Chapter 17
Organizational Change
Jim Harrell and Elson Mills
Organizational Change
Organizational Change is going to happen whether we like it or not.
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Lewin’s force field Analysis Model
Unfreezing
•The first part of the
change process whereby
the change agent
produces disequilibrium
between the driving and
restraining forces.
Refreezing
•The latter part of the
change process in which
systems and conditions
are introduced that
reinforce and maintain the
desired behaviors
Resistance to Change
• According to various
surveys, more than 40
percent of executives
identify employee
resistance as the most
important barrier to
corporate restructuring or
improved performance.
Reasons for Resistance to Change
•
Direct Costs
– People tend to block actions that result in higher direct costs or lower benefits
that the situation they’re currently in.
•
Saving Face
– Change is resisted as a political strategy to “prove” that the decision in wrong or
that the person encouraging change is incompetent.
•
Fear of the Unknown
– People resist change out of worry that they cannot adjust to the new work
requirements.
•
Breaking routines
– People are creatures of habit. They like to stay within comfort zones.
•
Incongruent organizational system
– Rewards, selection, training, and other control systems ensure that employees
maintain desired role patterns
•
Incongruent team dynamics
– Team develop and enforce conformity to a set of norms that guide behavior.
Urgency for Change
•
The change process must begin by ensuring that employees feel an
urgency to change; this occurs by informing them about competitors,
changing consumer trends, impeding government regulations, and other
driving forces.
Customer-Driven Change
- Putting employees in direct contact with customers.
Urging Change without External Forces
- Creating a platform for change even when there is no need for one.
- Example- Apple Ipod
Strategies to Minimize Resistance to Change
Strategies to Minimize Resistance Cont.
•
Communication
- Honest and frequent communication is the highest priority and first strategy required
for any organizational change. Communication improves the change process in at
least two ways:
1. Leaders develop an urgency to change.
2. Can potentially reduce the fear of the unknown.
•
Learning
- Learning is an important process in change because employees need new
knowledge and skills to fit the organizations evolving requirements. Types of learning
include:
1. Action learning
2. Coaching
•
Stress Management
- Stress management minimizes resistance by removing some of the direct costs
and fear of the unknown in the change process.
Strategies to Minimize Resistance Cont.
•
Employee Involvement
- Essential part of the change process. Allows employees to feel personally
responsible for the success of the change effort.
*Future search- System-wide group sessions in which participants identify
trends and identify ways to adapt to those changes.
•
Negotiation
- A form of influence that involves the promise of benefits or resources in exchange
for the target person’s compliance with the influencer’s request.
•
Coercion
- Includes persistently reminding employees of their obligations, frequently
monitoring behavior to ensure compliance, confronting those that do not change, and
using threats of sanctions to force compliance.
- Can sometimes include replacing employees that will not support the change.
Strategic Visions, Change Agents, and Diffusing Change
•
Change Agents
- Anyone who possesses enough knowledge and power to guide and facilitate the
change effort.
- These agents become transformational leaders that shape the overall direction for
the change effort and motivate employees to achieve that objective.
•
Diffusion of Change
- Change agents often test the transformation process with a pilot project.
*Pilot Project- More flexible and less risky.
- Employees are more likely to adopt the practices of a pilot project when they see
that it is successful.
- Employees must have the required skills and knowledge to adopt the practices
introduced by the pilot project.
- The pilot project gets diffused when employees have clear role perceptions.
Three Approaches to Organizational Change
•
Action Research Approach
•
Appreciative Inquiry Approach
•
Parallel Learning Structure Approach
Action Research Approach
• A data-based, problem-oriented process that diagnoses
the need for change, introduces the intervention, and
then evaluates and stabilizes the desired changes.
• It adopts an open systems view:
– Recognizes that organizations have many interdependent parts,
so change agents need to anticipate both the intended and
unintended consequences of their interventions.
The Action Research Process
1.
2.
3.
Form client-consultant relationship- Consultants need to determine the client’s
readiness for change
Diagnose the need for change- Identifies the appropriate direction for the change
effort by gathering and analyzing data about an ongoing system.
Introduce Intervention- Includes building a better organizational structure, building
more effective teams, managing conflict, or changing corporate structure.
•
•
4.
Incremental Change- the organization fine-tunes the system and takes small steps
toward a desired state.
Quantum Change- the system is overhauled decisively and quickly.
Evaluate and stabilize change- If the activity has the desired effect, the change
agent and participants need to stabilize the new conditions. Rewards, information
systems, team norms, and other conditions are redesigned to support the new
values and behaviors
Appreciative Inquiry Approach
• An organizational change process that directs attention away from
the group’s own problems and focuses participant’s on the group’s
potential and positive elements.
• Positive Organizational Behavior- focuses on building positive
qualities and traits within individuals or institutions as opposed to
focusing just on trying to fix what might be wrong with them.
The “Four-D” Model of Appreciative Inquiry
1. Discovery- identifying the positive elements of the observed events
or organization.
2. Dreaming- Envisioning what might be possible in an ideal
organization.
3. Designing- Involves dialogue in which participants listen to selfless
receptivity to each other’s models and assumptions and form a
collective model.
4. Delivering- Participants establish specific objectives and direction for
their own organization based on their model.
Parallel Learning Structure Approach
• Highly participative groups constructed parallel
to the formal organization with the purpose of
increasing the organization’s learning and
producing meaningful organizational change.
Cross-Cultural and Ethical Issues
• Some organizational change practices face ethical
issues:
– Threats to the privacy rights of individuals.
– Potential increase of management power by inducing
compliance and conformity in organization members.
– Undermine the individual’s self-esteem.
– Change in management consultant’s role in the change.
Personal Change for the Road Ahead
• Understand Your Needs and Values
• Understand Your Competencies
• Set Career Goals
• Maintain Networks
• Get a Mentor
Questions
•
Force field analysis is: (B)
– (A) A course that jedi’s need to take in school
– (B) Lewin’s model of systemwide change
– (C) Model of freezing and unfreezing
– (D) Comes right before forces of change model
•
Name three possible reasons for resistance to organizational change.
– (direct costs, saving face, fear of the unknown, breaking routines,
incongruent systems, incongruent team dynamics)
•
(T/F) A “change agent” is anyone who possesses enough knowledge and
power to guide and facilitate the organizational change effort. TRUE
Questions
• Name two of the four parts in the “Four-D” model of appreciative
inquiry
– (Discovery, Dreaming, Designing, Delivering)
• (T/F) Unfreezing is the first part of the change process where the
change agent breaks the equilibrium between the driving and
restraining forces. True