Balancing Radical and Incremental Changes in a Medium-Sized Danish Company: Practicable/Profitable?

The concept behind this Ph.D. research project was developed in the wake of the recently completed large-scale organizational restructuring at the case company, Martin Professional in Frederikshavn, Denmark. Designed to increase the company?s international competitiveness, this radical change process, involving the construction of a completely new factory and the revamping of a host of manufacturing activities, raised a number of issues. For one thing, it exemplified the importance of organizational structure in defining a company?s ability to implement organizational changes. Moreover, it underscored the dialectic between radical change, or continuous innovation, and incremental change, or continuous innovation. In relation to the Martin case, this dialectic begs the following question: what effect did focusing on such a radical change project have on the company?s incremental change projects? This query will be addressed by compiling experience from ongoing empirical activities and regular interventions in the organization. Based on this experience, the change processes conducted at Martin in recent years will be plotted on two axes: continuous vs. discontinuous (i.e., isolated, one-shot changes without follow-up) and incremental vs. radical. In short, the objective of this project is to describe and generate theory pertaining to how a medium-sized Danish firm exploits organizational characteristics and the effects of change projects to generate general organizational change competencies. Working as a member of the human resource team, the researcher will attempt to describe the correlation between continuous improvement and continuous innovation, to determine if a balance between incremental and radical change is possible or, indeed, desirable. CIP project group: Anders Petersen (Ph.D. researcher), Associate Professor Frank Gertsen (primary advisor) and Professor Harry Boer (associate advisor) External partners: Martin Professional ? Production unit at Martin Group that produces intelligent lighting solutions for the professional market. Project duration: November 2000 ? October 2003