Prima ancora che nel processo o nei contenuti,
292riteniamo che per quanto
riguarda la dinamica strategica delle aziende, le varie fattispecie di cambiamento si
differenzino in base ai loro effetti. In questo lavoro verrà di conseguenza considerato
‘strategico’ un cambiamento che comporti l’assunzione di un determinato
“commitment” da parte della struttura aziendale, ovvero: (I) una parziale
irreversibilità, o “lock-in”, delle azioni intraprese; (II) la progressiva perdita di
alternative strategiche, o “lock-out”;
293(III) un investimento significativo in tempo, o
“lags”.
294In altre parole, il cambiamento strategico incalana l’azienda verso l’adozione
di un orientamento gestionale, produttivo e competitivo sostanzialmente nuovo
rispetto a quello attuato.
295Per favorire il processo di rinnovamento delle condizioni di equilibrio
aziendale,
296O’Reilly III e Tushman (2004) – peraltro in sintonia con March (1991) –
routines, and structures. We will associate corporate renewal with the process of innovation, defined as nonroutine, significant, and discontinuous organizational change. We sharply differentiate the process of innovation from that of incrementalism or refinement to existing systems, structures, and technology (Kanter, 1983). Innovation embodies a new idea that is not consistent with the current concept of the organization's business (Galbraith, 1982: 6); as March and Simon (1958: 175) argued, it cannot be accomplished '... by a simple application of programmed switching rules.' Damanpour (1991: 561) points out that radical innovations '...pro- duce fundamental changes in the activities of an organization and represent clear departures from existing practices;' in contrast, incremental changes '...result in little departure from existing practices.'”
291
Cfr. Deware & Dutton (1986); Gersick (1991); Tushman & Romanelli (1985). Weick e Quinn (1999) chiariscono che “The contrast between episodic and continuous change reflects differences in the perspective of the observer. From a distance (the macro level of analysis), when observers examine the flow of events that constitute organizing, they see what looks like repetitive action, routine, and inertia dotted with occasional episodes of revolutionary change. But a view from closer in (the micro level of analysis) suggests ongoing adaptation and adjustment. Although these adjustments may be small, they also tend to be frequent and continuous across units, which means they are capable of altering structure and strategy. Some observers (e.g. Orlikowski 1996) treat these ongoing adjustments as the essence of organizational change. Others (e.g. Nadler et al 1995) describe these ongoing adjustments as mere incremental variations on the same theme and lump them together into an epoch of convergence during which interdependencies deepen. Convergence is interrupted sporadically by epochs of divergence described by words like revolution, deep change, and transformation”.
292
Cfr. Barnett & Carroll (1995).
293 Cfr. Ghemawat (1991). 294
Cfr. Ghemawat (1991). Cambiamenti che non implicano irreversibilità o che possono essere considerati coerenti con la formula strategica già attuata, per quanto significativi, non sono dunque considerati “strategici”.
295
Cfr. Greenwood & Hinings (1993).
296
La dottrina di economia aziendale è ricca di importanti contributi teorici in merito alle condizioni di successo. Per una loro disanima si vedano ad esempio Bertini (1987, 1995) e Coda (1988).
63
suggeriscono la necessità, per un’unità produttiva, di mettere in atto una certa
‘varietà’ di sforzi innovativi.
297Per gli studiosi è infatti essenziale che le aziende siano
in grado di compiere modifiche adattive e incrementali, il cui obiettivo è l’aumento dei
livelli di efficienza della formula operante – è ciò che si verifica, tipicamente, con il
learning-by-doing ovvero con il perfezionamento di conoscenze, tecniche ed
operazioni mediante la loro riproduzione nei cicli operativi aziendali
298– ma anche
orchestrare trasformazioni più radicali dell’assetto produttivo per cogliere importanti
opportunità di sviluppo.
