MGT CH 16
Processes for Planned Organization Change
Ideally, however, the organization will not only respond to change but will also anticipate it, prepare for it through planning, and incorporate it in the organization strategy.
structural change
A system-wide organization development involving a major restructuring of the organization or instituting programs such as quality of work life affects performance appraisal and rewards, decision making, and communication and information-processing systems. Reengineering and rethinking the organization are two contemporary approaches to system-wide structural change. No system-wide structural change is simple. A company president cannot just issue a memo notifying company personnel that on a certain date they will report to a different supervisor and be responsible for new tasks and expect everything to change overnight. Employees have months, years, and sometimes decades of experience in dealing with people and tasks in certain ways. When these patterns are disrupted, employees need time to learn the new tasks and to settle into the new relationships. Moreover, they may resist the change for a number of reasons; we discuss resistance to change later in this chapter. Therefore, organizations must manage the change process. Another system-wide change is the introduction of quality-of-work-life programs, defined as the degree to which members of a work organization are able to satisfy important personal needs through their experiences in the organization Total quality management, which was discussed in several earlier chapters, can also be viewed as a system-wide organization development program. In fact, some might consider total quality management as a broad program that includes both structural change and quality of work life. It differs from quality of work life in that it emphasizes satisfying customer needs by making quality-oriented changes rather than focusing on satisfying employee needs at work. Often, however, the employee programs are very similar to it.
Resistance to Change
Change is inevitable; so is resistance to change. Paradoxically, organizations both promote and resist change. As an agent for change, the organization asks prospective customers or clients to change their current purchasing habits by switching to the company's products or services, asks current customers to change by increasing their purchases, and asks suppliers to reduce the costs of raw materials. The organization resists change in that its structure and control systems protect the daily tasks of producing a product or service from uncertainties in the environment. The organization must have some elements of permanence to avoid mirroring the instability of the environment, yet it must also react to external shifts with internal change to maintain currency and relevance in the marketplace. Resistance may come from the organization, the individual, or both. Determining the ultimate source is difficult, however, because organizations are composed of individuals
Information Processing and Communication
Examples: Computer, satellite communications Global sourcing Videoconferencing Social networking Type of Pressure for Change: Faster reaction times, immediate responses to questions, new products, different office arrangements, telecommuting, marketing, advertising, recruiting on social networking sites Advances in information processing and communication have paralleled each other. A new generation of computers, which will mark another major increase in processing power, is being designed. Satellite systems for data transmission are already in use. Today many people carry a single device in their pocket that serves as their portable computer, e-reader, pocket-size television, camera, video recorder, music player, and personal communication device (telephone). And they work all over the world. Social networking may be the most radical and fastest growing aspect of the advances in information processing and communication so far. Through such platforms as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning, Yammer, Bebo, Viadeo, Skype, FaceTime, and many others, people are networking with others exploring common interests. People are spending hours reading about others and updating their own sites. Business uses of this phenomenon include advertising, marketing, market research and test marketing, recruiting, and more. And everyone looking for a job starts with Monster.com, Jobing.com, and similar sites. Flexible work stations, both inside and outside of offices, are more electronic than paper and pencil. For years, the capability has existed to generate, manipulate, store, and transmit more data than managers could use, but the benefits were not fully realized. Now the time has come to utilize all of that information-processing potential, and companies are making the most of it
People
Examples: Generation X, Y, Millennials Global labor supplies Senior citizens Workforce diversity Type of Pressure for Change: Demands for different training, benefits, workplace arrangements, and compensation systems The special characteristics of baby boomers show up in distinct purchasing patterns that affect product and service innovation, technological change, and marketing and promotional activities. Employment practices, compensation systems, promotion and managerial succession systems, and the entire concept of human resource management are also affected. The increasing diversity of the workforce in coming years will mean significant changes for organizations. In addition, employees are facing a different work environment in the twenty-first century. The most descriptive word for this new work environment is "change." Employees must be prepared for constant change. Change is occurring in organizations' cultures, structures, work relationships, and customer relationships, as well as in the actual jobs that people do. People will have to be completely adaptable to new situations while maintaining productivity under the existing system.
