Chapter 18: Organizational Change and Development

Individual-Level Resistance to Change

Individuals within an organization may be inclined to resist change because of uncertainty, elective perception, and force of habit. uncertainty and insecurity: people tend to resist change because they feel uncertain and insecure about its outcome. Employees' resistance to the uncertainty and insecurity surrounding change can cause organizational inertia. Absenteeism and turn over may increase as change takes place. Selective perception and retention: If employees' perceive few benefits then they may reject the change. Not surprisingly, it can be difficult for an organization to develop a common platform to promote change across an organization and get people to see the need for it. Habit: people have a built-in tendency to return to their original behaviors -- a tendency that hinders and prevents change.

Diagnosis of the Organization

The first step in action requires managers to recognize the existence of a problem that needs to be solves and acknowledged that some of change is needed. Diagnosing the organization can be a complex process, managers have to distinguish between symptoms and causes.

Lewin's Force-Field Theory of Change

The theory that organizational change occurs when forced for change strengthen, resistance to change lessens or both occurs simultaneously.

Determining the Desired Future State

After the identification of the present state, the next step is to identify where the organization need to be -- the desired future state. This step involves a difficult planning process as managers work out various alternative course of action that could move the organization to where they would like it to be.

Total Organization Interventions

An OD technique that brings together all of the managers of an organization to confirm the issue of where the organization is effectively meeting its goals.

Product Champion

An expert manager appointed to head a new product team and lead a new product from its beginning to commercialization.

Total Quality Management of Kaizen

An ongoing and constant effort by all of an organization's functions to find new ways to improve the quality of the organization's goods and services.

External Change Agent

An outside consultant who is an expert in managing change.

Business Process

Any activity that is vital to the quick delivery of goods and services to customer or that promoted high quality or low costs.

Bottom Up Change

Change implemented by employees at low levels in the organization and gradually rises until it is felt throughout the organization.

Top Down Change

Change implemented by managers at high level in the organization.

Evolutionary Change

Change that is gradual, incremental, and narrowly focused.

Revolutionary Change

Change that is rapid, dramatic, and broadly focused, and it involves a bold attempt to find new ways to increase effectiveness.

Force for Change

Competitive forces: unless an organization can match or surpass its competitors in at least one functional area that allows it to increase product quality, innovation, or responsiveness to customers, -- it will not survive. Economic, political, and global forces: compels organizations to alter how and where they produce goods and services. Demographic and social forces: and caused managers to learn the importance of equity and have motivated them to find better ways to supervise and motivate minority and female employees. Ethical forces: organizations must change in response to many forces but must do so in an ethical way.

Lewin's 3 step Change Process

Implementing change is a 3 step process, according to Lewin. 1) unfreezing the organization from its present state, 2) making the change, and then 3) refreezing the organization in the new desired state so that its members do not revert to their precious work attitudes and role behaviors.

Implementing Action

This is the third step of action research. First managers need to identify possible impediments to change that they will encounter as they go about making changes. These confuse impediments at the organization, group, and individual levels. The second step is deciding who will be responsible for actually making the changes and controlling the change process. The choices are to employ external change agents or internal change agents.

Internal Change Agent

A manager from within an organization who is knowledgeable about the situation to be changed.

Organization Development (OD)

A series of techniques and methods that managers can use in their action research program to increase the adaptability of their organization.

Action Research

A strategy for generating and acquiring knowledge that managers can use to define an organization's desired future state and to plan a change program that allows the organization to reach that state.

OD Techniques to Promote Change

sensitivity training: an intense type of counseling that consists of group members, aided by a facilitator, in which they learn how others perceive them and may learn how to deal more sensitively with others. Process consultation: a technique in which a facilitator works closely with a manager on the job to help the manger improve his or her interaction with other group members. Team Building: a technique in which a facilitator observes the interactions of group members and then helps them become aware of ways to improve their work interactions. Intergroup training: a technique that uses team building to improve the work interactions of different functions or divisions. Organizational Mirroring: A technique in which a facilitator helps two interdependent groups explore their perceptions and relations in order to improve their work interactions.

Organizational Change

the movement of an organization away from its present state and toward some desired future state to increase its effectiveness.

Quality Circles

Groups of employees who meet regularly to discuss the way work is performed in order to find new ways to increase performance.

OD Techniques to Deal with Resistance to Change

Education and Communication: Through education and communication, internal and external agents of change can inform members of the organization about the change and how it will affect them. Participation and Empowerment: Inviting employees the participate in the change process is becoming a popular method of reducing resistance to change. Participation compliments empowerment by increasing employees' involvement in in decision making and giving them greater autonomy to change their work procedures. Facilitation: during organization restructuring, especially when large lay offs are common, many organizations employ consultants to help employees deal with the stress and uncertainty of being laid off and having to find new jobs. Some companies pay consultants to help their CEOs manage the stress associated with being forced to down size employees. Bargaining and negotiation: bargaining can counter resistance to change. Negotiation helps individuals and groups understand how change will affect others so that the organization as a whole can develop a common perspective on why change is taking place and why it is important. Manipulation: when it is cleared that change will help some individuals and the expense of others, sr. managers need to intervene in the bargaining process and manipulate the situation to secure the agreement, or at least the acceptance, of various people or groups to the results of the change process. Coercion: The ultimate way to elevate resistance to change is to coerce the key players into accepting change and threaten dire consequences if they choose to resist.

Group Level Resistance to Change

Four characteristics that may result in the level of a group's resistance to change: Group norms: Change disrupts group norms and the expectations members have of one another. As a result, members of a group may resist change because a whole new set of norms may have to be developed to meet the needs of the new situation. Group Cohesiveness: A highly cohesive group may resist attempts by others to change what it does or even who its members are. Group members may unite to protect their interests at the expense of other groups. Group think: a pattern of faulty decision making that occurs in cohesive groups when members discount negative information in order to make it easier to agree with or conform to each other's views. Escalation of Commitment: worsens groupthink, This occurs when members realize that their course of action is wrong but continue to pursue it, regardless of the consequences. Groupthink and escalation can make changing a group's behavior very difficult.

Sociotechnical Systems Theory

Ideas about how organizations should choose specific kinds of control systems that math the technical nature of the work process.

Impediments to Change

Many forces inside an organization make it difficult for an organization to change in response to a changing environment. Power and Conflict: when change causes power struggles and organizational conflict, this slowly down decision making. Differences in Functional Orientation: is a source of organizational inertia. Different functions and decisions often see the source of a problem differently because they have their own different perspectives. The "tunnel vision"of each function or division increases organizational intro because much tim and effort needs to be spent to secure agreement about the source of a problem and how to solve it. Mechanistic Structure: are more resistant to change because the employees who work inside them are supposed to behave in predictable ways and do not develop the initiative to adjust their behavior to changing conditions. Organizational Culture: If organizational change disrupts the values within the organizational culture then it forces people to question what they are doing and ho they should do it, then resistance is likely to follow.

Revolutionary Change involves...

Re-engineering: the fundamental re-thinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performances such as cost, quality, service and speed. Change resulting from re-engineering requires manager to back to the basics and dissect each step in the work process. Restructuring: Organizations experiencing a rapid deterioration in performance may try to turn things around by restructuring. Restructuring usually means that an organization attempts to simplify its organization structure by eliminating divisions, departments, or levels in the hierarchy an by downsizing employees to lower operating costs It also contracts with other companies to perform its manufacturing, customer service, and other functional activities. Innovation: the process of using a company's skills and resources to create new technologies or products so an organization can change and better respond to the needs of customers.