made for these new paradigms and will assess the
prospects for radical theoretical change and development within the arena of
organizational change management.
The need for change
Hollway (1991) argues that knowledge and practice, especially within the field
of management, are inseparable. Alvesson (1991) makes a similar observation
and
notes the impact of “non-theoretical” influences on management research.
This is also in line with the work of Perry (1993) who, in discussing the process
of theorizing, notes:
since organizational theorizing is at once cognitive and social, it is neither unsullied by social
interests nor unproblemmatically deducible from them (p. 85).
Baritz (1965) also makes a similar point when he argues that specific conditions
and problems have produced different emphases in industrial psychology and
management more generally. Indeed Baritz notes that it took the problems and
upheaval generated by the First World War to overcome management prejudice
with regard to academia.
In more recent decades, however, managers seem to have shrugged off this
hostility and have, in fact, elevated key academics to the status of guru. Indeed,
managers now seem to expect academics to develop new methods and
templates to address the salient problems of the day. In this way business school
theorizing should not be thought of as representing a disinterested process of
discovery and “excavation” but instead might be better regarded as a
“knowledge-product”, called forth to service the demands and orientations of
management. When discussing theories of change and developments in
theoretical orientations, therefore, it is vital to set such discussion against a
backdrop of the changing economic and political context of western economies
and against a consideration of the aims and objectives which these theorists
attempt to address. As Ackroyd (1993) notes:
Organizational analysis is an organized and an organizing institution (p. 104).
He continues:
...it is shaped by and shapes its social context (p. 105).
In the following section, therefore, we will look more closely at the process by
which theory shapes and is shaped by social processes.
New paradigms
for change?
11
Theory as product innovation
Huczynski (1993) notes that, in recent years, the job and indeed the life of the
manager has become more complex and less certain. This dislocation probably
accounts for the number of books which have some reference to “chaos” in their
titles (see, for example, Peters, 1988; Stacey, 1992) since business academics,
like their business counterparts, must ensure product innovation if they are to
be sure of a presence in the market. At the root of this change lies a decline in
the economic fortunes of key western businesses compared with the rise of Far
Eastern economies.
In a preface to The Art of Japanese Management (Pascale and Athos, 1986),
Parker expresses both the dislocation and the soul-searching brought about by
perceptions of an increasingly dominant Japanese economy. He notes:
Japanese competitiveness has become one of the paramount economic events of the post-war
world. Nowadays our mirror on the wall is no longer giving the West the flattering answers of
the fairy-tale. The Western manager… has been able traditionally to go to straighten himself
up...by having a private, cosy chat with
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