Secure top-management support
Impact Gets dominant coalition on the side of change: safeguards structural change, heads off problems of power and control The support of top management is essential to the success of any change effort. As the organization's probable dominant coalition, it is a powerful element of the social system, and its support is necessary to deal with control and power problems. Complications may arise if disgruntled employees complain to high-level managers who have not been notified of the change or do not support it. The employees' complaints may jeopardize the manager's plan—and perhaps his or her job.
Take a holistic view of the organization
Impact Helps anticipate the effects of change on the social system and culture A limited view can endanger the change effort because the subsystems of the organization are interdependent. A holistic view encompasses the culture and dominant coalition as well as the people, tasks, structure, and information subsystems.
Consider global issues
Impact Keeps in touch with the latest global developments and how change is handled in different cultures the environment is a significant factor in bringing about organization change. Given the additional environment complexities multinational organizations face, it follows that organization change may be even more critical to them than it is to purely domestic organizations A second point to remember is that acceptance of change varies widely around the globe. Change is a normal and accepted part of the organization life in some cultures. In other cultures, change causes many more problems. Managers should remember that techniques for managing change that have worked routinely back home may not work at all and may even trigger negative responses if used indiscriminately in other cultures.
Encourage participation by those affected by the change
Impact Minimizes transition problems of control, resistance, and task redefinition Problems related to resistance, control, and power can be overcome by broad participation in planning the change. Allowing people a voice in designing the change may give them a sense of power and control over their own destinies, which may help to win their support during implementation.
Reward those who contribute to change
Impact Minimizes transition problems of resistance and control systems Employees who contribute to the change in any way need to be rewarded. Too often, the only people acknowledged after a change effort are those who tried to stop it. Those who quickly grasp new work assignments, work harder to cover what otherwise might not get done during the transition, or help others adjust to changes deserve special credit—perhaps a mention in a news release or the internal company newspaper, special consideration in a performance appraisal, a merit raise, or a promotion. From a behavioral perspective, individuals need to benefit in some way if they are to willingly help change something that eliminates the old, comfortable way of doing the job.
Foster open communication
Impact Minimizes transition problems of resistance and information and control systems Employees typically recognize the uncertainties and ambiguities that arise during a transition and seek information on the change and their place in the new system. In the absence of information, the gap may be filled with inappropriate or false information, which may endanger the change process. Rumors tend to spread through the grapevine faster than accurate information can be disseminated through official channels. A manager should always be sensitive to the effects of uncertainty on employees, especially during a period of change; any news, even bad news, seems better than no news.
Start small
Impact Works out details and shows the benefits of the change to those who might resist that change start with one team, usually an executive team. One team can evaluate the change, make appropriate adjustments along the way, and, most importantly, show that the new system works and gets desired results. If the change makes sense, it begins to spread to other teams, groups, and divisions throughout the system. When others see the benefits, they automatically drop their inherent resistance and join in. They can voluntarily join and be committed to the success of the change effort.
overdetermination
Occurs because numerous organizational systems are in place to ensure that employees and systems behave as expected to maintain stability Organizations have several systems designed to maintain stability. For example, consider how organizations control employees' performance. Job candidates must have certain specific skills so that they can do the job the organization needs them to do. A new employee is given a job description, and the supervisor trains, coaches, and counsels the employee in job tasks. The new employee usually serves some type of probationary period that culminates in a performance review; thereafter, the employee's performance is regularly evaluated. Finally, rewards, punishment, and discipline are administered, depending on the employee's level of performance. In other words, the structure of the organization produces resistance to change because it was designed to maintain stability. Another important source of overdetermination is the culture of the organization.
Group and Individual Change
Retraining a single employee can be considered an organization change if the training affects the way the employee does his or her job. Familiarizing managers with the leadership grid or the Vroom decision tree (as discussed in Chapters 11 and 12) in order to improve the way they lead or involve subordinate participation in decision making is an attempt at change. In the first case, the goal is to balance management concerns for production and people; in the second, the goal is to increase the participation of rank-and-file employees in the organization's decision making.
