External forces for change: originate outside the organization.
External forces can dramatically affect why an organization exists, as well as which markets it participates in and how.
External changes can either present new opportunities for organizations to realize and grow, or they can cause the ultimate demise or failure of a business.
Demographic Characteristics:
Organizations are changing benefits and aspects of the work environment in order to attract, motivate, and retain diverse employees.
Organizations are changing the way in which they design and market their products and services and design their store layouts based on generational differences.
Technological Advancements:
Social media is one of the most notable technological changes to impact business over the past several years.
The five most significant digital enterprise trends in business are the digital engagement of customers, big data and advanced analytics, digital engagement of employees and external partners, automation, and digital innovation.
Shareholder, Customer and Market Changes:
Increased shareholder activism is one of the most significant forces for change public companies have faced in the past several years.
Increasing customer sophistication is requiring organizations to deliver higher value in their products and services.
Companies often seek customer feedback about a wide range of issues in order to attract and retain customers and to turn any negative situation from social media to a positive one.
Social, Political, and Regulatory:
Social, political, and regulatory forces are created by social and political events.
Governments can apply political pressures that can force or block changes.
Internal forces for change: originate inside the organization.
Internal forces can be subtle, such as low job satisfaction, or can manifest in outward signs, such as low productivity, conflict, or strikes.
Human Resource Problems or Prospects:
These problems stem from employee perceptions about how they are treated at work and the match between individual and organization needs and desires.
Job dissatisfaction is a symptom of an underlying employee problem that should be addressed.
Unusual or high levels of absenteeism and turnover also represent forces for change.
Managerial Behavior and Decisions:
Excessive interpersonal conflict between managers and their subordinates or the board of directors is a sign that change is needed.
Inappropriate leader behaviors such as inadequate direction or support may result in human resource problems requiring change.
The correct answer is D, external: domestic or international competition.
Adaptive change: reintroduces a familiar practice either in a different unit or in the same unit at a different point in time.
Adaptive change is lowest in complexity, cost, and uncertainty.
Adaptive changes are not particularly threatening to employees because they are familiar.
Innovative change: introduces a practice new to the organization.
This type of change falls midway on the continuum of complexity, cost, and uncertainty.
Innovative changes are complex, since organizations need to learn new behaviors, as well as create, implement, and enforce new policies and practices.
Innovative changes have more uncertainty and cause more fear than adaptive changes.
Radically innovative change: introduces a practice new to the industry.
This type of change is at the high end of the continuum of complexity, cost, and uncertainty.
Kurt Lewin developed a three-stage model of planned change that explained how to initiate, manage, and stabilize the change process.
Unfreezing:
The focus of this stage is to create the motivation to change.
Managers can begin the unfreezing process by presenting data highlighting how current practices are now obsolete or less than ideal, such as low employee or customer satisfaction data, or market share gains made by competitors.
Changing:
This stage entails providing employees with new information, new behavioral models, new processes or procedures, new equipment, new technology, or new ways of getting the job done.
Change should be targeted to a specific desired end-result.
The Organizing Framework for Understanding and Applying OB is a good tool to use for identifying particular targets or purposes for change.
Refreezing:
The goal of this stage is to support and reinforce the change.
Refreezing helps employees integrate the changed behavior or attitude into their normal way of doing things.
Positive reinforcement is used to reinforce the desired change.
Role modeling helps to reinforce the stability of the change.
A systems approach is based on the notion that any change will have a cascading effect throughout an organization.
Figure 16.6, in the text, illustrates the four main components of a systems model of change.
This practical approach can be used to diagnose what to change and to determine how to evaluate the success of a change effort.
Inputs include the firm’s mission, vision, readiness, internal strengths and weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats.
The starting point for organizational change should be asking and answering the question: “Why change?”
All organizational changes should be consistent with an organization’s mission, vision, and resulting strategic plan.
Mission statement: expresses the reason why an organization exists.
Vision: a compelling future state for an organization.
Readiness for change: beliefs, attitudes, and intentions regarding the extent to which changes are needed, and the capacity available to successfully implement those changes.
Readiness can be both an individual- and/or an organizational-level input, and its components are necessity for change, top management support for change efforts, personal ability to cope with changes, and perceived personal consequences of change.
A strategic plan outlines an organization’s long-term direction and the actions necessary to achieve planned results.
