informal coalitions

The nature and dynamics of organizational coalitions

2008-08-26T23:15:16+01:00

A colleague recently drew my attention to an excellent article on the nature and dynamics of organizational coalitions that I had not come across before. It was written by three senior academics at the University of California (Stevenson, Pearce and Porter) and published in 1985 by the Academy of Management Review.

Its title, The Concept of ‘Coalition’ in Organization Theory and Research, hardly sets the pulse racing! But it has some important things to say about the characteristics of coalitions, which resonate strongly with those discussed in Informal Coalitions. In particular, the authors challenge many of the ways in which the term has been misused in the past. They argue that this has led to "… great confusion as to whether it applies to collections of individuals, to collections of subgroups, or even to the entire organization."

I see this article as adding value in two ways. Firstly, the authors offer a definition of the term "coalition", which provides a useful framework for thinking about their nature and dynamics. Secondly, they offer a number of hypotheses about the process of coalition formation. This post considers the first of these.

The authors’ definition of a coalition contains eight distinct attributes. I’ve set these out below with a brief commentary against each from an informal coalitions perspective.

So, for Stevenson, Pearce and Porter, the "constellation of features" of a coalition are:

An interacting group of individuals – This reflects the fundamental dynamic of organization from an informal coalitions viewpoint, which sees organizations as dynamic networks of self-organizing conversations. It is through these conversations that people perceive, interpret and evaluate (i.e. make sense of) what’s going on and decide how they are going to act, in the light of the sense they’ve made.
Deliberately constructed – Informal coalitional activity emerges naturally from this ongoing interplay of conversations and interactions. This leads some people to coalesce deliberately around particular conversational ‘themes’; actively building support for a particular stance, whether to initiate, advance or frustrate a particular cause.
Independent of formal organization’s structure – What I call "issue coalitions" most obviously satisfy this criterion. These are constructed informally, and initially covertly, with the aim of changing an existing policy, strategy or practice. I argue in the book that this is how all change originates in organizations. At the same time, what I call "action coalitions" are those deliberately ‘built’ by leaders within the organization to bring about a formally adopted change ‘on the ground’. The intended ‘membership’ of an action coalition mirrors that in the formal organization (such as a particular team). However, leaders who set out to build these action coalitions do so by seeking to use the natural dynamics of coalition formation, rather than seeking to impose their authority. This means working to shift the conversational patterns and consequential actions in ways that support the desired outcome. The complex social dynamics of organizations mean that leaders can set out with this intent but can have no guarantee that the intended outcome will emerge.
Lack of formal internal structure – This characteristic, as the authors acknowledge, accounts for the predominantly transient nature of coalitions: they lack an internal role structure that is independent of the particular people involved. The informal coalitions perspective would again concur with this. At the same time, leadership based on this view of organizational dynamics recognises that certain conversational pathways are more predominant than others and that certain individuals hold more sway than their peers in initiating, mobilising and shaping coalitional activity. One of the primary aims of leading change in an informal coalitions mode is therefore to seek to tap into this informal ‘structure’ of influence. Another important point to make here is that the very nature of action coalitions means that these do have a degree of relational stability and ‘permanency’, by virtue of the fact that coalition members share a formal, team-based relationship that endures beyond a specific issue or change initiative.
Mutual perception of membership – Whilst Stevenson et al acknowledge that there is likely to be some ambiguity surrounding who is ‘in’ a particular coalition and who isn’t, they argue that "… some reasonable consensus about who is a member and whose commitment is questionable would be expected." They go on to say that this further distinguishes coalitions from individuals acting independently but towards the same goals. Again I agree with this. Coalitional activity is unavoidably political. This is the case whether in relation to the micro-level negotiations implicit in conversational exchanges during coalition formation, or the macro-level dynamics involved in (a) challenging the current legitimacy (issue coalitions) or (b) seeking to build active support on the ground for newly adopted policy initiatives (action coalitions). Effective and politically aware ‘coalition building’ therefore demands a reasonably robust understanding of who’s for the coalition's purpose and who’s against it!
Issue oriented – The authors state categorically: "Coalitions are formed to advance the purposes of their members. When their members cease to interact around these issues, the group no longer exists as a coalition …". The part played by self-interest in coalition formation and action taking is fundamental to an understanding of organizational dynamics from the informal coalitions perspective. In interacting with others, individuals seek to preserve what I have called their "personal frames of reference", which reflect their unavoidably self-interested views of the world. These personally unique perspectives shape the way in which individuals interact with others. And, at the same time, individuals’ frames of reference are themselves shaped by those same interactions. Crucially, though, as part of pursuing this self-interest, individuals seek to act in ways that they judge will be seen as 'competent' and appropriate by all of those key groups that are important to them. These might include their work colleagues, their managers, their fellow professionals, their families, their friends, members of their important social groups etc. So self-interest is unavoidably intertwined with the interests of key others. When in action coalition mode, the challenge for leaders – throughout the organization – is to build active coalitions of support around issues that are both organizationally enhancing and which resonate across broad constituencies of their staff.
External focus – "Coalitions form," the authors say, "to influence some external agent." By "external" here, of course, they mean external to the coalition. Again, this is easy to see in relation to issue coalitions. These aim to shift the organization’s current policy, strategy or practice by influencing sufficient numbers of people involved in the formal policy-making structures of the organization to ensure that the position advocated by the coalition becomes adopted. In action coalitions the dynamic is somewhat different. Here, the aim is to build an active coalition of support for the desired change amongst a ‘core’ of people, comprising (where possible) those who are particularly influential with their peers, those who have a lot of informal links with other people, and others who are natural enthusiasts for the proposed changes. This core will then be well placed to influence and 'recruit' other of their peers who sit outside this (hopefully growing) coalition.
Concerted member action – The authors argue that if members never take joint action they cannot be considered to be a coalition. Their purpose in saying this is to distinguish between active coalition-building activity and the activities of a number of individuals who share a similar goal but who seek to influence events independently. The very essence of the informal coalitions perspective is that individual action mobilises collective action. So viewing "concerted member action" as a necessary characteristic of coalitions sits four-square with this idea of building active coalitions of support for change.

