Management Decision

Decision making during organizational change: observations on disjointed incrementalism in an

Australian local government authority
Robert Jones, Michael Gross,
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 Decision making during organizational change:
observations on disjointed incrementalism in an
Australian local government authority
Examines the nature of man-
agerial decision making
during the process of a pro-
gramme of workplace reform
at a major local government
authority in New South Wales,
Australia. Draws parallells
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Malang At 20:17 19 September 2017 (PT)
between the synoptic and
disjointed incrementalist
approach to decision making
during organizational change.
In particular shows that the
synoptic approach is not
applicable in this case, and
instead stresses the preva-
lence of incremental, recon-
structive, serial and remedial
decision making, characteris-
tic of the disjointed incremen-
talist model. Presents and
analyses the reasons for this.
In so doing also draws atten-
tion to the importance of four
factors which are interwoven
with the non-synoptic
approach throughout the
case, namely: continuity of
purpose, probing for open-
ings, seizing opportunities
and waiting (and pouncing).
Management Decision
34/7 [1996] 23–32
© MCB University Press
[ISSN 0021-1747]
Robert Jones
Department of Management, University of Wollongong, Australia,
Michael Gross
Department of Management, University of Wollongong, Australia
Introduction
This paper examines the nature of manager-
ial decision making during the process of a
programme of workplace reform at Wollon-
gong City Council (WCC) in New South Wales
(NSW), Australia, over the period 1988-95.
Information for the study was gathered
through documentary evidence, personal
observation, participatory experience of one
of the authors and a series of interviews with
members of the executive and senior manage-
ment teams and other staff at the council
conducted during 1994 and 1995.
Wollongong is a metropolitan area 80 kilo-
metres to the south of Sydney. In 1995, the city
council employed 930 people (down from 1,250
in 1988), controlled an annual budget of A$140
million and served approximately 200,000
residents. In common with most of NSW local
government, the council had traditionally
been regarded as inefficient in the delivery of
services; bureaucratic, hierarchical, non-
customer focused, reactive, and managerially
ineffective. The NSW Local Government Act
was passed in 1993 in an attempt to encourage
the transformation of local councils into
enabling rather than regulatory authorities,
stressing the notions of accountability to
their local communities, effective and busi-
ness-like delivery of services and manage-
ment of resources, and governance of a more
open, proactive, co-operative and responsive
nature. However, WCC had anticipated the
enactment of such legislation and had com-
menced its own reform agenda as early as
1988.
The year 1994 was a momentous one for
WCC. Following several years of (often bitter)
industrial conflict, not only did it finalize a
workplace-based enterprise agreement (EA),
which was widely regarded at the time as an
innovative breakthrough for local govern-
ment in NSW, but it also became the first local
authority in Australia to receive an
Australian Quality Awards commendation
for entrants in the large organizations cate-
gory. It repeated this achievement in 1995.
Additionally, in 1995, a subjective peer review
of the opinions of local government general
managers conducted by Jones and Gross[1]
ranked the council the second most
successful reformist local council in NSW
behind Liverpool City Council.
The process by which WCC achieved these
successes provides an important case study of
the nature of decision making during organi-
zational change. The paper lays emphasis on
how the change process parallels the nature
of processual change as presented by
Dawson[2] and also Braybrooke and Lind-
blom’s analysis of disjointed incrementalist
decision making[3]. The conditions determin-
ing the adoption of such approaches are
analysed, while attention is also drawn to the
importance of several other characteristics of
managerial decision making which were
prominent during the change process.
Decision making during
organizational change
Decision making during organizational
change has for long been dominated by the
popularity of unidirectional conceptual mod-
els. The most pervasive ideas have been con-
tained within Lewin’s notions of “unfreezing,
movement, and refreezing”[4]. More recently,
Tichy and Sherman[5] have depicted organi-
zational change as a three-act drama encom-
passing the concepts of “awakening, envision-
ing, and rearchitecting”; while Buchanan and
McCalman[6] envisage organizational change
as unfolding through a series of four layers of
“trigger, vision, conversion, and
maintenance/ renewal” in their perpetual
transition theory.
Such models readily give credence to pre-
scriptive and mechanistic approaches to
handling organizational change. Thus, for
instance, by employing the device of the
“readiness for change equation”, Carnall[7] is
able to trace a process which commences
with a feeling of dissatisfaction with the cur-
rent situation, and progresses through the
identification of a desirable end state, to a
practical plan for achieving that end state.
Belasco[8] has been able to popularize this
approach for a managerial audience in his
“teaching the elephant to dance” model,
which encompasses the steps of: building a
sense of urgency, creating a clear tomorrow,
developing a migration path, and reinforcing
the new behaviours.
[ 23 ]
 Robert Jones and
Michael Gross
Decision making during
organizational change:
observations on disjointed
incrementalism in an
Australian local government
authority
Management Decision
34/7 [1996] 23–32
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Malang At 20:17 19 September 2017 (PT)
[ 24 ]
Such unidirectional methodology is inher-
ent in the “stage” models which, according to
Dawson[2], have tended to dominate business-
school teaching of the subject and have
resulted in a regrettable textbook orthodoxy.
