This document is part of an ongoing journey exploring why organizational change leads to success and why not. Key in this journey is the permanent interaction between universities, business schools and private and public companies. Collecting data via questionnaires is accomplished with case studies.

1. This document contains findings of research related to organizational change. The
findings in this document are a follow-up of the previous research “Leading
principles for IT related organizational change”
http://www.slideshare.net/ldohmen/iba-frame-study-results-20100416
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2. Content of this document
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3. Research background
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4. This document is part of an ongoing journey exploring why organizational change
leads to success and why not. Key in this journey is the permanent interaction
between universities, business schools and private and public companies.
Collecting data via questionnaires is accomplished with case studies.
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5. Some characteristics of the study
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6. Shared objective versus collaboration
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7. Shared objective should create the proper conditions for preparation and
implementation. This document express shared objective as a factor (or
construct) of control for organizational change whereas the questions above are
representing the elements (or variables) used to define the factor control.
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8. Realism and collaboration on team or department level should lead to support
developing, building and implementing the result visualized with the construct
shared objective. This document express collaboration as a factor (or construct)
of contributing to organizational change whereas the questions above are
representing the elements (or variables) used to define the factor collaboration.
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9. To acquire a strategic result like improving strength and position of the
organization, the change result should be absorbed by individual employees and
lead to improvement within departments or teams. Value perceptions as a result
of IT usage are not absolute and differ depending on the technology applied, user
skills and (organizational) context. Result in this document is expressed in a
number of elements (see above). The average result referred to in this document
is the average of the used elements.
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10. IBAFrame contains six leading principles for steering organizational change where
IT plays an important role:
1. Shared objective and common view: determining the corporate objective
leads to a common view for the destination. The complexity and impact are
assessed and known.
2. A fitting approach: the pace for implementation should fit the complexity and
circumstances. This supports the learning process and people are able to
contribute.
3. Commitment and collaboration: the corporate objective is translated to
detailed objectives on group level. Objectives and timelines on this level are
realistic. Steering on this level is focused on collaboration and involvement
inside and outside groups. Steering is focused on alignment and connection
between project, users of IT-solutions and IT-support.
4. Stimulation of the learning process: there is sufficient room and time to learn
and share insights. This forms the fundament for a proper adoption of (new)
IT-solutions.
5. Attitude: an attitude of open-mindedness supports collaboration and
involvement.
6. Competences: (basic) knowledge about technology, organization and people
and their interaction is important besides knowledge and experience with
coordination of IT related organizational change.
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11. Key findings of the study. The study results are quantified and expressed on a
scale from 1 (very poor) to 10 (excellent). The next slides refer to a score
expressed as good, sufficient or positive when a score is greater than or equal to
5.5. Result perceptions lower than 5.5 are referred to as insufficient, low or
negative.
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12. Comparatively many small changes (number of people involved <100) are
included in this category. In (only) 6 situations / projects out of 22 (this is 27%),
the result is perceived as being insufficient. It is noteworthy that for 5 cases of
these 6 exceptions examined the question “Complexity has been assessed well
enough?” scores insufficient.
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13. Cooperation experienced as insufficiently when control (= shared
objective) is perceived as good is apparently a rarity (2 cases of
70). A (large) outsourcing issue is an example where this is found.
Time and objective realism scored low in this case.
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14. Analysis of a case outside this sample of 70 for which control (=
shared objective) was rated as negative and the (local) cooperation
is experienced as being sufficiently, but people qualified the result
anyway as insufficient, occurs in an ERP implementation
commissioned by the parent company where a local (regional) office
lost autonomy. Key employees of the local office was asked for their
perception.
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15. A positive result for this category is reached (only) for 8 out of 27
cases (this is 30%). Without these 8 positive exceptions the average
valuation of the result is 3.8. Compared to the situation where
control (= shared objective) AND collaboration are perceived as
good, the lowest result measured is 4.0 while a 1.0 score is reached
in the opposite category (control AND collaboration are not
sufficient). Apparently there is minimum lower limit for result (=4.0)
when control AND collaboration are perceived as good.
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16. The 70 examined cases are visualized in the picture above, sorted on (achieved)
result. The relation between result and shared objective is stronger (correlation
coefficient = 0.64) compared to the relation between collaboration and result
(correlation coefficient = 0.49) which can interpreted as shared objective has a
greater influence on the result than collaboration. Also it shows that 30 from 70
cases (this is 43%) lead to a positive result (greater than or equal to 5.5).
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17. Zooming in to the concepts of complexity and impact.
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18. In the fifth technology revolution (Carlota Perez, 2010), technology, organization and
people are the most important domains which are involved in changes. Understanding
complexity is understanding the interplay between technology, organization and people
and its impact when one or more parts in the interplay change.
Technology
This is the supply of available technology and the possibilities, limitations and the
impossibilities that this technology has. Where IT is concerned, the available technology is
limited to the IT domain. Even with this limitation, the supply of available technology is
enormous. Characteristically, the life cycle of new technology is (still) becoming shorter.
Organization
Here it concerns processes and structure (including location) of the organization.
