DAVID COGHLAN and NICHOLAS S. RASHFORD

Training and developing managers in skills that enable them to deal effectively with the multiple issues within an organization is a perennial task for O.B. teachers and trainers. In the systems approach, complex systems are divided into hierarchical levels of complexity (Miller 1978). In organizations these levels are typically described as individual, group, inter-group and organizational (Staw 1984, Rousseau 1985). Levels of organizational behavior are common in organizational behavior and organization development texts. In these texts they seem to be rather static notions, providing convenient headings under which particular elements of organizational behavior can be located. One approach, developed by Rashford and Coghlan (1987), attempts to articulate and link together the different levels of behavior in organizations. They describe levels in a more dynamic framework of how people participate in organizations by defining them in terms of tasks and interventions and attempting to link them to provide a useful action skills tool for managers. This framework is integrative in that it attempts to describe in a single paradigm the psychological processes of individual, group and inter-group behavior with issues of technological and strategic management (James & Jones 1974, Ivancevich, Szilagyi and Wallace 1977, Harrison 1987). This chapter outlines that framework in terms of managerial action skills, and draws on experience in using it in management development workshops and an executive MBA program (Rashford & Coghlan 1988, 1989).

The framework put forward by Rashford and Coghlan (1987) describes four levels of participation in organizations (individual, face-to-face team, divisional/group, strategy/policy). These levels can be viewed as degrees or types of involvement, or as degrees of complexity, depending on whether one approaches the question from the point of the view of the individual moving towards the organization to participate or the part of the organization viewing the commitment of individuals. From the point of view of the individual, the least complex approach is the relationship that the individual has with the organization. The more complex approach to participation exists in working out and solving the difficulties of a face-to-face working team. An even more complex involvement exists in terms of the group or divisional type of interface where teams must work together to achieve complex tasks. Finally, the most complex, from the point of view of the individual, is the relationship of the total organization to its external environment in which other organizations are individual competitors, competing for scarce resources to produce similar products or services. On the part of the organization, the question is one of involvement. The most basic involvement is to get a person committed to the goals, values and culture of the organization. The second level of involvement is to establish good, working face-to-face relationships in functional teams. The third level of involvement is the group or divisional level in which complex MIS and data systems must by used to extend the knowledge and coordinate the functions of complex working divisions or strategic business units. Finally, the most complex of all is the unified effort of all participants in an organization towards the end of making the organization profitable, growth-oriented, and functional in its external environment. This set of complex behaviors, then, is separated into a cognitive map - a mental construct of different types of participation and involvement - by the use of the concept of levels of participation.

There are many interventions that could be utilized on each level to enable it to function effectively. The selection of a "key" intervention, as the one to best enable a particular level to achieve its task, emerges from the particular tasks and definition of each level. It is evident that the interventions are drawn particularly from the O.D. literature, whose theory and practice provide an action-research approach to facilitation change. It is essential for the contemporary manager to develop effective process skills (Schein 1988). Rashford and Coghlan's (1987) framework of organizational levels, constructed specifically around central process issues for the individual, the team, the group/division, and the strategy/policy levels, demonstrates how core skills must incorporate all four levels. Other frameworks that give particular attention to, for example, individual or team skills are not inconsistent with this framework. In this chapter, Rashford and Coghlan's framework is offered to further reflection and development of action skills models.

Level 1 describes the individual level. When it is in place and operating effectively a person will allow the organization and its goals be a source of personal goal motivation. The individual will still retain his/her own individuality while "belonging" to the organization. The key intervention on this level is the career interview in which the dynamics of the life-cycle, the work-cycle and the family-cycle are located and place in juxtaposition so that the individual can locate his/her career in the context of his life.

Level II describes the team level. When it is functioning effectively there is an additional commitment to the organization to work together in a face-to-face team. The effective team acts as a unit working towards a common goal. Effectiveness in this concept means that a team is capable of finding and correcting its own dysfunctions. A successful team is only perceived as successful after it has successfully corrected its own dysfunction. The individual's task is to contribute to the team's functioning while the team's task is to be a functioning unit. The organization's task is that the team be significant in its output. The key intervention on this Level II is that of team-building.

