How do organizations change and develop? - Chapter 18

Change in an organization is the movement of an organization from the current state to a desired future state to increase its effectiveness. Organizations are currently in a changing environment where they have to constantly adapt to stay effective. Change occurs as a result of the action of different forces.

What are the forces and resistance to change?

The first force is competition. An organization will not survive unless it adjusts and surpasses other organizations. To excel, an organization must constantly adopt the latest technologies. In order to excel in innovation, an organization must ensure that its employees share ideas and work together.

The second force consists of economic, political, and global forces. The economy and politics determine how and where an organization can sell products and services. Forming economic unions, such as the EU, can bring benefits for the protection of Member States.

The third force includes demographic and social forces. Society is increasingly recognizing minority groups that participate in the labor market, therefore, the coordination of various groups becomes increasingly important. Here too, adjustments need to be made. Empowerment of women, for example, is an important part of the management of an organization with various employees.

Finally, there are ethical forces that play a role. Some organizations hire a trusted person to whom the ethical problems of the organization can be entrusted.

Besides forces that facilitate change, there are also factors that lead to resistance to change. Research shows that the main reason for resistance to change is formed by organizational inertia: the tendency to maintain the status quo. Factors cause inertia to have an effect at an organizational, group, and individual level.

At an organizational level, power and conflict are important factors that impede change. Change sometimes happens at the expense of others, creating conflicts, and delaying decision-making. Another factor at the organizational level is the difference in functional orientation in which different function groups or divisions have conflicting perspectives on change. In addition, a mechanistic structure can be an impeding factor, because this structure requires employees to work in a predictable way, and breaking this routine is difficult. The organizational culture consisting of norms and values can also stop change.

At the group level, informally developed group norms are impeding factors. Group cohesion can also cause inertia. Although a certain degree of cohesion is positive, cohesion that is too strong may reduce work performance. A final factor is groupthink, a pattern of erroneous decision-making that is caused by very cohesive groups that ignore negative information to conform with the vision of other group members.

At the individual level, uncertainty, selective perception, and habits play a role in the resistance to change.

According to Lewin 's force field theory, forces, and resistance move in the opposite direction; until the moment that the forces in both directions are equally strong, there will be no change. Only when the facilitating forces become stronger than the resistance will change be brought about. Managers must, therefore, ensure that facilitating forces increase and resistance decreases.

What are evolutionary and revolutionary changes?

Change can be implemented in two ways: evolutionary and revolutionary. Evolutionary change refers to a gradual and incremental pattern with a narrow focus. Revolutionary change, on the other hand, is a fast, dramatic, broad-based approach.

There are two forms of evolutionary change. The first is the sociotechnical system theory, which refers to ideas about how organizations should choose specific operating systems that fit the technical nature of the work processes. By considering in advance how changes will affect group norms and group cohesion, resistance to change can be prevented. The second form of evolutionary change is total quality management. This refers to a constant effort of all functional groups to find new ways to improve the products/services of the organization. Here too, the emphasis is on the connection of technical and social systems. Forming cross-functional relationships is important in total quality management because work groups coordinate their work better. More and more organizations use total quality management but it does not always seem easy to let all employees take on a new vision of their role. It takes a lot of time and effort to implement this new method.

There are three forms of revolutionary change:

1. The first is e-engineering. This includes the fundamental review and redesign of business processes with the aim of implementing drastic improvements in critical and modern performance measures such as cost, quality, service, and speed. A business process can be any activity that is indispensable for delivering high-quality products/services at a low price.
2. The second form of revolutionary adjustment is restructuring. This refers to simplifying the organizational structure, for example by reducing the number of divisions or hierarchical levels.
3. The third and final form is innovation. In innovation, creativity is stimulated to design new technologies and products and meet the needs of the consumer.

What is action research and what is it necessary for?

Before a change can be made, a good plan must be made. According to the force field theory, the change process consists of three stages:

1. Unfreezing

2. Implementing the change

3. Refreezing

The resistance at different levels, as discussed above, can lead back to the old pattern in the third stage. The change will then not be retained successfully. Managers must therefore actively control the change process. In order to determine desired changes and plans, action research is required, a process that consists of five steps:

1. Diagnosis (determine status quo)

2. Determine the desired future state

3. Implementation of the action

4. Evaluation of the action

5. Institutionalization

How does organizational development work?

Organizational development is a collection of techniques and methods that managers can use in action research to increase the adaptability of the organization. The goal of organizational development is to improve the effectiveness of the organization and help people to express their potential to achieve their goals.

According to this method, there are various ways to deal with resistance to change:

• Information and communication: this reduces uncertainty

• Participation and empowerment: this creates involvement of all employees in decision making, which increases autonomy and motivation

• Facilitating changing working relationships and role distributions: this reduces stress, for example by offering training and free time to compensate

• Negotiate: this can reduce conflicts

• Manipulation: sometimes it is necessary to bring about acceptance in disadvantaged groups through manipulation

• Applying pressure: a way to bring about rapid change, but this is, of course, detrimental to the working relationships

In addition to techniques that eliminate resistance, there are methods to promote change in organizational development:

• Counseling, in which the nature of one's own personality and that of others is examined in order to improve mutual interaction

• Sensitivity training, an intensive form of counseling in which members of a group learn how they come across to others and how they can deal with others more sensitively

• Process consultation, a technique whereby a manager learns to improve his or her interaction with other group members

• Teambuilding, a common method for strengthening relationships within a group

• Intergroup training, a step further than teambuilding, in which the cooperation between functional groups and divisions is strengthened

• Mirroring, where two interdependent groups examine the impression and relationships they have of/with each other to improve their cooperation

• Interventions at the level of the total organization, such as the confrontation meeting, where all managers come together to discuss whether the organization is effective and achieving its goals