Change

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How do organizations know when they should change? What cues should an organization look for? Although there are no clear-cut answers to these questions, the "cues" that signal the need for change are found by monitoring the forces for change. These forces come from external sources outside the organization and from internal sources. There are four key external forces for change: demographic characteristics, technological advancements, market changes, and social and political pressures. Internal forces for change can be subtle, such as low job satisfaction, or can manifest in out-ward signs, such as low productivity or high turnover and conflict. Internal forces for change come from both human resource problems and managerial behavior/decisions. American managers are criticized for emphasizing short-term, quick-fix solutions to organizational problems. When applied to organizational change, this approach is doomed from the start. Quick-fix solutions do not really solve underlying causes of problems and they have little staying power. Researchers and managers alike have thus tried to identify effective ways to manage the change process. Most theories of organizational change originated from the landmark work of social psychologist Kurt Lewin. Lewin developed a three-stage model of planned change that explained how to initiate, manage, and stabilize the change process. The three stages are unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. Unfreezing The focus of this stage is to create the motivation to change. In so doing, individuals are encouraged to replace old behaviors and attitudes with those desired by management. Mangers can begin the unfreezing process by disconfirming the usefulness or appropriateness of employee's present behaviors or attitudes. In other words, employees need to become dissatisfied with the old way of doing things. Changing Because change involves learning, this stage entails providing employees with new information, new behavioral models, or new ways of looking at things. The purpose is to help employees learn new concepts or points of view. Refreezing Change is stabilized during refreezing by helping employees integrate the changed behavior or attitude into their normal way of doing things. This is accomplished by first giving employees the chance to exhibit the new behaviors or attitudes. Once exhibited, positive reinforcement is used to reinforce the desired change. Additional coaching and modeling also are used at this point to reinforce the stability of the change. Source: Organizational Behavior, key concepts, skills and best practices by Angelo Kinicki and Robert Kreitner.