Organization Change &

Development
Lecture 2
Nature of Planned Change
Cultural Change
 Culture
• Basically, organizational culture is the personality of the organization.
Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible
signs (artifacts) of organization members and their behaviors.
•  Culture is one of those terms that's difficult to express distinctly, but
everyone knows it when they sense it.
• Corporate culture can be looked at as a system. Inputs include
feedback from, e.g., society, professions, laws, stories, heroes, values
on competition or service, etc. The process is based on our
assumptions, values and norms, e.g., our values on money, time,
facilities, space and people. Outputs or effects of our culture are, e.g.,
organizational behaviors, technologies, strategies, image, products,
services, appearance, etc.
 How to Change Organizational Culture
• Cultural change is a form of transformational organizational change,
which is is a radical and fundamental shift in the way the entire
organization operates. It is also classified as a strategic intervention,
which is particularly helpful in situations where, for example, there are
rapid changes in the external environment, significantly increased
competition, rapid expansion of markets, a likely merger or acquisition,
and/or need for a comprehensive change throughout the organization.
– Lewin’s Model (Unfreeze, Move, Refreeze)
– Action Research
– Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
– Future Search Conference (Marvin Weisbord/30-100 people or more/usually
over three days/articulate a preferred future and develop the action steps to
accomplish that future)
– McKinsey 7S Model (Imagine a circle of six circles with one circle in the middle.
The middle circle is labeled “shared values.” Shared values represent the
overall priorities in how the organization chooses to operate. The six outer
circles include “strategy,” “structure,” “systems,” “skills,” “staff” and “style.”)
Theories of Planned Change
 Theories of Planned Change
• Lewin’s Change Model
• Action Research Model
• The Positive Model
 Lewin’s Change Model
Unfreezing. This step usually involves reducing those forces
maintaining the organization’s behavior at its present level.
Unfreezing is sometimes accomplished through a process of
“psychological disconfirmation.” By introducing information that
shows discrepancies between behaviors desired by organization
members and those behaviors currently exhibited, members can be
motivated to engage in change activities.
Moving. This step shifts the behavior of the organization,
department, or individual to a new level. It involves intervening in
the system to develop new behaviors, values, and attitudes through
changes in organizational structures and processes.
Refreezing. This step stabilizes the organization at a new state of
equilibrium. It is frequently accomplished through the use of
supporting mechanisms that reinforce the new organizational state,
such as organizational culture, rewards, and structures.
 Action Research Model

1. Problem identification.
2. Consultation with a behavioral science expert.
3. Data gathering and preliminary diagnosis
4. Feedback to a key client or group.
5. Joint diagnosis of the problem
6. Joint action planning
7. Action
8. Data gathering after action
 The Positive Model

