Noel M. Tichy

The transformational leader

The Themes, The Protagonists, The Transformational Drama. RECOGNIZING THE NEED FOR REVITALIZATION. The Gathering Storm. Overcoming the Resistance to Change. CREATING A NEW VISION. Diagnosing the Problem. Creating a Motivating Vision. Mobilizing Commitment: Getting People Signed on to the Mission. INSTITUTIONALIZING CHANGE. Creative Destruction: Reweaving the Social Fabric. The Leader as Social Architect I: Making Bureaucracy Behave. The Leader as Social Architect II: Motivating People. EPILOGUE. History Repeats Itself. Notes. References. Index.

Social Network Analysis For Organizations

This article introduces the social network approach — its origins, key concepts, and methods. We argue for its use in organizational settings and apply the network approach in a comparative analysis of two organizations.

Managing strategic change: Technical, political, and cultural dynamics

Partial table of contents: A FRAMEWORK FOR STRATEGIC CHANGE. Strategic Change Management. Organizational Models. STRATEGIC ISSUES: DIAGNOSIS AND STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT. Diagnosis for Change. Application of Diagnostic Strategy. Change Strategy. Technical Change Strategies. Political Change Strategies. Cultural Change Strategies. IMPLEMENTING STRATEGIC CHANGES. Change Technologies. Transition Management. MONITORING CHANGE AND THE FUTURE OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT. Monitoring and Evaluating Strategic Change. Strategic Change in the Future. References. Author Index. Subject Index.

Managing change strategically: The technical, political, and cultural keys

The turbulent economic, political, and cultural forces of the 1980s have made the management of strategic change increasingly a way of life for organizations. To manage such change, managers will have to confront basic questions about the organizations technical, political, and cultural foundations. The technical questions include: What business(es) should we be in? How should we be organized to accomplish our strategy? What kinds of people do we need, and how will they be acquired, developed, and rewarded? The political questions include: Who gets to influence the mission and strategy of the organization? Who gets promoted to what key positions? The cultural questions: What values and beliefs are necessary to support the organizations strategy? What subcultures are desirable, and should there be an overarching corporate culture? The author suggests that the answers for an individual organization should cluster to form three strands of a strategic rope--that is, they must be interwoven and mutually supportive for the organization to be effective. He sees human resources management as the focal point of much of strategic change likely to occur in organizations during the 1980s.

Network Analysis in Organizational Settings

This article sets out to reinforce andfurther develop an emerging paradigm: social network analysis, which represents social structure in terms of relationships (ties) between social objects. Not all the social objects are directly linked, and objects may be connected by multiple relationships of affect, influence, information, or goods and services. Network analysis deals with the types and patterns of relationships, and the causes and consequences of these patterns. The article applies the paradigm to the study of organizational structure by both developing theoretical constructs and presenting methodology for carrying out social network analysis in organizations. An analysis of three organizations from the Aston Study is presented using social network analysis to test propositions about differences between mechanistic and organic structures.

Human resources management: A strategic perspective

We are coming to a time when the management of human resources must take a more prominent place in the firm’s decisions. The value and leverage of the resources is simply too great for the kind of reactive response to pressures which has characterized it in the past As it stands today, the personnel function, or industrial relations, or whatever title is used, is typically not a major mover in the firm . . . The reactive not the proactive tradition is strong in the personnel field.

Agents of Planned Social Change: Congruence of Values, Cognitions, and Actions.

1 This article is based on research conducted for a Ph.D. dissertation at Columbia University, 1 972. The author wishes to acknowledge the substantial contributions of his advisor and colleague, Professor Harvey Hornstein of Columbia University, who is collaborating on an expanded change agent study currently in progress. Support for this study came from the Center for Policy Research, Inc., New York City, and the Garrett Chair for Social Responsibility, Graduate School of Business, Columbia University. Questionnaire data collected from 91 varied well-known social-change agents were organized into a framework called the change agents general change model. This model included their values about change, how they conceptualized means of effecting change, the techniques they used to carry out change, their personal characteristics and their descriptions of their work. A four-category scheme of types of change agents best accounted for differences in the variables being studied: (1 ) outside pressure, (2) people change technology, (3) organization development, and (4) analysis for the top. Data are analyzed comparing the degree to which their general change models were congruent along two dimensions: (1 ) the congruence of values and actions and (2) the congruence of cognitions and actions.

An Analysis of Clique Formation and Structure in Organizations.

The organizational literature has long acknowledged the effects of various formal organizational variables on informal structure. Nevertheless, very few systematic and empirically testable propositions have been formulated specifying relationships in this area. In this article a number of testable propositions are developed which relate the variables of compliance, mobility and size to motivation for clique formation and to constraints within which cliques form. A typology of five clique types (1) coercive cliques, (2) normative cliques, (3) high-mobility utilitarian cliques, (4) seniority utilitarian cliques, and (5) no-mobility utilitarian cliques, is discussed.

How Different Types of Change Agents Diagnose Organizations

This article explores the results of a questionnaire study which focused on how four types of change agents, the Outside Pressure Type, the Organization Development type, the Analysis for the Top Type and the People Change Technology Type diagnose organizations. The four types of change agents were found to use different diagnostic categories. The differences were found to relate to both their value orientation and to the change techniques which they employ.

GE's Crotonville: A Staging Ground for Corporate Revolution

Dadically altering the genetic code of a large, successful corporation requires revolutionary action. Since 1981 John F. Welch, CEO of General Electric, has been struggling to break the companys old genetic code. This code was built around a core set of principles based on growth in sales greater than GNP, with many SBUs (strategic business units), relying on financial savvy, meticulous staff work, and a domestically focused company. The new genetic code is to build shareholder value in a slow-growth environment through operating competitive advantage with transformational leadership at all levels of the organization. After five years of this effort -which included downsizing GE by over 100,000 employees, divesting