) are limited, the logic of their own approach eventually takes them, at least partially, beyond other organisations as the focal point for environmental analysis. In a chapter on the created environment they conclude that when the problems stemming from interdependence are otherwise unmanageable, or when the resources necessary to achieve coordinated action are widely dispersed, organisations will attempt to use the larger power of the political, legal, and social environment (1978:222). Except, however, for a brief but useful discussion of social legitimacy, again there is little treatment of societal trends and social values, or of economic fluctuations, as a core part of the environment of the organisation influencing broad intraorganisational processes and organisational change. Instead, organisational change is seen to be related to some of the limited conditions associated with administrative succession.

ANALYTICAL BEARINGS: LINKING CONTEXT, PROCESS, AND ORGANISATIONAL CHANGING

The reader may recall the critical review of the literature on organisational change and development in Chapter 1 of this book highlighted that literature's ahistorical, acontextual, and aprocessual treatment of change as its principal shortcoming. Mention was also made of the relative isolation of the organisational change literature from developments in conventional organisation theory; although given that organisation theory has itself often been criticized for its timeless and contextless generalities, by for example, Pettigrew (1973, 1979), and Benson (1977a), perhaps the answers to the change literature's difficulties do not lie in a hasty marriage with that particular suitor. Attention was then given to some of the critical perspectives and forms of analysis in radical organisation theory, especially insofar as their treatment of “totality” and the social and economic context of organisational functioning might assist in building upon the recent writings on organisation–environment relationships and organisational change offered by Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) and Aldrich (1979). In spite of being conceived from such disparate world views, the approaches taken to conceptualise and link social and economic context and organisation in the radical literature and in the writings of Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) and Aldrich (1979) show some common problems, and it is to the isolation and attempted resolution of these through a form of contextualist analysis that I turn now.

Central to the analytical building blocks and broader theoretical and methodological contribution of this research is an attempt to specify some of the language and conditions to link the multilevel analysis and processual analysis of organisational phenomena in what may be called a holistic, contextualist analysis. In line with the language used earlier to draw out criticisms of the radical approach to organisation theory, the multilevel will be described as the vertical form of analysis and the processual the horizontal form of analysis. The vertical level refers to the interdependencies between higher or lower levels of analysis upon phenomena to be explained at some further level, for example, the impact of a changing socioeconomic context on features of intra-organisational context and interest group behaviour; while the horizontal level refers to the sequential interconnectedness between phenomena in historical, present, and future time. An approach which offers both multilevel or vertical analysis, and processual or horizontal analysis, is said to be contextualist in character. Any wholly contextualist analysis would require the following prerequisites:

1.  A clearly delineated, but theoretically and empirically connectable set of levels of analysis. Within each level of analysis and, of course, depending on the focus of explanation there would be specified a set of categories or variables.

2.  A clear description of the process or processes under examination. Basic to the notion of a processual analysis is that an organisation or any other social system may profitably be explored as a continuing system, with a past, a present, and a future. Sound theory must, therefore, take into account the history and future of a system and relate them to the present. The process itself is seen as a continuous, interdependent, sequence of actions and events which is being used to explain the origins, continuance, and outcome of some phenomena. At the level of the actor the language of process is most obviously characterised in terms of the verb forms, interacting, acting, reacting, responding and adapting; while at the system level, the interest is in emerging, elaborating, mobilising, continuing, changing, dissolving, and transforming. The focus is on the language systems of becoming rather than of being; of actors and systems in motion.

Any processual analysis of this form requires as a preliminary the set of categories identified in point (1) above. Change processes can only be identified and studied against a background of structure of relative constancy. Figure needs ground.

3.  The processual analysis requires a motor, or theory, or theories, to drive the process, part of which will require the specification of the model of man underlying the research. Within this research on change, strong emphasis will be given both to man's capacity and desire to adjust social conditions to meet his ends, and the part played by power relationships in the emergence and ongoing development of the processes being examined. As Martins (1974) has pointed out, this view of man contained within the means-end schema of social action theory, avoids the hard determinism identified in some of the radical structuralist perspectives on organisations. Instead of some higher level variable, for example, the world system, or state, determining some lower level phenomena; the relationship between higher and lower is now analysed through a variant of causalism in which actors play parts in bounded social processes.