Survey Feedback
Survey feedback techniques can form the basis for a change process. In this process, data are gathered, analyzed, summarized, and returned to those who generated them to identify, discuss, and solve problems. A survey feedback process is often set in motion either by the organization's top management or by a consultant to management. By providing information about employees' beliefs and attitudes, a survey can help management diagnose and solve an organization's problems. A consultant or change agent usually coordinates the process and is responsible for data gathering, analysis, and summary. The use of survey feedback techniques in an organization development process differs from their use in traditional attitude surveys. In an organization development process, data are (1) returned to employee groups at all levels in the organization and (2) used by all employees working together in their normal work groups to identify and solve problems. The survey feedback method is probably one of the most widely used organization change and development interventions. If any of its stages are compromised or omitted, however, the technique becomes less useful. A primary responsibility of the consultant or change agent, then, is to ensure that the method is fully and faithfully carried through.
Team Building
Team building emphasizes members working together in a spirit of cooperation and generally has one or more of the following goals: 1. To set team goals and priorities 2. To analyze or allocate the way work is performed 3. To examine how a group is working—that is, to examine processes such as norms, decision making, and communications 4. To examine relationships among the people doing the work. Team participation is especially important in the data-gathering and evaluation phases of team development. In data gathering, the members share information on the functioning of the group. The opinions of the group thus form the foundation of the development process. In the evaluation phase, members are the source of information about the effectiveness of the development effort. Team development can be a way to train the group to solve its own problems in the future. Research on the effectiveness of team building as an organization development tool so far is mixed and inconclusive.
Task and Technological Change
The direct alteration of jobs usually is called "task redesign." Changing how inputs are transformed into outputs is called "technological change" and also usually results in task changes. Strictly speaking, changing the technology is typically not part of organization development whereas task redesign usually is. Integrated Framework for Implementation of Task Redesign in Organizations Step 1: Recognition of a need for a change Step 2: Selection of task redesign as a potential intervention Step 3: Diagnosis of the work system and context Diagnosis of existing jobs Diagnosis of existing workforce Diagnosis of technology Diagnosis of organization design Diagnosis of leader behavior Diagnosis of group and social processes Step 4: Cost-benefit analysis of proposed changes Step 5: Go/no-go decision Step 6: Formulation of the strategy for redesign Step 7: Implementation of the task changes Step 8: Implementation of any supplemental changes Step 9: Evaluation of the task redesign effort Redesign may involve unexpected costs or benefits; although these cannot be predicted with certainty, they can be weighed as possibilities. Factors such as short-term role ambiguity, role conflict, and role overload can be major stumbling blocks to a job redesign effort. Strategy formulation is a four-part process. First, the organization must decide who will design the changes. Depending on the circumstances, the planning team may consist of only upper-level management or may include line workers and supervisors. Next, the team undertakes the actual design of the changes based on job design theory and the needs, goals, and circumstances of the organization. Third, the team decides the timing of the implementation, which may require a formal transition period during which equipment is purchased and installed, job training takes place, new physical layouts are arranged, and the bugs in the new system are worked out. Fourth, strategy planners must consider whether the job changes require adjustments and supplemental changes in other organizational components such as reporting relationships and the compensation system.
Quality-of-work-life
The extent to which workers can satisfy important personal needs through their experiences in the organization focus strongly on providing a work environment conducive to satisfying individual needs. The emphasis on improving life at work developed during the 1970s, a period of increasing inflation and deepening recession. The development was rather surprising because an expanding economy and substantially increased resources are the conditions that usually induce top management to begin people-oriented programs. However, top management viewed improving life at work as a means of improving productivity. changing the pay system to establishing an employee bill of rights that guarantees workers the rights to privacy, free speech, due process, and fair and equitable treatment. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has a QWL program that includes options for a compressed work schedule, in which employees can work eighty hours in nine workdays over a two-week period, and a "telework" option in which eligible employees may telework at an alternative worksite such as a telework center, at home, or at a satellite office, on a regular and recurring schedule for a maximum of three days per week. The program is designed to promote a more beneficial lifestyle for employees both personally and professionally. A more positive attitude toward the work and the organization, or increased job satisfaction, is perhaps the most direct benefit. Another is increased productivity, although it is often difficult to measure and separate the effects of the quality-of-work-life program from the effects of other organizational factors. A third benefit is increased effectiveness of the organization as measured by its profitability, goal accomplishment, shareholder wealth, or resource exchange. The third gain follows directly from the first two: if employees have more positive attitudes about the organization and their productivity increases, everything else being equal, the organization should be more effective.
