Madhumitha RaniLakshmi P S

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT

(Karl E. Weick and Robert E. Quinn)

Organizational change

• Organizational change is an ongoing process in order to bring the organizational systems and processes in line with the factors prevailing in the external and internal environment of the organization.

• The forces of organizational change include internal and external forces.

• Significant organizational change occurs, for example, when an organization changes its overall strategy for success, adds or removes a major section or practice, and/or wants to change the very nature by which it operates.

• It also occurs when an organization evolves through various life cycles, just like people must successfully evolve through life cycles.

• For organizations to develop, they often must undergo significant change at various points in their development.

The levels of organizational change

• Level 1- shaping and anticipating the future• Level 2 - defining what business(es) to be in

and their "Core Competencies• Level 3 - Reengineering (Structurally Changing)

Your Processes• Level 4 - Incrementally Changing your

Processes

Level 1- shaping and anticipating the future

• At this level, organizations start out with few assumptions about the business itself, what it is "good" at, and what the future will be like.

• Management generates alternate "scenarios" of the future, defines opportunities based on these possible futures, assesses its strengths and weaknesses in these scenarios changes its mission, measurement system etc.

Level 2 - defining what business(es) to be in and their "Core Competencies”

Many attempts at strategic planning start at this level, assuming:

1) the future will be like the past or at least predictable;

2) the future is embodied in the CEO's "vision for the future";

3) management doesn't know where else to start;

4) management is too afraid to start at level 1 because of the changes needed to really meet future requirements;

5) the only mandate they have is to refine what mission already exists.

After a mission has been defined and a SWOT analysis is completed, an organization can then define its measures, goals, strategies, etc.

Level 3 - Reengineering (Structurally Changing) Your Processes

• Either as an aftermath or consequence of level one or two work or as an independent action, level three work focuses on fundamentally changing how work is accomplished. Rather than focus on modest improvements, reengineering focuses on making major structural changes to everyday with the goal of substantially improving productivity, efficiency, quality or customer satisfaction.

Level 4 - Incrementally Changing your Processes

• Level 4 organizational changes are focusing in making many small changes to existing work processes.

• Oftentimes organizations put in considerable effort into getting every employee focused on making these small changes, often with considerable effect.

CHANGE

• To transform or convert.• To pass gradually into.

Episodic, discontinuous and intermittentContinuous, evolving and incremental

Change as a genere of organizational analysis

• From the perspective of organizational analysis, Change is a set of behavioral science – based theories, values, strategies, and techniques aimed at the planned change of the organizational work setting for the purpose of enhancing individual development and improving organizational performance, through the alteration of organizational members’ on-the-job behaviours. (Porras & Robertson, 1992)

Curt Lewin (1951) three stages of change :• Unfreeze, change and refreeze. “You cannot understand a system untill you try 

to change it”    .

Episodic Change

• Organizational changes that tend to be infrequent, discontinuous and intentional.

• Occurs during periods of divergence.• Tends to occur in distinct periods.

Basic metaphors: Organizing for episodic change

• Organizations are inertial and change is infrequesnt, discontinuous, and intentional.

images of organizations that are compatible with episodic change include those built around the ideas of :

• Punctured equilibria• The edge of chaos, and• Second order change.

Analytical Framework: Episodic change process

Episodic change tends to be:• Infrequent, slow• Less complete• More strategic in its content• More deliberate and formal• More disruptive• Initiated at higher levels in the organization The time intervals between episodes of discontinuous

change is determined by the amount of time the organization expent in other stages of organizational development.

Three important processes in the depiction of episodes are:

• Inertia,• The triggering of change, and• Replacement.

The change is dramatic and externally driven

Ideal Episodic Organizations• The ideal organization is capable of continuous

adaptation. • This holds true for continuous as well as

episodic change.• Successful firms have well defined managerial

responsibilities and clear project priorities while also allow the design process to be highlt flexible and continuously changing.

• Richly connected communicating systems.

Intervension Theory in Episodic Change

• The necssary change is created by outside intervension.

Curt Lewin (1951) • Unfreeze, • Transition, and • Refreeze.

Role of Change Agent• Prime mover who creates change.• Focuses on inertia and seeks points of central

leverage.• Speaks differently, communicates alternative

schema, reinterprety evolutionary triggers, builds coordination and commitment.

Continuous change

• It is developing, increasing and pretty much regular. Change is a way of life, not a burden. The organization is viewed, not as a static entity occasionally punctuated by periodic change, but as an essentially dynamic entity, ever-changing, ever-evolving and ever-unfolding.

• Here change is a pattern of endless modifications in work processes and social practice. It is driven by organizational instability and alert reactions to daily contingencies. Numerous small accommodations accumulate and strengthen.

Metaphor of organization

• Organizations are emergent and self organizing, and change is constant, evolving, cumulative.

• The foundation of an organization is the regular interactions by which its activities are conducted, rather than the fixed structures on which it is built.

• Systems are self-organizing rather than static and response ranges to events and breakdowns are developed continuously.

• Responses are mindfully constructed in the moment, rather than predicated upon the mindless application of routinised historical responses.

Analytic framework

Change is a pattern of endless modifications in work processes and social practice. It is driven by organizational instability and

alert reactions to daily contingencies. Numerous small accommodations cumulate and strengthen.

The ideal organization is capable of continuous adaptation.

Intervention theory• The change is a redirection of what is already under way. • Change is Confucian. Following are the assumption of Confucian theory:• Cyclical assumption- the process and pattern of change repeat

themselves• processional assumption-movement involves an orderly sequence

through a cycle and departures cause disequilibrium• journey assumption- without an end state.• equilibrium assumption- interventions are to restore equilibrium and

balance• appropriateness assumption- correct action maintains harmony• change assumption -nothing remains the same forever

1. Un-Freeze: make sequences visible and show patterns through maps, and stories

2. Rebalance: reinterpret, relabel, resequence the patterns to reduce blocks. Use logic of attraction.

3. Re-freeze: resume improvisation, translation, and learning in ways that are more mindful.

Role of change agent

• Role: Sense maker who redirects change.• Process: recognizes, makes salient, and

reframes current patterns. Shows how intentional change can be made at the margins. Alters meaning by new language, enriched dialogue, and new identity. Unblocks improvisation, translation, and learning.

CONCLUSION

• To understand organizational change one must first understand organizational inertia, its content, its tenacity, its interdependencies.

• Change is not an on-off phenomenon nor is its effectiveness contingent on the degree to which it is planned.

• Furthermore, the trajectory of change is more often spiral or open ended than linear.

• All of these insights are more likely to be kept in play if researchers focus on “changing” rather than “change”.

• A shift from change to changing directs attention to actions of substituting one thing for another, of making one thing into another thing, or of attracting one thing to become other than it was.

• A concern with changing means greater appreciation that change is never off, that its chains of causality are longer and less determinate than one anticipated, and that whether one’s viewpoint is global or local makes a difference in the rate of change that will be observed, the inertias that will be discovered, and the size of accomplishments that will have been celebrated.