Jones and Gross[1] explain that these so-
called “linear” models of change are based
upon a series of stages through which an
organization is expected to move in sequence
in order to achieve successful organizational
change. The simplest, logical sequence is
based on the progression: recognition – diag-
nosis – planning – implementation – evalua-
tion. Stages cannot be missed out or
attempted in a different order. Each stage
must be successfully accomplished before
moving on to the next. Stage models can be
presented in varying levels of detail. For
instance, in their popular management text-
book, Barney and Griffin[9] display such
stage orthodoxy in the following model: rec-
ognize the need for change, establish goals for
change, diagnose relevant variables, select
the change intervention, plan the implemen-
tation of change, implement the change, and
evaluate the implementation.
The concept of classical decision theory,
based on the rational-economic model, is
inherent in such linear stage models of orga-
nizational change. Vecchio[10] depicts the
typical steps in a classical decision-making
process as: problem recognition, problem
definition, generation of alternatives, gather-
ing information, evaluating alternatives,
selection of one alternative, implementation,
and evaluation. Lindblom[11] emphasizes the
extent of exhaustiveness involved in the clas-
sical, rational notion of decision making by
drawing attention to the fact that in order to
solve a problem, a decision maker:
1 identifies, scrutinizes, and puts into con-
sistent order, those objectives and other
values that s/he believes should govern
the choice of a solution to the problem;
2 comprehensively surveys all possible
means of achieving those values;
3 exhaustively examines the probable conse-
quences of employing each of the possible
means; and
4 chooses a means that will probably
achieve a maximum of the values, or reach
some acceptable level of achievement.
Braybrooke and Lindblom[3] call such a
method “synoptic” because of the high degree
of synopsis or comprehensiveness of view the
decision maker seeks to achieve in such a
method. To adopt the term is to assume that
the problem is solved by understanding it.
Understanding requires a comprehensiveness
of information and analysis. It is also to
assume that one cannot be rational without
first knowing what one wants and proceeding
only thereafter to a comprehensive examina-
tion of alternative means to the attainment of
what one wants.
The concepts of unidirectional stage mod-
els of organizational change and of classical,
rational decision making have been subject to
intense criticism. Dawson[2] argues that
change is a dynamic and complex process
which should not be treated as a series of
linear events. He supports a processual
approach to change in which change does not
unfold in a simple linear fashion, but rather
is a complex, temporal, iterative and non-
linear patchwork of unfolding processes, the
dynamic nature of which is seriously misrep-
resented by simple unidirectional models.
Support for the processual approach is also
provided by Pettigrew and Whipp[12]. They
were unable to uncover any isolated logic to
strategic change in their research, describing
it as an uncertain, emergent adjustment
process, the defining features of which were
ambiguity, unpredictability and volatility.
The weakness of unidirectional change
models lies in the classical assumptions of
rationality and abstract clarity. In reality,
managers do not have the privilege of pos-
sessing such comprehensive information.
Lindblom[11] summarizes such criticisms by
pointing out that the synoptic ideal is not well
adapted to the difficulties of complex problem
solving because it is not adapted to the inade-
quacy of information, to the costliness of
analysis in terms of time, effort or resources,
and to a decision-maker’s limited intellectual
capacity to solve all the issues thrown up by a
truly comprehensive analysis. In reality
there is often an incomplete formulation of
governing values, typically significant dis-
agreement on values, which makes it impos-
sible to clarify and systematize values in
advance of analysis. Additionally, comprehen-
siveness is difficult to achieve where conse-
quences run on endlessly or in a wide variety
of directions.
Given these difficulties, it is easy to under-
stand how, in practice, decision makers fash-
ion adaptations or tactics in order to make
headway against their problems. For
instance, Quinn[13] demonstrated how strate-
gic decisions often take the form of what he
called “logical incrementalism”. This
involves the blending of behavioural tech-
niques, power politics and formal analysis in
a logical incremental movement towards
ends which are broadly conceived and revised
in the light of new information during the
process of strategic change. In similar vein,
in formulating his “Science of muddling
through”, Lindblom[14] had earlier argued
that decision makers are much more likely to
make incremental decisions that do not vary
greatly from the status quo, because it is
 Robert Jones and
Michael Gross
Decision making during
organizational change:
observations on disjointed
incrementalism in an
Australian local government
authority
Management Decision
34/7 [1996] 23–32
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Malang At 20:17 19 September 2017 (PT)
much easier to assess the significance of
marginal changes than of significantly differ-
ent alternatives.
Disjointed incrementalist approach to
decision making
The adaptive approach to decision making
was later synthesized by Braybrooke and
Lindblom[3] into the model of “disjointed
incrementalism”. This approach looks at the
concept of problem solving as a strategy.
Policy problems are regarded as too complex
to be well understood and mastered. One
develops a strategy to cope with problems,
not to solve them. Disjointed incrementalism
is perceived as equivalent to the successive
approximation to solving a problem, rather
than exact computation, and is regarded as a
practical, desirable and unavoidable adapta-
tion to the impossibility of actually attaining
the synoptic ideal.
Disjointed incrementalism bears a striking
resemblance to the processual approach to
organizational change. Dawson and
Palmer[15] described the introduction of total
quality management (TQM) into a number of
companies as an “odyssey” which required
continual management effort. Unforeseen
critical events during the change process
could serve to impede, hasten or redirect the
route to change. There was a need for a con-
tinual revision of navigational decisions to
meet unpredictable and unfolding conditions.
Likewise, Pettigrew and Whipp[12] observed
in their research that managers made contin-
ual assessments, repeated choices and multi-
ple adjustments.