4.  Crucial, however, to this whole approach to contextualist analysis is the way the structural or contextual variables and categories in the vertical analysis are linked to the processes under observation in the horizontal analysis. The view taken here is that it is not sufficient to treat context either just as descriptive background, or as an eclectic list of antecedents which somehow shape the process. Neither, of course, given the continual reference to the dangers of determinism, should structure or context be seen as just constraining process. Rather this approach recognises that processes are both constrained by structures and shape structures, either in the direction of preserving them or altering them. In the past structural analyses emphasising abstract dimensions and contextual constraints have been regarded as incompatible with processual analyses stressing action and strategic conduct. Here an attempt is being made to combine these two forms of description and analysis. First of all by conceptualising structure and context not just as a barrier to action but as essentially involved in its production (Giddens, 1979; Ransom et al., 1980), and second, by demonstrating how aspects of structure and context are mobilized or activated by actors and groups as they seek to obtain outcomes important to them.

In this analytical approach to understand the origins, development, and implementation of organisational change, the interest, therefore, is in multilevel theory construction. An attempt will be made to formulate models of higher-level factors and processes, lower-level factors and processes, and the manner in which they interact. It is recognised that each level often has its own properties, processes, and relationships – its own momentum, and that while phenomena at one level are not reducible to or cannot be inferred from those at another level, a key to the analysis is tracking the interactions between levels through time. The interest is both in catching reality in flight, and in embeddedness – a return to context as a principle or method. Seeing historical processes of change as a complex dynamic system with a mixture of processes occurring at different levels and at various rates. It is in the dialogue between trends and forces in a multilevel and changing context, and the relationships, actions, and initiatives between groups and individuals seeking to adjust social conditions to meet their ends, that much organisational change – it origins, mechanisms, and forms – can be located and understood.

FIGURE 1  Components of analysis: context and process

The above represent some broad principles informing a contextualist analysis of process. But how might those principles be translated into a series of practical components to inform data collection and analysis in any particular study? Figure 1lays out in highly simplified diagrammatic form a possible series of interlinked components in a contextualist analysis. The figure indicates there are three basic elements to a contextualist analysis; the process component, the context component, and the outcome component of the process under investigation. In terms of the practical research questions of gathering data, and sorting that data into broad categories for analysis, the basic steps may be described as follows:

1.  Describe the process or processes under investigation, which, for example, may be processes of conflict, decision-making, or changing.

2.  Expose in the above descriptions any variability or constancy between the processes. This variability is, of course, represented in Figure 1 by the different curved lines.

3.  Begin the analysis of the above processes by using existing, or developing novel, theories of process.

4.  Begin the task of pinpointing the levels of analysis in the context, and some of the categories or variables in those different levels of analysis. Are, for example the levels in the context to be restricted to features of the intra-organisation context through which the processes immediately flow, or is the analysis to include aspects of the outer context such as the social and economic conditions surrounding the organisation at any point in time?

5.  Having established the levels of analysis and categories in the context, begin the task of describing and analysing any variability across the contexts through which the processes are unfolding. Seek also to describe and analyse trends and developments in the various contexts through time.

6.  Begin to consider the alternative criteria which can be used to judge the outcome of the process under study. This is a difficult practical research problem. Good sources to assist reflection in this problem are contained in the literature seeking to assess the success and failure, and other outcomes of social movement organisations (Goldstone, 1980; Gamson, 1980).

Important as the uncovering of the above components is to the success of the contextualist analysis, the key to the analysis lies in positing and establishing relationships between context, process, and outcome. In short, what are the relationships, if any, between variability in context, variability in process, and variability in outcome? It is in the craft skills in unravelling and establishing relationships between those three components of the analysis that the major benefits and principal problems of this kind of contextualist mode of analysis lie.

DATA BASE AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The setting in which any piece of empirical research is conducted, and the chosen research strategy, have a major impact on the empirical patterns which are identifiable, the frame of reference chosen to identify and analyse such empirical threads, and the nature of the theoretical developments and policy implications which follow. This research on organisational change and development has benefited enormously from being conducted in ICI. For a complex set of reasons related to its business, technological, manpower, social, and historical environment, ICI has been a pioneer in the use of OD concepts, values, and techniques in the United Kingdom. Along with a few other large British firms, many influenced initially by North American practitioners, they have helped to diffuse the techniques and precepts of OD to other UK business and public sector organisations. The research access provided in ICI, therefore, represents a unique opportunity to study the processes of initiating and implementing changes in managerial style and productivity, organisation structure and culture, union–management relationships, technological change and business strategy, in a large organisation at the forefront of attempts to make such changes happen.

