| How do Change-Related Mental Models Differ Across Groups? A Network Study |
| | Tijoriwala-Shah, Snehal | Carnegie Mellon U. | st2x@andrew.cmu.edu | (412)-268-8717 |
| | While organizational change literature has explored the change agents' mental models and their cognitive frameworks, it has paid little attention to change recipients' understanding of the change. This research shifts the focus from change agents to change recipients. The main objective of this study is to explore the differences in change-related mental models among different groups of change recipients. The groups are differentiated on the basis of the level of participation in the change process and the extent to which each group achieved success in implementing the change.
The data was collected from a large hospital in northeastern US. At the time of the survey, the hospital had implemented "shared governance" (a model of empowerment) in the nursing department for one and a half years (n=501). Qualitative responses to the open-ended question "what does shared governance mean (to you)?" were content analyzed into three concepts categories: "positive", "negative" and "neutral". Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS) technique was used to compare the mental models of different groups of change recipients based on the above concepts categories. It was found that change-specific experienced nurses have a more differentiated (complex) mental models of the positive concepts associated with the change compared to those of the inexperienced nurses. These two groups however, did not differ in their understanding about the negative concepts associated with the change. Some limitations and important implications of the study are also discussed.
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| | Keywords: Change Recipients; Mental Models; Multi-Dimensional Scaling |
| How Health Care Managers Make Sense of Change: An Empirical Investigation of Organizational Change Schemas |
| | Diplock, Peter C. | Saint Joseph's U. | pdiplock@sju.edu | 610-660-3231 |
| | Abstract
This study investigated health care managers' sensemaking of a quality initiative by examining
the structural properties of individual's organizational change schemas and the extent to which
these schemas were shared. Qualitative and quantitative data was obtained from 28 middle and
top managers using the repertory grid and a pre-designed survey instrument. Results suggest
that shared organizational change schemas can be identified and meaningfully understood in
terms of current and ideal orientations, although incongruence between these orientations did
not give rise to negative emotions as expected. Content analysis revealed that in their effort to
make sense of organizational change, organizational members rely on a relatively small number
of widely shared evaluative dimensions, and a larger number of essentially idiosyncratic dimensions.
An analysis of change schemas by organizational level also revealed important differences in the
way top managers and middle managers make sense of change. Comparison of the two methods
used in this study suggests that preservation of the terms and dimensions people themselves use to
describe change represents an important consideration for future-cognitive based organizational
change research. Implications for theory and practice as well as directions for future research are
discussed.
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| | Keywords: Organizational Change Schemas; Sensemaking; Healthcare |
| Changing Shades of Green: Institutional Pressures and Sensemaking in Corporate Environmental Reporting |
| | Sastry, Anjali | U. of Michigan | masastry@umich.edu | (734)-763-1591 |
| | Bernicke, Jeffery W. | U. of Michigan | bernicke@umich.edu | (734)-763-4613 |
| | Quinn, Ryan W. | U. of Michigan | ryanq@umich.edu | (734)-763-4613 |
| | Hart, Stuart L. | U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | harts@icarus.bscool.unc.edu | (919)-962-8405 |
| | We examine the sensemaking processes triggered by an organization's response to a new, institutionally-mandated practice. With the advent of corporate environmental reports (CERs) at the start of the 1990s, firms addressed external pressures to present and explain their environmental performance. The voluntary reports they produced as a result provide a unique window their efforts to interpret key ideas, frame their actions, and articulate beliefs and goals relevant to environmental management. Our focus is the evolution of Monsanto's corporate reporting, 1991-1997. A year-by-year analysis highlights the unfolding events and changes in words and ideas that follow the organization's decision to adopt the practice. We show how the processes of sensemaking and institutionalization interact, as the advent of the institution generated new questions and problems for the adopting organization, which in turn served as ideal occasions for sensemaking. Our study draws on a careful content analysis of Monsanto's published CERs, as well as press reports and third-party evaluations of the organization over the seven-year time frame. We find that the process of establishing and publicizing commitments serves as a tool for clarifying organizational purpose and sensemaking, but that, once made, these commitments can exert a powerful influence: Monsanto's failure to meet its commitments trigger further rounds of sensemaking. The eventual results of these ongoing processes of sensemaking, we argue, may be far from predictable, with institutional pressure and sensemaking becoming entangled in a process of dynamic adaptation. |
| | Keywords: institutionalization; sensemaking; environmentalism |
| Re-Imagining the Differentiation and Integration of Innovation Work as Heedfully Interrelating Communities of Practice |
| | Dougherty, Deborah | Rutgers U. | doughert@everest.rutgers.edu | (732) 873-0057 |
| | We know more about best practices for innovation than about the fundamentally
different way of working required to implement these best practices in complex organizations.
This research builds theory of the innovative way of working by contrasting the interpretive
schemes for differentiating and integrating work in non-innovative versus innovative organizations.
Using 119 interviews from 12 organizations, I re-imagine differentiation and integration
to both accommodate the realities of innovation work and invoke rich images in peoples' minds
regarding organization-wide roles and responsibilities.
The findings suggest images for differentiation and integration that depict work as clear and
standardized, yet multi-dimensional, situated, and emergent: communities of practice and heedful
interrelating. People in innovative organizations differentiate work by bracketing the whole as an
integral practice of value creation, represented as a hands-on working relationship with customers.
This whole is differentiated into specific problem areas, like lateral slices of the whole value
creation, that are organized as communities of practice that take charge of each problem
area. People integrate through a collective propensity for heedful interrelating: they readily envisage
their common task and construct their own contribution to it that fits with contributions from others.
Three organization-wide actions sustain this propensity: sharing an experience of collective action;
enacting common referents for action as milestones and objectives; and continually mapping out
specific processes.
The paper describes the fundamentally different way of differentiating and integrating innovation work
and illustrates communities of practice and heedful interrelations. Implications for
research and practice are drawn.
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| | Keywords: innovation; organizing; imagining |