Strategic plans are based on results from a SWOT—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—analysis.
The SWOT analysis aids in developing an organizational strategy to attain desired goals, such as profits, customer satisfaction, quality, adequate return on investment, and acceptable levels of turnover and employee satisfaction.
Target elements of change are the components of an organization that may be changed.
They essentially represent change levers that managers can push and pull to influence various aspects of an organization.
Target elements include organizational arrangements, social factors, methods, and people.
See Figure 16.6 in the text. The double-headed arrows connecting each target element of change indicate that change ripples across an organization—change one element, and it may change another.
The “people” component is in the center because all organizational change ultimately impacts employees.
Outputs represent the desired end results of change.
Change can be directed at the individual, group, or organizational level.
Change efforts are more complicated and difficult to manage when they are targeted at the organizational level since these changes are more likely to affect multiple target elements of change.
John Kotter believes that organizational change most often fails, not because of inadequate planning, but because of ineffective implementation.
He proposes an eight-step process for leading change to avoid typical implementation errors.
The model is not diagnostic in determining what needs to be changed, but helps managers sequence the change process.
Table 16.1 in the text, and from which this slide’s content is derived, describes the following steps to Kotter’s model:
Establish a sense of urgency: unfreeze the organization by creating a compelling reason why change is needed.
Create the guiding coalition: create a cross-functional, cross-level group with enough power to lead the change.
Develop a vision and strategy: create a vision and strategic plan to guide the change process.
Communicate the change vision: create and implement a communication strategy that consistently conveys the new vision and strategic plan.
Empower broad-based action: eliminate obstacles (processes and people) and encourage risk taking and creative problem solving.
Generate short-term wins: plan for and create short-term improvements. Recognize and reward people who contribute to the wins.
Consolidate gains and produce more change: the guiding coalition uses credibility from short-term wins to create more change.
Anchor new approaches in the culture: reinforce the changes by highlighting connections between new behaviors and processes and organizational success.
Figure 16.7 presents the components of the OD process:
Diagnosis: What is the problem and its causes?
Intervention: What can be done to solve the problem?
Evaluation: Is the intervention working?
Feedback: What does the evaluation suggest about the diagnosis and the effectiveness of how the intervention was implemented?
In the diagnosis stage, interviews, surveys, meetings, written materials, and direct observation can be used to determine the problem and its associated causes.
A contingency approach should be used to select the intervention that seems best suited for the problem and causes at hand.
Evaluation requires the organization to develop measures of effectiveness, and the proper measure depends on the problem.
If the evaluation stage reveals that the intervention worked, then the OD process is complete, and you can consider how best to “refreeze” the changes.
A negative evaluation means one of two things: (1) either the initial diagnosis was wrong, or (2) the intervention was inappropriate or not effectively implemented.
The correct answer is D, discourage individuals to replace old behaviors and attitudes with new ones.
Resistance to change: any thought, emotion, or behavior that does not align with actual or potential changes to existing routines.
People resist both actual and imagined events.
Resistance is one of the three possible influence outcomes—the other two being compliance and commitment.
Many managers of change see resistance as employees pursuing their own interests and attempting to undermine the interests of the manager or larger organization.
Some of the most widely recognized change experts argue that resistance does not reside within the individual but instead is a result of the context in which change occurs.
Resistance is caused by an interaction between change recipients, change agents, and the relationship between the two.
Figure 16.8 illustrates that resistance is a dynamic form of feedback.
Recipient Characteristics:
Individuals with a dispositional resistance to change are less likely to voluntarily initiate changes and more likely to form negative attitudes toward the changes they encounter.
When innovative or radically different changes are introduced without warning, affected employees become fearful of the implications.
Intimidating changes on the job can cause employees to doubt their capabilities, and this fear of failure erodes their self-confidence and performance.
Changes that threaten to alter power bases or eliminate jobs generally trigger strong resistance.
Someone who is not directly affected by a change may actively resist it to protect the interest of his or her friends and coworkers.
Success can breed complacency and foster a stubbornness to change.
Change Agent Characteristics:
A change agent is someone who is a catalyst in helping organizations deal with old problems in new ways.
Change agents can be external consultants or internal employees.
A change agent who fails to communicate with employees or is perceived as instituting unfair policies is likely to create resistance from recipients.
Another contributing factor is the change agent’s perception of the reason employees behave the way they do in the face of organizational change.
