Deregulation in the New Zealand Electricity Industry: Cases of Anticipatory and Reactive Change

The past decade has borne witness to a series of legislated changes corporatising and redefining the operating environment of New Zealand’s electricity industry. Driven by a desire to enhance New Zealand’s attractiveness to industry on a global scale, these discontinuous and controversial changes have created a newly competitive environment that has forced electricity companies to rethink entrenched structural and strategic norms. Yet despite similarities in strategy, structure and of course product, individual electricity companies have developed in an idiosyncratic manner that has resulted in visibly distinct change processes. In this study the variables determining different organisational strategic change approaches (anticipatory, reactive) in a time of discontinuous change are examined. In an exploratory study utilising the theories of Nadler and Tushman (1990) and qualitative method of withinand cross case analysis, the cases of two New Zealand electricity distribution companies are discussed. Illustrative of reactive and anticipatory strategic change, the findings enhance previous research and the implications to change management are discussed.