Modelling the dynamics of organisational change in a Spanish industrial cooperative

Abstract

There is increasing attention on the need for dynamic approaches to manage organisational change in order to sustain competitive advantage in changing business environments. Current frameworks and methods are misleading in terms of the fact that flexibility is a temporal and dynamic condition for survival in environments with a high degree of variability in most real-world organisations. This study aims to examine determinants underpinning organisational change strategies throughout the enterprise lifecycle in order to develop a predictive method that will help managers in the design of effective change options dealing with the complexity of organisational flexibility. A system dynamics model was constructed based on theoretical and empirical data from a case study of a Spanish cooperative company. Then, the predictive method shows the impact of managers’ decisions on organisational flexibility through simulations. The effectiveness of change strategies is investigated through the dynamic behaviour of key variables. These factors cause relevant delays on the desired results and could force firms to choose an inappropriate path for change. This study offers significant implications for theory and practice.

Keywords:

• Organisational change
• system dynamics
• simulation
• behavioural decision-making
• Spain

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to extend sincere thanks for the insightful comments received from our reviewers as they help us to improve our paper substantially, to the managers of Mondragón Componentes that collaborate in the questionnaires, to MC’s R&D manager who participate in the questionnaire and assist the authors during the interviews, to Niels van der Weerdt (PhD) from Erasmus University for his support in analysing the data from MCs, and to Hedapen global services, a company that assisted in drafting the paper, and a language service provider who helped in proofreading the final version of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Figure 8. Simulation results in routinisation with low control (Scenario 2a).

Figure 9. Simulation results in revitalisation with high control (Scenario 2b).

Notes

1 The QSF method, derived from the theoretical framework of Volberda (1998) was a web-based questionnaire (http://www.evaluation-erasmus.nl/cgi-bin/react_tool.pl?md5obj = 4766f48d3dfb5de5ba85d18b614e209d) developed by the Department for Strategy & Business Environment at the Erasmus University. The digital form of the questionnaire titled “Quick Scan Flexibility”(version 1.61 EO – English) was active during the period October 24^th, 2006 – October, 24^th, 2008.

2 Additional information in Supplementary Online Material 2, Figure S2.

3 For additional information see Supplementary Online Material 3.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.