Unlock document.
This document is partially blurred.
Unlock all pages and 1 million more documents.
Get Access
Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
a.
B. Overcoming Resistance to Change
1. Communication
a. Resistance can be reduced on two levels through communicating to help
employees see the logic of a change.
2. Participation
participated.
b. Prior to making a change, those opposed can be brought into the decision
contribution.
c. The negatives—potential for a poor solution and great time consumption.
3. Building support and commitment
adjustment.
b. When managers or employees have low emotional commitment to change,
change rather than embrace the status quo.
4. Develop positive relationships
in the Netherlands that was experiencing a merger.
much more positive about the change process.
5. Implementing changes fairly
a. One way organizations can minimize negative impact is to make sure
change is implemented fairly.
i. However, research on 26 large-scale planned change projects in the
Netherlands reveals that change recipients are not always
coworkers, the organization, and other parties.
ii. Furthermore, some resistance might be inevitable, particularly when
the change infringes upon the employees’ freedoms, although fairness
perceptions still help alleviate this resistance.
6. Manipulation and cooptation
a. Manipulation refers to covert influence attempts, twisting and distorting
680
Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
change.
b. Cooptation is a form of both manipulation and participation.
i. It seeks to “buy off” the leaders of a resistance group by giving them a
key role in the change decision.
ways to gain support.
i. The tactics can backfire if the targets become aware that they are being
tricked or used.
7. Selecting people who accept change
a. Research suggests the ability to easily accept and adapt to change is
behavior.
ii. One study of managers in the United States, Europe, and Asia found
those with a positive self-concept and high-risk tolerance coped better
with organizational change.
d. Besides selecting individuals who are willing to accept changes, it is also
possible to select teams that are more adaptable.
environments.
8. A meta-analytic review of hundreds of teams suggests that teams whose
members are high in cognitive ability and motivated to master their tasks tend
to be the most adaptable. Coercion
a. Coercion is the application of direct threats or force upon the resisters.
b. Examples of coercion are threats of transfer, loss of promotions, negative
performance evaluations, and a poor letter of recommendation.
C. The Politics of Change
1. Change threatens the status quo, making it an inherently political activity.
2. Politics suggests the impetus for change is more likely to come from outside
change agents, employees new to the organization (who have less invested in
the status quo), or managers slightly removed from the main power structure.
3. Managers who have spent their entire careers with a single organization and
impediments to change.
a. It is a very real threat to their status and position, yet, they may be
expected to implement changes.
681
Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
4. By acting as change agents, they can convey to stockholders, suppliers,
employees, and customers that they are addressing problems and adapting to a
dynamic environment.
b. Radical change is too threatening.
c. This explains why boards of directors that recognize the imperative for
rapid and radical change frequently turn to outside candidates for new
leadership.
II. Approaches to Managing Organizational Change
A. Lewin’s Three-Step Model (Exhibit 18-3)
1. Kurt Lewin argued that successful change in organizations should follow three
steps:
a. Unfreezing the status quo.
b. Movement to a new state.
c. Refreezing the new change to make it permanent.
2. The status quo can be considered to be an equilibrium state.
a. To move from this equilibrium—to overcome the pressures of both
(Exhibit 18-4)
i. The driving forces, which direct behavior away from the status quo,
can be increased.
equilibrium, can be decreased.
iii. A third alternative is to combine the first two approaches.
b. Companies that have been successful in the past are likely to encounter
refrozen so that it can be sustained over time.
i. Unless this last step is taken, there is a very high chance that the
the previous equilibrium state.
ii. The objective of refreezing is to stabilize the new situation by
balancing the driving and restraining forces.
2. Kotter began by listing common mistakes managers make when trying to
initiate change.
a. They may fail:
i. To create a sense of urgency about the need for change.
682
Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
v. To provide short-term and achievable goals, and to anchor the changes
into the organization’s culture.
(Exhibit 18-5)
i. Notice how Kotter’s first four steps essentially extrapolate Lewin’s
“unfreezing” stage.
ii. Steps 5, 6, and 7 represent “movement,” and the final step works on
“refreezing.”
C. Action Research
1. Action research is a change process based on the systematic collection of
data and then selection of a change action based on what the analyzed data
indicate.
