PREFACE
Many creative works are the expression of tension or frustration between what is expected and what is actually observed and this book is no exception. The idea for this book originated during an academic conference on organizational change in the city of Oranienburg, which is located about 20 kilometers from Berlin and infamous for the location of one of the first Nazi concentration camps. On a particular evening, while enjoying a local beer in a small pub, we (i.e., the authors) entered into a discussion about the gap between the academic theory and daily practice of organizational change. Of main interest was our observation that most academic studies on the subject do not (accurately) reflect many of the challenges encountered in change projects. Exploring the reasons for the mismatch between the theory and practice of organizational change an old parable came to mind, which is part of ancient Buddhist, Hindu, Sufi, and Jain teachings, and is called 'the blind men and the elephant'.
The Blind Men and the Elephant
Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today." They had no idea what an elephant is, and decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went there, and touched the elephant. "Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first blind man who touched his leg. "Oh, no! It is like a rope," said the second blind man who touched the tail. "Oh, no! It is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third blind man who touched the trunk of the elephant. "It is like a big hand fan," said the fourth blind man who touched the ear of the elephant. "It is like a huge wall," said the fifth blind man who touched the belly of the elephant. "It is like a solid pipe," said the sixth blind man who touched the tusk of the elephant. They began to argue about the elephant and every one of them insisted that he was right, and they started to get agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said." "Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right (Jainworld, 2012).
Figure 1 The blind men and the elephant
This story is often used to provide insight into the relativity, opaqueness, or inexpressible nature of the truth, the behaviour of experts in fields where there is a deficit or inaccessibility of information, the need for communication, and respect for different perspectives (Wikipedia, 2012). In the context of our observation of a mismatch between theory and practice on organizational change, this parable can be interpreted as follows.
The academic approach is mainly analytical, which implies that the domain of investigation is divided into smaller elements or parts (e.g., natural science versus social science) to enable a detailed investigation (i.e., specialization) of the components parts to gain an understanding of the system as a whole (i.e., the elephant). Over time, further distinctions are made, and sub-disciplines emerge (e.g., social sciences is subdivided into economics, sociology, psychology, history, et cetera) that zoom in further and further on a particular subject or phenomena. Basically, an increasingly smaller part of science (i.e., the elephant) is studied, by creating more and more abstract concepts, categories, and theories. To increase progress, sub-disciplines are allowed to evolve autonomously (i.e., independent from one another), so that specific languages and methodologies can be developed for individual parts that enables scholars to specialize even further, to increase the efficiency of the investigation. However, over time, the language, methodologies, concepts, categories, and theories of individual disciplines drift further and further apart, until the basis of effective communication between disciplines is lost. Miscommunication arises that eventually results in conflict, and communication between disciplines effectively comes to a halt. Within science, unfortunately, there is no wise man that can effectively resolve the conflict between the disciplines. Hence, the current state of the social (organization) sciences can be characterized as one of fragmented development in isolated parts with little cross-fertilization between these parts (Daft and Lewin, 1990; van Witteloostuijn, 1995). In other words, there is much analysis (i.e., specialization) with little synthesis (i.e., generalization). The overall effect is that the practical relevance of academic research is somewhat lost. We think this is a pity as we are convinced that business could benefit from proper academic studies.
To prevent this partial view of reality, we decided to take a completely different approach to study organizational change. After all, we do not want to rely on the narrow confinements of a single discipline (or theory), but want to provide managers and entrepreneurs with a coherent view that transcends theoretical boundaries. We try to accomplish this by applying the following threefold strategy, which is to (1) use grounded theory to distill the key principles by (2) using objective and controllable data, and (3) employing an analogy from medicine.
Grounded theory
Grounded theory is a scientific methodology in the social sciences involving the generation of theory from data (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). As such, it is a research method that operates almost in a reverse fashion from - what is now considered to be - traditional research. Traditional research starts by formulating a hypothesis (i.e., a theory fragment) and proceeds to collect data in an effort to prove the hypothesis (actually, the process is to disprove the opposite hypothesis; c.f., Popper, 2002). Instead, grounded theory starts with the collection of data through a variety of methods. This data is then coded and the codes are grouped into similar concepts in order to make them more workable. From these concepts, categories are formed, which form the basis for the creation of a theory, or a reverse engineered hypothesis. This contradicts the traditional model of research, where the researcher chooses a theoretical framework, and applies this model to the phenomenon to be studied (Wikipedia, 2012). However, like any theory or methodology, grounded theory is not without criticism. The main problem is that it is impossible to free oneself of preconceptions in the collection and analysis of data (Thomas and James, 2006). Although we fully agree with the fact that no one can ever be totally free from preconceived notions, we do think there are ways that this can be minimized. For example, by the collection of truly objective data and by using analogies from a different disciplines (like medicine in our case).
Truly objective and controllable data
Through the use of truly objective data, it is possible to minimize any preconceptions that might exist. Of course, even when the data itself is fully objective, there always remains a need to interpret the data, and our interpretations might also contain preconceived notions that bias our findings. Obviously, we cannot completely eliminate any distortion that is the result due to our subjective interpretation of the encountered data. However, what we can (and will) do is to use publicly available data that is extremely easy to access for any reader. This way, the reader has the possibility to access the data himself to validate or correct the interpretation that we have given to it. Thus, instead of trying to sell the reader a pre-cooked theory without access to the ingredients, we want to introduce our dish as well as the ingredients from which this dish was made. The reader can improve the dish by himself, by combining the ingredients in a (slightly) different way that better matches his or her reality (i.e., the reader can interpret the data in a different way). So, instead of the objective of trying to present a single, final theory, we want to provide food for thought, by providing the reader with the basic ingredients and a simple recipe how these ingredients can be combined to develop a nice dish or story.
The data that we will use in this book are episodes from reality TV-shows that have the objective to renew, transform, turnaround, or rescue (i.e., change) small businesses. Most of our observations, conclusions and examples are based on the show Kitchen Nightmares which stars top chef Gordon Ramsay. We have chosen this show for a number of reasons. First, Kitchen Nightmares and Gordon Ramsay kick-started this new genre of reality TV-shows on organizational turnaround. All reality TV-shows of this genre are based on the initial success of Kitchen Nightmares. Second, the show has been such a success that it is still running after eight years (since 2004). With almost 100 episodes (32 UK + 66 US), covering 83 restaurants in two countries it is arguably the show that is most powerful for academic analysis with plenty of testable data and information. Although we focused our research on Kitchen Nightmares (for which we have analyzed all episodes meticulously using video and timer), we sometimes refer to other reality TV-shows such as Restaurant Makeover and Tabatha Salon Takeover to...