An important and unusual feature of the research strategy has been the collection of comparative and longitudinal data. Interview and documentary material are available from four divisions and the head office of the company over the period 1960–83. Unique access has been provided to one of Britain's largest companies in order to ask some questions of fundamental and general interest about how corporations of this scale and size are able to build within themselves the capacity for adaptation and change in the increasingly complex and turbulent business, economic, political, and organisational conditions of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. A particular vehicle ICI has used throughout much of this period in order to stimulate organisational change has been the skills and knowledge of internal and external OD consultants. The experience of using such consultancy assistance in a variety of different organisational settings, on a number of different problems, throughout an extended period of time, will allow this book to explore the alternative strategies which exist for creating innovation in large systems. This research is also interested in the variety of ways of structuring and building innovative groups, and the factors crucial to their legitimacy and credibility through time; as well as how internal consultancy resources can be linked both with external sources of help, and to line managers who may themselves be developing initiatives and skills as managers of change.

Given the expressed interest in exploring the processual dynamics of changing in alternative contexts, attention will also be focused on the ethnography of change. What actually happens in a large organisation during periods of change? Where do ideas for change come from? Who supports the change agents, and why, and who are the opponents and doubters of change, and why? How do those interested in change attempt to get their ideas across, and what are the counter tactics of their detractors, and what impact to different organisational power systems and cultures play in such processes? In short, what are the dynamics of the process which leave one idea for change in the organisational sidings, another completely derailed, and a further one well on its way to implementation?

Looking beyond the fate of particular change episodes; and even the birth, evolution, development, and impact of groups of OD consultants within the various divisions of ICI; this book will also analyse the processes of trying to create strategic change at both the corporate and the divisional level in ICI. Here I will be addressing the most complicated and difficult questions of the study, and with due temerity will draw on not only an extensive data base of information inside and outside the company, but also the contextualist form of explanation outlined in detail earlier in this chapter. Continuity and change will be accounted for through a complex interplay of external and internal factors. Crucial amongst these will be the perceptions and leadership skills of chief executives; the enabling and constraining influences of social, economic and political change; constructed and real organisational crises; the established power structures and cultural systems in various parts of the company; the activities of interest groups inside and outside the firm and, of course, the always limited, but at times pertinent and effective role played by internal and external OD consultants.

Sources of data

Most of the data used to provide answers to the above broad questions are derived either from long semistructured interviews of company documents. The majority of the interviewing was done in late 1975, 1976, and early 1977, the latter parts of 1980 and early 1981, and again in 1982. However, these batches of interviews were also supplemented with intermittent but continuous contact with various parts of ICI from 1975 until early 1982. Some of this contact was of a straightforwardly research character, keeping the evolving story up to date and filling in gaps in the data; other interventions into the company were as a consultant. This continuous real-time data collection was enriched by retrospective interviewing and archival analysis which allowed me to go back to 1965, the date chosen to approximate the beginning of OD work in the company.

This kind of retrospective and real-time analysis of social and organisational processes presents its share of advantages, disadvantages, and threats to reliability and validity. Some of these problems and the craft skills to try and deal with them are discussed in detail in earlier historical work by the author (Pettigrew, 1973, 1979). The process of compiling the semistructured interview schedule and choosing and sequencing the interviews was similar in all the research sites. Relevant theoretical and empirical work, plus long conversations with a small group of people in ICI, were used to build up a very open and flexible set of themes and questions. These themes and questions provided the basis for an early set of individual interviews with a group of internal OD consultants, relevant external consultants, clients of these OD consultants, and people designated as power figures, at times on both the management and trade union side, in each of the five major research locations. From these early open-ended interviews a chronology of events and a further list of key personalities was identified, and a slightly more structured interview schedule prepared. Further interviews were completed with an additional set of internal and external consultants and past and present clients, together with a group of people identified from the initial interviews as supporters, doubters, and opponents of OD. Care was taken to ensure that these interviews covered people in roles at various hierarchical levels in the company, from main board director and division director, to supervisor, and also to include individuals from different functions and business areas. Where the changes involved management–trade union issues, efforts were made to acquire the perspective of the OD consultants, management representatives, and shop stewards.

Over the period 1975 to 1983 134 people were interviewed from the ICI corporate headquarters and the 4 divisions under study. However, some of these individuals were interviewed on a number of occasions and the total number of interviews for the research amounted to 175. Interestingly, of the 134 people interviewed only one refused to have his interview taperecorded. In total the interviews produced something in the order of 500 hours of tape-recorded information for analysis. The taperecorded interviews were either completely transcribed for analysis or coded directly onto 8 by 5 inch cards around predetermined and emergent categories. Data were also collected in informal conversations on journeys, over a beer, or a meal. Periods of observation in factory and office were also possible.