To conclude, consistent with the dynamics of informal coalitions, Stevenson, Pearce and Porter see organizational coalitions as:

attempting to operate in a concerted manner outside the formal, 'legitimate' structures and processes of the organization
relying primarily on emergent social interaction to define membership and mobilise collective action
having fuzzy and ill-defined boundaries
emerging from the temporary coming together of people who may have diverse - and potentially divergent - motives for participation ...
to facilitate the achievement of a common goal.

Paying for performance at the Olympics?

2008-08-25T23:59:37+01:00

I was dismayed to read in yesterday’s Sunday Times that the British Olympic Association (BOA) is drawing up plans to pay bonuses to athletes who win medals at the 2012 Olympic Games in London (Team GB to be rewarded with gold for gold).

This is not to say that our athletes don’t deserve recognition for their sporting achievements and a generous reward for their efforts. Far from it. But advocating a crude form of performance-related pay as part of the strategy for securing more medals seems to me to miss the point on several levels:

First of all, it suggests that those advocating this approach believe that our athletes would have tried harder and performed better in Beijing had they been promised a bonus for winning. This shows a naïve appreciation of what makes athletes ‘tick’ and is an insult to all of those in “Team GB” – medal winners and their team-mates – who committed four or more years of their lives in pursuit of their Olympic goals.

If athletes were motivated by money, many would never get involved in their specialist sports at all. Of course they and their sports need to be properly funded. This is especially the case where the need to commit time to practice and competition means that individuals’ earning capacities are reduced. But it also means recognising that the burning desire to be the best at what they do will not be enhanced by the promise of a ‘win bonus’. Indeed, ‘muddying the motivation waters’ by adding differential pay into the mix might reduce overall performance rather than enhance it. As Alfie Kohn writes in Punished by Rewards:
“Pay people generously and equitably. Do your best to make sure they don’t feel exploited. Then do everything in your power to help them put money out of their minds.”

Secondly, my experience of elite athletes suggests that their motivation and rewards when they were competing came from stretching themselves to their personal limits in the sport of their choice; performing at their personal peak; beating records; and, yes, winning medals, where their performance exceeded the best that others could summon up on the day.

All that any athlete can do is to perform to the maximum of their ability – “to be the best that they can be”, “to run their own race” and to "control the controllables", as their coaches might put it. If that level of performance is good enough on the day to win a medal, great. If not, no amount of financial ‘incentive’ would change the result. So, if the aim is to maximise the medal-winning potential of the Great Britain team for 2012, money needs to be invested up front - in facilities, equipment, performance-coaching and so on – so that an individual athlete’s personal best is given the best possible chance of beating the world's best and delivering a medal.