2. The process consists of five steps: diagnosis, analysis, feedback, action, and
areas, and possible actions.
c. Action research includes extensive involvement of the people who will be
involved in the change program.
d. Feedback requires sharing with employees what has been found from
steps one and two and the development of a plan for the change.
compared and evaluated.
3. Action research provides at least two specific benefits for an organization.
a. First, it is problem-focused. The change agent objectively looks for
problems and the type of problem determines the type of change of action.
b. Second, resistance to change is reduced. Once employees have actively
participated in the feedback stage, the change process typically takes on a
momentum of its own.
D. Organizational Development
1. Introduction
a. Organizational development (OD) is a collection of change methods that
try to improve organizational effectiveness and employee well-being.
b. The OD methods value human and organizational growth, collaborative
and participative processes, and a spirit of inquiry.
c. Contemporary OD borrows heavily from postmodern philosophy in
placing heavy emphasis on the subjective ways in which people see their
environment.
683
Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
2. There are six interventions that change agents might consider using. They are:
sensitivity training, survey feedback, process consultation, team building,
intergroup development, and appreciative inquiry.
a. Sensitivity Training
i. It can go by a variety of names—laboratory training, groups, or
T-groups (training groups)—but all refer to a thorough unstructured
group interaction.
ii. Organizational interventions such as diversity training, executive
coaching, and team-building exercises are descendants of this early
OD intervention technique.
b. Survey Feedback
i. Everyone can participate in survey feedback.
ii. A questionnaire is usually completed by a manager and all his/her
subordinates.
group).
v. Feedback and discussions should lead to implications.
c. Process Consultation
i. An outside consultant works with a client, usually a manager through
crafting “a relationship through a continuous effort of ‘jointly
d. Team Building
i. Team building uses high-interaction group activities to increase trust
and openness among team members, improve coordinative efforts, and
increase team performance.
ii. Here, we emphasize the intragroup level, meaning organizational
self-managed teams, and task groups.
iii. Team building typically includes goal-setting, development of
interpersonal relations among team members, role analysis to clarify
each member’s role and responsibilities, and team process analysis.
iv. It may emphasize or exclude certain activities, depending on the
which the team is confronted.
v. Basically, however, team building uses high interaction among
members to increase trust and openness.
e. Intergroup Development
i. A major area of concern in OD is dysfunctional conflict among groups.
and perceptions about each other.
iii. Here, training sessions closely resemble diversity training (in fact,
diversity training largely evolved from intergroup development in
684
Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
within an organization.
iv. In one company, the engineers saw the accounting department as
composed of shy and conservative types and the human resources
department as having a bunch of “ultra-liberals more concerned that
some protected group of employees might get their feelings hurt than
with the company making a profit.”
efforts among departments.
vi. Among several approaches for improving intergroup relations, a
popular one emphasizes problem solving.
(a) Each group meets independently to list its perceptions of itself and
of the other group and how it believes the other group perceives it.
relations between them.
(d) Subgroups can be formed of members from each of the conflicting
groups to conduct further diagnosis and formulate alternative
solutions.
f. Appreciative Inquiry
iii. AI is done in 4 steps:
(a) Discovery
(i) Discovery sets out to identify what people think are the
organization’s strengths.
(ii) Employees recount times they felt the organization worked best
(b) Dreaming
(i) Employees use information from the discovery phase to
speculate on possible futures, such as what the organization
will be like in 5 years.
(c) Design
(d) Destiny
(i) Participants seek to define the organization’s destiny or how to
fulfill their dream, and they typically write action plans and
develop implementation strategies.
(e) AI has proven to be an effective change strategy in organizations
Navy.
685
Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
(f) The end result of AI was a renewed culture focused on winning
attitudes and behaviors.
III. Creating a Culture for Change
A. Introduction
creating a learning organization.
B. Managing a Paradox
1. In a paradox situation, we are required to balance tensions across various
courses of action. There is a constant process of finding a balancing point, a
dynamic equilibrium, among shifting priorities over time.
change and adaptation.
C. The idea of paradox sounds abstract, but more specific concepts have begun to
emerge from a growing body of research.
D. Several key paradoxes have been identified.
1. Learning is a paradox because it requires building on the past while rejecting
it at the same time.
requiring empowerment and flexibility.
3. Performing is a paradox between creating organization-wide goals to
concentrate effort and recognizing the diverse goals of stakeholders inside and
outside the organization.