The Group or Divisional level is Level III. This level is made up of several fact-to-face working teams that must function together to accomplish a divisional purpose, such as manufacturing, sales, or marketing, or it is a collection of individual work teams that provide a strategic business unit function for an organization. When the third level is in place the group or division is capable to obtaining information and converting it into decision processes, enabling the implementation of complex programs or operations. The task of this level is to map the flow of information and partially completed work from one unit to another. The organization's task is that these units form an effective aggregate. The key intervention on this level is internal mapping, where dysfunctions in information or work flow are identified and corrected.

The fourth level is the Organizational Policy or Strategy level. It is the final fusion of these divisional groups together to form a working, whole organization. It must be capable of reflecting on its own strengths and weaknesses, as well as being engaged in proactive relationship in determining the opportunities and threats from the external environment. It matches these two n a selection process that determines programs, services, products aimed at accomplishing the goals of the organization and servicing the external environment with it products and services. The key intervention is open systems planning, performed in terms of the organization's core mission, with its internal and external constituencies that make demands on the organization.

It is suggested that there is a close link between each level. For instance, an action taken on Level IV can affect a team's functioning and lead to an individual's questioning his/her sense of belonging to the organization. So a triggering event on Level IV must be dealt with on Levels I and II. Effectiveness on Level II depends on Level I being in place, Level III depends on Levels I and II, and Level IV on all three. The authors' hypothesis is that such a delineation of levels in terms of definition, tasks and key intervention provides a valuable diagnostic construct and repertoire of skills for the manager. The more static uses of the notion of levels does not attempt to build links between levels in this dynamic way.

The framework helps unravel the complexity of the task of understanding how people function in organizations, and provides a key to effective intervention on each level. This chapter focuses on the four key interventions - the career interview, team-building, internal mapping and open systems planning - as core managerial skills needed to enable each level to function effectively. The learned ability to use these interventions appropriately and effectively constitutes a useful managerial skill. The conceptual background on which each intervention is based is provided.

The individual adult's life-cycle, work-cycle and family-cycle provides the context of the individual's relationship with the organization and the issues of human resource management (Schein 1978). The managers study the life cycle concepts and make the transition to their own behavior as a laboratory for learning about the behavior of others. The first aspect of getting them involved is to have them reflect on their own life-cycles and chart a history that traces their reactions to past behavior and feelings. They are invited to reflect on their own progress through the life, work and family cycles in order to assess their own development and identify the key feelings associated with each stage in their experience. The critical insight comes with their basic assertion of the validity of the life cycle information and difference in individual approaches to the stages. A second insight comes from seeing that an individual's experience is only one part of a bigger picture and so the need to understand others' experience to complete the picture.

The second focus is to apply the individual aspect of the adult life-cycle to the work-place, using the concept of the career anchor, as described by Schein (1978, 1985a). After an explanation of career anchors, managers are introduced to the practice of the career interview. In the career interview the individual's history is explored through the narration of career and vocational choices juxtaposed with issues of personal values and the interaction of the life and family cycles (Schein 1985a). The significant point of instruction in the career interview is allowing the interviewee ownership his/her own career story as the interview attempts to be sensitive to the other's dreams and to draw a pattern from the interview (Schein 1985b).

Learning is enhanced in two ways. First, the individual's self-reflection opens the door to bringing emotions and life issues into the world of work, and ties the effects of these issues back to job performance. The second point of learning is accomplished by the comparison of the individual's own career interviews with those of other participants. This provides the beginnings of a mosaic detailing the larger patterns of life cycles, anchors, career setbacks, dual-careers and other individual workplace issues. The proactive learning process comes from intervention in the growth and development of peers and subordinates.

There are three elements to this section. Firstly, the key skill is to understand the significant difference between process and content in order to understand and experience team facilitation and repair. Inputs on group process and team-building are made in this context, using Schein (1988) and Beckhard (1972). Beckhard's team-building dynamics comprise four activities: setting goals and priorities, allocating work, examining the team process and developing the interpersonal relationships. There are different perspectives on these activities - the leader's, the members', outcomes and a third-party consultant's. Secondly, the face-to-face team skills a leader needs in the contemporary workplace are introduced. These skills include: self-insight, cross-cultural sensitivity, cultural/moral humility, proactive problem-solving orientation, personal flexibility, negotiation skills, interpersonal and cultural tact, repair strategies and skills, and patience (Schein 1981). The final element focuses on the concept of process consultation (Schein 1987). There are three parts to this element. Firstly, the distinction between process and content is make. Secondly, the key elements of process are highlighted and examined. Thirdly, the process of entering into a process consulting relationship and intervening is explored. The process consultation approach is much more than a technique of working with groups. It is a philosophy of working with human systems.

