Myers, Hulks, and Wiggins: Organizational Change:

Perspectives on Theory and Practice

Integrative Case Study 4: With the programme or not

1. What do you think may have been the explanation for the managing directors
silence about the managers future in the conference call and his initial speech at
the retreat? How would you have handled this?

Indicative answers: We find that some students speculate that the managing director
may have been silent in a deliberate attempt to provide the managers with a learning
experience. However, this does seem unlikely. Other possibilities include, for
example, fear or anxiety about reactions to being candid with the managers, masked
by emotional labour, and/or a preference to clarify the precise policy with the board,
before discussing it with the managers. In discussing how they would handle it,
students may want to raise both practical and ethical issues. In Chapters 9 and 13
we discuss the importance to successful change of communicating as openly and as
early as possible and, in Chapter 12, approaches to communication.

2. How could the managers own lack of questions about their future, and how they
positioned themselves as in the process of acceptance and being ready to move
on during the first morning of the retreat, be explained?

Indicative answers: It does seem likely that these questions were on the managers
minds, while not being voiced. Again, the issues may concern emotional labour, and
the associated challenges of impression management, particularly given that their
futures might be at risk. Students may also raise issues concerning behavioural
norms in the organizational culture, and how acceptable it would have been to raise
these questions unless invited to do so. This can also lead to a broader discussion
especially in international groups concerning contrasts between different societal
norms around questioning people more senior in the hierarchy.

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 Myers, Hulks, and Wiggins: Organizational Change:
Perspectives on Theory and Practice

3. At the end of the second day, assuming that the managers were frank about
being with the programme (that is committed to involvement in the delivery of the
change), consider whether, in terms of the change curve, they were necessarily
then at the stages of acceptance or being ready to move on.

Indicative answers: There is a distinction here between commitment to the delivery

of change, and progressing through the change curve. While denial is
incompatible with commitment, it is entirely possible, indeed commonplace, to
experience stages of anger and depression, while committed to working toward
change. Students may be able to recognise this in their own experiences of change.

4. Which aspects of behaviour described here would you see as reflecting

emotional intelligence, or a lack of emotional intelligence?

Indicative answers: Most people pick out the HR manager as an exemplar in terms
of emotional intelligence, in the way she helped the managers acknowledge their
emotions and the impact of suppressing them, and also the way that she took the
opportunity to employ the managers own experience of anxiety, horror, and anger to
explore the challenges of their roles in taking change forward with their staff.

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