Various individuals in ICI have been generous in giving me access to archival material. These documents include materials on company strategy and personnel policy, documents relating to the birth and development of the various company OD groups, files documenting the natural history of key organisational changes, and information on the recruitment and training of internal OD consultants, and the use made of external OD consultants. These archival materials have provided valuable information in their own right, as well as cross-validation for statements made in interviews and conversations.

THE POLITICAL AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE ON ORGANISATIONAL PROCESS

In Chapter 1 the requirement both to review elements of the literature on strategic choice and change and to begin to alert the reader to the importance of the processual analysis of change, led to a brief description and commentary on the so-called rational, boundedly rational, incremental, and garbage can perspectives on organisational process. Also in the first Chaper, I issued a warning to the reader and myself– beware of the singular theory of choice and change. Behind this warning was the obvious desire to avoid premature theoretical ethnocentrism, expecially as I have shown the analyst of process does actually have a choice of perspective, if not theories, available. Thinking of how conceptual and empirical developments in the study of strategic choice and change could take place there are obviously a number of alternative strategies even within the process type of research favoured here. One approach is to discount ethnocentrism and pursue and refine any particular process theory, if I can be forgiven another metaphor – clip on a single powerful lamp onto the miner’s helmet and take that down into the data mine. A second strategy is to be ostensibly a more reasonable man, and go into the mine lights ablaze, looking from many perspectives of process, and hope to see and explain without being blinded by all the distractions and reflections. A third strategy is to keep in mind the different process theories, and work towards making contingent statements of, for example, where and when the different theories of process may be more or less appropriate. This strategy, of course, is already bearing some fruit, with incremental theories perhaps fitting easily alongside programmed or repetitive budgetary decisions (Davis et al., 1966); political process theories seeming to be compatible with the complexity and uncertainty of innovative decisions (Pettigrew, 1973); and garbage can approaches fitting the anarchistic loosely coupled character of educational organisations (March and Olsen, 1976; Weick, 1976). A fourth strategy, and the one favoured here, is to try and develop not only a more unified theoretical analysis, by in this case combining political and cultural views of process, but also by clarifying a methodological approach to process analysis – labelled here as contextualism, which seeks to engage a process analysis of action with features of intra-organisational and social, economic, and political context. This section of the chapter briefly tries to present a unified view of political and cultural analysis as they can be applied to strategic choice and change, and the following section discusses some of the major study questions of this research.

The frame of reference used to inform this research is a continuation and development of the author's previous work on organisations as political systems (Pettigrew, 1972,1973, 1977), and the politics of organisational change (1975a, 1980). Considering the organisation as a political system directs attention towards the factors which facilitate and hinder change and to the reasons why political energy is often released within the firm at even the prospect, never mind the reality, of change. Political processes within the firm evolve at the group level from the division of work in the organisation, and at the individual level from associated career, reward, and status systems. Interest groups form in organisations around the particular objectives, responsibilities, and intentions of functions or business areas, they also form around differences between groups at varying hierarchical levels, or around collectivities such as newcomers or old timers, or progressives and conservatives. Interest groups may also form around the issues of the day; whether to grow or not to grow; to diversify or not to diversify; to bring in new technology, or to continue to use old methods and procedures. Indeed a key part of the political process of the firm may have to do with which issues become a focus of individual or group interest and attention and move onto the stage of decision-making, and which issues are suppressed or otherwise immobilized and left in the wings, waiting for changes in the power balance of the firm and/or environmental adjustments to redirect the attention of organisational participants.

These interest groups are likely to have different goals, time orientations, values and problem-solving styles. In short, they may have different rationalities, which provide the motive forces for their actions and reactions, along with the language and styles of behaviour to express those actions. As the author has argued elsewhere (Pettigrew 1977), strategy formulation and change processes in organisations may be understood in part as the outcome of processes of competition between these rationalities expressed through the language, priorities, and values of technologists; of accounting and finance – the bottom line; or of the rather more diffuse perspectives adopted by specialist groups from planning, operational research, organisational development, or personnel.

Given the present interest in time and social process, and contextual analysis, the clear implication is that such interest group relationships are neither set in concrete, nor is their development bounded just by intra-organisational forces. While at any point in time an organisation may be dominated by a particular rationality – expressed perhaps through the interests and power positions of scientists or technologists, or finance or marketing groups, that dominance is always subject to intra-organisational and environmental changes. The micro-politics of the firm are inextricably linked to the macro-politics of the firm. Nowhere is this more clearly expressed at the moment than in tracing through how the economic policies of the Thatcher and Reagan governments are altering the resource base of many public organisations in the UK and USA and releasing new waves of micro- and macro-organisational politics.

