Change Flashcards
(15 cards)
What is change?
- A planned or unplanned response to external forces
- Difference in how an organisation functions, who its members and leaders are, what form it takes, or how it allocates its resources
- The new state of things is different from the old state of things
- “Change is inherent in human action, and organisations and sites of continuously evolving human action”
What kinds of change are there?
- Planned change
* Experiential change
What is planned change?
A series of sequential steps - think, act, reflect and evaluate (a road map)
What is experiential change?
Chaos, politics, behaviours - act, think, reflect, act… (a cycle or journey of change)
What are the two views of change?
- Calm-waters metaphor
* White-water rapids metaphor
What is calm-waters change?
- Unfreezing : Changing: Refreezing
- Useful in oragnisations in 1) tracking where change efforts are in the process and 2) reminding managers and leaders that there are inherent culture issues in unfreezing and refreezing processes
- (Driving forces: restraining forces: combined forces): Changing
What is white-water change?
Continuous, unstable, quick response, unpredictable
What are the perspectives on change?
- Developmental (1st order)
- Improvement of what is (change IN form)
- Transitional
- Implementation of a known new state
- Transformational (2nd order)
- Emergence of a new state (change OF form)
What are the types of movement?
- Macroevolutionary
- In the environment; historical; industries or industry clusters
- Microevolutionary
- Developmental; related to co-ordination, size and shape
- Poltical
- Revolutionary; jockeying for power among stakeholders
What is organisational becoming?
- “… treat change as the normal condition of organisational life.
- Change is the reweaving of actors’ webs of beliefs and habits of action to accommodate new experiences obtained through interactions
- Change is inherent in human action, and organisations are site of continuously evolving human action
- Organisations are in a state of perpetual become”
What is leadership vs management in regards to change?
- Management produces orderly results which keep things working efficiently
- Leadership creates useful change
- We need both in organiasiotns and politics
What are the implications of change for leaders?
- Change is seen as a strategy for competitive advantage
- Leaders of change or recipients of change
- Understand the nature of change
- Be competent at initiating, implementing and evaluating change
How are leaders change agents?
- Tolerates ambiguity
- Influences others
- Confronts difficult issues
- Listens well and empathises
- Recognises own feelings and intuitions
- Conceptualises and analyses
- Mobilises
- Teaches/mentors others
- Maintains a sense of humour/manages stress
What are strategies for handling change resistance?
- Education and communication: educating people above the change and hence gaining commitment
- Participation and involvement: involving people in the change
- Facilitation and support: enabling people through change
- Negotiation and agreement: negotiating with resistors to change
- Manipulaiton: using power and potluck to control those involved in the change process
- Explicit and implicit coercion: using threats or punishment to control change process
- Not all techniques advocated
Why can change efforts fail?
- People don’t see sufficient compelling evidence
- Fear or loss of change of role
- Management’s message or support is inconsistent
- Lack of investment in necessary resources
- Inadequate or inappropriate training
- Imposing intellectual solutions on an emotional problem
