5 Comprehensive Organ't Change Approaches

Session 5

Comprehensive organizational change approaches

Comprehensive organizational change approaches  There are three specific but comprehensive approaches to organizational change.

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The first is organizational development (OD), which is an approach with strong behavioral and people orientation.

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The second is the more engineering based approach called reengineering.

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The final is organizational learning.

The organizational Development (OD) approach to change 

The essence of OD approach to change is its emphasis on planned, strategic, long-range efforts focusing on people and their interrelationships in organizations.

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Better explanation:

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Organizational development (OD) approach to organizational change that has strong behavioral and people orientation, emphasizing planned, strategic, long range efforts focusing on people and their interrelationships in organization.

The OD approaches to change to  change Grew out of behavioral science research as far back as 1930s and 1940s. 

Aimed at improving the communications and quality of interaction among individuals in groups.

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Researchers put together groups of individuals in sessions away from the workplace in what were termed basic skills training groups, or, as they came to be called for short, Tgroups.

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T-groups: group of individuals participating in organizational development sessions away from the workplace; also called basic skill training groups.

The OD approach to change 

The T-group orientation over time broadened into focus on interpersonal relationships throughout the larger organization, and hence, the attention to organizational, not just group, development.

Values and Assumptions 

The early formulation of what eventually evolved in the OD approach place particular importance on certain values and assumptions, and they have remained at the heart of this approach to change to this day.

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First is the assumption that “people are the cornerstone of success in any organizational endeavor.

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A second value or assumption is that most people desire opportunities for personal growth and enhancement of their capabilities.

The OD approach to change 

Another basic value belief about people that underlies this approach to change is that their emotions are as important as their rational thoughts and that, therefore, the open expression of these emotions can be critical in facilitating real change.

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Fundamental assumption about organizations in the OD approach is that they are systems composed of interdependent parts and thus … 

A change in any one part can have a major effects on other parts.

The OD approach to change 

Another assumption is that the way organizations are designed and structured will influence the interpersonal relationship among people in them. 

In other words, the behavior of people in organizational settings flows not just from their intrinsic nature but also from conditions they encounter in these contexts – and these conditions can be changed.

Basic approach to the process of change Lewin’s basic OD approach to organizational change involves three seemingly simple steps:

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Unfreezing Changing Refreezing These steps are easy to state and remember, but they are not especially easy to put into practice.

Basic approach to the process of  Unfreezing emphasized the need to get people to examine critically change and openly their current attitudes or behavior pattern. 

In effect and using a force filed analysis, the unfreezing process is designed to decrease the restraining force of existing viewpoints and customary ways of doing things.

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In one sense we can think of the unfreezing stage as an effort to lower resistance to change rather than focusing on specific resources of resistance.

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Therefore, in an OD approach to change, the initial challenge is to unfreeze existing behavior patterns by getting people not to take them for granted but to question them and look at their effects.  For e.g when a certain mine decided to use OD techniques to reduce its accident rate, the first necessary step was to change existing attitudes about safety.

Basic approach to the process of change 

This was accomplish by changing the organizational climate concerning safety.

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Managers began to emphasized safety as a goal and they allocated funds to improve specific hazardous conditions.

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They also made a point to emphasized that every member of the company was responsible for safety.

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Employees are encouraged to meet and discussed safety issues and come up with ways of doing tasks that would help them by making their work safer.

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All these steps helped to convince the miners that management was serious about improving safety conditions and it primed them to accept and implement required procedural changes.

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Results of the OD intervention demonstrated a 50 percent reduction in on-the-job injuries.

Basic approach to the process of change 

In the traditional OD approach, both the first and second steps, unfreezing and changing, involve the use of change agents. 

Change agents individuals who are responsible for implementing change efforts; they can be either internal and external to the organization. 

That is, either from inside the organization, often the human resources department or they can be from the outside. 

These groups of professional can be a consultant, someone with experience, expertise in helping groups see the need for change and in making change,

Basic approach to the process of change 

The changes themselves are achieved by the use of one or more interventions, that is, “set of structured activities,” or action steps, designed to improve the organization.

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Some of these interventions, such as fact finding, begin in the unfreezing stage, and others, such as team building and coaching/counseling, take place in the changing stage.

Basic approach to the process of change  The priority in the second change stage is exploring new form of behavior and relationships. 

Particularly important at this point is an emphasize on behavioral processes, such as leader-group relations, decision making, inter-group cooperation and the like.

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This behavioral process orientation is a key distinguishing feature of the OD approach to organizational change.

Basic approach to the process of  Merely engaging in new and different ways of change

behaving, relating and interacting is not enough for changes to have lasting effects.

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This is why Lewin included the third stage, refreezing (transforming a new behavior pattern into the norm through reinforcement and support mechanism) 

The intent of this third stage was to make sure that the changes “stick” and that behavior and relationship don’t easily return to their former –less – effective – states.

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This means that the new patterns must become, in effect, new habits that are not easily dislodged by a tendency to return to old routines.

