Participative Transformation – Learning and Development in Practicing Changes

The last three decades have witnessed the deepening and expansion of publications on leadership and organizational studies, especially relating to attempts to adapt to an era of information technology and globalization (Pauleen and Gorman, 2011; Styhre, 2011; and others). This is a multifaceted process that includes the development of theory and research and has consequences for management, clarifying the process of change management in organizations. This book by Roger Klev and Morten Levin indicates how theory can be married with practice integrating various streams of organizational theory, drawing on their rich knowledge of extant literature and shaped by rich field experience.

The book is composed of two parts subdivided into 12 chapters. It begins with a pertinent question: is there a real need for yet another book dealing with organizational change? As the authors explain, a large gap often exists between the theory of organizational change and knowledge accumulated in organizations concerning change processes; they therefore undertake to bridge this gap in the book. A second reason given for the production of this book is “to argue that participation is at the center of practicing organizational change” (p. 1). Thus the book investigates how organizational change affects the daily work and quality of life of the organization's employees and the managers in a democratic society (p. 3).

The authors address three fundamental concepts of organizational change: strategy, leadership and change, through questions such as: “would leaders who decide to behave like Jack Welch become better leaders, even if they are obviously someone else? […] Are the success stories we witness true or are they just glorious self-deceptions not representing any particular value for other leaders? […] If successful companies are conservative in using new technology, can that insight directly guide decisions on exploring new technology-based opportunities?” (p. 7).

Answering these questions, the authors conclude that the learning processes that support the practice of leading change are not mere recipes or winning methods to be copied, rather they involve reflections around leaders’ own and others’ experiences to enable them to choose, develop and modify practical solutions and work methods that give change processes content and direction. Thus an important part of leadership is the individual's ability to observe, understand and construct solutions to meet the challenges of an uncertain future.

The authors also indicate that to lead change a manager must master the capacity to develop strategic change in addition to their ability to initiate and lead processes of organizational development while solving pertinent practical problems. In other words one key skill needed to lead organizational change is the ability to adapt to evolving practical challenges. The unique perspective of this book is that it sees transforming and change as the stable process while stability is seen as an unsteady state, a perspective that clearly contradicts Kurt Lewin's (1943) three phases of the “iceberg” metaphor for organizational change: unfreeze-change-freeze (in other words untie existing stable role and structure –change them and then create a new stable structure). As a contrast the authors see transformational processes as a continuous flow of small or larger incremental and evolutionary changes (p. 11).

Chapter 1 shows how different streams of organizational thinking conceptualize change, arguing that no change will occur unless employees participate in change processes (p. 15). Chapter 2 focusses on the differentiation of organizational development as a separate professional field. Different modes of practice and conceptualizations are discussed. Participation is marked out as a central value and key driving force for change (p. 31). Chapter 3 relates to the context within which organizational change take place, while Chapter 4 describes the co-generative model as the central conceptualization of organizational change that shows how learning and participation are related (p. 63). Chapter 5 discusses different modes of learning and alternative forms of knowledge. Chapter 6 goes deeper into the concept of participation in change processes. Different forms of participation are addressed and special attention is given to resistance to change. Finally, in Chapter 7, all the strands discussed in previous chapters are brought together in order to construct a model of leadership that can lead change processes and develop change resources in the organization, again highlighting the value of participation. Leadership is seen as a process of creating learning opportunities that can develop the organization's human resources for the management of daily work and employee involvement in strategic changes that the organization wishes to establish.

Part two consists of four different chapters (Chapters 8-12). The authors have selected various forms of work that have shown strong potential to create good and sustainable learning processes. In Chapter 8, Levin demonstrates how leaders and change agents can perform initial organizational analysis using a sound theoretical approach combined with a practical participative approach. While in Chapter 9 Levin presents a model for conference design based on a high degree of participation. In Chapter 10, Sense shows how her World Café became a very open and inviting work form in which complex problems are addressed by the participation of a large number of members in collective learning. Further discussion of this approach by both Martin and Roger appears in Chapters 11-12.

The fundamental perspective of this book is based on theories of social change. These insights provide an understanding of change as a social phenomenon providing guidelines for the design and facilitation of development processes (p. 31), emphasizing the role of research knowledge in enabling participants to gain a more shared understanding of challenges and possibilities.

From an organizational perspective the main implications of this book are that today's manager must continually learn and promptly master new and innovative tasks while preparing himself and his staff to meet future strategic challenges. The book also indicates how important it is to gather and explore evidence of success at company level.

The book is highly recommended as a very practical comprehensive guide for organizational change including useful tips for the initiation of a process of improvement and development. It is stressed that employees must be actively involved in these processes and that the classic top-down process imposing tasks from a foreign threatening entity is ineffective. Readers will also learn that both positive and negative experiences may be involved in a successful continuous process of improvement. A successful organizational change process may involve making mistakes on the way. Integrating scientific text and conceptualization of theory with practice is not an easy task, yet the authors of this book have succeeded in gathering examples of implementation through the deepening of theory. This should be compulsory reading for anyone involved in teaching, learning and the leadership of assimilation of a significant organizational change.