According to Lindblom[11], the essence of
the disjointed incrementalist approach to
decision making can be captured in four
major characteristics: incremental, recon-
structive, serial and remedial:
1 Incremental. Decision makers compare
and evaluate increments only. They con-
sider only a restricted number of policy
alternatives and a restricted number of
important consequences for any given
policy alternative. As a result we would
tend to find that decision makers:
• make an incremental move in the
desired direction but do not take upon
themselves the difficulties of finding a
solution;
• disregard many other possible moves
because they are too costly (time,
energy or resources) to examine, and
for the move they make do not trouble
to find out (again for reasons of cost)
what all its consequences are.
2 Reconstructive analysis. Decision makers
do not fix on a nicely defined problem.
Ends are adjusted to means as well as the
other way round. The “problem” is contin-
ually redefined. This fluidity simplifies
rather than complicates decision making.
Reconstructive analysis is a tactic of alter-
ing a problem to make it manageable,
rather than fruitlessly attacking an impos-
sible one.
3 Serial analysis and evaluation. A never-
ending series of attacks is pursued on a
problem. Thus, for instance, labour legisla-
tion is not simply enacted but endlessly re-
enacted. Decision makers know, therefore,
they need not understand all aspects of a
problem and find its “right” solution.
Given a problem’s complexity and the
inevitable opportunities to return to it,
they only try to accomplish a serial step in
the attack on it. Moreover, by returning
endlessly to the same problem area the
neglect of certain consequences and values
at any one step is less alarming.
4 Remedial orientation. Problem solving is
less dominated by aspiration towards a
well-defined future state than by identified
ills that call for remedy. More dominance
is given to particular imperfections that
must be removed. The simplification of
immediate problems achieved by focus on
the remedial ill is obvious.
Thus, to the extent that policy making is
remedial and serial, decision makers assume
that, to the extent that any particular move is
a failure, or marked by unanticipated adverse
consequences, the next move will attend to
the resulting problem. In a non-static society,
the obstacles to the successful practice of
exact computation, as in the synoptic ideal,
loom increasingly large, and the possibilities
of moving in a series of remedial steps come
to look increasingly appropriate. Remedial
and serial decision making can catch possible
errors of commission and omission as they
reveal themselves. Policies can be devised at
the time to cope with them.
In short, if decision making is both reme-
dial and serial, anticipated adverse conse-
quences can often be better dealt with if
regarded as new and separate problems than
if regarded as aspects of an existing problem;
and unanticipated adverse consequences can
often be better guarded against by waiting for
their emergence than by futile attempts to
anticipate every contingency, as required in
synoptic problem solving.
Organizational reform at
Wollongong City Council
The reform process at WCC can be traced
back to July 1988 with the appointment of a
new and visionary general manager, Rod
Oxley. Faced with the crisis of an inherited $6
[ 25 ]
 Robert Jones and
Michael Gross
Decision making during
organizational change:
observations on disjointed
incrementalism in an
Australian local government
authority
Management Decision
34/7 [1996] 23–32
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Malang At 20:17 19 September 2017 (PT)
[ 26 ]
million debt and the knowledge that the NSW
state government was contemplating legisla-
tion aimed at making councils more account-
able and responsive to the needs of their local
communities, Oxley set a visionary course
for Wollongong to become regarded as a
“council of excellence”. He wanted WCC to be
recognized as at the leading edge of reform. “I
wanted to be a leader not a follower: to be
ahead of the change not lagging behind.”
A restructuring of the management team to
embrace four directors and 16 divisional
managers was the first significant develop-
ment in the change process. Problems imme-
diately arose for Oxley, emanating from his
early start to the reform agenda. Although he
possessed a vision he was not quite sure what
had to be done to attain it. The details of
upcoming legislation were not known with
certainty and only inspired guesses could be
made. Oxley’s initial agenda revolved around
the goal of making the council’s operations
more business-like and cost effective. Empha-
sis was laid on methods of improving the
productivity, efficiency and flexibility of the
activities of the council’s workforce. The
structural efficiency (SE) drive was the main
national reform initiative at the time and was
aimed at encouraging employers and unions
to seek ways of improving the flexibility of
(centrally negotiated) award conditions in
return for second-tier (enterprise) wage
increases. This initiative was immediately
embraced at WCC in an attempt to modernize
the provisions of the in-house industrial
agreement which had served the organiza-
tion for several decades. (For more informa-
tion on the background to Australian indus-
trial relations refer to Davis and
Lansbury[16] and Deery and Plowman[17]).
Industrial relations at WCC had tradition-
ally been confrontational. The human
resources manager described it as a situation
where “we sat on either side of a table and
threw rocks at each other”. The industrial
agreement was not regarded as a facilitative
mechanism for change within the council.
Rather it was a repository for all the “trea-
sured” conditions of employment which had
been laboriously and sometimes painfully
negotiated over several decades and which
the union defended with a fervent passion.
The reason for this was understandable and
historical. The industrial agreement era at
WCC was characterized by a lack of continu-
ity and forward planning. The HR manager
explained that “what we did the following
year was usually based on whims, often polit-
ical, after which a budget was put together,
and we all went for it. Quite separately from
this procedure, industrial negotiations took
place in which the unions put forward claims
for more wages and better conditions, and we
(the management) considered that it was our
job to negotiate down the magnitude of these
ambit claims as much as possible. We were
always reactive, always defensive. None of
our actions seemed to be directed towards
anything, or to have a long-term flow”.
