Navigating Conflicting Influences During Complex Strategic Changes: The Contribution of Diagnosis, Congruence, and Leadership

Abstract

This study explored how managers implement complex strategic changes with multiple, often conflicting, influences and initiatives. A large, regional operating division of a French electrical utility was implementing a top-down, enterprise-wide digital transformation and developing broad agile capabilities in a participative way. Conclusions from the 18-month collaborative research effort suggest that three change activities made pragmatic and theoretically insightful contributions. First, diagnosis – a process not integrated in theories of strategic change and adaptation – served as a powerful source of tailored solutions that orchestrated diverse change activities. Second, the organization's existing culture and identity – typically considered a target of or constraint to change – became an important source of change congruence. Third, managers collectively leveraged and re-framed hierarchical authority in leading the change. Exercising authority in traditional ways kept emerging changes safe. Reframing authority as the power to convene conversations helped to focus expertise on key issues.

The multiple faces of collective responses to organizational change: Taking stock and moving forward

“…At the base of collective responses is recognition that the ability or capacity of organizations to respond directly to change is seen as an important way to survive and thrive, especially given rapidly changing business environments. While there has been extensive theorizing on this theme, especially at the individual level (e.g., Eby et al, 2000; Sanders et al, 2020; Worley & Beaujolin, 2023), increasingly, attention has turned to the collective response to change events – those “components of subevents that make up the overall change” (Oreg et al, 2018, p.67). As a recent bibliometric analysis (Bouckenooghe et al, 2021) indicates the collective response is often framed by the agency and structure of the change event on a specific change.…”

Exploring the Ambidexterity of Learning in Indonesian Start-Up: Moderated-Mediated

“…Hence, it is believed that the aforementioned beneficial relationship can be enhanced through the owner's possession of additional skills, such as navigating problem capability. Worley & Beaujolin, (2023) argues that the organizational struggle was how to navigate and execute these shifts against the pressures of "preserving the light on". Navigating the problem necessitates that leadership practices acknowledge and embrace the initial emotional discomfort with paradoxes, as well as find methods to become comfortable with the uneasiness (Lewis & Smith, 2023).…”