Forces for Change
The four areas in which the pressures for change appear most powerful involve people, technology, information processing and communication, and competition.
The Continuous Change Process Model
This approach treats planned change from the perspective of top management and indicates that change is continuous. Although we discuss each step as if it were separate and distinct from the others, it is important to note that as change becomes continuous in organizations, different steps are probably occurring simultaneously throughout the organization. The model incorporates Lewin's concept into the implementation phase. The continuous change process model incorporates the forces for change, a problemsolving process, a change agent, and transition management. It takes a top-management perspective and highlights the fact that in organizations today, change is a continuous process. In this approach, top management perceives that certain forces or trends call for change, and the issue is subjected to the organization's usual problem-solving and decision-making processes. Usually, top management defines its goals in terms of what the organization or certain processes or outputs will be like after the change. Alternatives for change are generated and evaluated, and an acceptable one is selected. The final step is measurement, evaluation, and control. The change agent and the top management group assess the degree to which the change is having the desired effect; that is, they measure progress toward the goals of the change and make appropriate changes if necessary. The more closely the change agent is involved in the change process, the less distinct the steps become. The change agent becomes a "collaborator" or "helper" to the organization as he or she is immersed in defining and solving the problem with members of the organization. When this happens, the change agent may be working with many individuals, groups, and departments within the organization on different phases of the change process. When the change process is moving along from one stage to another, it may not be readily available because of the total involvement of the change agent in every phase of the project. Throughout the process, however, the change agent brings in new ideas and viewpoints that help members look at old problems in new ways. Change often arises from the conflict that results when the change agent challenges the organization's assumptions and generally accepted patterns of operation. Through the measurement, evaluation, and control phase, top management determines the effectiveness of the change process by evaluating various indicators of organizational productivity and effectiveness or employee morale. It is expected the organization will be better after the change than before. However, the uncertainties and rapid changes in all sectors of the environment make constant organization change a given for most organizations.
Threatened Power
Any redistribution of decision-making authority, such as with reengineering or team-based management, may threaten an individual's power relationships with others. If an organization is decentralizing its decision making, managers who wielded their decision-making powers in return for special favors from others may resist the change because they do not want to lose their power base.
Economic Factors
Change may threaten employees' steady paychecks. Workers may fear that change will make their jobs obsolete or reduce their opportunities for future pay increases.
principles of management development
(1)management development is a multifaceted, complex, and long-term process to which there is no quick or simple approach; (2)organizations should carefully and systematically identify their unique developmental needs and evaluate their programs accordingly; (3)management development objectives must be compatible with organizational objectives; and (4)the utility and value of management development remain more an article of faith than a proven fact.
Threatened Expertise
A change in the organization may threaten the specialized expertise that individuals and groups have developed over the years. A job redesign or a structural change may transfer responsibility for a specialized task from the current expert to someone else, threatening the specialist's expertise and building his or her resistance to the change.
Lack of Awareness
Because of perceptual limitations such as lack of attention or selective attention, a person may not recognize a change in a rule or procedure and thus may not alter his or her behavior. People may pay attention only to things that support their point of view. As an example, employees in an isolated regional sales office may not notice—or may ignore—directives from headquarters regarding a change in reporting procedures for expense accounts. They may therefore continue the current practice as long as possible.
Organizational Sources of Resistance
Daniel Katz and Robert Kahn have identified six major organizational sources of resistance: overdetermination, narrow focus of change, group inertia, threatened expertise, threatened power, and changes in resource allocation. All are based on people and social relationships. Many of these sources of resistance can be traced to groups or individuals who are afraid of losing something—resources, power, or comfort in a routine.
Resource Allocation
Groups that are satisfied with current resource allocation methods may resist any change they believe will threaten future allocations. Resources in this context can mean anything from monetary rewards and equipment to additional seasonal help to more computer time. These six sources explain most types of organization-based resistance to change.
Individual Sources of Resistance
Individual sources of resistance to change are rooted in basic human characteristics such as needs and perceptions. Researchers have identified six reasons for individual resistance to change: habit, security, economic factors, fear of the unknown, lack of awareness, and social factors
Habit
It is easier to do a job the same way every day if the steps in the job are repeated over and over. Learning an entirely new set of steps makes the job more difficult. For the same amount of return (pay), most people prefer to do easier rather than harder work.
