Effecting Change in Large Organizations 9780231881456

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Effecting Change in Large Organizations

Effecting Change in Large Organizations By ELI GINZBERG and EWING W. REILLEY assisted by

DOUGLAS W. BRAY

AND JOHN L. HERMA

Columbia University Press, New York, 1957

The funds for this study were made available tion for Management Research.

Library

of Congress

Catalog

Card Number:

Copyright

© 1957 Columbia

Published

in Great Britain, Canada,

By the Oxford London,

University

Toronto,

Manufactured

Bombay,

University

by the McKinsey

57-13484 Press, New

India, and

Press and

Karachi

in the Uniteti States of

America

York

Pakistan

Founda-

Foreword Tins is AN EXPLORATORY study. It has four objectives: to

identify an important aspect of corporate life; to assess the strategic factors involved in the process of directed change; to consider how current efforts to bring about major organizational changes can be improved; and to suggest the lines of future investigation likely to yield new knowledge and improvements in practice. The subject is so large that we are inevitably forced to deal with it suggestively rather than exhaustively. Our aim is to frame the problem and to identify the key elements and processes so that others in business and academic life may be stimulated to concern themselves with it. This book is an outgrowth of a collaborative effort between the President of the McKinsey Foundation for Management Research and the Director and two staff psychologists of the Conservation of Human Resources Project at Columbia University. The impetus for the book was given by Ewing W. Reilley when he sought to discover whether the theory and techniques of the social sciences could contribute to the clarification of this important management problem. He had been repeatedly impressed with the difficulties that large business corporations encounter when they seek to change their organiza-

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Foreword

tional structures in order to cope more effectively with the increased demands made upon them, usually as a result of rapid growth. In our preliminary group discussions of organizational changes we considered nonprofit and government organizations as well as large business enterprises. We made an extensive search of the literature in the social sciences and psychology. The bibliography cites those items which were found to be most directly relevant and helpful. In addition, we gave considerable attention to the contribution of organizational and psychological theory. In our early discussions we made three decisions which help to explain the shape of this study of change. We focused on large business organizations because of their undeniable importance in our contemporary economy and society. However, most of the findings emerging from this study of change appear also to have applicability to smaller organizations. The second decision was to study change from the viewpoint of top management. No one but the chief executive can assume the final responsibility for approving a program of change that will unsettle established traditions, relationships, and policies and that commit a company to operating in ways with which it has had no prior experience. The third decision was to study change by considering the problems faced by large organizations as they have decentralized their operations. Since it was not practical in this exploratory study to consider all types of change, we decided to concentrate on this type of organizational change, especially since it has been the outstanding ex-

Foreword

vii

: ample of organizational change that has characterized our (economy since the end of World War II. This book has been written for the business executive. We hope that it will also interest the social scientist. We ! have included background materials about actual business (operations to help the social scientist follow the argument imore easily; and we have deliberately reduced the scientific apparatus in order to present the argument to the 'businessman in terms more nearly his own. An outline of the structure of the book may enable the ) reader to follow the analysis more easily. The first chapter ] presents examples of organizations that have confronted ithe necessity of change. Since no corporation lives in isolation, the forces in the larger environment likely to pre