Organizational Change
Chapter 7
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Organizational Change
 Educational organizations are expected to be
vehicles for social change, as well as
preserving and transmitting values.
 Thus schools must integrate stability and
change.
 In 1990, Seymour B. Sarason wrote The
Predictable Failure of Educational Reform:
Can We Change Before It’s Too late?
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To change schools, we must change the power
relationships in schools.
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Aims of Educational Reform
 Sarason listed five aims that would constitute major
change in the inner core of assumptions that are
difficult to bring about:
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To reduce the achievement gap among social classes and
racial groups.
To get students to enjoy school.
To enable students to acquire knowledge and skills in ways
that relate learning and give purpose to each student.
To engender interest in human accomplishments, past and
present, and to enlarge their own identities: personal, social,
and as citizens.
To acquaint students with the domain of career options and
how schooling relates to the fast-changing world of work.
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The Tradition of Change in American
Education
 Paul Mort indicated, in late1950s, that change in
education proceeded very slowly.
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He noted that schools were generally 25 years behind the
best practices of the time.
Example: Kindergartens.
 Mort’s work led to viewing higher per pupil
expenditures as reliable indicators of change and
superior school output.
 Other researchers noted, however, that there is most
likely a curvilinear relationship where after an
optimum funding point increases in school output
slow.
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Three Strategies of Planned Change
 Robert Chin’s taxonomy of change
strategies is used in this book.
 I.
Empirical-rational strategies.
 II. Power-coercive strategies.
 III. Normative-reeducative strategies.
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I. Empirical-Rational
Strategies for Change
 This approach to change is based on planned,
managed dissemination intended to spread new
ideas and practices swiftly.
 This is often supported through state and
federal grants or through companies that are
willing to fund the production of knowledge
for profit potential.
 This is known broadly as KPU (Knowledge,
Production, and Utilization).
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Research, Development, and Diffusion
(R, D, and D)
 Development Phase: Research and development, or R
& D, includes translating research into products that
are practical.
 Diffusion Phase: RD& D includes marketing the new
products and making them attractive at a reasonable
cost.
 Adoption Phase: RDDA, which usually includes Dick
Clark and Egon Guba’s three-stage process: a trial,
installation of the program, the institutionalization of
the program as part of the system.
 See Figure 7.1 for a depiction of RDDA.
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The Agricultural Model
 Using the US Department of Agriculture as a model to
more quickly disseminate KPU educational
innovations, the following occurred from late 1950s to
1980.
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National Defense Education Act (1958) supported innovative
curriculum packages.
Title IV of ESEA (1965) created 20 regional educational
laboratories and 10 Educational Research and Development
Centers.
ERIC was created to help disseminate information.
National Institute of Education was created (1972).
The Department of Education was made a cabinet-level
department (1979).
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Assumptions and Implications of KPU
Approaches to Change
 New products will be perceived by potential adopters
as desirable.
 Adopters will do what is desirable because it is in their
own interest.
 KPU and RDDA focus on innovations, yet the term
has been debased through misuse in which
innovations have been tried then abandoned.
 The strategy for change in schools using KPU and
RDDA assumes that good ideas are developed outside
the school and later installed in the school.
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II. Power-Coercive
Strategies for Change
 One Power-Coercive strategy uses the behavioral
psychology concept of the carrot and stick approach:
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Both rewards (financial) and sanctions (political, financial,
moral) are used to obtain compliance from adopters.
Most recent example is NCLB.
 Robert Chin and Kenneth Benne described the
restructuring of power elites to bring about change.
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Example: minority group efforts to gain representation in
decision making.
Example: coalitions of disabled who lobbied for series of
laws and judicial decisions in their favor.
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III. Normative-Reeducative or
Organizational Self-Renewal Strategies
 Empirical-rational and Power-coercive strategies share two
assumptions: (a) good ideas are developed outside the
organization; (b) the organization is the target of external
forces for change. Normative-reeducative differs.
 In 1975, the NIE indicated that billions of dollars have been
spent on education with little difference in improved school
outputs.
 In response, the Rand Corporation studied 293 federally
sponsored programs:
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Found that the successes of empirical-rational and power-coercive
strategies for change are related to school and school district
effectiveness and their capacities for change.
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Rand Study found that successful
schools:
 Rejected rigidly packaged innovations that did
not permit local adaptations.
