EMERGENT CHANGE

Emergent Change

Today, we are living in a dynamic world with changes keep going on every day. When we
look at changes, there are changes that are planned and unplanned. Planned changes are
those changes that we seek, while unplanned changes are those changes we do not seek
but we are being forced to accept them.

Emergent change is the unplanned change that is not in anyone agenda. For example, look
at the social media today, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc have emerged as global communication
tools. No regulation forces people to use these social media, however, they have been used
globally. People just found out the new way to communicate, make contact and share
information through these social media. Fax, mail, become less chosen to communicate with
each other. Facebook and WhatsApp are emergent changes.

Emergent changes can be defined as ‘unpredictable, often unintentional, can come from
anywhere, and involving relatively informal self-organising.’ (Weick & Quinn, 1999).

According to Spacey 2016, emergent change ‘is the change that follows no big upfront plan;
Change driven by small, frequent releases.’

Emergent Strategy to Changes

Emergent change gives birth to the emergent strategy.

Emergent strategy ‘is the process of identifying unexpected outcomes from the execution of
corporate strategy and then learning to integrate those unexpected outcomes into future
corporate plans.’ (Root III, 2018).

According to Burnes 2009, emergent strategy to change have characteristics as follow:

 This approach see change is a continuous process of learning
 Repetitive small changes over time resulting in larger changes
 Managers should have the vision to direct changes
 The key activities are information gathering, learning and communication.

As we can see from the above explanations, the emergent strategy is about learning from
day to day practices and experiences, learning to see changes as the opportunity and how
an organization can be more innovative and responsive to the changes.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Emergent Strategy

According to Quain 2018, there are advantages and disadvantages of emergent strategy as
follow:

Advantages:
1. Helps organization to respond to its change environment for its benefit.
2. Gives organization flexibility to adjust to changes
3. Since this is a strategy from bottom to up, the innovation and ideas from the
employees can boost the organization performance and make the employees feel
more empowered.
 EMERGENT CHANGE

Disadvantages:
The disadvantage of this approach, it is unpredictable while the organization need strategic
plans as its guidance and framework.

Conclusion
There are changes that are planned and unplanned. In today’s rapid changes world, the
organization needs to apply both planned and emergent strategy to increase its
competitiveness and thrive to success.
 EMERGENT CHANGE

References
Burnes, B 1996, ‘Organizational Choice and Organizational Change’, Management Decision,
Vol. 35, Issue 10, pp. 753-759, viewed on 20 September 2018,
<https://doi.org/10.1108/00251749710192075>.
Quain, S 2018, Advantage and Disadvantage of Emergent Strategy, AZCentral, viewed on
21 September 2018, <https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/advantage-disadvantage-
emergent-strategy-15781.html>.
Root III, DG 2018, Advantage and Disadvantage of Emergent Strategy, Chron, viewed on 20
September 2018, <https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantage-disadvantage-emergent-
strategy-10070.html>.
Spacey, J 2016, Change: Emergent vs Planned, Simplicable, viewed on 20 September
2018, <https://simplicable.com/new/emergent-change>.
Weick, K & Quinn, RE 1999, ‘Organisational change & development’, Annual Review of
Psychology, Vol. 50, pp. 361-386.