While the concern for organisational resources is likely to be a continuing feature of organisational life, and may be expressed differently in one organisation than another, politics in organisations breed in times of change. The point about organisational changes is that to a greater or lesser degree they are likely to threaten the existing distribution of organisational resources as they are represented in salaries, promotion opportunities, and control of tasks, people, information, and new areas of a business. Additional resources may be created and appear to fall within the jurisdiction of a group or individual who had previously not been a claimant in a particular area. This group or its principal representative may see this as an opportunity to increase his power, status and rewards in the organisation. Others may see their interests threatened by the change, and needs for security or the maintenance of power may provide the impetus for resistance. In all these ways new political energy is released, and ultimately the existing distribution of power endangered.

These processes are likely to receive their more volatile expression not, as is often imagined, at the implementation of changes but during the decision to go ahead with the change (Mumford and Pettigrew, 1975). Constraints are set during the decision stage which can make resistance and manoeuvre at later stages of the change mere ritualistic gestures. The issue, therefore, is less one of where and when is political energy likely to be released than one of to what extent will it be released within the change process. Amongst other factors influencing the extent of political behaviour will be how aware individuals and groups become about resources during early discussions of the change, the actual objective redistributions of resources consequent on the change, the criticalness of the change to any group, and that group's capacity to mobilise power to protect its interests.

There is, of course, a considerable difference between awareness by an interest group of the impact of change on their position and their ability to translate that heightened awareness into effective action. Consciousness of the implications of a change may have to be tied not only to the awareness that the interest group has of its potential power resources, but also to the tactical manner with which those resources are used in negotiating the parameters of, and processes of implementation of, change. It has been suggested elsewhere that the power resources of expertise, control over information, political access and sensitivity, assessed stature and group support may be of considerable importance in making and preventing changes from happening (Pettigrew, 1975b).

More recendy (Pettigrew, 1977, 1979) this resource view of power and political process has been complemented with another perspective on organisations which seeks to draw out the synergy between a political and a cultural analysis of organisational life. The acts and processes associated with politics as the management of meaning represent conceptually the overlap between a concern with the political and cultural analyses of organisations. A central concept linking political and cultural analysis is legitimacy. The management of meaning refers to a process of symbol construction and value use designed both to create legitimacy for one's actions, ideas and demands, and to delegitimise the demands of one's opponents. Key concepts for analysing these processes of legitimisation and delegitimisation are symbolism, language, belief, and myth.

In the pursuit of our everyday tasks and objectives it is all too easy to forget the less rational and instrumental, the more expressive social tissue around us that gives those tasks meaning. Yet in order for people to function within any given setting, they must have a continuing sense of what that reality is all about in order to be acted upon. Culture is the system of such publicly and collectively accepted meanings operating for a given group at a given time. This system of terms, forms, categories and images interprets a people's own situation to themselves. Indeed what is supposed to be distinctive about man compared with other animals is his capacity to invent and communicate determinants of his own behaviour (White, 1949; Cassirer, 1953). While providing a general sense of orientation, culture treated as a unitary concept in this way lacks analytical bite. A more useful approach is to regard culture as the source of a family of concepts and to explore the role that symbolism, language, belief, and myth play in creating practical effects.

Language provides order and coherence, cause–effect relationship – rationales, in times of confusion and transition. Contextually appropriate words may be used to give legitimacy to faded causes and new ideas, or to breathe life back into established practices which are under threat. In a competitive situation there is clearly a point where ideas for change may become unsupportable, and the issue becomes not one of mobilising power for the pre-existing idea but seeing how the idea can be modified and connected to rising values and environmental priorities, so its power requirements can be assembled. Metaphors and myths help to simplify – to give meaning to complex issues that evoke concern. Myths serve also to legitimate the present in terms of a perhaps glorious past, and to explain away the pressures for change which may exist from the discrepancies between what is happening and what ought to be happening. In these various ways it may be possible for interest groups to justify continuity in the face of change, and change in the face of attempts to preserve continuity.

