Preserving the organisation's life‐blood: organisational change and the role of records management in the charity sector: a case study of The Children's Society
| Published date | 01 December 2004 |
| Date | 01 December 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09565690410566774 |
| Pages | 116-123 |
| Author | Ian Wakeling |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Preserving the
organisation’s life-blood:
organisational change
and the role of records
management in the
charity sector: a case
study of The Children’s
Society
Ian Wakeling
The author
Ian Wakeling is Records, Archive and Data Protection Manager,
The Children’s Society, London, UK.
Keywords
Records management, Change management, Social services,
Voluntary organizations, Charities, United Kingdom
Abstract
This article provides a case study that examines the relationship
between records management and change management. The
study focuses on a three-year phase of intensive change
management in a leading national children’s charity, The
Children’s Society. During this period, records management
became a key tool in the change management process,
generating positive benefits for all stakeholders. Change causes
uncertainty, fluidity and the distortion of organisational
structures that can lead to the loss of business records and
information. At The Children’s Society records management
introduced structures and systems into the change process,
ensuring the retention of records to meet the needs of good
governance, accountability, research and practice learning, and
provide children and young people with future access to
personal case file records.
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Introduction
Organisational change is increasingly becoming an
invidious part of business life. Invariably the
process consists of re-structuring in response to
revised corporate plans, financial pressures or the
transition from old to new types of services and
practice in the light of altered market forces. The
shifting sands of change can be internally driven or
involve company mergers or the transfer of
functions to new external agencies.
The fluidity that change brings has a far-
reaching impact on an organisation’s records,
information and knowledge assets. This is where
the practicalities of transition begin to bite.
Departments and teams change shape and
structure or are dismantled. Staff move around the
organisation; some exit, either through choice or
redundancy. Inextricably linked to departments
and people are the records, information and tacit
knowledge they have created, the functional
lifeblood of the organisation. Yet corporate
strategists and organisational design teams will
often leave softer elements like records out of the
transition equation, while happily concentrating
resources on more obvious concrete elements like
staff redundancies, buildings, information
technology (IT) equipment, and furniture.
Equally, little seems to have been written about
the relationship between organisational change
and the management of records, information and
knowledge – either by change management
theorists and practitioners or their counterparts in
the world of records and information
management. Change brings a kinetic energy to
the scene that can seriously disorder the certainty
of normal business life, disrupting established
information flows and the procedural security of
records or file management programmes.
Pressured time-scales, cost reduction factors and a
perceived need to get things over with can generate
volatility and a sense of emergency or exception
where things do not happen as stakeholders might
expect. The realities of change can threaten
organisational records and information assets if
not properly managed. At worst, there is a risk
records can be lost or destroyed; they may move
around the organisation without an audit trail or
map; and successor managers or agencies might
not realise their business value. There are
numerous permutations.
Organisational change creates both
opportunities and dilemmas for records managers.
This article examines a period of significant
structural change over a three and a half year
period at The Children’s Society, a major national
children’s charity, and examines the role of records
management as an integral component of a wider
Records Management Journal
Volume 14 · Number 3 · 2004 · pp.116-123
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited · ISSN 0956-5698
DOI 10.1108/09565690410566774
116
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