Organisational Change Chapter 2

CUMMINGS, T. G. AND WORLEY, C. G. (2001). Essentials of Organization development and change. Cincinnati: South-Western College Publishing.

Businesses are facing a dichotomy between wanting to chalk out an all-time structure and strategy for their organization, and recognizing that their world is in a constant state of flux [3]. For most of the 20th century they were largely focused on the static elements of this dichotomy. However, in the last decade changes have become more frequent and more dramatic, so much so that a whole branch of management is now devoted to the subject of change itself.

The theory of planned change is based on the mechanistic understanding of systems in which there are parts that can be fixed or replaced, much like a machine, for example, a dishwasher that can be disassembled and repaired. A complex adaptive system possess the ability to adapt to a changing environment, a dishwasher does not.

Planned change, which is an effort to move an organization into a new state, and unplanned change, which is pressure to make change the efforts of the organization to resist change, are two types of change that happen within an organization from either external or internal factors. Both planned and unplanned change typically involve changes in an organization's design, tasks, people, information systems and technology practices. Organizational change often comes through the evolutionary model of organizational change starting with the first phase, which is the need for change. A manager in the company feels that there is a need for change. The second phase occurs when the change agent, such as manager or other power in the company, tries to move the organization into a new state.

Change is an ongoing and never-ending process of organizational life. The intensity of organizational change can range from the nominal to the radical. As Clark, Gioia, Ketchen, and Thomas (2010) mentioned, three degrees of change intensity are distinguished according to the amount of

Organizational change encompasses many challenges to both the individual, and the organization. An organization is a living system, as Flower (2002) states “living systems cannot survive without change, challenge, variety, and surprise” (Flower, 2002, p. 16). An organization requires the ability to adapt in to survive as Darwin states in The Origin of Man, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” (Read Me First, 2013, p. 1). It must adapt to the changing market, global economic pressures, stakeholder demands, and the diverse needs

Leading and managing change require a solid theoretical foundation. This assignment will research the theoretical elements of change and change management. Addressed will be the following: Organic Evolution of Change, Formulating Strategic Development Approaches, Leadership and Management Skills and Gathering and Analyze Data. As societies continue to evolve and changing demand creates the need for new products and services, businesses often are forced to make changes to stay competitive. The businesses that continue to survive and even thrive are usually the ones that most readily adapt to change. A variety of factors can cause a business to reevaluate its methods of operation. According to literature from the past two

Week 3, the lecture on Managing Change describes organizational changes that occur when a company makes a shift from its current state to some preferred future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to decrease employee resistance and cost to the organization while concurrently expanding the effectiveness of the change effort. Today's business environment requires companies to undergo changes almost constantly if they are to remain competitive. Students of organizational change identify areas of change in order to analyze them. A manager trying to implement a change, no matter how small, should expect to encounter some resistance from within the organization.

After reviewing and researching the literature with respect to organizational changes, I have come to the conclusion that organizations have always changed. When everything in the world is changing, organization cannot remain islands. They must change to face new challenges. Bolman and Deal (2008) claim organizations have changed about as much as in past few decades as in the preceding century. Bolman and Deal (2008) claim means that the change organizations have experienced in the last decade are almost similar to those they experience in at the end of the twentieth century.

Emergent approach believes in continuous and natural growth of change. It motivates the organisation to flourish in an unpredictable environment. It sees change process as something that unpacks and arise from various factors and situations occurring in an organisation (Burnes, 2009). It stems from the belief that change cannot be planned because there are lot of unforeseen events and unintended outcomes that can occur during a certain amount of time. Bernard burns (2009) defined it as “Emergent change is based on the assumption that change is a continuous, open-ended and unpredictable process of aligning and realigning an organisation to its changing environment”

Finally, one organisational response to change is that organisational forms are themselves evolving. Therefore, the change management response will

1.1 Change management is described by Armstrong (1) as “the process of achieving the smooth implementation of change by planning and introducing it systematically taking into account the likelihood of it being resisted”. Change, the fundamental constant in any successful organisation, can be adaptive, reconstructive, revolutionary or evolutionary and can happen for a number of diverse reasons:

In an effort to grasp the concepts of organization change in greater depth, it is vital to: (a) gain insight of the history of organization change, (b) know the nature of organizational change, (c) identify the levels of organizational change, and (d) review evaluate research, theory and models of change.

In order to survive and prosper in a rapid changing environment of business world, organization is often required to generate fast response to changes (French, Bell & Zawacki, 2005). Change management means to plan, initiate, realize, control, and finally stabilize change processes on both, corporate and personal level. Change may cover such diverse problems as for example strategic direction or personal development programs for staffs. In this

Change in such an organisation is complicated, as it is highly technical, and the focus in