A Proposed Model for Evaluating the Sustainability of Continuous Change Programme

Abstract- Many studies report that it is difficult to sustain change. This article focuses on how an organization can initiate and sustain a continuous change process. A theoretical model is proposed as a fusion of two previous models for evaluating the sustainability of a change programme; the first is based on analyzing stakeholder interest balance as a prerequisite for organizational sustainability, the second on analyzing the design of the implementation, indicating whether long-term effects will be achieved. It is argued that the combination of these factors provides a more comprehensive perspective, since it allows us to evaluate both the ‘form’ and the ‘direction’ of the programme. To assess stakeholder interest balance, the goal for the change programme is analyzed, utilizing the broad stakeholder interest balance perspective. To assess the design of the implementation, four preconditions for long-term effects should be analyzed: management’s ownership of the change initiative, professional steering, competent leadership and participation. Reference is given to the management concept Lean Production, which is claimed to engage the organization in continuous change. Application of the model highlights the mismatch between narrowly focused change programmes such as Lean Production and sustainable change.

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Introduction- The vexed issue of the sustainability of a change programme, or in other words, of making change ‘stick’, is receiving increased attention in both scholarly and practitioner literature Under pressure from imperatives such as globalization and technological innovation, managers face the knowledge that maintaining change over time is difficult (Beer and Nohria, 2000; Smith, 2002; Knodel, 2004; Burnes, 2004; 2009) and that many such changes decay over time. Maintaining new ways of working and applying them to address the requirements of a rapidly evolving and increasingly complex business context is the real challenge of sustainability (Bateman and David, 2002). For while there is an increased pressure on organizations to shift from traditional bureaucratic structures to more flexible and adaptive forms of organization, these new, more flexible organization structures should not necessarily be seen as replacements to the traditional organizational form. Rather, as Graetz and Smith (2009) point out, they can be viewed as complementary and fulfilling different needs.

One example of a ‘new’ form for organizing is the Toyota-inspired management concept of Lean Production (Womack et al., 1991; Hines et al., 2004; Paterson, 2009), increasingly influential in the manufacturing industry (Bornfelt, 2006; Johansson and Abrahamson, 2009). While Lean can take on many forms, continuous improvement is often argued to be a key aspect of the concept (Petersen, 2009). The success of Lean rests on the organization continuously changing itself through smaller and larger changes, and thus, the means to facilitate these changes is needed. Using Weick and Quinn’s (1999) terminology, and based on this interpretation of Lean, the concept can be characterized as advocating continuous rather than episodic change. However, introduction of the Lean concept itself could be viewed as a form of episodic change, leading to continuous change when the concept is assimilated into the organization. In using Lean as an example of continuous change, one should be mindful that it has been criticized on the grounds that it does not progress wider organizational learning, is perhaps only relevant to the high volume and re utilized workplace such as the automobile industry and does not necessarily address the concerns of other organizational stakeholders (Hines et al., 2004). This article seeks to develop a model for the evaluation of continuous change which would assist in overcoming these limitations.

The specific evaluation of such a continuous change programme creates important challenges. The reason for this is that organizational change is often evaluated after the change programme has been completed, that is, it is evaluated as an episodic change. This raises the question of how to evaluate the sustainability of a change programme, such as Lean, intended on initiating an organizational state which is characterized by continuous change and thus lacks an end-state.

This article contributes to the theory and practice of Change Management by proposing a multi factorial model for evaluating the sustainability of an organization’s continuous change processes. In doing so, an attempt is made to clarify the semantic confusion around ‘sustainable change’.

Defining ‘Sustainable Change’

The term ‘sustainability’ is difficult to define in a universal manner. The challenge for scholars and practitioners is that as the importance of sustainability has spread across both management theory and practice so has the confusion surrounding its definition (Garriga and Mele, 2004). In the change management literature, sustain-able change is taken as meaning change that ‘sticks’ or becomes the new norm in the organization (e.g. Drew et al., 2004; Bateman and David, 2002; Buchanan et al., 2005). The concept is also applied in the context of sustainable work systems, also sometimes referred to as ‘regenerative work’. Such work requires work systems that regenerate the resources of the employees, rather than diminish them, contributing to the development of both human and social resources (e.g. Svensson et al., 2007; Kira and Forslin, 2008; Docherty et al., 2009; Zink et al., 2009). It is acknowledged that in the discourse of sustainable development, ‘sustainable’ is interpreted to refer to the balancing of ecological, economical and social factors for future and current generations (World Commission on Environ-mental and Development (WCED), 1987). However, it is beyond the scope of this article to specifically aim to address sustainability from this macro perspective. The article seeks to recommend an approach to ongoing change that meets the meso level needs of a sustainable work system. However, a wider definition of stakeholder, is incorporated that also encompasses the shareholder, the wider community and the natural environment itself (e.g. Starik and Rands, 1995; Driscoll and Starik, 2004; Haigh and Griffiths, 2009).

