Organizational Change - Planned and Unplanned

• Organizational change refers to a modification or transformation of an organization's structure, processes, or goods.
• Changes impact how work is performed and can significantly affect staff.
• Changes include alterations to the structure, operation, workforce size, working hours, practices, job scope, or roles.

Types of Change

• Planned change results from a deliberate decision to alter the organization and is considered an intentional, goal-oriented activity.
• Unplanned change is imposed on the organization and is often unforeseen.

Forces for Change

• External forces prompting organizational change include social, cultural, demographic, economic, political, and technological factors in the general environment.
• Additional external forces include industry dynamics, competition, and consumer demands in the business environment.
• Internal forces driving change are identified as low performance, low satisfaction, new missions, new leadership, and conflict.

Change - Employee's Lens

• According to Carnall (2008), employees typically go through five stages during major organizational changes: denial, defense, discarding, adaptation, and internalization.
• Stage 1 Denial: Employees deny changes, try to prove the old ways still work, and give reasons why changes will not work
• Stage 2 Defense: Employees start to believe changes will happen and become defensive, trying to justify their positions
• Stage 3 Discarding: Realization that changes are inevitable, and it is in the employees best interest to start accepting the new reality
• Stage 4 Adaptation: Employees learn the new system and begin to make adjustements in how they perform
• Stage 5 Internalization: Employees immerse themselves in the new culture and become comfortable

Lewin's 3-Stage Model of Change

• Stage 1 Unfreeze: Recognize the need for change, determine what needs to change, encourage old behaviors and attitudes to be replaced, ensure management provides strong support, and manage doubts and concerns.
• Stage 2 Change: Plan and implement the changes, and help employees learn new concepts or points of view.
• Stage 3 Refreeze: Changes are reinforced and stabilized, integrated into the normal way of doing things, and ways to sustain the change are developed and success is celebrated.

Change Agents

• A change agent is someone with the skill and power to stimulate, facilitate, and coordinate change efforts, and can be external or internal to the organization.
• Roles of change agents include consulting, training and research

Types of Change Agents

• Outside Pressure Type: These agents work from outside the organization, using tactics like mass demonstrations, civil disobedience, and violence to achieve their objectives.
• People-Change-Technology Type: Focuses on the individual and their morale and motivation and uses methods such as job enrichment, goal setting, and behavior modification.
• Organisation-Development Type: Focuses on the internal processes and uses a cultural change approach to analyze the culture within the targeted organization.

Reasons for Resistance

• Individual resistance includes economic reasons, fear of loss/the unknown, security concerns, status quo preference, peer pressure, disruption of interpersonal relations, and social displacement.
• Organizational resistance stems from resource constraints, structural inertia, sunk costs, threats to expertise, and political factors.

Types of Resistance

• Types of resistance include passive and active
• Passive behaviours: Ignoring, not participating, malicious compliance, feigning ignorance, withholding information and standing by and allowing the change to fail
• Active behaviours: Fault-finding, ridiculing, blaming or accusing, undermining, starting rumours and blocking

Managing Resistance to Change

• Methods for managing resistance include education and communication, participation, empathy and support, coercion, negotiation, manipulation and cooperation

Change Management vs. Change Leadership

• Change management focuses on managing the change process, working with goals, resources, and KPIs, implementing changes in daily business, and generating compliance and pressure to change.
• Change leadership focuses on initiating and steering the change process, working with visions, strategies, empowerment, providing direction and orientation, and generating commitment and enthusiasm for change.

Case Study: Carlson Restaurants & TGI Fridays

• Richard Snead, as CEO of Carlson Restaurants, wanted to focus on diversity issues and make diversity an important part of the culture at Carlson Restaurants.
• The diversity effort focused on hiring, training, and employee development.
• The implementation phase included conducting needs and culture assessment, creating a high-level diversity team, and evaluating each location's and manager's diversity efforts and success.