299Questi processi – precisano gli Autori – presuppongono condizioni di contesto,
attitudini personali e regole di comportamento diverse, spesso inconciliabili
nell’ambito della stessa unità organizzativa. Se il cambiamento incrementale si orienta
al rispetto ed al rafforzamento della formula operante mediante la selezione continua
di ‘piccoli’ miglioramenti,
300quello radicale diparte al contrario dalla ricerca di un
assetto sostanzialmente nuovo ed è generalmente ottenuto per mezzo di variazioni
significative nella struttura aziendale
301– pertanto anche in netto contrasto con linee
consolidate di pensiero e azione – derivanti principalmente dalla sperimentazione di
soluzioni molto innovative.
302Non meraviglia, pertanto, come alcuni studiosi abbiano
coniato, a proposito dell’idea di armonizzare lo svolgimento di tali processi nella
stessa unità organizzativa, l’espressione “paradosso del cambiamento”.
303297
Osserva March (1991, p. 73), “What is good in the long run is not always good in the short run. What is good at a particular historical moment is not always good at another time. What is good for one part of an organization is not always good for another part. What is good for an organization is not always good for a larger social system of which it is a part. […] The trade-off between exploration and exploitation exhibits some special features in the social context of organizations”.
298
“An automaker, for example, may frequently tweak a basic engine design to increase horsepower, enhance fuel efficiency, or improve reliability”, cfr. O’Reilly III & Tushman (2004, p. 76). Si veda anche la nota 130.
299
Cfr. Burgelman (2002). Scrivono O’Reilly III & Tushman (2004, p. 76) “[…] businesses need to come up with discontinuous innovations-radical advances like digital photography that profoundly alter the basis for competition in an industry, often rendering old products or ways of working obsolete. All these types of innovation can have different targets”.
300
Cfr. Nelson & Winter (1982); Zott (2003).
301
Cfr. Orlikowski (1996).
302
Per approfondimenti si veda Zott (2003).
303 O’Reilly III & Tushman (2004, p. 74) scrivono “General managers and corporate executives
should be able to […] look backward, attending to the products and processes of the past, while also gazing forward, preparing for the innovations that will define the future”. Volberda, Baden-Fuller & van den Bosch (2001, p. 159) osservano che “Profits for today requires order, control, and stability: adaptation for tomorrow requires flexibility and creativity in the value-added system. Large firms in many industries are confronted with this challenge of exploration and exploitation. In the European financial services industries these conflicting tendencies are increasingly obvious. Existing large financial
64
Il dualismo intercorrente tra orientamenti succitati può essere riletto da un
punto di vista ulteriore, quello ovvero che vede un qualsiasi sistema sociale
fronteggiare il dilemma tra stabilità e cambiamento.
304Si riconduce, alla prima, il
cambiamento incrementale-conservativo – quindi agente nella direzione del
mantenimento dello status quo – mentre, al secondo, quello non conservativo ossia
de-strutturante.
305Alla stabilità dell’assetto attuato riconducibile alla persistenza di una stessa
fromula strategica nel tempo sono generalmente attribuiti, a parità di circostanze di
gestione, ritorni crescenti.
306La ragione di ciò è peraltro intuitiva: il reiterato utilizzo di
capacità esistenti – processo che March (1991) identifica con l’attività di
players seem well placed to exploit the present but ill suited to adapt to the future. Why is this so, and what can be done about it?”.