This article argues that the concept of stakeholder interest balance, which is often used in the literature of change management (e.g. Beer and Nohria, 2000), could be usefully deployed to link the different interpretations of change that ‘stick’ and sustainable work systems. In doing so, it extends Eklund’s (1998) argument for a connection between stakeholder interest balance and organizational sustainability, where the interests of the main stakeholders (employers, customers and employees) of the organization need to be balanced. It is proposed that the durability of a sustainable change programme derives from the programme’s commitment to the ongoing renewal and regeneration of employee resources. Building a ‘social license to operate’ in the wider community and strategies to ensure that the change programme does not deplete the environmental resources upon which the organization ultimately depends also confers durability and resilience. It is accepted therefore that a sustainable change may not be understood by practitioners as the same as a successful change; whether a change programme is successful or not is mostly determined by the degree of more immediate goal fulfillment (Rapp, 2002). The key feature of a truly sustainable change must be renewal and regeneration – of other stakeholder organizations, of individual employees and of society and the biosphere. With Dunphy et al. (2007), it is argued that some change programmes will play out the features of sustaining change while others may be limited by a more efficiency or compliance based approach, where stakeholders representing financial or regulatory control may be prioritized.

This leads to the suggestion that stakeholder interest balance is a plausible way to link the different perspectives of ‘sustainable’. By taking the broad stakeholder view in measuring stakeholder impact, how a change programme will influence the sustainability of the work system can be approximated, as well as how the programme might meet the wider concerns of sustainable development. The article suggests that this multi-stakeholder perspective to the change initiative defines the durability of the programme, in effect, arguing that measuring stakeholder impact provides a proxy for stakeholder interest balance and therefore the extent to which different stakeholder needs are addressed.

Sustaining Continuous Change Processes

When evaluating the potential impact from a change programme introducing continuous change, several important distinctions are important to keep in mind.

First, there is a difference in the strategies required for creating as compared with sustaining or maintaining changes (Drew et al., 2004; Meyer and Stensaker, 2006). For example, a ‘bottom up’ strategy for organizational change can be an effective way of creating organizational change (Svensson and von Otter, 2001). There is debate in the literature, however, as to whether the change thus created may be less likely to become lasting. On the one hand, employees often lack the resources and authority to maintain the introduced changes (Svensson et al., 2007), yet on the other hand, widespread engagement is clearly an important factor (Benn and Baker, 2009). It is also necessary to differentiate between intended and unintended, on the one hand, and discrete and continuous change, on the other hand. Whether the change has an objective, in the form of goal(s), a vision or a concept such as Lean Production, distinguishes an intended change process from an unintended one (Seo et al., 2004). As such, a change with an intention to fulfill a goal, aim or vision, could be described as having an implementation phase. An implementation could also be meant to initiate continuous change process, striving towards a goal or vision, meaning a set of interlinked change processes, rather than a single discrete change. This article focuses on changes that aim at initiating continuous change processes.

The article also stresses that not all implementations are expected to initiate a continuous change process; they may have the goal of creating a permanent or temporary change in the form of a discrete change. Conversely, simply because a continuous change has been initiated, the discrete changes created by the process are not necessarily permanent. In fact, the created discrete change cannot always be lasting if the continuous change process is to be sustainable (Buchanan et al., 2005). It is also noted that recent research on complexity leader-ship argues that sustainable change is in fact discontinuous (Boyatzis, 2006). Thus, the issue here is that the introduced changes are maintained and kept during appropriate periods, given the organizational context and goals of the

continuous change process (Buchanan et al., 2005). Another way of putting this point is to say that ‘sustainability’ is not a static but a dynamic concept (Docherty et al., 2009).