One of the logical problems that the political and cultural view of process potentially at least shares with other process theories, is the difficulty of demonstrating that the process does in fact produce the observed outcome. In some cases, for example, maximising and satisficing explanations, no process information is actually offered. The reader is merely expected to accept that outcomes have been produced as a result of ‘black box’ notions such as maximising and satisficing. Political explanations of outcomes can likewise end up as tautologies if, for example, it is merely inferred that the possession of a power resource such as wealth means that some individual or group is powerful. A more satisfactory explanation would in this case have to demonstrate how the possession and tactical use of some resource, for example wealth, was connected to the achievement of some practical outcome. The challenge with the political and cultural view of process is, however, much greater for here what is being proposed is not just a framework to examine front-stage decision-making and power, but also of back-stage decision-making and therefore control. The front-stage view of decision-making and power, closely resembles Lukes’ (1974) one-dimensional and two-dimensional views of power, while the interest in deeper processes of control conforms to Lukes’ third dimension of power. As Hardy (1983) has succinctly put it, a concern with both power and control as explanations of, in this case, choice and change process, would in effect correspond to two uses of power: power used to defeat competition in a choice or change process and power used to prevent competition in a choice or change process. In both of these processes there would be an explanatory role for unobtrusive systems of power derived from the generation and manipulation of symbols, language, belief and ideology – from culture creation; and from the more public face of power expressed through the possession, control and tactical use of overt sources of power such as position, force, or expertise.

There are two further essential points to derive from the above way of thinking about process. The first is that structures, cultures, and strategies are not just being treated here as neutral, functional constructs connectable to some system need such as efficiency or adaptability, those constructs are viewed as capable of serving to protect the interests of dominant groups. This means that not only can the existing bias of the structures and cultures of an organisation in general terms protect dominant groups by reducing the chances of challenge, but features of intra-organisational context and socioeconomic context can be mobilised by dominant or aspiring groups in order to legitimise existing definitions of the core strategic conerns, to help justify new priorities, and to delegitimise other novel and threatening definitions of the organisations situation. These points, as we shall see, are as pertinent to understanding processes of choice and change as they are to achieving practical outcomes in strategic change. As Normann (1977:161) has so aptly put it, “the only way to bring about lasting change and to foster an ability to deal with new situations is by influencing the conditions that determine the interpretation of situations and the regulation of ideas”.

The above political and cultural view of process gives a central place to the processes through which strategies and changes are legitimized and delegitimized. The content of strategy, the other leg of our three-legged stool of content, context, and process, thus is ultimately a product of a legitimisation process shaped by political/cultural considerations, and expressed in rational/analytical terms.

THE LEVELS OF ANALYSIS AND PARTICULAR STUDY QUESTIONS

Having established the important role of political and cultural concepts in this analysis of organisational changing, the remaining task in this chapter is to specify the form of contextual and processual analysis and particular study questions used to explore both the evolution and impact of organisation development groups in ICI and the overall process of continuity and change in ICI. Given the earlier critical comments on the acontextual, ahistorical, and aprocessual character of much research on organisational change, together with the field's tendency to use the change programme or episode as the unit of analysis, this research offers a different approach. The focal point of analysis and explanation here is the birth, evolution, development and impact of five OD groups born into and therefore faced with different antecedent conditions, varying organisational contexts, and living through changing social and economic conditions. Principally I shall be seeking to describe and explain the varying impact each group had in facilitating and inhibiting organisational changes in each of their arenas of action, and the natural history of each group's emergence, development, and fate. Simply stated there is the requirement to explain why by 1983, through different pathways, and after varying life histories and effects, two of these divisional OD groups had ceased to exist, while the head office OD activities and the other divisional OD activities continued in 1983, if not quite in the same size and form as they had emerged in the late 1960s.

The study questions and methodology have been chosen to generate conceptual frameworks and comparative empirical findings rather than to test a priori formulations. The research will probe into three levels of analysis and their interconnections. The expectation is that each of these levels will reveal significant data about the birth, growth, decline, consolidation, and demise of OD at various points in time.

The first and focal level of analysis is the group level, and here the subject matter is the overlap between two intersecting areas. For the most part at the group level the study is interested in the development and fate of a particular population, the OD groups in the four divisions and head office of ICI. At this group level, however, I am also interested in the activities of OD, for as we shall see in some contexts the population of OD consultants ceased to exist and the continuation of OD was left to other consultants or line managers.

An innovating group such as an OD department more often than not represents the antiroutine aspect of organisation functioning and its members can project and be seen as an insubordinate minority. A group advocating change from a specialist, advisory base is likely to be abnormal rather than normal, extraordinary rather than routine, illegitimate rather than legitimate, marginal rather than central, and powerless rather than powerful. Its activities and resource base have to be justified, its members have to generate credibility in particular and varying contexts, and success, failure, and survival is often a question of the vagaries of the last project or activity. This is the position from which an OD group concerned with change ordinarily begins its struggle for impact.