Table 16.2 in the text identifies common pitfalls effective change agents should avoid.
Change can cause cultural and group dynamics to be thrown into disequilibrium.
The personalities of change agents can breed resistance.
Undue resistance can occur because changes are introduced in an insensitive manner or at an awkward time.
People are less likely to resist change when the change agent uses transformational leadership.
Active, honest communication and aligned reward systems help recipients understand and believe in the value of changes.
The correct answer is A, a change agent who is perceived as a transformational leader.
Job stress: the harmful physical and emotional responses that occur when the requirements of the job do not match the capabilities, resources, or needs of the worker.
Figure 16.9 in the text presents a very useful and comprehensive model of occupational stress.
Eustress: stress that is associated with positive emotions and outcomes.
Since stress is inevitable, your efforts need to be directed at managing stress, not at somehow escaping it altogether.
Cognitive appraisal is the process by which people evaluate the meaning of events and demands.
People make two types of appraisals when evaluating the potential impact of stressors on their lives: primary and secondary appraisals.
Primary appraisal: perceptions of whether a stressor is irrelevant, positive, or negative.
Secondary appraisal: perceptions of how able you are to deal or cope with a given demand.
The combination of an individual’s primary and secondary appraisal influences the choice of coping strategies and in turn the subsequent outcomes.
Coping strategies are characterized by the specific behaviors and cognitions used to cope with a situation.
Coping strategies include control, escape, and symptom management strategies.
Control strategy: using behaviors and cognitions to directly anticipate or solve problems.
Escape strategy: avoiding or ignoring stressors.
Symptom management strategy: focuses on reducing the symptoms of stress.
Stress Outcomes: stress has psychological, attitudinal, behavioral, cognitive, and physical health consequences or outcomes.
Workplace stress is negatively related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, positive emotions, and performance, and positively related to emotional exhaustion, burnout, absenteeism, and turnover.
Stress negatively affects our physical and psychological health and is associated with the frequency of drinking and taking illicit drugs.
Employees are more likely to resist when they perceive that the personal costs of change outweigh the benefits.
Managers are advised to:
Provide as much information as possible to employees about the change.
Inform employees about the reasons/rationale for the change.
Conduct meetings to address employees’ questions regarding the change.
Provide employees the opportunity to discuss how the proposed change might affect them.
These four recommendations also will improve the agent–recipient relationship by enhancing the level of trust between the parties.
Managers should not assume that people are consciously resisting change.
Resistance may have a cause that involves some obstacle in the work environment, such as job design or performance management practices.
Managers should obtain employee feedback about any obstacles that may be affecting their ability or willingness to accept change.
Change agents should not be afraid to modify the targeted elements of change or their approach toward change based on employee resistance.
Managers should use a contingency approach to overcoming resistance and apply the concepts from Table 16.3 in the text to determine which managerial strategy for overcoming resistance would be appropriate.
Inspire. Do the best you can to describe a vivid and compelling vision of what the changed organization will look like, and equally important, what role you see those who report to you playing and the value they can provide.
Recognize progress, Not Just Outcomes. Many if not most organizational changes occur over long periods of time, which means changes will include multiple steps along the way. Observe and recognize people for their efforts, and don’t wait for ultimate performance outcomes. This is similar to Kotter’s advice from earlier in the chapter, create and celebrate small wins. Don’t simply wait for performance metrics at the end of the quarter, the year, or until the merger is close and the cultures or systems integrated.
Expect mistakes. Expect them, tell your people you expect them, and don’t panic when they happen. Treat them as learning opportunities, which means you need to analyze and identify what to do and what not to do in the future.
Model, Measure, and Reward Collaboration. A common sign of resistance is a lack of collaboration, and one way to overcome this is to apply what you learned in Chapter 6 to make collaboration part of the performance expectations. Communicate, model, measure, and reward collaboration.
Positivity. As you learned previously, we tend to negative events, experiences, and emotions more than positive ones, and this is especially common in the context of organizational change. Therefore, it can be an excellent and productive opportunity to exercise mindfulness, and for you and employees to identify and reflect on the positive elements of the change.
Goals and time. Just as you learned in Chapter 6, setting SMART goals and being sure to include a time element will help focus people’s efforts. It is better to set a deadline and need to change it, rather than not setting one at all.
The correct answer is D, symptom management strategy.