ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AS DESCRIBED BY MANAGERS THROUGH METAPHORS
Corporations spend a huge amount of money every year on implementing changes designed to improve organizational performance. It is well known that effective implementation of organizational change demands effective communication, and effective communication, in turn, relies heavily on the appropr...
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| Language: | en_US |
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The University of Arizona.
2003
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10150/610592 http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/610592 |
| Summary: | Corporations spend a huge amount of money every year on implementing changes
designed to improve organizational performance. It is well known that effective
implementation of organizational change demands effective communication, and
effective communication, in turn, relies heavily on the appropriate use of metaphors.
Marshak has identified four categories of organizational change metaphors: fix and
maintain, build and develop; move and relocate, and liberate and recreate. These four
types are assumed to describe gradients in change ranging from a fairly simple change
(fix and maintain) to a radical transformative change (liberate and recreate). Marshak
has proposed that managers can utilize metaphors to facilitate organizational change and,
further, that metaphors can be used to evaluate the degree of alignment of employee and
manager understanding of an organizational change. As a preliminary test of Marshak's
model, a secondary data analysis was done of 30 interviews conducted with managers in
a large urban medical center undergoing a major organizational redesign process. The
interviews were done at two points in time, early in the redesign effort and three years
later. Fifteen interviews were selected from each of the two points in time for secondary
analysis. Using standard content analysis procedures, change metaphors were identified
in each interview and categorized either into one of Marshak's four categories or as
"other." The results of the analysis showed that the predominant metaphor of change
differed at the two points in time, and that the change was in the direction of a more complex change (specifically from "fix and maintain" to "build and develop. ") These
findings provide preliminary empirical support for Marshaks' model. |
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