The study is interested in the antecedent conditions which led to the emergence of the five groups and the form and nature of the birth processes themselves. Why, when, and how did they emerge, and what role did contextual and precipitating factors play in their genesis? What were the backgrounds, aspirations and values of the early group members and what structural form did the innovating group take? Did it take the option of a distinct and separate functional unit on the organisation chart, a temporary task force, a like-minded group of individuals forming a voluntary association, or an adjuct to an existing functional unit, or some combination of these? Who were the early leaders of such groups and how did they tackle what Gusfield (1957) has described as the mobilization and articulation functions of leadership – the concern with building and reaffirming goals, values and commitment inside the group, and linking the group and its tactics to its host environment? Did each group have a strategy and tactics for managing its internal dynamics and external boundaries or did the groups through a combination of unselfconscious and non-reflective action merely adopt a behavioural and ideological stance to other interest groups in their environment? How did each group acquire its resources, choose its activities, exercise influence, secure its boundary, and build networks of relationships?

Clearly factors explaining origins do not necessarily explain continuance, indeed early patterns of emergence and development may load the dice in constraining future lines of development. I am interested in describing and analysing in a comparative mode a continuous process. Each of the groups in their different ways persisted through varying time periods in the course of which they mobilized resources, applied them in various forms of activity, through a mixture of tactics, and experienced the consequences and implications of those behaviours in a fully interrelated process that also affected subsequent episodes of action and outcome.

The processual analysis implied in the above questions at the group level of analysis cannot be adequately carried out without reference to the immediate and more distant context within which each OD group had to make its way. The more immediate context, the second level of analysis in the study, is described as the inner context. Here the interest ranges from the auspicious or inauspicious antecedent conditions and context each group was born into, to the evolution and selective impact of that context, both in the enabling and constraining senses as each OD group itself developed through time. Particular features of the inner context of each group examined are company and divisional organisational cultures (Pettigrew, 1979), their norms, power distributions and recurring conflicts (Pettigrew, 1973, 1975b), the social control and other attitudes and behaviours directed toward each group by key figures and interest groups in their environment, and the relationship between these factors and the organisational impact and survival of the OD groups.

Given the change objectives of most OD groups and their, at times, consequent insubordinate and deviant stance, the social control activities of their doubters and opponents is an important issue, as of course, is the tolerance and inattentiveness of those doubters and opponents. Social control tactics expressed through subtle processes of characterisation or labelling, and through more tangible practices such as recruitment strategies, withdrawing resources or terminating activities or groups, may determine how far, how fast, and in what form and direction a group or activity develops; the success a group has in generating a network of clients and supporters, and in the tactics and natural history of a group's development. Following the important role attached to politics as the management of meaning in the broad frame of reference for this research a highly action-oriented and interactionist concept of social control processes is intended here. Control agents are not assumed to be representing a highly unified and clear-cut normative system to which others must comply; rather control is seen as a political process of meaning construction and definition in which parties fashion and negotiate how actions and values represent themselves in the identity of relevant others, in order to control, or escape the possibility of control.

The other feature of group context relevant to explaining both the overall pattern of continuity and change in ICI between 1960 and 1983 and the impact and fate of the five OD groups is the outer context level of analysis. This is the third level of analysis in the study, the one most novel to the analysis of organisational change and analysis, and the one most difficult empirically and theoretically to handle. The outer context level of analysis refers to the economic performance and competitiveness of ICI as a whole and to each division under study throughout the period 1960–83. In addition, this level refers to corporate and divisional policy in the manpower and personnel spheres over the past two decades. Also included here are the relevance of broad social and economic trends in UK society throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s both to the business fortunes and broad personnel policies of ICI, but also to the emergence and changing use made of OD consultants, their techniques, knowledge and skills.

Important as alternative structural forms, leader behaviour and effectiveness, strategies, tactics and cycles of activity and outcome are to group development, this research also emphasises the crucial role that larger social and economic trends play in providing enabling conditions, and sealing the fate of some of our OD groups and their activities. An important value of these levels of analysis is that each has something of an evolving life of its own which presents constraints and opportunities to the other levels. In line with my earlier strictures about contextualism as a form of analysis, context is neither treated just as descriptive background nor used to drive a simple determinist explanation. Contexts of an auspicious or non-receptive kind to OD activities may derive from environmental change; the accidents and events of intragroup development; or environmental circumstances; they may also be products of the social constructions of men seeking to adjust and label social conditions to meet their ends.

An advisory group interested in creating change must itself create a social context in which it can survive and prosper. A key part of the politics of organisational change reported in this book relates to the legitimisation strategies of the OD groups and the delegitimisation strategies of their doubters and opponents. These legitimisation strategies represent a crucial link between the group level of analysis and the inner and outer context levels of analysis. Here the role of information and perception in political processes are crucial (Pettigrew, 1973). He who understands the political and cultural system of his organisation and the impact of changing economic and social trends on the emergence and dissolution of old issues, values and priorities, and the rise of new rationalities and priorities, is at least beyond the starting gate in formulating, packaging, and influencing the direction of organisational change. Context is then treated as something which must not only be understood, but mobilised to create practical effects. The extent to which the OD groups in ICI understood this part of the politics of creating change, and their skill in using this understanding, is a focal point for this investigation.