Figure sets out the development process of continuous change. An implementation is meant to either initiate a discrete or a continuous change, although a continuous change process is always preceded by a discrete change. However, this discrete change, e.g. introducing a new procedure for continuous change, is not necessarily the same as the implementation of that change. An implementation could consist of activities such as training in the new procedure, or lectures to justify the need for the new procedure. Consequently, the inclusion of the implementation phase in Figure is important, especially from the point of evaluating the effects of the change programme, because the consequences from this phase could very well differ greatly from the consequences of the continuous or discrete change process itself.

For instance, in the literature regarding the effects of Lean Production on work conditions, Landsbergis et al. (1999) note that in the case of two companies they studied, the employees felt satisfied with the high participation during the implementation phase. However, this level of employee participation was not maintained after the system was operating. Research also indicates it is important to understand that the conditions and outcomes of the implementation phase could influence the legitimacy of the long-term continuous change process (Meyer and Stensaker, 2006). For instance, if employees perceive that management’s commitment to the change programme is lacking, their engagement in the change process is likely to diminish, making it difficult or even impossible to continue the change programme. This is a common experience in the work with quality circles (Lawler and Mohrman, 1985).

Evaluating Sustainability

The article now moves from the issue of defining what is meant by sustainable change, to discussing how it could be evaluated in a programme intended on implementing continuous change process. It is argued that, given their importance for sustainability, two factors are highly important to evaluate: the goals of the change programme, i.e. the programme’s direction (what the programme seeks to achieve) and the implementation strategy used (how the programme seeks to implement the sought results).

Goal Evaluation

Evaluation of a change programme can be done retrospectively (i.e. after the change is done) or during the change process. The problem with both of these approaches is that they mean that the change programme needs to be initiated before an evaluation can take place. An alternative approach is to try to ‘approxi-mate’ the likely outcome of the change programme before it is initiated. One such way, as discussed further below, is to assess the goals of the change programme, since they indicate which results are likely to be produced by the programme. For a change programme meant to initiate a continuous change process, it is difficult to evaluate it retrospectively (although it could be done during the programme’s dur-ation), specifically because it is assumed to be continuous, and at least in theory, to have no real endpoint. This suggests that the most appropriate approach is to evaluate the goals and intents behind the change programme, to approximate its potential stakeholder interest impact, and thus, the programme’s likely effect on the sustainability of the work system as well as on the wider range of stakeholders such as the natural environment.

In support of the argument that the goals of a change programme can be a viable way of assessing the likely outcome, several researchers have noted that the likely organizational outcome of a change programme does not depend solely upon the specific change programme concept itself but that management’s intentions are also important (Westphal et al., 1997; Poksinska et al., 2002; Brulin and Svensson, 2011). With the implementation of ISO 9000, for example, if management is mainly seeking to implement the quality management system for the sake of an ISO-certification, then this is also what they most likely will receive – and only this. However, if they instead try to use the standards as a continuation of their work with quality management, i.e. an approach more in line with the ‘philos-ophy’ behind the standard, they are more likely to achieve efficiency gains from the implementation of ISO 9000 (Poksinska et al., 2002). As well, organizations that implement the TQM concept largely as a management fad or to gain legitimacy gains from their customers, are less likely to receive efficiency gains than those organizations who try to reflect upon how the concept fits them, and how it can be best adapted to suit their needs and goals (Westphal et al., 1997). These studies are therefore supportive of the argument that why an organization initiates a change programme is as important as which change programme they initiate. In other words, they suggest that management’s reasons for the change programme are likely to be as important as the programme itself, because the intended goals affect the likely outcome of the programme.

The Implementation Design

While the goals of the change programme are highly important to evaluate, since they likely approximate the potential outcome of the programme, the design of the implementation is also a key factor. In this section, it is suggested that Svensson et al.’s (2007) model for organizing a change project in such a way that it leads to management’s sought long-term effects (as contrasted to short-term results), from the change programme, is useful to evaluate the organizational features of the implementation phase (Figure 2).

