From the Editor
Welcome to the third issue of the Management Development Forum (MDF).
Today’s organizations are continually challenged to stay competitive and remain effective. Executives must seek information and ideas from within their organizations to drive change and keep their competitive edge. The type of information collected and how it is used in planning for change is the focus of this issue.
Belasen (Empire State College, State University of New York) challenges executives to exercise unbinding leadership style when initiating organization-wide change by asking employees the right questions rather than giving the solutions. When the collective intelligence of organizational members is transferred in a non-directive way, it can also facilitate the initiation and implementation of change.
Hamlin (University of Wolverhampton), Reidy (British Civil Service) and Stewart (Nottingham Trent University) present a case for using a rigorous internal research-based technique to gather data for use in solving problems and implementing change, and offer an example of its successful use within the British Civil Service. They argue that the credibility of the research, and the visionary leadership of the organization’s leader were the most important factors to overcoming the barriers to change.
Luechauer (Butler University) argues that traditional problem-solving approaches are less effective for driving and implementing organizational change, and instead advocates engaging employees in appreciative inquiry. This approach focuses on identifying what is right with the organization, rather than analyzing how to fix the problem.
Schaninger, Harris, and Niebuhr (Auburn University) call for organization-wide involvement in change and use the GE workout template to illustrate the success of this strategy. They then discuss their experience and the lessons they learned from helping a smaller organization implement the workout template that they developed for it.
Kidwell and Scherer (Niagara University) offer a caveat: employee feedback must be used in an ethical manner. Their article provides perspectives on the ethics and social responsibilities of organizations.
Rausch (Didactic Systems, Inc.) and Sherman (Southampton College, Long Island University) suggest that to remain successful, managers must ask questions of themselves. They offer a tool, reminder guidelines, to help managers bring structure to strategic change management.
Parry (Victoria University of Wellington, NZ) reminds us that feedback from both peers and employees is important to ensuring managerial effectiveness. He suggests that leadership audits should be performed routinely for management development.
We hope you will find these articles thought provoking and useful as you deal with the challenge of change within your own organizations. We are also happy to welcome Peg Jasinski as Assistant Editor, and wish Marilyn McCabe well in her new endeavors.