Thirdly, and allied to the last point, it is important to recognise that success in modern sport depends not only on the performance of the competing athletes but also on the leadership and support of a whole raft of other people. Apparently the proposed incentive system would recognise the contributions made by coaches and others in the back-up team. But it is also the presence, performance and feedback of other athletes in a particular discipline – including those who don’t make the final team or event - that help to push the competing athletes to new heights. A colleague of mine, himself a medal winner at a previous Olympics, refers to the required condition as one of “healthy competition”.

The competitive, winner-takes-all ethos is properly reflected in the award of medals and in the particular adulation reserved for gold medal winners. Today, this typically carries through into medal winners' post-performance years, where lucrative careers are often assured through such routes as sponsorship deals, motivational speaking, broadcasting and coaching. However, as I’ve suggested above, gold medal success and ‘on-field’ competitiveness requires a behind-the-scenes collaborative spirit and healthy competition within the wider team. And this is hardly likely to be strengthened by the BOA’s proposals, which would put further distance between the winners and other athletes in the team who had contributed to the medal success.

Fourthly, in those sports where unprecedented medal success has been achieved by British athletes in Beijing – most visibly in the cycling, rowing and sailing events - it is primarily the investment made in facilities, equipment, training, skills enhancement, mental preparation, and the development of a ‘one team’ ethos, that has enabled the talent of individual athletes to come to the fore. If BOA have money to spend, to build on the success of Beijing and to increase the medal tally for 2012, they should use it to take these lessons into other, currently less successful, sports.

Besides providing talented athletes with the best conditions in which to hone their craft, investing in state-of-the-art facilities is also a far better way of meeting the equally important goal of providing a long-term sporting legacy from the London games. Paying bonuses to the nation’s sporting elite would contribute nothing to this.

Finally, elite sport offers many potential lessons that business managers can benefit from in organizational management. And no doubt sports managers, coaches and athletes can learn many useful lessons in return from the experiences gained by business managers in leading their organizations. However, this superficially attractive but overly simplistic approach to performance management is not one of them.

High-expectations leadership – moving from vicious to virtuous circles

2008-08-19T13:40:27+01:00

Some years ago, when I was a manager in a large industrial plant, we took the decision to scrap a whole raft of ‘performance measures’ and related practices that had been introduced some years earlier under the guise of productivity improvement and management control. Despite widely-held concerns that poor work practices would increase if controls were relaxed, we pushed on with the decision.

The reasoning was simple. If we were ever to unlock the vast wealth of untapped talent in the business, we needed to change the expectations that managers - throughout the organization - had of their staff.

Changing managers' expectations

The challenge we faced is illustrated in the figure below.

This shows that the main task was to escape from the vicious circle of low expectations, tight control and alienation which was disfiguring the leadership of the organization and limiting its performance. Our aim instead was to stimulate a virtuous circle of high expectations, self-control, commitment and contribution.

In all organizations, it is primarily the expectations that managers express through their words and actions that determine whether the dynamics of alienation or commitment result. Those managers who are unwilling to raise their expectations of people's willingness and ability to contribute, and who continue instead to impose controls that are based on low expectations, shouldn't be surprised at the response that they get!

A 'leap of faith'

Success requires managers to make a ‘leap of faith’: raising their expectations of people and enabling greater levels of self-management, even where (or especially where!) the evidence ‘on the ground’ makes this appear foolhardy. The required shift will occur if, as a result of what staff see managers doing, the patterns of their informal conversations change in line with the changed levels of expectations.

In the example I mentioned briefly above, this faith was repaid many fold. Staff who had been constrained for years grew significantly in the roles that they performed and the contributions that they made. And managers were freed up to focus on the ways in which they could add genuine value to the business.

As a final point, managers also need to ‘hold their nerve’ if, as is likely, the initial relaxation of controls tempts some people to take advantage of the situation. It is important to recognise that people will tend to perceive and interpret what’s happening through their existing patterns of assumptions about managers’ intentions and motives. The mistrust that many managers have of staff is often mirrored by staff’s mistrust of managers! How managers respond to any initially negative behaviours is therefore critical. A response that is characteristic of past interactions would tend to reinforce existing patterns and make the shift harder to achieve.

A relational view of identity in organizational dynamics

2008-08-14T23:18:57+01:00

In a previous post, I used the slogan from Orange’s latest advert to introduce the nature of individual identity in organizations as seen from an informal coalitions viewpoint. A reader (signing himself GDA9) strongly dismissed this view, adding the following comment:

“‘I am who I am because of everyone’ - What a bloody wrong concept of identity. It shows that the person who made up the slogan can't place boundaries on his own identity - a sign of psychosis. A person is who they are because of their personality traits, memories, ideas, the sense of self, consciousness, etc. NOT because of external factors or others' identities. It doesn't take a philosophy professor to understand what identity is.”

