DEVELOPING AND UNDERSTANDING CULTURAL CHANGE IN HM CUSTOMS AND EXCISE: THERE IS MORE TO DANCING THAN KNOWING THE NEXT STEPS
| Published date | 01 December 1993 |
| Date | 01 December 1993 |
| Author | CYRIL TOMKINS,IAN COLVILLE,KEVIN DALTON |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1993.tb00991.x |
DEVELOPING
AND
UNDERSTANDING
CULTURAL CHANGE IN HM CUSTOMS AND
EXCISE: THERE IS MORE
TO
DANCING THAN
KNOWING THE NEXT
STEPS
IAN
COLVILLE,
KEVIN
DALTON
AND
CYRIL
TOMKINS
Increasingly, what was formerly known as public administration is turning itself into
management, while management itself is fast becoming synonymous with the manage-
ment
of
change. These two directions meet in government calls
to
change the culture
of
the civil service, and are
to
be found most clearly in the Financial Management
Initiative (1982). and its successor, the Next Steps (1988). While each stresses a different
aspect, the core policy idea which
runs
through them is one of improving performance
by delegating power and responsibility down the hierarchy closer to the point
of
delivery. In this way the bureaucratic giants which comprise the various central
government departments are transformed into more adroit organizations, to the extent
that it becomes appropriate to talk
of
giants learning
to
dance (Kanter 1989). This article,
through a discussion
of
'experiments in change' conducted in one of the largest central
government giants,
HM
Customs and Excise, argues that teaching giants to learn to
dance is easier said than done. The main
focus
of
the article is on what giants may need
to
learn in order that they can become more attuned to change and it concludes with
the proposition that change in central government cannot be understood or be properly
managed without an appreciation
of
the changing context of change itself.
INTRODUCTION
The
whole
thrust
of
recent thinking in reforming
the
civil service can
be
portrayed as
one
of
getting giants
to
learn
to
dance
(Kanter
1989).
In other
words,
the
principles
of
classical Weberian bureaucracy upon
which
central
government
departments
were
founded
have given
rise
to
lumbering hierarchies
Ian
Colville, Kevin Dalton and Cyril Tomkins are respectively Lecturer, Research Officer
and
Professor
in
the School
of
Management, University
of
Bath.
Colville
and Tomkins
are
also members
of
the Centre for the Study
of
Organizational Change
(c-~C)
at
the
School of
Management. The
authors would
like
to acknowledge funds from the
ESRC
and
HM
Customs and
Excise
and to
thank
all
those eople
in
the department who continue to support them by providing ready
and
generous
access.
T!e
helpful comments
of
two
anonymous reviewers are also acknowledged.
Public Administration
Vol.
71
Winter
I993
(549-566)
0
Basil Blackwell Ltd.
1993,108
Cowley Road, Oxford
0x4
IJF,
UK
and
238
Main Street, Cambridge,
MA
02142,
USA.
550
IAN COLVILLE, KEVIN DALTON
AND
CYRIL
TOMKINS
which,
it
is argued, are no longer appropriate to the times. The call is for faster
thinking and more nimble organizations which can respond quickly to complex
and dynamic environments. This demand was most clearly to be found in the
Conservative government's Financial Management Initiative
(1982)
and its aptly
named successor, the Next Steps (1988). That the type
of
change being envisaged
is radical is conveyed by the fact that the various documents and the associated
Select Committee reports talk,
if
somewhat vaguely, about changing the culture
of
the civil service and the way that it does
business
(The Efficiency Unit, The
Next Steps, para.33, emphasis added).
Calling for change is, however, quite different from achieving change. As Sir
Peter Kemp, until recently the project manager
of
Next Steps pointed out, 'the
history
of
reform in the Civil Service is one
of
changing labels and not substance'
(1989).
Achieving change is a tricky and paradoxical (Quinn and Cameron
1988)
&air at the best
of
times
and
settings, but it would seem to be particularly true
in the past with regard to the civil service. The key question is why should this
apparently be the case and why is it difficult to bring about real cultural change
which does not either involve vandalizing the current culture beyond recognition
(Sederberg
1984;
Bate
1993
forthcoming)
or
simply end up as confirming the
plus
ca
change,
plus
c'est
la
mhe
chose
thesis?
This article seeks to explore these two questions through the case
of
HM
Customs and Excise. It does
so
through the telling
of
the story
of
a number
of
experiments in change and the events that surround them. This provides the
empirical basis from which the article considers the process
of
achieving change.
The aim is not to offer prescriptions for change, but to reflect on attempts to
create change as a basis for generating an understanding
of
change.
Action takes place within a context shaped by past history(ies) and perceptions
of
possible futures. For this reason, the article begins by addressing the context
of
change and the recent history
of
reform in the civil service. This provides
the backdrop to the second section which looks at experimenting the change in
HM
Customs and Excise and identifies a series
of
issues which had to be addressed
in striving for cultural change in that department. A curious irony
of
change is
that one rarely fully appreciates or understands a situation until after it has
changed. That is, by taking action through experiments in change, it was hoped
that an appreciation
of
the existing culture would be generated from which an
understanding
of
how things might be changed could be informed. This
represents the main focus
of
the third section of the paper which then leads to
a reflection on the theoretical and practical implications of the experimental
process. We conclude that, in terms
of
the metaphor, change leadership is, first,
about calling the right strategic tunes to persuade people to take to the
floor.
Then change management has to be about keeping them there and instilling the
confidence which comes from practice and success. It is this confidence which
differentiates those who merely know the formal steps from those who can
really dance. The final section
of
the article then summarizes
our
arguments
and adds a cautionary note regarding the status
of
dancing in the Charter
Initiative.
Q
hsil
Blackwell
Ltd.
1993.
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