304
Cfr. Archer (1997 e 1998); Baskhar (1974); Giddens (1979 e 1984); Tsoukas & Chia (2002); Whittington (1992). Questa prospettiva muove direttamente dalle posizioni dei filosofi processuali Bergson, James e Whitehead. “The point is that usually we look at change but we do not see it. We speak of change, but we do not think about it. We say that change exists, that everything changes, that change is the very law of things: Yes, we say it and we repeat it; but those are only words, and we reason and philosophize as though change did not exist. In order to think change and see it, there is a whole veil of prejudices to brush aside, some of them artificial, created by philosophical speculation, the others natural to common sense”, Bergson (1946, p. 131). “What really exists [in corsivo] is not things made but things in the making. Once made, they are dead, […] and an infinite number of altemative conceptual decompositions can be used in defining them. But put yourself in the making [in corsivo] by a stroke of intuitive sympathy with the thing and, the whole range of possible decompositions coming into your possession, you are no longer troubled with the question which of them is the more absolutely true. Reality falls [in corsivo] in passing into conceptual analysis; it mounts [idem] in living its own undivided life—it buds and bourgeons, changes, and creates”. James (1996, p. 263-4). Come sottolineato da Bateson (1979, p. 102) l’osservazione non è sensibile che alle differenze. Il concetto di stabilità differisce da quello di staticità che, a differenza del primo, indica necessariamente assenza di cambiamento. Come viene chiarito dal fenomeno dell’allostasi, la stabilità di una struttura come quella che caratterizza un essere vivente può al contrario implicare il cambiamento. Tsoukas & Chia (2002, p. 572) scrivono “The weather is changing from hour to hour and from day to day, but is it changing from year to year? How many of us have detected the decrease of birds in our gardens? [...] Our perceptual knowledge is ill suited to answer such questions—We need conceptual knowledge instead”. “In this view, stability and change are explained in the same terms: stability is due to processes that maintain the organization so that it can be reified as the same thing by some observer(s), while change occurs when the processes operate in a manner that is reified by observer(s) as changing the organization. In both instances, stability or change are judgments, not real things, because the organization is a process that is continuously being constituted and reconstituted (Rescher 1996)”, Van de Ven & Poole (2005, p. 1380). Per il filosofo americano James (1996), l'incapacità di concepire i processi nella loro forma complessa ed evanescente, come la tendenza ad esprimerli in forme sintetiche e stabili, deriva da una connaturata propensione ad utilizzare nell'interpretazione dell'esperienza, strutture stabili di pensiero, vale a dire i concetti, categorie, etc.
305
Cfr. la nota 290.
306
65
“exploitation”
307– equivale ad un investimento progressivo in specializzazione
dell’esperienza, alla cui accumulazione è possibile associare, ceteris paribus, un
miglioramento delle performance.
308È possibile considerare l’attività di exploitation,
ovvero il perseguimento di livelli di efficienza crescenti nell’ambito di una stessa
formula
operante,
essenzialmente
manageriale
dacché
articolata
intorno
all’incessante razionalizzazione dei processi e dell’assetto esistenti.
La stabilità rafforza l’economicità soltanto se, tuttavia, vengono rispettate
determinate condizioni. L’ottenimento di risultati soddisfacenti rinforza la fiducia
espressa dai soggetti d’azienda nei riguardi dell’assetto attuato il quale, avvantaggiato
da una maggior coesione sul piano ‘politico’ e istituzionale, tende a ripetersi
ulteriormente per effetto dell’accumulo di esperienza nei processi operativi,
aumentando in questo modo anche la probabilità che l’assetto venga nuovamente
riprodotto.
309La ripetuta conferma della formula competitiva attuata sul piano
‘politico’, così come la sua progressiva integrazione da un punto di vista operativo,
rende tuttavia l’azienda sempre meno incline al cambiamento.
310In primo luogo, i
307
“Exploitation includes such things as refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection, implementation, execution […].The essence of exploitation is the refinement and extension of existing competences, technologies, and paradigms. Its returns are positive, proximate, and predictable”, cfr. March (1991, pp. 71,85). Il concetto di selection espresso in Nelson & Winter (1982) è molto vicino a quello di March.
308 Cfr. Nelson (1991). ) Osserva March 1991, p. 73) “Since performance is a joint function of
potential return from an activity and present competence of -an organization at it, organizations exhibit increasing returns to experience (Arthur 1984)”.