There are two reasons for this. First, because organizations introducing a new organizational structure or the means to work with continuous change are being discussed, e.g. continuous improvements. Thus, the continuous change process is preceded by an implementation phase, which affects the sustainability of the continuous change process, as already argued. Hence, it is necessary to also evalu-ate the design of the implementation, because an ill-designed implementation could ruin the chances of creating a sustainable continuous change process. However, as discussed above, management’s goal for the changes predict the likely outcome of the programme. Consequently, if the continuous change

process is to be sustainable, management’s goals of the change programme must be balanced from the perspective of the stakeholders of the organization, recognizing that from a sustainable development viewpoint, stakeholder impact must be assessed from the perspective of the long-term impact of the change on the broader socio-ecological system (Clifton and Amran, 2011). If they are, and the organization uses an implementation design close to Svensson et al.’s (2007) model, this would arguably allow both a successful implementation phase followed by a high chance of goal-fulfillment, and thus, a sustainable continuous change process.

Svensson et al.’s (2007) model uses four enablers for long-term effects: management ownership of the change initiative, professional steering, competent leader-ship and engaged participants. Each of the enablers is also referred to by other researchers in this field, supporting the claim for inclusion in this model. First, active ownership of the implementation, meaning owner and top management commitment and involvement in the change project is highly important for creating long-term effects (Norrgren et al., 1996; Bateman, 2005; Dunphy et al., 2007; Svensson et al., 2007;). Svensson et al. (2007) also stress the importance of having an active owner of the change programme in the top management, who can take responsibility for the results and make sure that they are implemented in the organization.

Second, professional steering of a change programme is important if change is going to ‘stick’ (Knodel, 2004; Bateman, 2005; Svensson et al., 2007). An example of this is a steering group, which can overlook the implementation process, allocate resources when needed and make sure that the implementation is meeting the ongoing needs of the owners (Svensson et al., 2007). Another example could be a method for visualizing and steering the project work (Knodel, 2004) or the appointment of a coordinator or ‘change agent’ for sustain-ing continuous improvement activities (Bateman, 2005). Active feedback for those involved in the implementation is another very important steering aspect (Norrgren et al., 1996).

Third, continuing and competent leadership is highly important for successful organizational change in order to act as inspirers and to ‘lead by example’. This has been stressed by many authors (Kotter, 1996; Aoki, 2008; Svensson et al., 2007; Taylor et al., 2011; Whelan-Berry and Somerville, 2010). However, a number of writers (Ibarra and Hunter, 2007; Svensson et al., 2007) also point to the leader’s importance for partnering, networking and creating a dialogue between all of those involved in or impacted by the project, including those often perceived as fringe stakeholders (Hart and Sharma, 2004), such as groups representing the natural environment, for instance. Partnering and networking enables learning and change, particularly applying to partnerships between NGOs and corporations in connection with their strategic sustainability activities (Porter and Kramer, 2006; Matten and Moon, 2008). Lastly, engaged participants, who can act as local inspirers and also add momentum and ensure commitment to the change, are highly important for sustainability (Boyatzis, 2006; Svensson et al., 2007). From the perspective of sustainable change, engaging participants may involve engaging fringe stakeholders in order to both pre-empt stakeholder concerns and provide innovative suggestions to the dilemmas of organizations attempting to reposition themselves via new structures or implementing reforms such as Lean (Hart and Sharma, 2004). Another way of putting this issue is to highlight the importance of allowing all affected by the change to participate in the implementation. But they also need to be empowered to participate in the implementation through provision of resources such as time, skills and training (Kotter, 1996; Norrgren et al., 1996; Rapp, 2002; Bateman, 2005; Whelan-Berry and Somerville, 2010). Kotter (1996) refers to this as the importance of ‘empowerment’. For example, researchers have shown that certain human resource management policies and practices can facilitate change through prompt-ing employee engagement with environmental programmes (Ramus and Steger, 2000).

Halvarsson and Ohman-Sandberg (2009) develop Svensson et al.’s (2007) model arguing that the four enablers of ownership, steering, leadership and engaged participants interact with each other and that therefore there is a need for communication and coordination between them. They refer to structural factors, such as visions and goals for the change, together with process factors, such as how learning is facilitated during the development process. For instance, goals and visions are the sought consequences of a change programme, which then need steering together with learning processes and engaged participants, and com-petent leadership, using feedback to monitor their progress, to assure that the change initiative is developing in accordance with the goals and vision.