Lewin's Process Model
Kurt Lewin suggested that efforts to bring about planned change in organizations should approach change as a multistage process. His model of planned change is made up of three steps—unfreezing, change, and refreezing—as shown in In Lewin's three-step model, change is a systematic process of transition from an old way of doing things to a new way. Inclusion of an "unfreezing" stage indicates the importance of preparing for the change. The "refreezing" stage reflects the importance of following up on the change to make it permanent.
Social Factors
People may resist change for fear of what others will think. As we mentioned before, the group can be a powerful motivator of behavior. Employees may believe change will hurt their image, result in ostracism from the group, or simply make them "different." For example, an employee who agrees to conform to work rules established by management may be ridiculed by others who openly disobey the rules.
Security
Some employees like the comfort and security of doing things the same old way. They gain a feeling of constancy and safety from knowing that some things stay the same despite all the change going on around them. People who believe their security is threatened by a change are likely to resist the change.
Training
Training generally is designed to improve employees' job skills. Employees may be trained to run certain machines, taught new mathematical skills, or acquainted with personal growth and development methods. Training may also be used in conjunction with other, more comprehensive organization changes. For instance, if an organization is implementing a management-by-objectives program, training in establishing goals and reviewing goal-oriented performance is probably needed. One important type of training that is becoming increasingly more common is training people to work in other countries. Among the many training methods, the most common are lecture, discussion, a lecture-discussion combination, experiential methods, case studies, films or videos, and online training modules. Training can take place in a standard classroom, either on company property or in a hotel, at a resort, at a conference center, or online from anywhere. On-the-job training provides a different type of experience in which the trainee learns from an experienced worker. Most training programs use a combination of methods determined by the topic, the trainees, the trainer, and the organization. A major problem of training programs is transferring employee learning to the workplace. Often an employee learns a new skill or a manager learns a new management technique, but upon returning to the normal work situation, he or she finds it easier to go back to the old way of doing things
Group Inertia
When an employee attempts to change his or her work behavior, the group may resist by refusing to change other behaviors that are necessary complements to the individual's altered behavior. In other words, group norms may act as a brake on individual attempts at behavior change.
learning organization
an organization that facilitates the learning of all its members and continually transforms itself. In a learning organization, continual learning and change become part of the culture. Wikis, blogs, and searchable databases are sometimes used to collect employees' knowledge and make it available to others. To facilitate organizational learning, it is important that learning happen during a project and continue after the project ends. One of the best ways to encourage continual learning is through an after-action review, or a professional discussion of an event that enables discovery of what happened, why it happened, and how to sustain strengths and improve on weaknesses. After-action reviews are conducted for both successes and failures and occur after any identifiable event or milestone during a project or after the project is completed. The purpose is never to assign credit or blame, but to carefully identify the circumstances that led to successful and less successful outcomes to enable learning. Learning from an after-action review is usually by the group and for the group, although individuals can also conduct such a review. The review is usually conducted fairly quickly using a simple process. In an open and honest meeting usually lasting twenty minutes or less, everyone who participated in the event or project discusses four simple questions: What was supposed to happen? What actually happened? Why were there differences? What did we learn? Building trust and team integrity are additional outcomes of after-action reviews. Another factor influencing an organization's ability to learn is its approach to failure. Many organizations punish failures through lower-performance evaluations, lower bonuses, or even terminations. More learning-oriented firms recognize the learning opportunities presented by "intelligent failures," that is, the failures of events or projects that had a good chance of working, did not work out, but provide a good learning opportunity. At the computer chipmaker Intel, one manager threw a big dinner every month—not for the group that had been most successful, but for the "failure of the month," to honor the group that had made a valiant effort that just did not work out. That manager communicated to his people that failures were an inevitable accompaniment of risk taking that should be talked about openly, not hidden, papered over, or blamed on others. High-quality relationships in which employees feel psychologically safe enable organizational members to engage in learning from failures.
Narrow Focus of Change
Many efforts to create change in organizations adopt too narrow a focus. Any effort to force change in the tasks of individuals or groups must take into account the interdependence among organizational elements such as people, structure, tasks, and the information system. For example, some attempts at redesigning jobs fail because the organization structure within which the jobs must function is inappropriate for the redesigned jobs.