Particular skills sessions are devoted to cases and experiential processes to illustrate team dynamics and to strengthen the process consultation skills of the managers. Structured experiences such as Tinkertoys or Construct O Straw can provide much of the Level II dynamics. The exercise is structured to provide the possibility for the experience of the development of teams and the observation of process. The processes are recorded on video. Debriefing focuses on both the team dynamics learnings and learnings on the consultation processes.

The overall goals on this Level III is to understand and experience internal mapping processes (Beckhard 1975). Descriptions of information systems, definitions of PERT, issues of work flow and the sharing of resources, systems fit and inter-team power relations (Harrison 1987) provide the conceptual framework on which Level III behavior is based. Level III intervention is, by its nature, a process that takes at least a year or two. It's fraught with complex mapping processes, dealing with the utilization of scarce resources, the tracking of complex engineering, and the design and application of product processes.

The key task in internal mapping is to plot the flow of operations and map the functions so as to develop a sense of where overlaps and dysfunctions occur. A second task is devoted to the practice of getting the larger picture from each map and setting goals for change processes and review. Individuals studied a case in which the engineering and design of prefabricated building projects provided examples for discussion. The work is best done in and between the actual work teams. One of the most successful interventions took place around the engineering group at AT&T Long Lines. The group mapped out the flow of work installing the new optic fiber transmission line step by step. The process was over two years and had about 6700 steps in seven stages. The mapping process pointed out how the process broke down between stages of the different engineering functions.

A second section is devoted to topic of organizational learning (Argyris & Schon 1978). Managers are introduced to the concepts of single and double-loop learning, organizational double-loop learning, and intervention strategies. Case material is used in the application of these concepts. The focus here is to acquaint managers with the blocks to organizational learning that can be a feature of the Level III process.

The goal is to understand Level IV by experiencing the organization's endeavor to exist and participate in a competitive environment. The first section is given to open systems planning (Beckhard & Harris 1977) and its application, and the second to the definition and review of the concept of stakeholders (Freeman 1984).

The six steps of open systems planning are:

Step 1: Defining the organization's core mission

Step 2: Mapping the current demand system

Step 3: Mapping the current response system

Step 4: Projecting the future demand system

Step 5: Conceiving the desired future state

Step 6: Activity planning

The work is done in organizational or functional teams. Each step is gone through individually so that an overall picture of the organization in its present and future environment is painted. From this activity the notion of stakeholders is extrapolated. The team discusses the notion, clarifies the distinction between stakeholders and shareholders, and generates its list of stakeholders, evaluating what stakeholders are more significant than others. In one instance a top level cabinet team mapped its stakeholder groups and gained considerable insight into a significant relationship with an outside body from which an important strategy was designed.

The aim of the chapter has been to share how organizational levels have been used in developing managerial skills with a view to developing the understanding and further clarification of the framework itself and contributing to education, training and development models.The pedagogy of an approach to management skills used in training and development programs and an executive MBA program (Rashford & Coghlan 1988, 1989) has been described. The approach is built on a particular framework of organizational levels (Rashford & Coghlan 1987). The framework attempts to link together how people participate in organizations and how there is a relationship between the individual's belonging, the team's functioning, the organizations functioning as an aggregate of inter-team networks and how it relates and competes in an external environment. Each level focuses on a key actor - the individual, the face-to-face working team, the group-division and the organization - and provides a framework for developing management skills. The framework focuses on the actual agendas of organizational life the individual's struggle to fulfill life tasks, the team's effectiveness, the coordination of scarce resources and the organizations survival.

The authors have found that participants in the workshops and classes have admitted to recognizing their own experience in the construct. The key intervention processes are an extension of the process consultation approach with its action-skills thrust towards diagnosis and intervention as simultaneous processes. As a framework it has proved to be a valuable and useful educational, training and development model. The value of the training tool is in the application to actual management experiences in developing human resources as individuals and in teams, and in managing the complex interaction of an organization with it internal and external environment. The framework attempts to contribute to the development of an approach to management skills development that integrates both process and content.