Enacting political games in organizational transformation projects: panoptic vs polyphonic styles of management

Resistance to change and micro-politics around change processes have been studied by many social scientists. In the managerial field, numerous authors plead for the adoption of participative methods in order to overcome such phenomena but few of them seriously document the way in which the so-called “human factor” may be really taken into consideration in the management of change projects. Is there a direct relation between the managerial ability to cope with power games and the final results of a change project? Does a participatory strategy necessarily lead to a successful change? What are the conditions under which the enactment of micropolitics may contribute to an effective organizational transformation?
We will here focus on change processes occurring in the public sphere: the NPM school of thought led to a large range of organizational reforms in which the civil servants’ engagement and motivation appear to play a crucial role. Our research questions will be discussed through the presentation of two cases studies of Belgian public organizations concerned with the implementation of an electronic document management system (DMS). The first case is located in the Federal Police department while the second occurs in a regional administration. Both are issued from action-researches undertaken with my research team during the last decade. They have been selected in order to contrast the different ways in which power games and end-users resistances may be enacted by senior management. They will help us to distinguish two management styles and to explore their respective impact on the change process itself.