gerard coughlan <ftmbs-15@carraig.ucd.ie> 06/25/97 11:31AM wrote:
>Hello there,
>
>I'm a masters student at ucd here in ireland. My thesis has come to a
>halt at the moment as i am having trouble operationalising my research
>question: According to Henry Mintzberg in times of change a machine
>bureaucracy may require a radical shift in direction, which can be occur
>in two ways.
Gerald,
You may want to consider a third factor as a cause of change, which is
outside of the organization and in the environment. For example, American
car makers didn't start making smaller cars, even though their research
indicated that consumers wanted smaller cars. It wasn't until they lost a
ton of market share that they changed. Another example occurs regularly
in the public sector. Typically a "budget crisis" is what causes an
organization to look at they way they do business. When money is
available and the organization is successful, there is little incentive to
change.
You may also want to contrast Mintzberg's work, which has an either/or
feel to me, with Robert Fritz's work (see corporate tides) where he views
change occuring in an an environment of structural tension and how the
organization always seeks to maintain e qualibrium. More of a discussion
of how change occurs in a continuum.
Debbie
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