Within this environment the post-1988
structural efficiency programme soon degen-
erated into an exercise of attempting to trade
off certain long-established conditions of
employment in exchange for a pay increase.
What started as union mistrust was trans-
formed into open confrontation. The Lord
Mayor had laid the foundation for this in 1988
by publicly declaring that the $6 million debt
could easily be rectified by “cutting 100
employees out of the workforce”. This became
a major issue thereafter where the union
fought for the maintenance of staff numbers
against a council it believed was intent on a
course of destroying jobs and reducing
employment conditions. The union adopted a
stance of suspicion of, and refusal to co-oper-
ate with, change elsewhere.
The SE agenda went dramatically wrong
during 1991. The general manager unilater-
ally announced that the council would not
allow the industrial agreement in its current
form to roll over for another year and took
the unprecedented step of circulating to all
employees a 40-point log of claims. In this
circular it was explained that in order to give
effect to a number of changes which could be
achieved in productivity and efficiency under
the structural efficiency programme, “the
narrowly defined and restrictive industrial
agreement provisions must firstly be
amended”. Some of the issues targeted in the
log of claims included such “treasured” con-
ditions as annual leave loading, long-service
leave loading, sick leave, spread of hours and
elimination of morning tea, among others.
Officially the intention of the changes was
the pursuit of efficiency, productivity, flexibil-
ity and cost savings. But the union
interpreted it as an attack on conditions. The
conclusion of the HR manager in retrospect
was that “the whole agenda went sour. A lot of
industrial tension was generated”. By 1991
this agenda had virtually ground to a halt as
the council and union engaged in a classic
stand-off.
In the opinion of several managers the
discord was exacerbated by the nature of the
union leadership (wages division) at that
time. WCC had had its own industrial agree-
ment since the 1960s, although it was strongly
allied to the award system. Council officials
had very little contact with union officials
from head office and transacted the majority
of their business and negotiations through
local job delegates. The narrow focus of these
delegates prompted the HR manager to
 Robert Jones and
Michael Gross
Decision making during
organizational change:
observations on disjointed
incrementalism in an
Australian local government
authority
Management Decision
34/7 [1996] 23–32
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Malang At 20:17 19 September 2017 (PT)
describe them as “always a bit militant
because they could not understand the big
world”. According to another senior manager
(anonymity requested) the union leadership
was “always suspicious, basically intransi-
gent, who liked things the way they were”. He
described the central union negotiator as a
“dinosaur”, whose approach was to “never
take a step back” and for whom any notion of
bargaining away conditions was anathema.
The face-off with management during 1991
was legendary. The same manager considered
that “we all reckoned the only way to change
WCC was to take him out of play. There were
some efforts to white-ant him, to find a chink
in the armour, but he always used such
efforts to his own advantage to muster his
troops”. The attempt by the general manager
in 1991 to negotiate a new industrial agree-
ment with reduced conditions of employment
only acted to give the union the ammunition
it needed to secure almost total unity of oppo-
sition behind such slogans as “only the union
can defend your rights; we’ve never lost a
condition for you; there’ll be blood on the
floor before we take a step backwards”.
Oxley recalls that he was somewhat “brash
and inexperienced” during that period. Two
of his major regrets are that he may have
been a little remote from his senior manage-
ment team, and also tried to move the organi-
zation faster than it was capable of going.
Oxley’s problem was immediately appar-
ent. By his own admission the organization
was managerially ineffective, bureaucratic
and inward-looking. But how could an inter-
nally appointed general manager leading a
predominantly internal management team
hope to change the culture of an organization
which had operated in a fixed manner for
many decades, a culture of which they were
an integral part? It soon became apparent
that he could not, at least not at the speed he
initially hoped for. In Oxley’s words: “there
were people who had been here for many,
many years and change was difficult for a lot
of them to come to terms with”.
Oxley admits that the management team
assembled at that time “was not necessarily
composed of the most desirable people”.
But his initial objective was to get his
newly-instituted organizational corporate
management structure right, after which the
best people would mould themselves into that
situation. Unfortunately, this approach did
not fit well with his objective of moving the
organization through a period of fast-paced
change. The HR manager described the coun-
cil’s managers as “very good technically, but
poor managers of people. But it was the sys-
tem which created and compounded this
problem. Managers were promoted on senior-
ity and tended to rely on centralized staff
functions, such as Personnel and Finance, to
an unhealthy extent.” Not surprisingly, in
such a situation, wages personnel failed to
regard the management team as a value-
adding element in the organizational struc-
ture. It was the union which provided them
with their wage increases, not management,
and which fought for improved conditions
and job security. “Management was only out
to screw them.” The events of 1991 only
served to compound this belief.
Oxley began to doubt the ability and com-
mitment of some of his managers. “A number
of my colleagues came to me saying that they
didn’t think the organization could cope with
the changes. I said we are going to keep going.
We are not going to back off. I felt if we lost
the momentum, or the organization perceived
we were easing off, we would become compla-
cent and roll back into the old ways, and I
wasn’t going to let that happen.”
Perseverance was Oxley’s major attribute.
In his words, “I wasn’t about to go belly up”.
He possessed a strong determination to suc-
ceed. A Wollongong person born and bred, he
wanted to prove to his community that he
was a leader they could respect. He was not
going to give up easily.