This view of identity as an innate part of the individual is well established. So there will no doubt be many who will be reluctant to embrace a socially constructed and relational view of identity. I therefore thought it would be useful to take time out to say a bit more about this contrary perspective – as I see it - in this new post.

Identity emerging in relationship

The notion of identity as intrinsic to the individual provides the basis of much of the work that goes on in organizations around people and organizational development. However, this position is increasingly being contested by more recent perspectives on the dynamics of organizations. And, as someone who views everyday conversations and interactions as fundamental to the ways in which organizations work and that outcomes arise, I see a 'relational' understanding of identity as central to this.

The notion that a person’s identity is a function of their interactions with others, rather than something inborn or inherent, is a challenging one. Some aspects of our personalities might well be genetically based; that is, essentially ‘hard wired’ at conception and later expressed in the form of particular personality traits. But we are fundamentally social beings. As a result, ‘who we are’ is largely shaped by the interactions that we have with other people – as, at the same time, ‘who we are’ shapes those interactions. A corollary of this, of course, is that who we are, and how we see the world, constantly shifts according to whom we are with at any particular time and in what context.

When we come into the world, other people (and ‘things’ that have arisen from their and their predecessors' prior interactions) already exist. We have no choice but to interact with them. And, through these interactions, we begin to develop a sense of who we are and how best to navigate our way through life. This, I would maintain, is a life-long endeavour. Unless, of course, we are content to become isolated and alienated from other people and ‘society’ at large.

Re-membering the past

So what about the memories that form part of knowing who we are and how we have become who we are? Well, as I see it, our memories depend on the ways in which we make sense of past events. And we do this both through the internal conversations that we have with ourselves and those that we engage in externally with others. As we call our memories forward into the present, so to speak, our recollections affect the way that we think about and talk about ourselves in the here-and-now. At the same time, though, those memories are themselves “re-membered”, as Stacey and others would say. That is, they are put together afresh each time, from the standpoint of how we see ourselves today.

In other words, the ways in which we perceive, interpret, evaluate and feel about past events are not fixed for all time. Instead, these are subject to reinterpretation and re-evaluation, as part of the ongoing process of becoming who we are. And this “becoming” is, at one and the same time, both a uniquely personal and a communally social act.

Ideas and beliefs

I would similarly argue that the ideas and beliefs that a person holds about the world are necessarily products of their interactions – even those which they see as their own creations. For example, for the past ten years or more I have used the term “informal coalitions” to describe the hidden, messy and informal dynamics of organizations. Using the term in this context is an original notion of mine, as are many of the specific ideas that flow from it. However, I have worked alongside a multitude of people over the years and, as I acknowledged in the preface to the book, “all of those interactions have, in some way or other, influenced the ideas and perspectives that are reflected in this book”.

It would also be true to say that many non-work-related insights will also have influenced what I believe to be true about organizations. These will have arisen from a mixture of ‘live’ relationships and my ‘interaction’ with other people through the texts they have written or other media that they have appeared in.

A sense of oneself – and other selves

As regards a person’s sense of self, I agree that this is unique and personal to the individual. At the same time, it arises from their conscious and unconscious sensing of their own self in relation to specific and generalised ‘other selves’. It does not exist - indeed cannot exist in my view - in isolation from the specific relationships of which an individual sees themselves being part. Or from the more generalised social patterns of assumptions, beliefs and behaviours that reflect the broader communities to which they see themselves belonging.

The capacity to know what we are doing

Finally, the very idea of consciousness and self-consciousness relates to our capacity to know what we are doing, to be aware of ourselves and our surroundings, and to self-reflect on our existence. This enables us to act, interact and transact etc with others (and they with us). And it also enables us to develop a sense of ourselves as unique beings in relation to how we see individual and collective others.

In sum

To sum up then, from an informal coalitions viewpoint our identity is developed though all of the interactions that we have with people and things throughout our lifetime. The ways in which we perceive, interpret and evaluate these experiences, in the moment of interaction and through self-reflection, determines who we currently are in the ongoing process of becoming who we will become.

So, it is for this reason that I see Orange’s “I am who I am because of everyone” slogan as neatly reflecting this relational view of identity and setting it apart from the more conventional, individual-centric perspective.

The time machine of organizational decision making

2008-07-25T14:54:58+01:00

In Technology, Management and Society*, Peter Drucker describes decision making as

“… essentially a time machine which synchronizes into one present a great number of divergent time-spans.”