Competition
Examples: Global markets International trade agreements Emerging nations Type of Pressure for Change: Global competition, more competing products with more features and options, lower costs, higher quality First, most markets are global because of decreasing transportation and communication costs and the increasing export orientation of business. The adoption of trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the presence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have changed the way business operates. In the future, competition from industrialized countries such as Japan and Germany may take a back seat to competition from the booming industries of developing nations such as China and India. The Internet is creating new competitors overnight in ways that could not have been imagined five years ago. Companies in developing nations may soon offer different, newer, cheaper, or higher-quality products while enjoying the benefits of low labor costs, abundant supplies of raw materials, expertise in certain areas of production, and financial protection from their own governments that may not be available to firms in older industrialized states.
Technology
Examples: Manufacturing in space Internet Global design teams Type of Pressure for Change: More education and training for workers at all levels, more new products, products move faster to market Not only is technology changing, but the rate of technological change is also increasing. With 3G and 4G technology, people have Internet access from just about anywhere. Technological development is increasing so rapidly in almost every field that it is quite difficult to predict which products will dominate ten years from now. With the advances in information technology, organizations generate more information, and it circulates faster. New technology will affect organizations in ways we cannot yet predict. Gesture technology may eliminate all controls in your home, from your AV system remote to your thermostat, and replace them with your own gestures with your hands and fingers. HP's TouchSmart technology allows people to touch things without actually touching them and could drive innovations in medicine and education within a decade. Sensawaft technology will allow people to control devices such as smartphones and ATMs using exhaled breath—which could dramatically increase mobility and control for people with limited mobility. Several companies are developing systems to manufacture chemicals and exotic electronic components in space. The Internet, the World Wide Web, and cloud computing are changing the way companies and individuals communicate, market, buy, store, and distribute faster than organizations can respond. Thus, as organizations react more quickly to change, change occurs more rapidly, which in turn necessitates more rapid responses.
Managing Successful Organization Change and Development
In order to increase the chances of successful organization change and development, it is useful to consider seven keys to managing change in organizations. They relate directly to the problems identified earlier and to our view of the organization as a comprehensive social system. Each can influence the elements of the social system and may help the organization avoid some of the major problems in managing the change. In the current dynamic environment, managers must anticipate the need for change and satisfy it with more responsive and competitive organization systems. These seven keys to managing organization change may also serve as general guidelines for managing organizational behavior because organizations must change or face elimination.
reingeneering
Reengineering can be a difficult process, but it has great potential for organizational improvement. It requires that managers challenge long-held assumptions about everything they do and set outrageous goals and expect that they will be met. An organization may change the way it divides tasks into jobs, combines jobs into departments and divisions, and arranges authority and reporting relationships among positions. It may move from functional departmentalization to a system based on products or geography, for example, or from a conventional linear design to a matrix or a team-based design. Other changes may include dividing large groups into smaller ones or merging small groups into larger ones. In addition, the degree to which rules and procedures are written down and enforced, as well as the focus of decision-making authority, may be altered. Supervisors may become "coaches" or "facilitators" in a team-based organization. The organization will have transformed both the configurational and the operational aspects of its structure if all of these changes are made.
Fear of the Unknown
Some people fear anything unfamiliar. Changes in reporting relationships and job duties create anxiety for such employees. Employees become familiar with their bosses and their jobs and develop relationships with others within the organization, such as contact people for various situations. These relationships and contacts help facilitate their work. Any disruption of familiar patterns may create fear because it can cause delays and foster the belief that nothing is getting accomplished.
change agent
a person who will be responsible for managing the change effort. The change agent may also help management recognize and define the problem or the need for the change and may be involved in generating and evaluating potential plans of action. The change agent may be a member of the organization, an outsider such as a consultant, or even someone from headquarters whom employees view as an outsider. An internal change agent is likely to know the organization's people, tasks, and political situations, which may be helpful in interpreting data and understanding the system, but an insider may also be too close to the situation to view it objectively. (In addition, a regular employee would have to be removed from his or her regular duties to concentrate on the transition.) An outsider, then, is often received better by all parties because of his or her assumed impartiality. Under the direction and management of the change agent, the organization implements the change through Lewin's unfreeze, change, and refreeze process.
