A Model of Cascading Change: Orchestrating Planned and Emergent Change to Ensure Employee Participation

Abstract

Understanding how and why organizational changes succeed is of paramount importance because many organizational changes do not deliver the expected results. This paper presents a case study of successful change at a world leading cardiology department and proposes a model of cascading change that requires change managers to go beyond the simplistic dichotomies of planned versus emergent change. Successful change requires the reconciliation and integration of top-down and bottom-up approaches. Top management must set the direction and should then step back and allow the diagnosis and solution-development processes to take place in a bottom-up manner. This allows employees to identify and solve the problems that matter to them and that reflect their organizational reality. The implementation of the changes toward the end of the change process should take place in a top-down manner. The cascading model of change is based on three key drivers: a cascading change process with formal handovers engaging more and more employees, Lewinian change processes of unfreeze, move, and refreeze, and, finally, orchestrated employee participation. The cascading change process is found to build participation, transparency, trust, and commitment to the change among employees and managers. In turn, this ensures that implementation occurs without problems.

Frontline employee-driven change in hospitality firms: an analysis of receptionists’ personality on implemented suggestions

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Understanding and supporting law enforcement professionals working with distressing material: Findings from a qualitative study

“…While we have no information regarding the processes which led to decisions regarding these procedures, we feel it is important to emphasise that a culture promoting employee involvement in making decisions about organisational changes is essential for the successful implementation of change [134][135][136]. This is because including employees in the decision making process allows them to solve problems that matter to them within the organisation, builds participation, transparency, trust and commitment to the proposed changes [137].…”

Organizational resilience through techno-structural interventions: case of an Indian wealth management firm

“…This plays an important role in studies like the current one because organizations are usually reluctant to share information and sensitive data even for general research purposes. The approach is consistent with prior case research on OC (Edwards et al, 2020;Kulkarni et al, 2020;Kykyri et al, 2010). The second factor that motivated us to choose the particular financial consulting firm for the study is its uniqueness in terms of nature of business, market presence and lack of evidence of research attempts in the past to examine firms in this industry.…”