1. Initiate the inquiry.

2. Inquire into best practices
3. Discover the themes
4. Envision a preferred future
5. Design and deliver ways to create the
future.
 Comparisons of Change Models
• All three approaches emphasize the application of behavioral science
knowledge, involve organization members in the change process to
varying degrees, and recognize that any interaction between an OD
practitioner and an organization constitutes an intervention that may
affect the organization.
• Lewin’s change model differs from the other two in that it focuses on
the general process of planned change, rather than on specific OD
activities.
• Lewin’s model and traditional action research emphasize the role of
the OD practitioner with relatively limited member involvement in
the change process.
• Lewin’s model and action research are more concerned with fixing
problems than with focusing on what the organization does well and
leveraging those strengths.
General Model of Planned Change
 General Model of Planned Change
• Entering and Contracting
– Those events help managers decide whether they want to engage further
in a planned change program and to commit resources to such a process.
Entering an organization involves gathering initial data to understand the
problems facing the organization or to determine the positive areas for
inquiry. Once this information is collected, the problems or opportunities
are discussed with managers and other organization members to develop
a contract or agreement to engage in planned change.
• Diagnosing
– Diagnosis can focus on understanding organizational problems, including
their causes and consequences, or on collecting stories about the
organization’s positive attributes. The diagnostic process is one of the
most important activities in OD. It includes choosing an appropriate
model for understanding the organization and gathering, analyzing, and
feeding back information to managers and organization members about
the problems or opportunities that exist.
 General Model of Planned Change
• Planning and Implementing Change
– They design interventions to achieve the organization’s vision or goals and make action
plans to implement them. There are several criteria for designing interventions,
including the organization’s readiness for change, its current change capability, its
culture and power distributions, and the change agent’s skills and abilities. Depending
on the outcomes of diagnosis, there are four major types of interventions in OD:
1. Human process interventions at the individual, group, and total system levels
2. Interventions that modify an organization’s structure and technology
3. Human resources interventions that seek to improve member performance and
wellness
4. Strategic interventions that involve managing the organization’s relationship to its
external environment and the internal structure and process necessary to support a
business strategy
• Evaluating and Institutionalizing Change
– The final stage in planned change involves evaluating the effects of the intervention and
managing the institutionalization of successful change programs so they persist.
– Feedback to organization members about the intervention’s results provides information
about whether the changes should be continued, modified, or suspended.
Institutionalizing successful changes involves reinforcing them through feedback,
rewards, and training.
Different Types of Planned Change
Different Types of Planned Change
• Magnitude of Change
– fine-tuning the organization to fundamental changes
– Incremental changes tend to involve limited dimensions and levels of the
organization, such as the decision-making processes of work groups.
– They occur within the context of the organization’s existing business
strategy, structure, and culture and are aimed at improving the status
quo.
– Fundamental changes are directed at significantly altering how the
organization operates. They tend to involve several organizational
dimensions, including structure, culture, reward systems, information
processes, and work design. They also involve changing multiple levels of
the organization, from top-level management through departments and
work groups to individual jobs.
Different Types of Planned Change
• Degree of Organization
– overorganized situations vs underorganized situations
 Different Types of Planned Change
• Domestic versus International Settings
– In contrast to Western societies, for example, the cultures of most Asian
countries are more hierarchical and status conscious, less open to
discussing personal issues, more concerned with “saving face,” and have
a longer time horizon for results.
– Conducting OD in international settings can be highly stressful on OD
practitioners. To be successful, they must develop a keen awareness of
their own cultural biases, be open to seeing a variety of issues from
another perspective, be fluent in the values and assumptions of the host
country, and understand the economic and political context of business in
the host country. Most OD practitioners are not able to meet all of those
criteria and partner with a “cultural guide,” often a member of the client
organization, to help navigate the cultural, operational, and political
nuances of change in that society.
Critique of Planned Change
 Critique of Planned Change
• Conceptualization of Planned Change
– Porras and Robertson argued that planned change activities should be
guided by information about (1) the organizational features that can be
changed, (2) the intended outcomes from making those changes, (3) the
causal mechanisms by which those outcomes are achieved, and (4) the
contingencies upon which successful change depends
– Planned change also tends to be described as a rationally controlled,
orderly process.
– Most descriptions of planned change typically describe a beginning,
middle, and end to the process
– The relationship between planned change and organizational
performance and effectiveness is not well understood. In the absence of
rigorous assessment and measurement, it is difficult to make resource
allocation decisions about change programs and to know which
interventions are most effective in certain situations.
 Critique of Planned Change
• Practice of Planned Change
– A growing number of OD practitioners have acquired skills in a specific technique,
such as team building, total quality management, appreciative inquiry, large group
interventions, or gain sharing, and have chosen to specialize in that method.
– Effective change depends on a careful diagnosis of how the organization is
functioning.
– In situations requiring complex organizational changes, planned change is a
longterm process involving considerable innovation and learning on-site. It
requires a good deal of time and commitment and a willingness to modify and
refine changes as the circumstances require.
– Other organizations have not recognized the systemic nature of change. Too often,
they believe that intervention into one aspect or subpart of the organization will
be sufficient to ameliorate the problems, and they are unprepared for the other
changes that may be necessary to support a particular intervention.
Resistance to Change
 Resistance to Change
Effort to block new ways of
doing things

Individual
Resistance

Group
Resistance
Organizational
Resistance
 Individual Resistance
• Individual sources of resistance to
change reside in basic human
characteristics such as perceptions,
personalities & needs.
• Reasons of individual resistance:
• Economic Reason –The
economic reason of resistance to
change usually focus on:
• Fear of technological
unemployment.
• Fear of reduced work hours &
consequently less pay.
• Fear of demotion & thus reduced
pay.
 Individual Resistance
• Fear of Loss- When a change is
impending, some employees may
fear losing their jobs, status
particularly when an advanced
technology is introduced.
• Security – people with a high
need for security are likely to
resist change because it threatens
their feeling of safety.
• Status change may pose
quo-
disturbance to existing
the
comforts of status quo.
 Individual Resistance
• Peer Pressure-
employees individual may be
accept changeprepared
but refusetoto accept it
for the sake of the group.
• Disruption of
Interpersonalemployees
Relation-may resist
change that to limit
threatens
meaningful
interpersonal relationships on the
job.
• Social
of Displacement-
often results in
Introduction of the existing
change
disturbance
relationships. Changesocialmay
also result in breaking up of work
groups.
 Group Resistance
• Organizations, by their very nature
are conservative. They actively resist
change. Reason of organizational
resistance
• Resource constraint: resources
are major constraints for many
organizations. The necessary
financial , material & human
resources may not be available to
the organization to make the
needed changes.
 Group Resistance
• Structural inertia – some
organizational structures have in-
built mechanism for resistance
to
change. Eg in bureaucratic
structure where jobs
defined & ar
lines
narrowly
authority are clearly spelled
e
out, change would be difficult. of
 Organizational Resistance
• Organizational resistance means the
change is resisted at the level of the
organization itself.
• Some organization are so designed
that they resist new ideas, this is
specifically true in case of
organization which are conservative
in nature.
• Majority of the business firm are
also resistance to changes.
 Organizational Resistance
• The major reason for organizational
resistance are:-
• Threat to power
• Organizational structure
• Threat to specialization
• Resource constants
• Sunk costs