Organization development
a system-wide application of behavioral science knowledge to the planned development and reinforcement of organizational strategies, structures, and processes for improving an organization's effectiveness. First, organization development involves attempts to plan organization changes, which excludes spontaneous, haphazard initiatives. Second, the specific intention of organization development is to improve organization effectiveness. This point excludes changes that merely imitate those of another organization, are forced on the organization by external pressures, or are undertaken merely for the sake of changing. Third, the planned improvement must be based on knowledge of the behavioral sciences such as organizational behavior, psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, and related fields of study rather than on financial or technological considerations. was initially treated as a field of study and practiced by specially trained OD professionals. However, as organization change became the order of the day in progressive organizations around the world, it became clear that all organizational leaders needed to become leaders and teachers of change throughout their organizations if their organizations were going to survive.
Management Development
attempt to foster certain skills, abilities, and perspectives. Often, when a highly qualified technical person is promoted to manager of a work group, he or she needs training in how to manage or deal with people. In such cases, management development programs can be important to organizations, both for the new manager and for his or her subordinates. use the lecture-discussion method to some extent but rely most heavily on participative methods such as case studies and role playing. Participative and experiential methods allow the manager to experience the problems of being a manager as well as the feelings of frustration, doubt, and success that are part of the job. The subject matter of this type of training program is problematic, however, as management skills, including communication, problem diagnosis, problem solving, and performance appraisal, are not as easy to identify or to transfer from a classroom to the workplace as the skills required to operate a machine. In addition, rapid changes in the external environment can make certain managerial skills obsolete in a very short time. As a result, some companies are approaching the development of their management team as an ongoing, career-long process and require their managers to periodically attend refresher courses.
Refreezing
makes new behaviors relatively permanent and resistant to further change. Examples of refreezing techniques include repeating newly learned skills in a training session and then role playing to teach how the new skill can be used in a real-life work situation. Refreezing is necessary because without it, the old ways of doing things might soon reassert themselves while the new ways are forgotten. For example, many employees who attend special training sessions apply themselves diligently and resolve to change things in their organizations. But when they return to the workplace, they find it easier to conform to the old ways than to make waves. There usually are few, if any, rewards for trying to change the organizational status quo. In fact, the personal sanctions against doing so may be difficult to tolerate. Learning theory and reinforcement theory (see Chapter 3) can play important roles in the freezing phase.
Organizational Development
organization development is simply the way organizations change and evolve. Organization change can involve personnel, technology, competition, and other areas. Employee learning and formal training, transfers, promotions, terminations, and retirements are all examples of personnel-related changes. Thus, in the broadest sense, organization development means organization change. The term as used here, however, means something more specific. Over the past forty years, organization development has emerged as a distinct field of study and practice. Experts now substantially agree as to what constitutes organization development in general, although arguments about details continue. Our definition of organization development is an attempt to describe a very complex process in a simple manner. It is also an attempt to capture the best points of several definitions offered by writers in the field.
Unfreezing
the process by which people become aware of the need for change. If people are satisfied with current practices and procedures, they may have little or no interest in making changes. The key factor in unfreezing is making employees understand the importance of a change and how their jobs will be affected by it. The employees who will be most affected by the change must be made aware of why it is needed, which in effect makes them dissatisfied enough with current operations to be motivated to change. Creating in employees the awareness of the need for change is the responsibility of the leadership of the organization.
Transition management
the process of systematically planning, organizing, and implementing change, from the disassembly of the current state to the realization of a fully functional future state within an organization. No matter how much planning precedes the change and how well it is implemented, because people are involved there will always be unanticipated and unpredictable things that happen along the way. One key role of transition management is to deal with these unintended consequences. Once change begins, the organization is in neither the old state nor the new state, yet business must go on. Transition management also ensures that business continues while the change is occurring; therefore, it must begin before the change occurs. The members of the regular management team must take on the role of transition managers and coordinate organizational activities with the change agent. An interim management structure or interim positions may be created to ensure continuity and control of the business during the transition. Communication about the changes to all involved, from employees to customers and suppliers, plays a key role in transition management.
