Management Reactions to Technological Change

This article explores how different types of managers respond to large-scale organizational change and what factors underpin differences in management attitudes and reactions. Through qualitative analysis of the introduction of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in two case study organizations, the authors argue that variations in managerial responses to organizational change relate to both the structural position of individual managers and their level of involvement in the implementation of change. Managers are also shown to exhibit agency in interpreting, influencing, and negotiating the impact of organizational change. The analysis emphasizes the need to incorporate more critical perspectives informed by labor process theory with existing insights from conventional organizational change literature.

[1]  Harold J. Leavitt,et al.  Readings in managerial psychology , 1964 .

[2]  H. Braverman.  Labor and Monopoly Capital , 1974 .

[3]  H. Braverman.  Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century , 1996 .

[4]  T. G. Cummings,et al.  Organization development and change , 1975 .

[5]  Donald R. Brown,et al.  An Experiential Approach to Organization Development , 1976 .

[6]  P. Goldman,et al.  Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century , 1980 .

[7]  I. MacMillan,et al.  Strategy implementation versus middle management self-interest , 1986 .

[8]  Ian Patrick McLoughlin,et al.  Technological Change at Work , 1988 .

[9]  Shoshana Zuboff,et al.  In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power , 1989 .

[10]  Darren Nixon,et al.  The sociology of work , 1991 .

[11]  R. Kanter,et al.  The Challenge of organizational change : how companies experience it and leaders guide it , 1993 .

[12]  Rosemary Stewart,et al.  Information technology, organizational restructuring and the future of middle management , 1993 .

[13]  Stephen Wearne,et al.  Book reviewTechnological change at work (2nd edn): I McLoughlin and J Clark Open University Press, UK (1994) 304 pp £14.99 (paperback) ISBN 0 335 19009 X , 1995 .

[14]  Sumantra Ghoshal,et al.  Rebuilding Behavioral Context: A Blueprint for Corporate Renewal , 1996 .

[15]  H. Willmott.  Rethinking Management and Managerial Work: Capitalism, Control, and Subjectivity , 1997 .

[16]  Steven W. Floyd,et al.  Middle Management’s Strategic Influence and Organizational Performance , 1997 .

[17]  Anselm L. Strauss,et al.  Basics of qualitative research : techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory , 1998 .

[18]  Stewart Clegg,et al.  The Politics of Management Knowledge. , 1998 .

[19]  T. Davenport.  Putting the enterprise into the enterprise system. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[20]  Jean E. Neumann,et al.  Uncertainty, Contrariness and the Double-Bind: Middle Managers' Reactions to their Changing Contracts , 1998 .

[21]  S. Piderit.  Rethinking Resistance and Recognizing Ambivalence: A Multidimensional View of Attitudes Toward an Organizational Change , 2000 .

[22]  M. Meyer,et al.  Innovation Roles: From Souls of Fire to Devil's Advocates , 2000 .

[23]  Chris Kimble,et al.  Computer based Information Systems and Managers' Work , 1995, ArXiv.

[24]  Christian Koch,et al.  Enterprise resource planning , 2001 .

[25]  Angela Lin,et al.  Mission Critical: Realizing the Promise of Enterprise Systems , 2001 .

[26]  Mark Fenton‐O'Creevy.  Employee involvement and the middle manager: saboteur or scapegoat? , 2001 .

[27]  J. Kidd,et al.  The hollowing out of the workforce: what potential for organisational learning? , 2001 .

[28]  Alison Linstead,et al.  Losing the Plot? Middle Managers and Identity , 2002 .

[29]  Jeanne W. Ross,et al.  Learning to Implement Enterprise Systems: An Exploratory Study of the Dialectics of Change , 2002, J. Manag. Inf. Syst..

[30]  Richard Hall,et al.  Enterprise resource planning systems and organizational change: transforming work organization? , 2002 .

[31]  Jeanne W. Ross,et al.  Second-Wave Enterprise Resource Planning Systems: The Continuing ERP Revolution: Sustainable Lessons, New Modes of Delivery , 2003 .

[32]  Julia Balogun,et al.  From Blaming the Middle to Harnessing its Potential: Creating Change Intermediaries , 2003 .

[33]  Leslie P. Willcocks,et al.  Second-Wave Enterprise Resource Planning Systems , 2003 .

[34]  Kwasi Amoako-Gyampah,et al.  ERP implementation factors: A comparison of managerial and end-user perspectives , 2004, Bus. Process. Manag. J..

[35]  Marie-Claude Boudreau,et al.  Enacting Integrated Information Technology: A Human Agency Perspective , 2005, Organ. Sci..

[36]  Ian Palmer,et al.  Managing organizational change: a multiple perspectives approach , 2006 .

[37]  Eddie Norman,et al.  Losing the plot , 2008 .