Pettigrew's research on decision making in relation to understanding the organisational change process is one of the most influential approaches to the study of organisational change.
Pettigrew studied the overall change in Britain's largest manufacturing firm, ICI, and also looked into the organisation's history and identified three key elements (context, content, and process) for studying organisational change (Pettigrew, 1987).Pettigrew's contextualist
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approach suggested that in order to conduct a useful study of organisational change, it is imperative to consider the context of change, the process of change, the content of change, and the interrelationships among them (Pettigrew et al., 1992). Another study was conducted by Pettigrew and associates (Pettigrew et al., 1992) to discover changes in the British National Health Service, arguing that, similar to the private sector, detailed assessments are necessary for investigating change in the public sector. Hence it is relevant to this study which has also been conducted in the public sector (DSF and clubs).The contextualist approach proposes three elements that are key factors to studying and understanding organisational change, namely content (i.e. what), context (i.e. why), and process (i.e. how), and highlights the significance of various interconnections among them (Pettigrew, 1987), as shown in Figure 4.1.
Figure 4.1 Key Elements of Pettigrew’s Approach (Source: Pettigrew, 1987)
Change is not only chronological, but has to be understood in the context of local time cycles (Pettigrew et al., 2001). The challenge is dual: firstly, the attempt is to catch reality ‘in flight’ and secondly to study long-term processes in their contexts in order to elevate embeddedness to a principle of method (Pettigrew et al., 2001, p. 698).The three key elements for studying organisational change are detailed in the following sub-sections.
Inner Outer
CONTENT PROCESS
119 4.4.1 Content
This element refers to the specific area of transformation that needs to be investigated for studying the change (Pettigrew et al., 1992). In other words, it refers to “what has changed” (Pettigrew et al., 1992, p. 7). Content is an ordering or sequential exercise to perform change initiation. The importance of exploring the content of change is to question the objectives for which change is required and look into various concepts of change. It is imperative to understand what kinds of targets are set and by whom as well as to evaluate changes. The scope of “the content of change” under study could range from the entire organisation to some sub-units within an organisation or could include subjects such as the technology, people, services, or products (Pettigrew et al., 2001). Moreover, it can include more abstract features like radical or incremental changes that may affect adaptability (Pettigrew et al., 2001).
4.4.2 Context
This element refers to the settings or background of change and has been categorised into the inner context and the outer context.
4.4.2.1 Inner Context
The inner context relates to the internal settings of an organisation that has undergone a change. It includes organisational culture, organisational structure, organisational strategy, political processes, management, and other components that are internal to the organisation and impact change in one way or another (Pettigrew et al., 1992). Pettigrew's work for Sir John Harvey-Jones explains that pressures of change may arise from within the organisation; the factions of an enterprise that are unhappy with the status quo and the intentions they have to achieve difficult goals are also very well illustrated in his later works (Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991).
4.4.2.2 Outer Context
The outer context relates to the external setting of an organisation undergoing change. It includes external factors such as economic, political, religious, social pressures, policies and events, and other components that impact change in one way or another (Pettigrew et
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al., 1992).In other words, this key element is related to the “why of change” (Pettigrew et al., 1992, p. 7), i.e. the reason for the change. The contextualist approach highlights the usual change triggers in an external environment for economic, business, political, and social factors. The significance of context is magnified when change in organisations needs to be studied in a robust manner in terms of understanding the important events, important actors, or type of change (Thibault and Babiak, 2005). In order to better understand organisational change, it is imperative to appreciate the relational power play within and outside an organisation; therefore, both inner and outer contexts need to be considered. Focusing on the inner context alone would overlook various issues in the wider setting (Pettigrew et al., 1992).
4.4.3 Process
This key element refers to the action, reaction, and interaction of various interested parties (Girginov and Sandanski, 2008; Pettigrew et al., 1992; Thibault and Babiak, 2005). In other words, it refers to the “how of change” (Pettigrew et al., 1992, p. 7). The actions and responses of stakeholders, managers and workers to the actions are crucial to analysing organisational change. The process of change is important rather than the change itself (Girginov and Sandanski, 2008) and the view of process is related to gradual events. Moreover, as Pettigrew points out ‘‘process questioning involves the interrogation of phenomena over time using the language of what, where, why, when and how’’ Pettigrew (1987, p. 700). The process is often not researched, but it is necessary to consider it in order to understand how the change was achieved as Pettigrew (1987, p. 659) argues, ‘‘Biases existing in structure and culture can protect dominant groups’’. Change can be a long and difficult process, for it may involve a ‘‘challenge to the dominant ideology, cultures, system of meaning and power relationships in the organisation’’ (Pettigrew, 1987 pp. 659-660).
Pettigrew (1997, p.3) highlighted that
'The aim in a processual analysis is not to produce a case history but a case study. The case study goes beyond the case history in attempting a range of analytical purposes. Firstly there is a search for patterns in the process and presumably some attempt to compare the shape, character and incidence of this pattern in case A compared with
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case B. Secondly, there is a quest to find the underlying mechanisms which shape any patterning in the observed processes. The third analytical factor which may turn a case history into a case study reminds us that inductive pattern recognition has also to go hand in hand with deduction''.
Pettigrew's approach is an analytical tool for measuring organisational change that focuses on the three key elements (as depicted in Figure 4.1). The behavioural aspect of change is highlighted by the fact that the contextualist approach enables an appreciation of the historical, contextual, and processual nature of change. It also facilitates an understanding of the manager's role and different forces that take part in the change process and its result (Girginov and Sandanski, 2008, p. 24). However, limitations of this approach have been reported in the literature, as most contextualist approaches conceal the richness and complexity of multi-level analysis (Dawson, 1994). The concept of understanding the inner and outer context is imperative while studying organisational change, but the mere categorisation of context is not enough to understand various contextual roles, as it does not inform managers how to deal with contextual differences and their implications (Buchanan, 1991; Buchanan and Boddy, 1992; Dawson, 1994). Caldwell (2006) suggests that Pettigrew's approach lacks interactions or interrelationships between the inner and outer context and that limited consideration is given to the leadership perspective. Carter (2000) argues that Pettigrew's processual analysis claims to be historical but shows a poor understanding of historical description, referring to it as “bad history”. Carter (2000) highlights that owing to the over-concentration of events, Pettigrew's approach is too heavily focused on the “here and now”. Moreover, despite presenting several choices of theoretical frameworks, the contextualist approach itself does not supply a sufficient theoretical foundation (Girginov and Sandanski, 2008). Such limitations are addressed in this thesis by examining in detail the actions, reactions, and interrelationships among various inner and outer contexts, thus eliciting results from various analysis. Moreover, this research does not only focus on ‘here’ and ‘now’ but also investigates the changes that occurred over a period by considering time and history, thus overcoming the limitations of the contextualist approach.
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