 Developed their own local materials.
 Engaged in continuous planning and
replanning, rather than one-shot planning.
 Had ongoing training and technical assistance,
not one-shot training.
 Had strong support from key administrators in
the school and district.
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Normative-Reeducative Strategies
(continued)
 Defined as a strategy that believes the norms of the
organization's interaction-influence system (attitudes,
beliefs, and values--in other words, culture) can be
deliberately shifted to more productive norms by
collaborative action of the people.
 As Chris Argyris noted, a healthy organization
performs three core activities over time:
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Achieves its goals.
Maintains itself internally.
Adapts to its environment.
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Organizational Health
 Indicators of organizational health from Matthew
Miles:
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Goal focus.
Communication adequacy.
Optimal power equalization.
Human resources utilization.
Cohesiveness.
Morale.
Innovativeness.
Autonomy.
Adaptation.
Problem-solving adequacy.
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Organizational Self-Renewal
 Organizational Self-Renewal postulates that
effective change cannot be imposed on a
school. It seeks to develop internal capacity to:
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Sense and identify emerging problems.
Establish goals, objectives, and priorities.
Generate valid alternative solutions.
Implement the selected alternatives.
 The optimal unit for change is the single
school with its pupils, teachers, and principal
as primary participants.
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The Learning Organization
 A Learning Organization adapts to unfolding
changes in the environment. This process is
often called organizational development (OD).
 OD is an approach to increasing the self-
renewal capability of school districts and
schools.
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OD Involves at Least 10 Concepts
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The goal of OD.
System renewal.
A systems approach.
A focus on people.
An educational strategy.
Learning through experience.
Dealing with real problems.
A planned strategy.
Change agent.
Involvement of top-level administration.
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The Sociotechnical View
 What OD strives to do is to seek a new and
more functional basis for:
Task analysis.
 Structural arrangements.
 Selection and use of technology.
 Selection and professional development of people
and groups.
(See Chapter 4, specifically Figures 4.15 & 4.16).
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Force-Field Analysis
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This is a technique to analyze the sociotechnical
aspects of the organization.
Kurt Lewin indicated that an organization can
analyze its ability to change by the following:
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The Key to change is to analyze the forces for and
the forces against change.
If they are in balance, then we have equilibrium—no
change (Figure 7.2).
When one or the other is removed or weakened, then
equilibrium is upset and change occurs (figure 7.3).
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Force-Field Analysis (continued)
Force-field analysis led Kurt Lewin to develop a
popular three-step change process. In order to
effect change something must happen to first
unfreeze the organization, then the organization
can move toward change, and finally re-freezing
the system brings it back to equilibrium.
Unfreeze
Moving
toward
change
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Re-freeze
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Force-Field Analysis (continued)
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It is not productive for an administrator to use coercion in
trying to make the driving forces dominant. This only
produces a strong reaction against change.
In school situations it is likely to be more effective to help
bring the restraining forces into the open as legitimate in
the process of change.
Leaders should create a culture in which feelings can be
expressed instead of secretly harbored. By promoting
opening communication and valuing the right to question
and challenge, the level of resistance to change will
decrease.
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Force-Field Analysis (continued)
 The best change occurs when people not only
learn about the innovation, but also when they
learn by doing.
 In this way, people are truly reeducated.
 There are no quick and easy solutions to change.
 And remember Hersey and Blanchard’s
admonition, “Changes in knowledge are the
easiest to make, followed by changes in attitudes.”
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Research on the Effective of OD
 Philip Runkel and Richard Schmuck findings on OD
include:
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Success is more likely when the school faculty senses a
readiness to change and welcomes the OD project.
Entering OD is the most critical phase and requires a skilled
and experienced OD consultant.
Open, active support from administrators is critical.
OD is more likely to be successful when the staff is in
agreement on goals.
An OD project has four main phases: entry, diagnosis of
problems, institutionalization, and maintenance.
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Research on the Effective of OD
 John Goodlad suggested that the school culture should
be the focus of changing teacher behavior to effect
improvement in student outcomes.
 Goodlad’s DDAE schools used his OD model:
dialogue, decision making, action, and evaluation.
 Goodlad’s DDAE schools are characteristic of selfrenewing schools. They are growing and developing
organizations. They are continuously engaged in
systematic problem solving, and they are able to select
appropriate technology from all that is available.
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