Organizations commit IT for the realisation of their organizational goals. The application of
technology is tuned on this. In some branches, the application of new technology has an
enormous influence on the existing processes, structures and relationships. Internet
technology has made it possible to create a virtual world (V-world) next to a physical world
in which the meaning of the terms place, time and presence has drastically changed.
People
A new IT solution often means new work content and changing cooperation with colleagues
or people outside its own organization. Often, because of this, interests of people change.
The main question is: How fast are people able to make new IT solutions their own and
apply them within their work situation? Other behaviour, new knowledge and skills must be
developed. This will be nearly always coupled with a learning process. However, this
learning process can be different for each person. It is popular to distinguish between
people who have grown up with IT (digital natives) and the elderly (digital immigrants).
Besides this, people have different learning styles which also affect the learning process.
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19. Projects that run in the wrong direction will end up in chaos. Companies should
prevent to enter this zone.* When complexity is sufficiently assessed complexity
can be „reduced‟ by growing insights and a better understanding of the issue.
Evaluation in the beginning of a merger confirms this by a statement made
shortly after a workshop set up to explore the status and objectives of the
merger: “… now the situation is clear and I understand which bottlenecks we have
faced, I really believe we can bring this merger to a good end.” Interventions like
front-end loading and kick-off workshops can help to bring the status of a project
from perceived as complex to a situation as perceived more certain, understood
by key players and where choices and decisions can be made. A very helpful
manner to understand complexity is Ralph Stacey‟s complexity matrix. Another
useful concept is the general system theory of Ludwig von Bertalanffy.
Also conditions or circumstances can affect complexity. For example: when you
like to travel from Copenhagen (Denmark) to Florence (Italy), it can be a huge
difference when you travel in the summer period or in winter. So weather
conditions can affect preparation , effort and duration time of the journey even
when starting point and destination are the same. This is also applicable for
organizational change issues. Circumstances and conditions can differ per
situation.
* Source: Stacey RD. Strategic management and organizational dynamics: the
challenge of complexity. 3rd ed. Harlow: Prentice Hall, 2002. Adapted by L.
Dohmen (2013)
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20. Before assigning an expectation of value, the IT value discussion must first
recognize the type of technology being implemented – basic infrastructure to
innovation (Goldstein, Katz and Olson, 2003). Shenhar et al (2001) confirm the
different impacts of new and proven technology on project success. The type of
technology cannot be ignored when researching user value perceptions.
The result or value of the interaction between technology, organization and
people is not absolute. Orlikowski (1992)* uses the term interpretive flexibility:
interaction of technology and organization is a function of different actors and
socio-historical contexts. Ruben Puentedura‟s SAMR concept (see above) is a very
good instrument to analyze the impact of technology on organization and people
aspects.
* W. Orlikowski, The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology
in Organizations, Organization Science, vol. 3, no. 3 (1992), focused issue:
Management of Technology, August.
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21. The elements complexity and impact show the strongest correlation with result
from the researched shared objective and collaboration elements in this
document. Assessing complexity AND impact is a powerful indicator for the result
of organizational change projects. Based on a sample of 70 projects and/or
situations (n = 70) a quadrant can be created showing the result of assessing
complexity and impact and the percentage of cases with a result perceived as
greater than or equal to 5.5.
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22. Content of this document
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23. If control of the (higher) (project) management is found inadequate good
cooperation on team or department level can hardly compensate this. The
influence of having (not) a common goal (shared objective) on the result is very
large. If the direction is not clear, the joint image is missing and the issue is
poorly understood (impact and complexity have not been adequately studied)
then chances are (very) small that a positive result is achieved. The complexity
and impact factors - and good researching it - are important indicators of the
(achieved) result.
This study elicits a number of important insights concerning elements and factors
determining the result of organizational change. It confirms that powerful
perceived collaboration only is not sufficient to come to a positive result. However
the findings of this study need much more exploration and fine-tuning to gain a
better understanding of the phenomena of control, collaboration and result and its
interdependencies.
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24. In case of questions ….
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25. Leon Dohmen is Principal Management Consultant. He joined CGI in 2001. He has
more than 20 years of experience as a consultant, project manager and IT
manager and guided more than 60 assignments and projects for large and small
(inter) national companies including DSM, Stream Group, NXP Semiconductors,
Philips, VGZ and Imtech. Internet, Enterprise Resource Planning (including SAP
and Microsoft Dynamics), control (management) of IT services and global
sourcing are key terms related to the knowledge and experience of Leon. ERP as
a cloud solution, making better use of offshore facilities in India and China and
the use of agile (lean) development methods also play a role here. Leon acts on
the interface between business and IT and combines extended (industrial)
business knowledge with knowledge about the latest IT developments. He is
specialized in organizational change and the impact of IT. For this specialization
he has produced several publications. Leon developed and teached at the
Rotterdam Business School the module Management of Technology for MBA and
Masters students from 2003 to 2012. Since 2011 he performs a PhD research on
the value of IT. Professor Bert Kersten is his promoter.
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26. Thank you for reading.
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