Public Sector Change

Journal of Change Management Vol. 6, No. 1, 99 –113, March 2006

Strategic Management and Organization Development: Planned Change in a Public Sector Organization
HARRY SMINIAÃ & ANTONIE VAN NISTELROOIJÃÃ
à The Management School, University of Sheffield, UK, à à Department of Administrative and Organization Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

ABSTRACT This paper reports on a case study on the introduction of organization development (OD) techniques in a traditionally top-down lead public sector organization in the Netherlands. The findings suggest that an OD-inspired bottom-up change approach can have a place next to a top-down strategic management change approach. However, to reap the benefits of OD, the top management role appeared to be pivotal, especially with regard to creating the circumstances under which sufficient participation can take place. KEY WORDS : Organization development, strategic management, management of change, public sector, process research

Introduction

Organization development (OD) is used increasingly in strategic change initiatives in public sector organizations (Ferlie et al., 1996; Robertson and Seneviratne, 1995; Patchett, 2005; Teo and Crawford, 2005). The reasons for strategic change in the public sector are mostly found in abrupt and predominantly exogenous jolts such as changing policies or legislation, technological change, top management replacements or reorganizations such as the joining together or the breaking up of public agencies. These kinds of development require decisive and large scale strategic change to regain congruence between the organization’s goals, the environment and the organization. In these instances, public sector organizations have a tendency to adopt a strategic-management-inspired approach of generating change in a top-down fashion (Ferlie et al., 1996). Such an approach
Correspondence Address: Harry Sminia, The Management School, University of Sheffield, 9 Mappin

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He researches in the fields of organizational behaviour, change management and OD. He has written books and articles with in these fields, in particular on the role of communication during large scale change projects.