Power and Politics and Organisational Change

Philip Harland

TMA 01: Power and politics and organisational change

Personal Identifier: C6583258

Submission Date: 7th January 2015

Contents

Executive Summary 2

Change at EUTCo, Tanzania 3

Kurt Lewin’s Change Model 4

A critique of Lewin using Sturdy and Grey 5

An Application of Lewin’s Theory to EUTCo 7

Beer and Nohria’s Theory E and Theory O 9

Recommendations and Conclusions 11

References 12

Appendix A: EUTCo Corporate Background and Structure 14

Appendix B: Examples of Construction Project Failings 16

Executive Summary

This essay is to be read as an assessment of and recommendations for the organisational change management (OCM) at the East Usambara Tea Company (EUTCo), Tanzania in 1995. The changes are charted in the years following investment in the project by the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC), London. The author uses the time frame of the event to contrast ‘old school’ change theories of Lewin against the more modernist rapid transformational change theories that have supposedly outdated them. The work thus serves as a comparison between old and new philosophies in an environment where culture and technologies are often set against each other in tension.

In order to investigate these old and new theories, the essay begins with an overview of one of the founding publications relating to organisational change by Kurt Lewin featuring his model: unfreeze-change-refreeze (Lewin, 1951). This is chosen due to its wide acceptance in the methodology of change and broad spectrum of critical opinions and new models developed on it. The critique of this model is further developed with reference to the alternative change philosophies proposed by Sturdy and Grey (2003) which consider a variety of papers challenging mainstream OCM thinking. The paper challenges the supposed wisdom that change is a necessity for progress and introduces theories outside the sphere of normal OCM discourse. Chosen for its fundamental framing of...