Chapter 6: Fluid Change Leadership: Navigating Organizational Change in Dynamic Contexts

A confluence of several changes in the business environment has presented major adaptation challenges to large machine-like bureaucracies. Indeed, this structural form, which once could be seen as a paragon of solidity now appears to be an exemplar of rigidity. Several trends have emphasized this problem. First, advances in information and communication technology have improved coordination and communication within and across organizations leading to reduced friction in the course of getting work done (Lipnack & Stamps, 1997). In fact, “virtual working” is a standard part of most jobs in large organizations today (Martins, Gilson, & Maynard, 2004). Second, and largely enabled by the first, geographic barriers mean a lot less today than they did even a few decades ago, both in terms of organizations' internal operations and in terms of their external business environment (Davidow & Malone, 1992). Competitors can come from anywhere in the world, customers demand an uniform experience from organizations across different locations in the world, suppliers can just as easily come from around the block as from around the world, and employees are dispersed throughout the globe.