The Invisible Organization: How Informal Networks Can Lead Organizational Change

Citation

Clarke, N. (2009), "The Invisible Organization: How Informal Networks Can Lead Organizational Change", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 33 No. 5, pp. 470-472. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090590910966607

1 Book synopsis

This book highlights the significance of informal and formal social networks within organisations as a resource to be leveraged in the strategic management of change. The book draws on the author's past 20 years experience as a management consultant in the area of business transformation. He argues that change will be ineffective unless key influencers within informal networks in organisations are involved, as these individuals are the critical enablers of change. Comprising six chapters, the book begins by describing the nature of the “informal” organisation, highlighting the potential impact of informal networks on change outcomes, and then proceeds to offer a framework for Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) as a means to more effectively manage change (and business‐related challenges more generally).

Chapter one sets the background to the book, suggesting that the failure of many change programmes is due to “people problems”, and ineffective leadership styles that reflect traditional command and control management. Chapter two identifies the significance of informal leadership within organisations, drawing upon a distributed leadership perspective, and highlights the importance of informal leaders as key influencers necessary to drive change. Here the author argues that those best able to influence change are not necessarily those with formal authority. The key task then, is to identify who the key influencers are in the organisation. These key influencers can be categorised as either change positive (i.e. supportive of change) or open‐minded (not necessarily against change) influencers, and the recommended strategy is to successively interview these in a cascade‐type fashion to further identify those in their informal networks who might similarly be key influencers. As a result, a comprehensive network map of individuals can be identified who should be recruited to build a critical mass to champion change.

Chapter 3 proceeds to explain the use of ONA as a particular tool that can be utilised in order to build the network of change “influencers” discussed above. Essentially this involves the use of questionnaires that are used to conduct “informal organisational scans” that are able to identify among other things, patterns of communication, knowledge sharing, cultural perceptions, as well as individuals who “broker” different networks. Once identified, a number of strategies are suggested as to how these informal networks might be supported. These include changing the physical location of employees, holding cross‐organisational events to build social ties, re‐designing jobs and reward strategies to support collaborative behaviours, increasing job rotation, and recruiting individuals with networking skills. Chapters four and five discuss the need for different employee engagement techniques that focus on both “key influencers” and employees more generally, as well as suggesting that a focus on both formal and informal networks needs to be balanced in order to manage change. Chapter six concludes with identifying a range of business‐related problems such as low productivity, poor innovation or knowledge management and suggests how organisational network analysis can help. Some short case vignettes describing how ONA had been used are also included.

2 Evaluation

There is much to commend this book to managers and HR practitioners. It distils, in a fairly accessible way, a number of key developments and ideas from the wider literature identifying the significance of social networks in underpinning communication, knowledge creation, learning and collaboration within organisations. Its focus on the need to support informal social networks and suggestions on how to do so, also offers some good guidance. Importantly, it highlights the benefits that can be gained from obtaining knowledge on the characteristics of differing informal networks within an organisation, although stopping short of offering any detailed tools (such as questionnaire items) for practitioners to actually use.

Previously in the change area, social network analysis has offered new insights into employees' resistance to change (Macri et al., 2001; Torenvlied and Velner, 1998), issues of identity and need for control (Fenwick, 2007), the role of social support and emotional ties (Mullen and Kochan, 2000; Neumann, 1989), sense‐making during change (Issabella, 1990) as well as changes in power and influence (Clarke, 2005). I therefore found this book disappointing in that it offers a rather narrow focus on the importance of network analysis in furthering our understanding of change. Indeed, it is primarily discussed as a means to identify change champions. This tends to reinforce the dominant managerialist perspective that change is something that is done to employees and that the focus of change is about overcoming employee resistance rather than seeking to understand change from a more configurational or processual perspective (Dawson, 1994; Whipp et al., 1988). There was also little consideration of the problems involved in applying network analysis techniques in organisations, which have been found to be quite intrusive (Hatala, 2006). Perhaps the more major limitation with the book however was the lack of consideration given to the complex array of additional factors that are likely to influence change outcomes beyond the identification of key “influencers”.

3 In the author's own words

A shadow organization of influencers and those with extensive personal networks (with typically a 60%+ mismatch to the formal management structure) largely determines the scope and pace of change in the way that the business operates…Only when change‐positive balances of opinion exist in both the formal senior management organization and in the informal “key influencer” organization can (people‐disruptive) change be successfully implemented (p. 21, italics in the original).