Consequently, Svensson et al.’s (2007) model, as further developed by Halvars-son and Ohman-Sandberg (2009), is meant to increase the chance of organizations achieving sought long-term effects, i.e. a form of goal-fulfilment. When this model is, in turn, combined with Eklund’s (1998) model, where the goals are used to approximate the impact on the stakeholder interest balance from the change programme, Figure 3 is derived.

Thus, management’s goal for a change programme are more likely to be achieved if an implementation design similar to the one proposed by Svensson et al. (2007) is used. Consequently, the implementation design and management’s goal are evaluated, it is possible to approximate (though far from predict, of course) whether: (1) the programme has a likely chance of achieving the sought goals, and (2) how the introduced changes (as guided by the goals of management) changes the stakeholder interest balance in the organization. Arguably then, when these two factors are put together, the sustainability of a change programme meant to introduce continuous change can be estimated.

Discussion

In considering the aim of this article to develop a model to evaluate the sustain-ability of programmes aimed at implementing continuous change processes, it is acknowledged that this model is only a proposal, based on previous research and theoretical models. One could argue that it is overambitious to try to evaluate the ‘sustainability’ of a programme mean to initiate continuous change processes at the levels proposed here, i.e. from the perspectives of change ‘stickiness’, as well as of regenerative work, systems. This is, however, an empirical question, rather than a theoretical one. Thus, in order to empirically and methodologically validate the proposed model according to these different levels of sustainability, considerable future research is needed.

In each instance, this would best be done by using a longitudinal approach, sampling either qualitative or quantitative data at several separate points in time from the studied organization(s). One alternative to this more extensive approach would be to try to assess how ‘robust’ the model is for evaluating sustainability by assessing stakeholder interest balance and enablers for long-term effects. For instance, this could be done using several case studies, pooling the results and thus calculating the chance of the model giving valid conclusions.

While the focus of this article has been to evaluate sustainability of a continuous change process, e.g. the introduction of Lean Production, this model can likely be used to evaluate programmes meant to introduce discrete change as well. Given the special nature of a continuous change process (which is the focus and interest of this article), i.e. that they are (at least in theory) meant to have no real endpoint in time; this means that retrospective methods (which are available for discrete change) cannot be used for a continuous change process. However, one could evaluate the process during its progress, though there are two potential problems with this. First of all, this will mean that the change programme needs to be initiated. Second, an evaluation of the process takes time, meaning that it either needs to be halted, or that the process risks having moved on to a point such that when the evaluation is finished, the conclusions from it may no longer be

of relevance. Consequently, from the perspective of risk management and potential resource usage, assessing the change before it is initiated does offer an advantage compared to after the process has been initiated.

However, given the importance of learning and process feedback for creating durable change and achieving the sought long-term effects of a change programme, it is plausible to argue for the need of a continuous evaluation during the continuous change process as well (Norrgren et al., 1996; Svensson et al.,

2007; Halvarsson and Ohman-Sandberg, 2009; Brulin and Svensson, 2011), i.e. different means for learning evaluations (e.g. Brulin et al., 2009). Consequently, these approaches to evaluating a change programme are not mutually exclusive to, or a substitute for, the proposed model. Instead, they are a highly important complement to it.

One advantage of the proposed model arises from its ability to evaluate two distinct aspects of the question of sustainability: management’s goals or the sought stake-holder interest balance consequences, and the design of the implementation, meaning if the implementation is likely to lead to the intended consequences. These features of the model reduce the risk of creating a one-sided (and possibly misleading) result, thereby arguably increasing the likely validity of the results from the model. Consequently, if the model shows favorable results regarding both the direction and the design of the implementation, this indicates a higher chance of creating a sustainable continuous change process, while if only one of them shows positive results, the chance is likely lower. This aspect of the model is highly important, since influence from ‘external’ factors, such as a consulting company’s change pro-gramme initiated in an organization, can provide an ‘illusion’ of sustainability, if the evaluative model solely focuses on the implementation design.