1991 was the watershed. His executive team
had failed. The union was virtually in a state
of insurrection. Angry workers invaded the
main administration building. Oxley was
booed and abused. The change effort was
effectively stalled. A well-meaning and
visionary leadership had made the mistake of
turning the SE programme into an exercise of
trading-off conditions of employment (or, as
the HR manager put it, “we’ll give you 2 per
cent for giving up your morning tea. The
problem was there was nothing in it – for
anybody”).
Reconstructing the problem
Time for change. The departure of two of his
directors afforded Oxley the opportunity to
remodel his management team to only two
assistant general managers and 12 divisional
managers. His relationship with his new
team was far better. In particular, his two
deputies were more on his wavelength and
worked more co-operatively as a team. But
four years had been wasted.
By then (1992), the details of local govern-
ment and industrial relations reform in NSW
were known and Oxley’s reform agenda could
be firmed up. Corporate planning (CP) was
introduced into WCC in late 1989 and total
quality management (TQM) in late 1990. CP
was a strategic initiative introduced in antici-
pation of expected legislation. TQM, however,
was an opportunistic initiative, introduced
after Oxley discovered the concept at a meet-
ing of local council chief executives and
[ 27 ]
 Robert Jones and
Michael Gross
Decision making during
organizational change:
observations on disjointed
incrementalism in an
Australian local government
authority
Management Decision
34/7 [1996] 23–32
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Malang At 20:17 19 September 2017 (PT)
[ 28 ]
believed that it might provide the kind of
boost that was required to the reform pro-
gramme. Both were cautiously introduced
and tentatively pursued as the organization
sought to understand how they operated and
how they could synergize with council’s other
activities. In addition, the substitution of a
workplace-based enterprise agreement (EA)
for the existing industrial agreement became
a distinct possibility as a result of the enact-
ment of the NSW Industrial Relations Act in
1991.
These three programmes were run as sepa-
rate agendas from the outset, a policy which
caused some confusion among staff and
created antagonism among some managers.
Nevertheless the effects created by these
agendas were eventually instrumental in
moulding the conditions and climate which
allowed an innovative and integrative EA to
be negotiated for the whole organization in
late 1994, as analysed later.
The history of the Council had been one in
which salaried employees had always been
perceived as closer to management than wage
employees. The split between the two was
clearly revealed during 1992 when the salaries
division of the union was persuaded to sign an
EA. In terms of this agreement the old jobs-
based classification structure was replaced by
a skills-based broadbanded classification. In
return for a 4.5 per cent salary increase and a
standardized 35-hour week, the salaries divi-
sion agreed to trade off certain conditions of
employment, such as morning tea, and the
removal of long service and annual leave load-
ings. But once again, outside developments
conspired to give a fortunate boost to the
change effort. The threat by the state govern-
ment that unpaid accumulated sick leave
would be abolished unless EAs were signed by
a certain date gave an added impetus to the
rush to sign. In the words of the ex-administra-
tion manager “many salaried employees were
sitting on buckets of unpaid leave which they
stood to lose unless the EA was signed”.
On the other hand, negotiations with the
wages division broke down. In line with its
philosophy of “never taking a step back” the
union leadership would have nothing to do
with an EA which was trying to involve them
in a process of trading-off conditions. It also
regarded the threat to abolish accumulated
sick leave as unrealizable and refused to take
it seriously. As a result, wages personnel
chose to continue with the existing industrial
agreement, in the process sacrificing the
possibility of the pay increase which had
already been paid to salaried personnel. The
latter were attacked as “scabs”, and the whole
saga soured relations between the wages and
salaries divisions of the union.
However, by late 1994 the wages division of
the union had been persuaded to join the EA.
The process by which this was achieved is
worth examining in two main stages.
First, the CP and TQM agendas gradually
began to have a “softening up” effect on
employees. As TQM was being introduced
through 1991 the union was initially suspi-
cious and would not co-operate. It was con-
centrating on more pressing concerns,
namely the threat to conditions of employ-
ment. But as members participated in TQM
awareness sessions and cross-functional
process improvement teams their individual
attitudes began to soften. Union members
attended external TQM seminars and
reported back in favourable terms that “this
was the way to go”. The quality manager ran
his programmes separately from HRM, a
controversial approach at the time, but
which, in retrospect, worked to the council’s
advantage. He was widely perceived to be a
sociable person, friendly and popular, who
interacted well with all employees, and,
importantly, communicated well with the
union and its members. His agenda was per-
ceived to be untainted by the HR side of the
organization. The HR manager was seen as a
hard character, frequently clashing with the
union, whereas the quality agenda, and its
main protagonist, adopted a much softer, and
less threatening, focus. The temptation to
draw an analogy with the classic “hard
man/soft man” routine is difficult to resist.
Additionally, the CP agenda started to
involve the council in a more deliberate exami-
nation of its role and adoption of a longer-term
planning focus. The union was invited to com-
ment on the council’s CP documents[18] but
according to the ex-administration manager
“showed little interest”. Union concern lay
more with the effect that such an agenda
might have on conditions of employment.
Second, inter-union relations between the
salaries and wages divisions, which had been
vitriolic at the time of the signing of the EA
by the salaries division in 1992, began to
soften as a result of the cumulative effect of a
series of internal and external events:
• A small but vocal element within the
salaries division saw the EA more in terms
of a management win than a staff win. The
union was perceived as having given up
conditions because it had become too close
to management. The main negotiator was
ousted and a new breed of leadership
emerged which was far more inclined to
link itself with the wages division.
