TITLE:
Performance of Administrative Reforms: Can the Organizational Development Approach Reconcile Utopia and Dystopia?
AUTHORS:
Léon Bertrand Ngouo
KEYWORDS:
Performance of Administrative Reforms, Methodology of Intervention in an Organizational Milieu, Action Research, Organizational Development, Utopia, Dystopia
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Service Science and Management,
Vol.17 No.1,
January
31,
2024
ABSTRACT: Performance
in implementing administrative reforms calls for change management systems that
aim to help beneficiaries and all other stakeholders take ownership of the
results obtained. This performance depends on many factors, including the
approach adopted to introduce these reforms and manage the resulting
transformations, including their perverse effects, which threaten the
well-being of beneficiaries. However, the eminently technicist or managerialist
logic of the rational utopian thinking that underpins modernizing reform
projects creates a rupture with the real workflow of implementing these
reforms. This rupture hypothecates the chances of achieving the organizational
performance objectives of these public services. At the same time, these
utopias carry with them risks of dystopia that will undermine the confidence of
the actors concerned and their belief in the legitimacy of these reforms. We
adopt an organizational and public policy analysis perspective, which we apply
to the process of organizational change through a realist literature review. The aim is to examine the
contribution of the organizational development (OD) approach, as a method for
managing organizational change, to improving the performance of
administrative reforms by taking into account these undesirable unexpected
effects. The article contributes to the actualization of the OD approach as an
action-research method. It offers an analysis of the practical and managerial
implications of this approach, to meet the challenge of learning and unlearning
within organizations, and enable them to evolve from a change management
approach to one of managing organizations’ capacity to change.