“Our approach today,” he goes on, “still tends towards the making of plans for something we will decide to do in the future. This may be a very entertaining exercise, but it is a futile one.”

Incredibly, Drucker first made this statement to a management conference in 1957! And yet, 50 years on, the notion that present and future decision making are separated in time still dominates management thinking; the former focusing on current operations and the latter on the visions, strategies and plans intended to realise the desired future.

So how do Drucker’s insights on the time dimension of decision making and the need to focus on the present play into current thinking about the dynamics of organizations?

The futurity of present decisions

“Decisions,” Drucker says, “exist only in the present." He goes on:

"The question …is not what we should do tomorrow. It is: what do we have to do today [my emphasis] to be ready for an uncertain tomorrow? The question is not what will happen in the future. It is: what futurity do we have to factor into our present thinking and doing, what time-spans do we have to consider, and how do we converge them into a simultaneous decision in the present?"

He then adds another important insight, that managers ignore at their peril:

" … we can make decisions only in the present; the rest are pious intentions. And yet we cannot make decisions for the present alone; the most expedient, most opportunist decision – let alone the decision not to decide – may commit us on a long-range basis, if not permanently and irrevocably.”

So Drucker’s idea of decision making as a “time machine” recognises that future outcomes are wholly products of the complex interplay of decisions made by people in the present. Also that it is not only those decisions that are 'headlined' as strategic decisions that have potentially strategic implications for the organization.

The living present (re-membering the past and anticipating the future)

The view of organizations as complex responsive processes, put forward by Ralph Stacey and his colleagues at the University of Hertfordshire, takes this further still. It challenges the taken-for-granted, common-sense notion that time is linear; that it flows from the matter-of-fact past, through the transient present, towards a future that is waiting to be unfolded. Instead they focus on what they call “the living present”.

Here, the present itself has a time structure that embraces the past and the future. To quote from The Emergence of Leadership, by one of Stacey’s colleagues, Douglas Griffin:

“The past is not factually given because it is reconstructed in the present as the basis for action to be taken in the present. The past is what we re-member. The future is also in the present in the form of anticipation and expectation. It too forms the basis of action in the present. Furthermore, what we are anticipating affects what we remember and what we remember affects what we expect, in a circular fashion. In this way, the movement of the living present is experience, having a circular time structure that arises simply because humans have the capacity for knowing what they are doing.” (Taken from page 206 onwards).

I’ve tried to illustrate this in the diagram below.

In the notion of the living present, then, “… the future, as expectation and anticipation, is in the detail of actual interactions taking place now, as is the past as reconstructions in this process of memory.” (Again from Griffin, The Emergence of Leadership, p 185).

Making a difference

So what can we take from these insights into the nature of decision making and action taking in organizations?

First, although Drucker is advocating long-range planning as an important practice of management, he emphasises the critical importance of focusing on the futurity of present decisions in carrying this out, not on future decisions. He also argues forcibly that it is not about forecasting or trying to mastermind the future. As any student of complexity 50 years on would agree:

“Any attempt to do so is foolish; human beings can neither predict nor control the future.”

Drucker, then, calls on managers to pay attention to those decisions – theirs and others’ – that are taking place through interactions in the present.

For those in the ‘Stacey School’:

“… all managers are active participants with each other in the interactive processes that are the organisation. … The emphasis shifts from the manager focusing on how to make a choice [in and about the future] to focusing on the quality of participation in self-organising conversations from which such choices and the responses to them emerge [in the living present].” (Stacey, Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics, 5Ed., 2007, p 444).

So both Drucker (long-range planning) and Stacey (strategic management), five decades apart, underscore the importance of managers paying attention to, and engaging in, what’s happening in the present.

Informal Coalitions similarly argues that outcomes emerge from those everyday conversations and interactions that take place continuously throughout the organisation. The ways in which people perceive, interpret, evaluate and act upon their perceptions of what’s going on, and the interplay of these with all of the other decisions and actions taken elsewhere, determine the results that are achieved.

This sense-making and action-taking process will go on with or without managers’ active involvement. The only real choice that managers have, therefore, is whether or not to engage with this process in a deliberate way; with the aim, in Stacey’s terms, of improving the quality of their participation.

Other posts on this site relating specifically to Peter Drucker and Ralph Stacey include:

Other references to Drucker and Stacey on the site can be found by using the Google search box.

*NOTE: All of the quotations by Peter Drucker are taken from Chapter 8 of the book, entitled Long-range Planning. This begins on page 120 of my copy; but this is an edition published by Pan in 1970, so the pages of the current version might be different!