• At the same time dissent became evident
within the wages division. Employees had
missed out on a pay rise, the loss of accumu-
lated sick leave was still a real possibility,
and it was becoming increasingly obvious
 Robert Jones and that future pay rises could only be achieved
Michael Gross through the vehicle of enterprise negotia-
Decision making during tions. Management did not lose the oppor-
organizational change: tunity to hint to members of the wages
observations on disjointed
incrementalism in an division that they had had the chance to
Australian local government negotiate but had lost out. Their union, it
authority was pointed out, had “let them down”. As
Management Decision the HR manager explained, “as time went
34/7 [1996] 23–32 by the troops became hungrier. Their last
pay increase had been 2 per cent resulting
from the SE exercise in August 1991. Pres-
sure began to mount on the union leader-
ship to achieve something.”
• Opportunistically the key negotiator in the
wages division was absent from work for a
crucial six-month period, during which
time more flexible negotiators came
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Malang At 20:17 19 September 2017 (PT)
through the ranks.
• This was combined with the influence
exerted on internal negotiators by an
increasingly more enlightened outside
union movement, which was itself in the
process of restructuring by taking on a
regional rather than a branch structure.
Internal delegates were steadily made more
aware of the “big picture” and came to real-
ize that there was more to be gained by
moving on rather than standing still.
As a result of these developments, the wages-
salaries split, which had earlier been at the
daggers-drawn stage, was transformed into a
more comfortable middle-ground alliance.
At this stage in the drama enter the HR
manager, sensing an opportunity like a preda-
tory animal. “I sensed that the timing was
right. A number of catalysts came together
which made it easier to expound my philoso-
phy and have it heard and accepted.” His
philosophy was that enterprise bargaining
had to be geared to the organization’s needs.
The notion of old-fashioned bargaining had to
be jettisoned. In his words it was “basically
directionless with no long-term flow”,
divorced from the real needs and vision of the
organization. “We only hurt each other by
throwing rocks at one another.” Now, he real-
ized, the need was to employ the EA as a
facilitative process; a tool in the process of
change, an integral part of helping the orga-
nization to achieve its objectives.
Two working parties were convened (one
for the salaries division and one for the wages
division of the union) each collaborating with
a key HR official. Working together in a prob-
lem-solving rather than a bargaining envi-
ronment[19], they reviewed all existing agree-
ments and policies to decide what needed to
be changed to create the kind of agreement
that would facilitate the council’s vision. The
EA, as signed, brought together the three
previously separate agendas of CP, TQM, and
SE. A clear picture was provided of what the
council’s leadership had now come to believe
in, firmly relating remuneration to broad-
banded skills classifications for all employ-
ees, trading off a range of conditions for pay
increases annualizing separate allowances,
and making future pay increases dependent
on the achievement of organizational perfor-
mance indicators.
Also as part of the agreement, performance
review criteria were designed to ensure that
all levels of management commence “walking
the talk” in terms of their obligations to TQM
and CP. By fixed dates in 1995, 1996 and 1997
managers were mandated to report on the
success achieved in taking their units
through three distinct levels (commitment,
involvement and adoption) in respect of four
criteria (operating performance, customer
satisfaction, health/safety/and environment,
and continuous improvement and innova-
tion).
Some sections of the council’s management
team had been subject to criticism for contin-
uing to display poor people skills and failing
to walk the talk with regard to organizational
reform. This was evidenced by accusations of
lip service in regard to TQM practices, and
failure to display participative and team
approaches to the formulation of business
plans. The quality manager had frequently
expressed frustration that his “centralized
prodding” was often ineffective with some
managers and he had had to secure the assis-
tance of the general manager on some occa-
sions to reinforce the message. However, the
new EA acted to pull into line such wavering
managers by placing as much, if not more,
pressure on them to perform as it did ordi-
nary employees. The emphasis was now on
managers (all of whom had been placed on
five-year performance contracts) and employ-
ees performing together to realize business
plans and performance indicators to achieve
the objectives of the organization. In the pre-
vious culture the workforce looked to the
bargaining power of its union to secure pay
and conditions advances. It was hoped that
the new culture would be one in which the
council sought to achieve these objectives
through the value-adding behaviour of man-
agers and employees. By effectively decen-
tralizing such discipline down to the divi-
sional managers, the quality manager was
able to abandon his role of centralized cajol-
ing in favour of that of an internal consultant.
Parallels with the disjointed
incrementalist model
Change at WCC is still ongoing. This paper
has examined the nature of the change
process during the period 1988-95 and has
[ 29 ]
 Robert Jones and
Michael Gross
Decision making during
organizational change:
observations on disjointed
incrementalism in an
Australian local government
authority
Management Decision
34/7 [1996] 23–32
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Malang At 20:17 19 September 2017 (PT)
[ 30 ]
found strong parallels with the disjointed
incrementalist model of incremental, recon-
structive, serial and remedial decision mak-
ing, combining to propel the change process
onwards. The ex-administration manager
described the process as one of:
finding our way by groping along, until all of
a sudden you reach out and a brainwave
brings it together. In retrospect you might
think “what a brilliant plan” but the reality of
it was that people could see some of these
things but often couldn’t make sense of them,
or didn’t know how to make them happen.
Things kept happening and changing … we
were all learning … there was a vision … we
thought we knew the direction we were head-
ing in but sometimes we were not sure.
