Veronica Hope Hailey

Devising Context Sensitive Approaches To Change: The Example of Glaxo Wellcome

There is a growing awareness of the need for designers of organisational change to develop context sensitive approaches to implementation if change is to be successful. Existing change literature indicates that there are many aspects of an organisation’s change context that need to be considered, and a wide range of different implementation options open to those designing change. However, these contextual aspects and design options are not currently pulled together in a comprehensive manner, or in a form that makes them easily accessible to practitioners. This paper builds a framework, called the change kaleidoscope, which aims to achieve this. It illustrates the applicability of this framework in practice as an aid to managers in the development of context sensitive implementation approaches via a case study on the changes undertaken at Glaxo Wellcome UK since the early 1990s. This is an interesting case of a successful organisation that managed to change in a pro-active manner rather than in a crisis driven re-active manner. The paper concludes with the lessons for practitioners on the impact of certain contextual features and design choices during change as illustrated by the Glaxo Wellcome case, and a discussion on the use of the kaleidoscope in practice.

Going global, feeling small: an examination of managers' reactions to global restructuring in a multinational organisation

This paper is concerned with examining the reactions of managers to the process of global restructuring in a large, multinational food-processing company. Much extant research concerning globalisation has focused on the wider economic, political and social outcomes. Perhaps surprisingly, relatively little attention has been given to how globalisation is experienced inside organisations. This paper examines how country-level managers have been affected by the move to a new global structure in their organisation. We present evidence of these managers feeling disempowered by global reorganisation and of a largely negative impact on their feelings towards the organisation they work for.

Disappearing between the cracks: HRM in permeable organisations

This paper is concerned with examining the implications of inter-organisational relationships for human resource management (HRM). To date much of the literature on human resource management has been inwardly focussed on the organisation and its employees. Yet increasingly complex organisational forms and more permeable boundaries may mean that employees working for one organisation are influenced by the HR policies and practices of another. This paper presents evidence from two such case studies, representing different forms of inter-organisational relationship. The implications for the HR function are discussed and it is argued that traditional conceptions of HRM are inadequate to encompass these developments.