Organizational Change and Stress Management

Organizational Change and Stress Management

• Change involves altering something. Planned change is a deliberate, goal-directed activity.
• Planned change has two key goals: adapting to environmental changes and altering employee behavior.
• Change agents are responsible for managing change activities.

Forces for Change

• Nature of the workforce: Increased diversity, aging population, immigration, and outsourcing.
• Technology: Faster, cheaper, and more mobile computers, social networking, and advancements in genetics.
• Economic shocks: Global housing market fluctuations, financial crises, and recessions.
• Competition: Mergers, consolidations, and increasing global competition.
• Social trends: Concern for environment, shifting social attitudes towards various groups, and increasing connectivity.
• World politics: Political shifts, global issues, and economic/political shifts.

Resistance to Change (Individual Sources)

• Habit: Reliance on accustomed routines and responses.
• Security: Fear of change disrupting established safety and security.
• Economic factors: Concern about job tasks/routines changes impacting pay/productivity.
• Selective Information Processing: Individuals only taking in information that reinforces their existing beliefs.

Resistance to Change (Organizational Sources)

• Structural inertia: Built-in mechanisms (selection, regulations) which cause organizational resistance to change.
• Limited focus of change: Interdependent subsystems preventing comprehensive change.
• Group inertia: Group norms hindering individual behavior change desire.
• Threat to expertise: Change challenging specialized expertise in a group.
• Threat to established power relationships: Redistribution of power creating conflict.

Overcoming Resistance to Change

• Communication
• Participation
• Building support and commitment
• Develop positive relationships
• Fair implementation of changes
• Manipulation and cooptation
• Selecting individuals who embrace change
• Coercion

The Politics of Change

• Change is inherently political due to its impact on the status quo.
• Change is frequently driven by: outside change agents, recent employees (less invested in the old status quo), and managers removed from the top of the organizational structure.

Approaches to Managing Organizational Change

• Lewin's Three-Step Model: Unfreezing, Movement, Refreezing. The three steps involve unfreezing the status quo, moving toward desired state, and refreezing the new status quo.
• Kotter's Eight-Step Plan: Establish sense of urgency, form coalition, create vision, communicate vision, empower others, create short-term wins, consolidate improvements, and reinforce changes.
• Action Research: Data collection, diagnosis, analysis, feedback, action, and evaluation process. Problem-focused and addresses resistance to change.
• Organizational Development (OD): Methods to improve organizational effectiveness and employee well-being. OD methods value collaborative processes and a spirit of inquiry.OD focuses on how individuals make sense of their work environment.

Creating a Culture for Change

• Managing a Paradox: There isn't a separate area of "change management" because all management is dealing with constant change and adaptation.
• Stimulating a Culture of Innovation: A new idea or methodology applied to a new product or service, or changing a process or service to improve or create breakthrough. This may involve improvements as well as a radical breakthrough.
• Sources of Innovation: Structural variables, organic structures, rewards, slack resources, inter-unit communication.
• Features of Innovative Cultures: Encouraging experimentation, reward both success and failure, and celebrating mistakes.
• Strategies for Fostering a Culture of Innovation: Actively develop & promote training for members, high job security, encourage champions of change, championing new ideas, fostering support, making changes.
• Characteristics of a Learning Organization: Shared visions, abandoning old ways, looking at the organization as an inter-linked system, open communication, sublimating personal needs to advance shared vision.

Stress at Work

• Major causes of work stress: Financial concerns, work, family, and health anxieties.
• How workplace stress is measured: OB poll shows that the majority of employees experience extreme stress with accompanying symptoms (64%), followed by manageable (31%) stress, and low (5%) stress levels.

A Model of Stress

• Potential Sources: Environmental (economic, political, technological uncertainty), Organizational (task, role, interpersonal demands), and Personal (family problems, economic problems).
• Individual Differences: Perception, job experience, social support, and personality traits.
• Experienced stress: The accumulation of experiences leads to stress.
• Consequences: Physical (immediate effects, illnesses, chronic), Psychological (anxiety, lower emotional well-being, lower job satisfaction), and Behavioral (decreased performance, increased absenteeism, higher turnover).

Managing Stress at Work (Individual Approaches)

• Personal responsibility: Taking proactive measures to reduce stress levels.
• Time-management techniques
• Increased physical exercise
• Relaxation training
• Expanded social support networks

Managing Stress at Work (Organizational Approaches)

• Management control: Modifying task and role demands
• Selection & Placement: Improving selection/placement to reduce stress for individuals with particular characteristics or experience levels.
• Goal-setting: Providing motivation to employees by giving clarity to their aims.
• Redesigning jobs: Improving job autonomy to provide employees with more responsibility and meaning to work, giving more flexibility, and reducing dependence on other people.
• Employee involvement: Improving communication and providing the opportunity for employees to have a voice in decisions to lessen feelings of role stress.
• Organizational Communication: Increase clarity to reduce role ambiguity and conflicts using effective communication.
• Employee Sabbaticals: Giving employees flexibility in their work, helping them engage in activities outside of work and reduce stress
• Corporate Wellness Programs: Promoting healthy behaviors to reduce stress by improving physical and mental well-being.

Implications for Managers

• Change agents: Managers take responsibility and play a key role in driving change.
• Learning organizations: Management policies and practices influence organizational flexibility and ability to adapt.
• Moderate levels of stress: Healthy levels of stress can be productive while excessive and overwhelming levels of stress cause problems.
• Alleviating harmful workplace stress: managers should ensure a suitable workload for each employee, provide employees with support to cope with stress, and listen to concerns of their employees.
• Monitoring early indicators: Identifying and responding to signs of elevated employee stress to address the issue early.

Explore the critical concepts surrounding organizational change and the dynamics of stress management in the workplace. Understand the forces driving change, the role of change agents, and the individual sources of resistance. This quiz will help you grasp how to effectively navigate change in modern organizations.