The same manager likened the journey to a
trek of exploration through uncharted native
vegetation:
It was like heading through the jungle
towards water. We couldn’t see the water and
often we couldn’t see each other. At the end of
the day we broke through the trees and
shouted “hey, we can see the water, and we
can see each other – what a wonderful trip.
The change process commenced in 1988 with a
management restructuring and the adoption of
the SE programme – classic incremental
moves. There was no grand plan of change.
Oxley possessed only a vague vision of “excel-
lence” but no real notion of the process or
content of change. The SE approach was
chosen because it was the national agenda of
the moment, not as a result of any comprehen-
sive analysis of alternative strategies and con-
sequences. In effect, it represented the mini-
malist (and politically correct) deviation from
the status quo. It also suited the situation
Oxley found himself in at the time, in the sense
that he had made an early start to the reform of
local government in NSW, with an incomplete
knowledge of developments and legislation
that were destined to unfold only at a later date.
Once this avenue had been adopted the
(brash and inexperienced) Oxley pursued the
option relentlessly and often autocratically
until, as the case reveals, the process had been
driven into a cul-de-sac and remedial action
was required. Rather than fruitlessly attacking
what had become a bitter and impossible prob-
lem, the tactic was pursued of redefining the
problem to make it more manageable. A recon-
struction of the problem was achieved by
noticeably slowing down the pace of reform
and switching focus away from the hard indus-
trial concepts associated with SE reform, such
as productivity and cost effectiveness, to
embrace the softer notions associated with
business planning, community responsive-
ness, quality and customer service. The organi-
zation’s focus changed perceptibly to empha-
size approaches based on participation,
involvement, communication, empowerment,
ownership, commitment, teamworking, contin-
uous improvement and responsibility for deci-
sion making. What happened is that Oxley had
learned, both from his own experiences and
from observations of reform efforts in other
organizations. More information had also
become available of the details of local govern-
ment and industrial relations reform in NSW
which sharpened his thinking.
This reconstruction was not attempted
dramatically but as a result of a progression
of serial moves (“attacks”) on the problem: CP
in 1989, TQM in 1990, EA in 1991, and another
management restructuring in 1992. All of
them served the purpose of keeping the
change effort rolling on in the general direc-
tion the council desired and of creating possi-
bilities which could be taken advantage of at
the appropriate moment. All of them were
incremental in nature. Having no previous
experience of such programmes the council
regarded them as experimental. Their conse-
quences were unknown. If they provided a
solution well and good. If not, they could be
terminated or remedial action undertaken.
(Thus, the breakdown of EA negotiations
with the wages division in 1992 was treated by
council as an unanticipated adverse conse-
quence which could be treated by further
doses of serial and remedial measures).
Again they did not represent any comprehen-
sive attempt at examining all possible alter-
natives and evaluating consequences. They
simply “came along” at the right time. In
effect, they represented a mixture of oppor-
tunistic and strategic endeavours which may
(or may not) have provided the kind of boost
that was required for the reform programme,
but council was willing to explore their possi-
bilities. Accordingly, they were cautiously
introduced, tentatively pursued, and sepa-
rately administered, as council sought to
understand how they operated and how they
could synergize with other activities.
In effect, the council could be described as
embracing an approach of “scattering seeds”
in the hope that enough of them would germi-
nate. As the separate sagas developed the
council was able to monitor progress, learn,
adapt its behaviour and approach and “push”
determinedly in a certain direction whenever
an opportunity revealed itself. These argu-
ments raise the importance of four connected
issues, which this case study shows to have
been interwoven with the disjointed incremen-
talist nature of decision making, and which
could be usefully presented and analysed at
this juncture, namely: continuity of purpose,
probing for openings, seizing opportunities,
waiting (and pouncing).
 Robert Jones and
Michael Gross
Decision making during
organizational change:
observations on disjointed
incrementalism in an
Australian local government
authority
Management Decision
34/7 [1996] 23–32
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Malang At 20:17 19 September 2017 (PT)
Continuity of purpose
The approach of the general manager was to
demonstrate a persistent commitment to the
reform agenda, led from the top, although
neither the final destination nor the exact
course to be traversed were known at the
outset. He recognized that “unless the CEO
and senior executives have a very strong
commitment to ensuring that the change
effort continues then it will falter”.
Probing for openings
In the absence of a well-prepared and detailed
plan of campaign the council had to probe for
openings and exploit opportunities whenever
they occured. This could only be achieved if
the council remained sufficiently flexible and
proactive to benefit from events as they
unfolded. Such a policy relied on two
elements for its success: a flexible and com-
mitted top management team and a policy of
maximizing the number of developments
from which an opening might be contrived.
The first was achieved by three progressive
(remedial) management restructurings in
1989, 1992 and 1994. The second was achieved
by embracing as many promising
programmes as possible. Thus, the journey
became an “odyssey” of starts, stops, retreats
and restarts; of lighting fires across a number
of fronts in the hope that some of them would
take hold; of starting new initiatives and
abandoning failed ones; of learning, adapting
and changing direction according to circum-
stances, but always pushing on in the hope of
a breakthrough. Thus, for instance, the case
clearly reveals how such an opportunity for a
breakthrough was fashioned in 1992 when the
effects of the “softening up” agendas of CP
and TQM allowed the council an opening to
divide the workforce and persuade the
salaries division to sign a new EA.