Basic approach to the process of  change Since the time of Lewin’s formulation of this three-stage change process many years ago, the goal of refreezing has been converted into the objective of organizational renewal. 

Organization renewal: a concept of organizational change that proposes a goal of flexibility and capability for continual change.

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This new focus takes into account the fact that in contemporary, fast-changing, competitive world, new habits and patterns rapidly become old and outdated themselves and may need to be replaced after relatively short periods of time.

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Therefore, the emphasis has shifted from refreezing to developing a capacity for renewal, a goal that incorporates flexibility and the ability to change more or less continually.

Basic approach to the process of change 

The OD legacy survives in various forms in many organizations today but other, newer comprehensive approaches to change has attracted increasing attention from many managers in the last decade or so.

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Two of these are: 

Reengineering

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Organizational learning

Reengineering 

Business process reengineering is a radical redesign of business processes to achieve (intended) dramatic improvements.

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Sometimes also known as restructuring.

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Information technology, of course, often plays a central role in such reengineering efforts.

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But human and managerial issues related to reengineering are also extremely crucial to its success in organizations.

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Breadth of reengineering means change in terms of redesign of a set of processes across a complete business unit rather than a change in a single, limited process.

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and depth of reengineering means a change in a related set core organizational elements such as roles and responsibilities, structure, incentives, shared values and the like, rather than any one or two of these elements.

Reengineering 

Adequate breadth and depth by themselves are not enough for reengineering to succeed.

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A major commitment must come from the top of the organization, that is, from key executives (of the total organization or of its major units) who can supply the necessary resources to implement these activities and who can take the time to demonstrate personal involvement in the entire redesign process.

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Like any comprehensive change approach, for reengineering to be successful requires enormous energy, planning, coordinated effort, persistence, and attention to detail.

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Without substantial backing, it is likely to fail.

Organizational learning (OL) 

OL has become a major focus in approaches to organizational change and renewal.

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OL: exhibited by an organization that is skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.

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The central idea is that organizations that emphasize this perspective are: 

Attempting to change and improve continuously, not just periodically.

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Basing these improvements on a foundation of new knowledge they have learned.

Organizational Learning 

Several factors have been shown to facilitate learning by organizations: 

Existing and well-developed central, core competencies of current personnel.

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An organization culture that supports continuous improvement.

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The availability of organizational capabilities (e.g. managerial expertise) to be able to implement the necessary changes.

Organization Learning 

Clearly, managers and organizations cannot simply decide or declare, that learning should take place.

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The elements listed above need to be in place as a starting point if organizational learning is going to lead to any real benefits.

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Then, a number of activities need to take place to implement fully an ongoing learning process in organizations.

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Five of the major important are explained here:

Organization Learning 1. Systematic, Organized and Consistent Approach to Problem Solving 

Similar to the emphasis on scientific methods in the TQM approach, a learning process in organizations requires the continual collection of factual data, rather than reliance on assumptions or guess-work, to aid problem solving and decision making.

Organization Learning 2. Experimentation to Obtain New Knowledge 

Learning organizations do not simply solve problem.

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They experiment with new methods and procedures to expand their knowledge and gain fresh insights.

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They engage in a steady series of small experiments to keep acquiring new knowledge consistently and to help employees become accustomed to change.

Organization Learning 3. Drawing Lessons from Past Experiences 

Enterprises with strong learning cultures pay particular attention to lessons from both past failures as well as past successes.

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It’s not having the experience is important, it’s what you have learned from the experience that is important.

Organization Learning 4. Learning from the Best Practice and Ideas of Others 

Organization and their managers that are strongly committed to learning are also humble in a certain respect.

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They do not assume they already know how to do everything better than other organizations, whether they are competitors, enterprises outside their own industry or sphere of operations, or customers.

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They consistently spend resources to scan their environment to gain information and knowledge from a variety of external sources.  One common form of this is benchmarking, where the best practices of competitors are identified, analyzed and compared against one’s own practice.

Organization Learning 

Benchmarking: identification, analysis and comparison of the best practices of competitors against an organization’s own practices.

5. Transferring and Sharing Knowledge 

Another core activity of an organizational learning approach is to make sure that the new knowledge that is gained is actually disseminated widely throughout relevant units of the organization.

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This requires that managers be alert to both the need for information sharing as well as ways to do it. 

Would include such activities as distributing reports, developing demonstration projects, initiating training and education programs and rotating or transferring those with the knowledge .

Organization learning 

As an approach to change, an organizational learning perspective has much to offer.

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It places the emphasis on constant attention to the possible need for changes, and it embodies the goal of renewal, of pushing organization or units within them to continue to reinvent themselves in one way or another through the purposeful and persistent acquisition of new knowledge.

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Since environments never stay the same, successful organizations can never stay the same.

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One of the best ways both to keep up with changing environments and to keep ahead of them is for managers to focus intently on instilling a learning culture in their areas of responsibility.

End of lecture