Editorial

Citation

Korac-Kakabadse, N. (1999), "Editorial", Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 14 No. 7/8. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmp.1999.05014gaa.001

Editorial

Nada Korac-Kakabadse is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Cranfield School of Management. Previously, she was employed as a Senior Information Technology Officer with the Australian Public Service's Department of Employment, Education and Training. She has worked for international organizations in Scandinavia, the Middle East and North Africa, as well as for the Canadian Federal Government. Her research interest focuses on information technology and organizational dynamics, diversity management, performance improvement in private and public sector organizations and excellence in politics of decision making. She has a BSc in Mathematics and Computing, a Graduate Diploma in Management Sciences, a Master's Degree in Public Administration and a PhD in Management. She has co-authored two books (with A. Kakabadse), The Essence of Leadership (1999), and A Study of the Australian Public Service (1998). She has contributed 14 chapters to international volumes and has published 25 scholarly and reviewed articles. She is co-editor of the Journal of Management Development.

The last decade has seen no let-up in the pace of change affecting organisations and individuals alike. Underpinned by rapid development in information technology and in response to economic pressures (permanent unemployment, permanent under-employment, decline of the middle class), operating in mature markets which have involved taking costs out of the organisation, the nature of work and the workplace are increasingly undergoing a profound transformation. The net effect is that current concepts of work are, if not obsolete, at least outdated. The boundaries that have traditionally existed between workplace and home, for example, are slowly disappearing, as work has become situation-independent. Changes occurring in the entire context of work modify the meanings that have been taken for granted, such as job security, upward mobility, and employees' "loyalty". These pressures, in turn, lead to progressive erosion of traditional organisational context meaning as the locus of employees' identity, norms, working time and space conditions. Organisations are increasingly moving towards a minimalist or "lean" approach, operating with small cores of essential staff and activities and often drawing upon a global network of an externalised workforce, exemplified by casual work, global teleworking, outsourcing, and other explicit contractual arrangements. The resulting new cultural, social and economic formations are challenges that few people feel capable of responding to confidently and critically.

In addition, a combination of demographic changes (female-dominated workforce, ageing workforce, decline in youth population), business needs (shift from products to services, shift to human-based services, focus on core business, cost reduction, customer focus), organisational forms (globalisation, minimalist/line organisation, externalised work, demise of traditional organisation, demise of traditional management), social forces (increased affluence, post-materialistic values, emerging leisure society) and technological factors (invisible collaboration, virtual companies/teams, global communication/interaction, personal corporate infrastructure, mobility and opaque work domains) leads to changes in attitudes and feelings towards the relationship between work and the individual. This transition to new organisational forms and work patterns requires new sets of individual skills and organisational competencies in order to successfully accommodate new ways of working. Each new change or new strategy that takes place also creates a new language system, new meanings and new emotionality, which allow individuals to make some sense of the new situation in which they find themselves.

Current structural transformations (removal of many of the vertical career steps traditionally associated with career success); restricted budgets; increased workloads; and flexible work arrangements often mean that there is an increased mismatch or, at the very least, considerable tension between the expectations of the organisation and the individual on issues such as work opportunities, career counselling, promotion and levels of stress. These circumstances lead to a widening of the gap between individual and organisational expectations on issues relating to performance, career development, loyalty and security, individual identity - all potentially having negative effects on employees' motivation, increasing stress levels and ultimately leading to a degradation of performance.

With these developments in mind, a team of authors has contributed to this issue of the Journal of Managerial Psychology, bringing together essays on the experience of change in organisations. Experts in their respective fields, the authors cover a wide range of contemporary management and psychology concerns, specifically addressing the experience of change from three different perspectives - policy, strategy and personal. Nada Korac-Kakabadse, Andrew Korac-Kakabadse and Alexander Kouzmin explore certain dysfunctional dynamics of corporate citizenship behaviour in newly emerging work patterns in decentralized organizations. In their paper "Dysfunctionality in 'citizenship' behaviour in decentralized organizations: a research note", they provide two case studies, from a policy design perspective, highlighting strategies for the prevention of negative dynamics that emerge from decentralization of organizational control.

Kim James and Cliff Bowman, in their articles, "Re-thinking organisational stress: the transition to the new employment age" and "Action-led strategy and managerial self-confidence" respectively, address change from the strategic perspective. Kim explores four related issues, namely, work adoption practices, stress, "fit", and change, and proposes a tri-partite model for understanding individual and organisational fit. Through a case of radical organisational change, Kim illustrates all three stages of her model, surface social fit, conscious psychological fit, and unconscious psychological fit. Similarly, Cliff explores the reasons why planned change in non-crisis situations does not work but emphasises that emotions, in reality, drive change. Cliff proposes an action-led strategy for change, that is a strategy that emerges from action rather than from "analysis". Cliff suggests the use of test cases for modeling change throughout organizations, in order to build trust, confidence and to create dissatisfaction with old ways, and thus promote a powerful impetus for change. This approach is illustrated with a real case of change that resulted in incremental adjustment to the organization over time and ultimately led to successful alteration.

Traditionally, organisations provide a genius loci or "spirit of place" in terms of where one is in relation to one's context in view of "identification", thus emphasising how one is able to relate to context. The genius loci provides individuals with the dimensions of the experience of safety and belonging; openness and honesty; love and appreciation; social and cultural rules; freedom and responsibility; support, control, power, and membership. It is through specific work practices, particular organisational cultures, values, rules, procedures, structures, specific management styles and rewards, that organisations define the work realm for their employees. Pursuing this theme, Cary Cooper, Adrian Carr and Karen Lee explore how individuals experience these developments. Cary Cooper in his paper, "Can we live with the changing nature of work?", questions each individual's ability to cope effectively with stress brought about by a "bottom line" mentality, a compression of time (a contemporary experience constructed by speed accompanied by uncritical consumption) and changing work patterns. Adrian Carr focuses on the often-neglected side to organizational psychodynamics in time of change, namely emotions, emotionality and the dislodgement of individual identity during organizational transitions from old to new. Adrian's paper, "The psychodynamics of organizations change: identity and the 'reading' of emotion and emotionality in a process of change", canvasses understanding of the interplay of psychodynamics and the effect on individual and group behaviour in times of change. Karen, in her paper, "A change in the outlook for psychology in management: from skill-building to development", explores the changing nature of psychological knowledge and its use in the workplace and management development. The paper provides insights into physiological process with particular emphasis on mirroring and its importance in the maintenance and development of an adult's identity and creation of a psychologically healthy work environment.

In identifying a range of features associated with change, the authors explore and illustrate the dynamics and connections between change, employee emotions, and stress, strategy and policy design. They communicate premisses; theories and experiences of change that set the modus ponens of reasoning and comprehensible discourse for a deeper understanding of change dynamics. As change is becoming more and more instrumental, it is worth reflecting on a Buddhist tradition. In Dhammapada (Mascaro, 1975, p. 35), we read "What we are today is the result of our thoughts of yesterday. And our thoughts of today pave what we shall become tomorrow". Therefore, we need to inform our thoughts of today and understand the implication of change to enable us to understand a world in which we will find ourselves tomorrow. To this end, the contributing authors to this special issue of Journal of Managerial Psychology have shared their thoughts and wisdom on understanding the changes we are experiencing today and how such changes will shape our future.

Nada Korac-Kakabadse Guest Editor

Reference

Mascaro, J. (1975), The Dhammapada (translation), Penguin Books, London.