309
Cfr. Ghemawat (1991); Schreyogg & Kliesch-Eberl (2007). Per Miller & Friesen gli tali modelli sono “composed of tightly interdependent and mutually supportive elements such that the importance of each element can best be understood by making reference to the whole configuration”, Miller & Friesen (1984, p. 1). Osservano Greenwood & Hinings (1988, pp. 294-5) “For Miller and Friesen, understanding which archetype an organization is in, is crucial for understanding structural change and its difficulties. The coherence of an archetype is not accidental; it represents the appropriate design for adequate performance. Archetypes, moreover, exhibit momentum and inertia. Momentum is the process whereby an organization exhibits change which is an extension of its current archetype. Indeed, Miller and Friesen argue, and show, that momentum is a dominant organizational condition (1980a; 1984). That is, change occurs, but within an organizational design rather than between such designs. There is continuity in the direction or organizational evolution in line with operative goals, power structures, programmes and expectations (Miller and Friesen 1980a). From the point of view of major change or transformations, what Miller and Friesen (1984) call 'quantum change', organizations exhibit inertia, precisely because they are caught within an archetype. Quantum change only occurs when there are important, unmistakable problems to be faced”.
310
Scrive March 1991, p. 73) “Positive local feedback produces strong path dependence (David 1990) and can lead to suboptimal equilibria. It is quite possible for competence in an inferior activity to become great enough to exclude superior activities with which an organization has little experience (Herriott, Levinthal, and March 1985). Since long-run intelligence depends on sustaining a reasonable level of exploration, these tendencies to increase exploitation and reduce exploration make adaptive
66
ritorni crescenti aumentano il costo-opportunità delle alternative di cambiamento
scoraggiandone la realizzazione su un piano oggettivo;
311in secondo luogo, la
stabilizzazione di uno specifico modello di gestione
312rende i soggetti aziendali
sempre psicologicamente meno avezzi a metterne in discussione la validità e ciò per
una tendenza – gidiucata da alcuni spontanea
313– all’inerzia. Ne può derivare
processes potentially self-destructive”.
311 Cfr. Schreyogg & Klesc-Eberl (2007). 312
“When managers operate consciously from a model of how the entire business system will work, every decision, initiative, and measurmente provide valuable feedback. Profits are important not only for thei own sake but also because they tell you whether your model is working. If you fail to achieve the results you expected, you reexamine your model […]. Business modeling is, in this sense, the managerial equivalent of the scientific method – you start with a hypothesis, which you then test in action and revise when necessary”, cfr. Magretta (2002, p. 5).
313
Cfr. Kelly & Amburgey (1991). “Inertial pressures arise from both internal structural arrangements and environmental constraints. A minimal list of the constraints arising from internal considerations follows. 1. An organization's investment in plant, equipment, and specialized personnel constitutes assets that are not easily transferable to other tasks or functions. The ways in which such sunk costs constrain adaptation options are so obvious that they need not be discussed further. 2. Organizational decision makers also face constraints on the information they receive. Much of what we know about the flow of information through organizational structures tells us that leaders do not obtain anything close to full information on activities within the organization and environmental contingencies facing the subunits. 3. Internal political constraints are even more important. When organizations alter structure, political equilibria are disturbed. As long as the pool of resources is fixed, structural change almost always involves redistribution of resources across subunits. Such redistribution upsets the prevailing system of exchange among subunits (or subunit leaders). So at least some subunits are likely to resist any proposed reorganization. Moreover, the benefits of structural reorganization are likely to be both generalized (designed to benefit the organization as a whole) and long-run. Any negative political response will tend to generate short-run costs that are high enough that organizational leaders will forego the planned reorganization. […] 4. Finally, organizations face constraints generated by their own history. Once standards of procedure and the allocation of tasks and authority have become the subject of normative agreement, the costs of change are greatly increased. Normative agreements constrain adaptation in at least two ways. First, they provide a justification and an organizing principle for those elements that wish to resist reorganization (i.e., they can resist in terms of a shared principle). Second, normative agreements preclude the serious consideration of many alternative responses. For example, few research-oriented universities seriously consider adapting to declining enrollments by eliminating the teaching function. To entertain this option would be to challenge central organizational norms. The external pressures toward inertia seem to be at least as strong. They include at least the following factors. 1. Legal and fiscal barriers to entry and exit from markets (broadly defined) are numerous. Discussions of organizational behavior typically emphasize barriers to entry (state licensed monopoly positions, etc.). Barriers to exit are equally interesting. There are an increasing number of instances in which political decisions prevent firms from abandoning certain activities. All such constraints on entry and exit limit the breadth of adaptation possibilities. 2. Internal constraints upon the availability of information are paralleled by external constraints. The acquisition of information about relevant environments is costly particularly in turbulent situations where the information is most essential. In addition, the type of specialists employed by the organization constrains both the nature of the information it is likely to obtain (see Granovetter 1973) and the kind of specialized information it can process and utilize. 3. Legitimacy constraints also emanate from the environment. Any legitimacy an organization has been able to
67
un’irrazionale scarto delle occasioni di rinnovamento da parte dei manager
(“organizational myopia”).
