Towards an analytical framework for change [Lawrence Reaville, ISSS 1998 Paper Session, July 22/98

These notes are a rough transcription, prepared as each individual presenter and/or commentator spoke at the ISSS 1998 conference. Gaps and errors have likely occurred. For more accurate citations, please consult the original presenters. These notes have been contributed to the ISSS by David Ing, of the IBM Advanced Business Institute (sabi@systemicbusiness.org).

Lawrence Reaville, City University Business School, London

• with Francis Strickland, who is now at Hewitt Associates

• Looking at the nature of change.

• (Complicated diagram of influences).

1. Source categories
• Information, e.g. availability may produce change (e.g. stock market)
• Action
• Process: e.g. deforestation
2. Source descriptions
• Permitting
• Predisposing
• Precipitating
• Triggering, e.g. nuclear fission
• Reinforcing, e.g. autocatalysis

• Planned
• Natural: e.g. changes of season
• Accidental: e.g. not predicted

• Structure: e.g. delayering
• Process: e.g. BPR
• Behaviour: culture
• Strategy: e.g. for better market penetration
• State: e.g. measures
• Environment: e.g. press statements

• Analysis and interpretation
• Scale and perspective
• Measurement

• Intelligence
• Design
• Choice
• Implementation
• Nomothetic
• Ideographic

• Random to deterministic dimensions
• Sequential to parallel dimension
• Continuous to discontinuous dimension
• Reversible to irreversible dimension

• First- and second-order change
• Speed of change, and the observer's position:
• Hyper-change and semantic enhancement
• e.g. telecom in Hungary, due to changes in political structure
• Had to think about new words
• Speed, relativity and labeling.

• Drivers of change
• Other theorists:
• Gersick: deep structure
• Morgan: logics of change (autopoesis, (?), dialectics)
• Wheatley: field

• Criticality: critical mass
• Least resistance
• Induced change: e.g. IT penetration
• Metastability: if system show lots of bugs, or staff doesn't like it, may creep back to old methods.
• Environment coupling
• Feedback

• Intransigence
• Indifference
• Cooperation
• Execution
• Examples with metaphors:
• Constructive: nuclear fission, within a containment.
• Absorptive: isothermal change
• Fragile: self-organized criticality (e.g. strike requiring quorum)
• Overload: adiabatic change
• Closed: alkali metals (difficult to change, e.g. family businesses)
• Newtonian: autopoesis (so much resistance that self-organize)

• Stable (static)
• Metastable (dynamic stability)
• Unstable
• Catastrophic

• The framework is a basic conceptual schema on a systemic basis, attempting to pull together diverse thinking.
• Will be applied to organizational change.

Questions