How to
change an organization? The answer to this question is made surprisingly difficult by all those
who think that change is unnecessary, change is risky, and in any case it should
be change that favors their favorite option; nothing else will do. Using history to
promote a change effort is an old trick that makes a lot of sense, because it
is a way of claiming that change is actually a return to a golden age. And
history can be edited in many ways, so it is a very flexible trick. Managers use it.
But can it
be more than a managerial trick to manipulate the organization? New research by Mary Jo Hatch and Majken Schultz in Administrative Science Quarterly shows how
change can be created in a more autonomous fashion by employees reaching back
into the organizational history. The research follows two distinct and
independent occasions that Carlsberg brewery used its old motto, the latin
phrase semper ardens (always burning)
to foster change. In each case the users were different and the change was
different, but the old and flexible motto proved a way to successfully make
changes with less controversy. In one case, a group of master brewers working
on their own used it to formulate, gain acceptance for, and launch a craft beer
line, in stark contrast to the industrial beer that was the core of Carlsberg. In
the other, it was proposed by consultants seeking to create a unifying
statement for Carlsberg, which had become large and diverse through recent
mergers,and then promoted internally in the organization.
Even though these
processes were unrelated, they
followed a remarkably similar sequence.
The steps are described in detail in the paper, but here I want to focus
on the two final ones: renewing and re-embedding. Renewing is central when
history is used to motivate change, because the new activities are never exact
equivalents of the historical record. Indeed, the historical record can be
unclear or even contradictory, so renewal is needed. Semper ardens was a phrase favored by the second generation Carlsberg
owner, but did not have any concrete brewing practices associated with it. But
the master brewer team reached back into the brewing recipes from that time
period, and combined these with the passion for improvement expressed through
the “always burning” meaning to create beers that were distinct in taste and
packaging.
Re-embedding
is actions taken to give the referral to history endurance in the organization.
This is needed because the change attempts are frequent and often override
previous ones, including those backed by history, so without embedding changes
may become temporary. The master brewer team were able to embed semper ardens into the organization well
enough that it lived on in a new craft brewery project even after the beer
using it as a label was discontinued, and as a marker of distinction used when
announcing extraordinary team efforts or noteworthy events. Thus the motto
lived on in its renewed form of encouraging a passion for improvement at
Carlsberg. And passion for improvement is, we might agree, useful both for
organizations in general and for beer brewers specifically.