314Un commitment crescente sulla formula operante, causa ma anche effetto
della ‘persistenza’ di un preciso modello di business, può dunque comportare come
implicita conseguenza (A) il costo sempre più elevato del cambiamento (“lock-out”
315)
e (B) la perdita graduale di alternative strategiche (“lock-in”).
316In tali circostanze,
generate constitutes an asset in manipulating the environment. To the extent that adaptation (e.g., eliminating undergraduate instruction in public universities) violates the legitimacy claims, it incurs considerable costs. So external legitimacy considerations also tend to limit adaptation. 4. Finally, there is the collective rationality problem. One of the most difficult issues in contemporary economics concerns general equilibria. If one can find an optimal strategy for some individual buyer or seller in a competitive market, it does not necessarily follow that there is a general equilibrium once all players start trading. More generally, it is difficult to establish that a strategy that is rational for a single decision maker will be rational if adopted by a large number of decision makers. A number of solutions to this problem have been proposed in competitive market theory, but we know of no treatment of the problem for organizations generally. Until such a treatment is established we should not presume that a course of action that is adaptive for a single organization facing some changing environment will be adaptive for many competing organizations adopting a similar strategy”, cfr. Hannan & Freeman (1977, pp. 931-2).
314
È la cosiddetta cultura del “killing the bad news messengers”. Cfr. Schreyogg & Klesc-Eberl (2007). Cfr. anche Lave & March (1975); Levinthal and March (1981); Levitt and March (1988). “we will note three forms of learning myopia: The first form of myopia is the tendency to ignore the long run. The short run is privileged by organizational learning. As a result, long run survival is some times endangered. The second form of myopia is the tendency to ignore the larger picture. The near neighborhood is privileged by organizational learning. As a result, survival of more encompassing systems is some times endangered. The third form of myopia is the tendency to overlook failures. The lessons gained from success are privileged by organiza-tional learning. As a result, the risks of failure are likely to be underestimated”, Levinthal and March (1993, p. 101).
315
Il fenomeno del lock-in, unitamente alla presenza di lags, inerzia, e lock-out, può essere alla base secondo Ghemawat (1991) del vantaggio competitivo. Perché siano possibili differenze persistenti nelle performance economiche delle aziende di un settore è infatti necessario che le formule competitive adottate da esse comportino scelte non reversibili (lock-out), tempo per essere imitate (lags) e costi irrecuperabili (inertia). Scrive Nelson (1991, p. 67) “the commitments contained in a strategy often are as much a matter of faith of top management, and company tradition, as they are of calculation. […], firm strategies seldom determine the details of firm actions, but usually at most the broad contours. […], there is no reason to argue a priori that these commitments are in fact optimal or even not self destructive”. Burgelman riporta l’esempio di Intel, la cui perdita di alternative a disposizione dell’azienda seguita alla focalizzazione sui microprocessori promossa dal CEO Grove, ha tuttavia prodotto un aumento delle performance di lungo periodo. Scrive infatti lo studioso “Looking back in 1998 and comparing Intel's strategy during Epoch II and Epoch I, Grove said, "The most