FREE online courses on Strategies for Managing Change - Using Weak Signals to Manage Change - Adaptive Change

 

Firms and other organizations which are not subjected to strategic shocks do, nevertheless, go through discontinuous strategic changes.  This occurs through step-by-step accumulation of incremental changes which, over a long period of time, add up to transformation of culture, power structure and competence.  This is a process which sociologists call organic adaptation which is unmanaged from the top and occurs in response to successive environmental stimuli, or to unsatisfactory performance by the firm, or, more rarely, it is brought about by creative forces within the firm.  The successive adaptations are usually arrived at through trial and error.

 

If the change is spread over a long period of time, at any given time the resistance will be low, but not absent, because even incremental departures from the `historical order of things' induce organizational dysfunctions and conflicts.  But the required power is correspondingly low, and applied by the proponents of the change who are usually below the top management level. The conflicts are resolved through compromises, bargains, power shifts.

 

We shall refer to introduction of a discontinuous strategic change through a series of incremental steps spread over time as an adaptive change process.  It is slow, but has the virtue of minimizing the level of resistance at any given time.  Even though it may be argued that this amounts to spreading pain over time, the adaptive response belongs in the repertoire of valid responses, because it makes change possible under conditions when very little power is available to the proponents of change.

 

Like the coercive approach, adaptive change can be made more effective if it is managed.  The suggestions made in the preceding section for improving the effectiveness of coercive change apply equally in this case.  In addition, adaptive change should be made to follow the change motivating sequence.  It will be recalled that this requires that changes in climate, mentality and power by made first, systemic changes in competence and capacity should follow, and strategy is changed only when the organization is ready and willing.