Before launching the empirical part of this book with a synopsis of the key points in ICI's historical and business development, and a review of social and economic trends in Britain throughout the past two decades, there is one intractable issue to be mentioned which will follow us throughout the book. I have in mind the question of what constitutes success and failure for an OD group? I take some comfort for the difficulties in handling this issue from the fact that in the literature on social movement organisations where there is also a question of movement outcome and assessing success and failure, after 20 years or more of research the debate continues as hotly as ever (Goldstone, 1980; Gamson, 1980).

Superficially, at least, the problem seems simple enough. The three OD groups that survive in 1983 may be construed as successes, whilst the two that no longer exist can be deemed failures. But under certain conditions, perhaps the inattentiveness of key organisational figures caused either by indifference and/or plentiful resources, a group of OD consultants may survive for long periods without achieving much legitimacy for their activities and goals or much credibility for themselves as individuals. Groups of specialists may also be able to survive, if not flourish, for periods of time by adopting a highly passive interpretation of their role – keeping their heads down, not forcing any controversial issues, becoming relatively inclusive figures in their organisation. Meanwhile a group with a relatively short life might have achieved a great deal of change, either by diagnosing and carrying through the particular change it was set up by power figures to accomplish and then being disbanded – or indeed forcing upopular change through so hard that it sacrificed its legitimacy and credibility in the short run, yet in retrospect achieved change beneficial to the organisation.

Another kind of success may occur when a group either disappears, or is reduced in scale, yet the activities, skills and knowledge which it embodies are perpetuated either by individual internal and external consultants and line managers or by former consultants drafted into more acceptable specialist positions. Indeed the most complete kind of success may exist when a group's skills and knowledge are so institutionalised into the host culture that the consultancy group can either fade away completely or just leave a few super-professionals around to update on developments in the field and continue to transmit the new ideas to line managers as the change agents.

There is, of course, a further problem of what Gamson (1980:1050) labels pseudo-success. A group realises changes only for those changes to appear later empty of meaning; or a group tagging on with another group with similar objectives in order to achieve success. Equally well, a group's environment may change so auspiciously towards its objectives that the group achieves them almost in spite of itself.

Finally, there is the question of whose concept of success and failure does the analyst take, and when does he ask the question? Recognising that the evaluation of any organisational group and activity is as embedded in the political processes of the organisation as the activity is itself, suggests that the analyst has to scrutinise with care the stated attitudes and underlying perspectives of each of the interested parties, and to let the data speak for themselves through as many channels and contexts, and over as long a period of time as possible.

It should be clear that the above way of analysing the birth, evolution, fate, and impact of specialist OD resources on organisational change as a continuous process in context, can also be applied to the exploration of the cases of strategic change in this research. As I argued in Chapter 1 the starting point for this analysis of the how of strategic change is the notion that finding and clarifying the content of any strategic change crucially entails managing its context and process. Given the importance of unravelling the relationship over time between the content of strategic change and its context through a processual analysis, then strategic changes are best analysed not by treating them as discrete episodes or programmes, but by seeing them as continuous processes. The cases of strategic change in this book illustrate the deep-seated organisational cultural and political roots of strategy, and the existence of dominating rationalities or ideologies inside organisations which provide the frame of reference by which individuals and groups attach meaning, make sense of intra-organisational and business and economic trends developing around them. This research points to the enormous difficulties of breaking down such dominating ideologies once a particular marriage of strategic content, context, and process has become established. The breaking down of established patterns of strategic content, context, and process is seen as a long-term conditioning and learning process influenced by the interest and above all persistence of visionary leaders, the changing patterns of competition between individuals and groups representing and projecting different ideologies, the massive enabling opportunities created by business and economic change, changes in the power distribution of the company, and the connecting of what are perceived to be coherent solutions at particular points in time to culturally legitimate problems. The what, the why, and the how of creating strategic change through such long-term conditioning and learning processes constitute the central analytical and practical message of this book about the management of strategic change in large organisations.

¹ The Nichols and Beynon (1977) ethnographic study of “Chem. Co.” has recently been roundly criticized by Willmott (1984) for protraying managers as “pliant and passive agents of capital”, and thus for not being able to connect social action theoretically and empirically with a structural analysis.