Thesis-1999-Griffin.pdf (32.95 MB)
Building, sustaining and dissolving large scale change proposal coalitions in top management teams
thesis
posted on 2010-11-15, 10:05 authored by Nicholas B. GriffinRecent studies into the political aspects of large scale change in organisations have
highlighted the need for a deeper understanding of managerial elites in the change
context. The extant literature is guilty of conflating large scale change into a single
process, and commentators describe and prescribe political processes and behaviours
without differentiating between the proposal and implementation stages of change. The
research presented in this thesis provides insights into the nature and characteristics of
large scale change proposal coalitions and the behaviours and tactics of coalition leaders
in top management teams across a range of organisational settings in the UK private
sector.
Data was collected and analysed using a qualitative methodology. An elite style semistructured
interview schedule was used with a research sample of fifty members of top
management teams drawn from across fourteen organisations in thirteen industries.
The findings suggest that large scale change proposal coalitions follow a five phase lifecycle:
initiate, build, sustain, dissolve, and capture and transfer. Within these phases
coalition leaders tend to perform three primary roles: builder, sustainer and dissolver.
The sequence of gathering support to build a coalition is heavily influenced by the
hierarchical position of the builder, and the behaviours and tactics used are contingent
upon whether an individual is engaged in an upward inter-tier, intra-tier, or downward
inter-tier support gathering exercise.
Once a large scale change proposal coalition had been established the leadership role
changes from building to sustaining. Four principal types of coalition are identified:
aligned coalitions, unaligned coalitions, unfocused coalitions and fragmented coalitions.
Different leadership skills are required for each.
Once a proposal has been approved or rejected the evidence suggests that coalitions
should be dissolved as rapidly as practically possible using one or a combination of three
dissolution techniques.
These findings have important implications for academic enquiry and practitioners.
History
School
- Business and Economics
Department
- Business
Publisher
© Nicholas B. GriffinPublication date
1998Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.EThOS Persistent ID
uk.bl.ethos.310990Language
- en