4. And finally, belonging is a paradox between establishing a sense of collective
identity and acknowledging our desire to be recognized and accepted as
unique individuals.
E. Managers can learn a few lessons from paradox theory, which states the key
paradox in management is that there is no final optimal status for an organization.
1. The first lesson is that as the environment and members of the organization
change, different elements take on more or less importance.
2. There is some evidence that managers who think holistically and recognize
the importance of balancing paradoxical factors are more effective, especially
in generating adaptive and creative behavior in those they are managing.
F. Simulating a Culture of Innovation
1. Definition of innovation
a. Innovation, a more specialized kind of change, is a new idea applied to
initiating or improving a product, process, or services.
b. So all innovations imply change, but not all changes necessarily introduce
new ideas or lead to significant improvements.
c. Innovations can range from small incremental improvements, such as
netbook computers, to radical breakthroughs, such as Nissan’s electric
Leaf car.
2. Sources of innovation
686
Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
a. Structural variables are the most studied potential source of innovation.
i. First, organic structures positively influence innovation because they
facilitate flexibility, adaptation, and cross-fertilization.
ii. Second, Innovation-contingent rewards positively influence
innovation. When creativity is rewarded, firms tend to become more
innovative—especially when employees are given feedback on their
performance in addition to autonomy in how to do their jobs.
iii. Third, innovation is nurtured where there are slack resources.
iv. Finally, inter-unit communication is high in innovative organizations.
There is a high use of committee, task forces, cross-functional teams
and other mechanisms that facilitate interaction.
cultures.
i. They encourage experimentation.
ii. They reward both successes and failures.
iii. They celebrate mistakes.
iv. Innovative organizations also tend to share a common vision as well as
underlying goals.
making mistakes, and encourage individuals to become champions of
change.
3. Idea Champions and Innovation. Once a new idea is developed, idea
champions actively and enthusiastically promote it, build support, overcome
resistance, and ensure it’s implemented.
b. Idea champions have jobs that provide considerable decision-making
discretion; this autonomy helps them introduce and implement
innovations.
c. People in collectivist cultures prefer appeals for cross-functional support
organization’s championing strategies to reflect cultural values.
687
Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
closely following budgets and procedures.
G. Creating a Learning Organization
1. What’s a learning organization? (Exhibit 18-6)
a. A learning organization is an organization that has developed the
continuous capacity to adapt and change.
organization.
i. It’s one in which people put aside their old ways of thinking, learn to
be open with each other, understand how their organization really
works, form a plan or vision everyone can agree on, and work together
to achieve that vision.
fundamental problems of traditional organizations: fragmentation,
competition, and reactiveness.
i. First, fragmentation based on specialization creates “walls” and
“chimneys” that separate different functions into independent and
often warring fiefdoms.
collaboration.
(a) Managers compete to show who is right, who knows more, or who
is more persuasive. Divisions compete when they ought to
cooperate and share knowledge. Team leaders compete to show
who the best manager is.
solving rather than creation.
(a) The problem solver tries to make something go away, while a
creator tries to bring something new into being.
(b) An emphasis on reactiveness pushes out innovation and continuous
improvement and, in its place, encourages people to run around
“putting out fires.”
2. Managing learning
i. Establish a strategy.
(a) Management needs to make explicit its commitment to change,
innovation, and continuous improvement.
ii. Redesign the organization’s structure.
(a) The formal structure can be a serious impediment to learning.
Flattening the structure, eliminating or combining departments,
interdependence and reduces boundaries.
iii. Reshape the organization’s culture.
(a) To become a learning organization, managers must demonstrate by
688
Chapter 18 Organizational Change and Stress Management Page
mistakes.
(i) And management needs to encourage functional conflict.
H. Organizational Change and Stress
1. Researchers are increasingly studying the effects of organizational change on
employees.
effectively.
2. The overall findings are that organizational changes incorporating OB
knowledge of how people react to stressors may yield more effective results
than organizational changes that are only objectively managed through
goal-setting.
perceive it as stressful.
b. Another study indicated that a positive orientation toward change before
specific changes are planned will predict how employees deal with new
initiatives.
4. Often, organizational changes are stressful because employees perceive
aspects of the changes as threatening.
stress.
5. To reduce the perception of threat, employees need to see the organizational
changes as fair.
threatening.
689
