John Kotter, one of the world's foremost authorities on leadership and change, argues that problems of strategic change arise because top executives fail to take the necessary steps to manage such changes. These include:

Establishing a sense of urgency on the basis of market threats or opprortunities.

Forming a powerful coalition of stakeholders for change.

Creating and communicating a clear vision and strategy to direct the change and ensuring that the behavior of the guiding coalition is in line with the vision.

Removing obstacles to change, changing systems that undermine the vision and encouraging nontraditional ideas and activities.

Creating short-term wins.

Consolidating improvements but also continuing the process of change.

However, Julia Balogun studied a top management change initiative from the point of view of how middle managers interpreted it. She found that, whilst top managers believed they were being clear about the intended strategy, change actually took place by middle managers making sense of change initiatives in terms of their own mentalmodels in relation to their local responsibilitiesandconditions, through discussion with their peers and on the basis of rumour. Top managers were inevitably too far removed from these dynamics and could not be expected to understand them in detail or manage them in specific ways. She argues that 'Senior managers can initiate and influence direction of change but not direct change'. They can:

Monitor how people respond to change initiatives.

Engage as much as possible with how people make sense of change and work with their reality, responding to their issues and interpretations.

Live the changes they want others to adopt, especially avoiding inconsistencies between their actions, words and deeds.

Focus on creating the understanding of higher-level principles rather than the details.

Hari Tsoukas and Robert Chia go further. They argue that change is an inherent property of organisations. Hierarchy and management control dampen that inherent change. Change programmes trigger ongoing change: they provide the discursive resources for making certain things possible, although what exactly will happen remains uncertain when a change programme is initiated. It must first be experienced before the possibilities it opens up are appreciated and taken up (if they are taken up). Change programmes are . . . locally adapted, improvised and elaborated. . . . If this is accepted what is, then, the meaning of "planned change"? . . . Change has been taken to mean that which occurs as a consequence of deliberate managerial action. In the view put forward here such a definition is limited. Although managers certainly aim at achieving established ways of thinking and acting through implementing particular plans, nonetheless, change in organizations occurs without necessarily intentional managerial action as a result of individuals trying to accommodate new experience and realize new possibilities. In the view suggested here, an excessive preoccupation with planned change risks failing to recognize the always already changing texture of organizations'

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Question1. What are the problems associated with top-down or bottom-up views of change

management?

Question2. If you were a senior executive which approach would you take and in what circumstances?