This aspect of the model should also be considered as a means of reducing the risk of researchers and managers blindly following a newly popular management concept, such as Lean Production. For instance, it is not uncommon in the Lean literature that the advocates of the concept promise many tempting results and effects from the implementation of Lean – some even arguing for the introduction of Lean in all companies in order to benefit society more widely (Womack et al., 1991). However, while one cannot, of course, completely rule out that a concept such as Lean will often produce certain effects, based on the previous referred to studies and argumentation in this article, it is argued here that the effects of a Lean implementation will as likely depend on the management’s goal and the implementation design, as on the concept itself. Evaluating management’s goal for the change programme can to some degree predict the effects the programme will produce (if an appropriate organization for the implementation is used). In addressing theoretically the question of whether some management concepts are likely to produce sustainable change than others, the model suggests that sustain-ability does not depend upon the specifics of the chosen concept. Instead, it depends mostly on other factors, i.e. the design of the implementation in terms of its structure and processes and management goals for the concept, rather than the chosen concept itself.

Many of the factors used and argued for in project management is temporary in nature, given that they are based on projects. Therefore, it is relevant to ask if these types of steering systems, such as a steering group, are appropriate for use in the implementation of continuous change programmes such as Lean Production. One could argue that they work well during the implementation phase; however, this means that the organization needs to find other forms for steering after this phase is over. Conversely, one could argue that organizations instead should immediately integrate the work with the concept in their ordinary management and steering structures. Therefore, one could further argue that a temporary steering system makes for an easier implementation phase and conversely, that integrating the work into the ordinary management systems will mean less momentum during the implementation, although this could avoid the difficulties of moving from an implementation phase into the long-term continuous change process. However, if Graetz and Smith’s (2009) argumentation is accepted, this is actually a non-issue; instead, according to these researchers, these types of temporary steering structures should exist side by side with the ordinary management structures, since they complement each other. This approach is more in line with recent interpretations of change that lend themselves to open dialogue and questioning and have the potential to facilitate strategic direction setting in the face of complexity and ambiguity (Clegg et al., 2007). Also, from the perspective of Eklund’s (1998) and Svensson et all’s (2007) models, the advantage of these types of temporary steering mechanisms is that they likely provide a forum for correcting the direction of the change programme. Thus, if the organization is aware of the need for stakeholder interest balance, a steering group could be used as a means for representative employee participation and wider stakeholder engagement, thereby providing some means for employee interest fulfillment as well as responding strategically to the needs of fringe stakeholders such as those groups representing the interests of the natural environment (Sharma and Henriques, 2005). Hence it also acts as a means to steer the change programme in a direction towards stakeholder interest balance, taking the broad stakeholder view and therefore addressing the wider needs of a more sustainable development than the narrow inward-looking focus of the continuous improvement traditionally embraced by change programmes such as Lean.

Lastly, while the proposed model uses Svensson et all’s (2007) ‘enablers’ for evaluating the form of the change programme, only longitudinal studies over an extended time period can validate the model. Thus, this model can only indicate probabilities for sustainability; it cannot be used to determine if an organizational change programme will lead to a sustainable continuous change process within an organization. Of course, one could easily argue that it is by definition impossible to actually ‘determine’ if a change programme will be sustainable; in the end, only probabilities should be discussed, since many things can occur which could affect the sustainability of the change programme. Again using Svensson et al’s (2007) model, and Halvarsson and Ohman-Sandberg’s (2009) further development of the model, using an implementation design which has means for steering and learning processes built into the programme likely provide some means to handle this issue.

Conclusion

Several conclusions can be drawn based on the above discussion. The discussion provides support for the argument that evaluating the sustainability of a change programme should be in terms of both the aimed for direction and the design of the implementation of the change programme. Stakeholder interest balance utilizing the broad stakeholder view is suggested as a concept that allows change to be operationalized so that the different interpretations of ‘sustainability’ are linked. The extant literature supports the suggestion that management’s goal for the change programme is a plausible way of assessing stakeholder interest balance and so provides a means to evaluate the direction of the change programme. The second suggestion, based on the previous models, is that organizational preconditions for achieving management’s sought long-term effects from a change programme are professional steering, management’s ownership of the change programme, competent leadership and participation for all affected by the change programme. Consequently, it can be concluded that these are suitable ways of evaluating the design of the implementation.

The proposed model evaluates all of these factors, i.e. it assesses both the direction and the design of the change programme. Therefore, the overall conclusion here is that the proposed model is theoretically viable. The next step is to present a way to operationalize the model, and consequently provide a means for testing the validity and robustness of the model. This is a good basis for future research that may enable the recognized sustainability limitations of narrow understandings of continuous change programmes, such as Lean Production, to be overcome.

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