Org. Behavior Ch 15

Parallel Learning Structure

...rely on social structures developed alongside the formal hierarchy with the purpose of increasing the organization's learning. They are highly participative arrangements, composed of people from most levels of the organization who follow the action research model to produce meaningful organizational change

Formal approaches to organizational change:

1- Action Research 2- Appreciative inquiry 3- Large-group interventions 4- Parallel learning structures

Appreciative Inquiry

Embraces the positive organizational behavioral philosophy by focusing participants on the positive and possible. Along with this positive principle, this approach to change applies the constructionist, simultaneity, poetic, and anticipatory principles. The four stages of appreciative inquiry include discovery, dreaming, designing, and delivering.

Force Field Analysis

Kurt Lewin's model of systemwide change that helps change agents diagnose the forces that drive and restrain proposed organizational change

Future Search Conference

Large group interventions typically held over a few days in which participants identify emerging trends and develop strategies for the organization to realize potential under those future conditions.

Cross-Cultural Concerns

Linear and open conflict assumptions differ across cultures

Unfreezing

Unfreezing produces disequilibrium between the driving and restraining forces.

Parallel Learning Structure Approach

- Highly participative social structures - Members representative across the formal hierarchy - Sufficiently free from firm's constraints - Develop change solutions applied back into the larger organization

Six strategies for minimizing resistance to change

1- Create an urgency to change (Leaders often need to create an urgency to change before the external pressures are felt, and this can occur through provision of a more appealing vision of the future). 2- Communicate/Inform (Future resistance to change may be minimized by keeping employees informed about what to expect from the change effort). 3- Teaching (Teaching employees valuable skills for the desired future (learning). 4- Involving (involving employees in the change process). 5- Helping (Helping employees cope with the stress of change). 6- Negotiating trade-offs and Coercion (negotiating trade-offs with those who will clearly lose from the change effort, and using coercion (sparingly and as a last resort).

Why is resistance to change a resource?

1- It is it a signal that the conditions for effective change are not yet in place. 2- It is a form of constructive conflict. 3- It is a form of voice, so it may improve procedural justice.

Action Research Principles

1. Opens system perspective 2. Highly participative process 3. Data driven, problem oriented process

Appreciative Inquiry Approach Principles

1. Positive (focus on positive, not problems). 2. Constructionist (Conversations shape reality). 3. Simultaneity (Inquiry and change are simultaneous). 4. Poetic (We can choose how to perceive situations i.e. glass half-full). 5. Anticipatory (people are motivated by desirable visions).

Cross-cultural and ethical issues in organizational change:

A concern is that organizational change theories developed with a Western cultural orientation potentially conflict with cultural values in some other countries.

Method used by many organization to implement change:

A pilot project. The success of the pilot project is then diffused to other parts of the organization. This occurs by applying the MARS model, including motivating employees to adopt the pilot project's methods, training people to know how to adopt these practices, helping clarify how the pilot can be applied to different areas, and providing time and resources to support this diffusion

How should resistance to change be viewed?

As a resource, not an inherent obstacle to change.

Large-group interventions (future-search conferences)

Highly participative events that typically try to get the entire system into the room (Involve the "whole system"; Future-oriented, usually to create a shared vision).

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Research

testing application of concepts

Action

to achieve the goal of change

Why organizational change is resisted:

-Direct costs -Saving face -Fear of the unknown -Breaking routines -Incongruent team dynamics -Incongruent organizational systems

According to Lewin's Force Field Analysis Model, how does change occur?

Change occurs through the process of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing.

Appreciative Inquiry Approach

Frames change around positive and possible future, not problems.

Ethical concern issues

-Including increasing management's power over employees -Threatening individual privacy rights -Undermining self-esteem

Large-group interventions Limitations

-Limited opportunity to contribute -Risk that a few people will dominate -Focus on common ground my hide differences -Generates high expectations about ideal future

Ethical Concerns

-Privacy rights of individuals -Management power -Individuals' self-esteem

Action Research

A highly participative, open-systems approach to change management that combines an action orientation (changing attitudes and behavior) with research orientation (test theory). It is a data-based, problem-oriented process that diagnoses the need for change, introduces the intervention, and then evaluates and stabilizes the desired changes.

Refreezing

Refreezing realigns the organization's systems and structures with the desired behaviors.

Lewin's force field analysis model

States that all systems have driving and restraining forces. Change occurs through the process of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. Unfreezing produces disequilibrium between the driving and restraining forces; refreezing realigns the organization's systems and structures with the desired behaviors.