Seizing opportunities
A change agenda such as the one described
here brings breakthroughs at unexpected
moments of time. A necessary ability of a
management team running such an agenda is
to “seize opportunities” whenever they occur.
The quality manager described the general
manager as “always quick on the uptake”.
Invariably this means turning (fortuitous or
contrived) internal and external develop-
ments to the advantage of the organization.
We have already seen how the council has
been able successfully to internalize a num-
ber of external developments and turn them
to strategic advantage. Additionally, the coun-
cil’s ability to “seize the moment” in terms of
the fortunate occurrence of ad hoc events has
also been noticeable (witness the advantage
taken by council of the state government’s
threat to unpaid accumulated sick leave in
1992, and the fortunate prolonged work
absence of the main wages negotiator in 1994,
to secure major breakthroughs in EA negotia-
tions).
Waiting (and pouncing)
The importance of seizing the moment is
strongly related to the timing of decisions.
The HR manager attributes the success of EA
negotiations in late 1994 to his sensing that
“the time was right”. Like a predatory animal
his success lay in “waiting and pouncing”.
Because breakthroughs can occur at any, and
unexpected, moments of time, the importance
of management patience is emphasized. The
“wearing-down” factor is often a critical
element in change programmes. This case
study shows the importance of a successful
playing of the “waiting game”. Waiting is
vital for people to be “softened up”; for time
to take its toll as people work their way
through the defence and discarding stages of
the coping cycle; and for time to allow a dif-
ferent contingency of circumstances to coa-
lesce to create the right climate for additional
pushes. At least five different developments
act as witness to this. First, the “softening-
up” effect of such non-threatening agendas as
CP and TQM. Second, the fact that wages
personnel became increasingly “hungry”
after three years without a pay increase.
Third, the change in leadership in both the
salaries and wages divisions of the union.
Fourth, the increasing influence of a more
enlightened and restructured external union
on the awareness and attitudes of the internal
wages negotiators. Fifth, the coming together
of the two divisions of the union with a com-
mon and mellower approach.
Once the moment occurs it must be recog-
nized, analysed and taken advantage of deci-
sively. The HR manager played this waiting
game to perfection during 1994, eventually
“pouncing” to achieve a far more innovative
EA than previously thought possible. He was
able to harness the new-found unity between
the wages and salaries divisions of the union
to formulate an EA which decentralized disci-
pline for performance achievement down to
individual divisional managers, and used the
combined pressures of individual contracts,
wage increases tied to performance indica-
tors and employee pressure, to police the
process. Faced with stubborn resistance to
walk-the-talk with regard to organizational
reform from some sections of the managerial
cadre, the HR manager had effectively recon-
structed the problem by targeting these man-
agers as the villains of the piece, and employ-
ing the two union divisions as allies in his
enforcement strategy.
[ 31 ]
 Robert Jones and
Michael Gross
Decision making during
organizational change:
observations on disjointed
incrementalism in an
Australian local government
authority
Management Decision
34/7 [1996] 23–32
Downloaded by Universitas Negeri Malang At 20:17 19 September 2017 (PT)
[ 32 ]
Conclusion
Unidirectional conceptual models of decision
making during organizational change are
predicated on the synoptic ideal of compre-
hensive analysis, perfect knowledge and
abstract clarity. In this paper we have exam-
ined the nature of managerial decision
making during the process of a programme of
workplace reform at Wollongong city council
in NSW Australia, over the period 1988-95. In
so doing we have drawn strong parallels with
the model of disjointed incrementalism with
its emphasis on incremental, reconstructive,
serial and remedial decision making. In par-
ticular, three factors are advanced as being
instrumental in determining the adoption of
such a problem-solving approach:
• an eager, but “brash and inexperienced”
leader, ill-suited at the time for (among
other things) conducting comprehensive
analyses of alternatives and consequences;
• a complex organizational change problem
involving the transformation of a moribund
and entrenched culture;
• an early start to the reform process, based
on a narrow agenda, vague vision and
incomplete knowledge of events and devel-
opments (including legislation) which were
destined to unfold at a later date.
Collectively, these factors are not suited to the
assumptions of rational clarity and perfect
knowledge implicit in unidirectional stage
models.
Thus the paper emphasizes the nature of
decision making epitomized by the making of
mistakes, learning, adapting behaviour, and
experimentation involved in an iterative
“successive approximation” approach to
problem solving characterized by incremen-
tal, reconstructive, serial and remedial deci-
sion making.
In making these parallells we have empha-
sised the importance of four connected issues
which are interwoven within the disjointed
incremental model throughout this case:
1 Continuity of purpose: continual manage-
ment effort, persistence and commitment
in the face of uncertainty and setbacks.
2 Probing for openings: the concept of seek-
ing breakthroughs through experimenta-
tion and the adoption of multiple agendas
– “scattering seeds and lighting fires”.
Application questions
1 Is decision making in times of change
necessarily characterized by “mess”? Can
rational models prevail?
2 How can the four connected issues out-
lined by the authors be learned by man-
agers?
3 Seizing opportunities: taking decisive advan-
tage of contrived or fortuitous internal or
external developments, based on keen
awareness of events and willingness to act.
4 Waiting (and pouncing): the virtue of man-
agerial patience and the accurate reading
of emotions and sense of timing.
References
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3 What have been the three key lessons for
managing during times of change you
would draw from your own experience?
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