Change Memo

HRM 587 Discussions 1 Week 5 Organizational Development Theory and Practices-All Students Posts 20 Pages Managing Organization Change

Managing Change: The Art of Balancing“ by Jeanie Daniel Duck [1] came out in the Harvard Business Review in November 1993. It is an influential article, one that has been cited 437 times until date. Duck draws upon her years of experience as a Vice President in the Chicago Office of the Boston Consulting Group and of running her own consulting firm that focused on the emotional and behavioral impact of change on corporate performance. She can be safely called both, a management consultant as well as an organization development consultant. Presented below is a summary and key points of the article supplemented by examples, views and facts gleaned from other sources as well.

Cummings, T. G.; and Worley, C. G. (2015). Organization Development and Change, (10th Ed). Mason, OH. Cengage Learning.

The track change option was very new to me. I took a computer class about 3 years ago in college and I don’t remember if my teacher went over this option or not. I am currently working on an essay for my English class so I plan to use the track change to help reduce some the errors. I also like the fact that there are different options when using markups. There may come a time when I will have to type memos and send them out to the patients. By using the track change option, I will be able to type a clear and error free memo. I am so glad that we covered this formatting option this it will help me in so many ways whether its dealing with school, work, or something from home. Being that this is my first time using this tool I am going to continue

Week 3, the lecture on Managing Change describes organizational changes that occur when a company makes a shift from its current state to some preferred future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to decrease employee resistance and cost to the organization while concurrently expanding the effectiveness of the change effort. Today's business environment requires companies to undergo changes almost constantly if they are to remain competitive. Students of organizational change identify areas of change in order to analyze them. A manager trying to implement a change, no matter how small, should expect to encounter some resistance from within the organization.

The significance of Lewin’s change theory lay not in the formality of the theory itself but rather on his ability to conceptualize real situations and as a result come up with models that reflect ideal situations. Kurt Lewin cut a niche for himself as one of the pioneers of the applied, organizational and social psychology. Born Kurt Zadek Lewin in September 9 1890, he is acknowledged as the founder of social psychology and among the first people to study organizational development and group dynamics. He lays claim to the term action research which he coined in 1944 to try and explain the effect of social action and the factors that lead to the same. A spiral circle

The purpose of this paper is to discuss organizational change and the management of that change. I will talk about the different drivers of change, the factors a leader needs to weigh to implement change effectively, the various resistances a leader may encounter while trying to implement change, and how various leadership styles will effect the realization of change. I will also discuss the knowledge I have gained through the completion of this assignment and how I think it might affect the way I manage change in my workplace.

After reviewing and researching the literature with respect to organizational changes, I have come to the conclusion that organizations have always changed. When everything in the world is changing, organization cannot remain islands. They must change to face new challenges. Bolman and Deal (2008) claim organizations have changed about as much as in past few decades as in the preceding century. Bolman and Deal (2008) claim means that the change organizations have experienced in the last decade are almost similar to those they experience in at the end of the twentieth century.

According to Burnes, Kurt Lewin’s theory of change management has stayed relevant for over forty plus years, however as of recently, lewin’s approach was met with major scrutiny with critics often pointing out that change management theory applies to to work in situations where the work environment or project is small in nature and applies heavily on the fact that the organisation is stable and ignored instrumental politics in the business and furthermore was criticized for focusing too heaviliy on management driven tactics (Burnes, 2004). Burnes has specifically stated that the intention of the article is to reevaluate and to test the claims against the greater benefits that has been gained. It is very evident from the article that Burnes specifically talks about the social challenges that Lewin has faced and how that has in turn driven Lewin to create the Planned Approach to change and the elements of the change, which are Field Theory, Group Dynamics, Action Research and finally, the

Organizational change is usually triggered by relevant environment shift, either internal or external, that sensed by companies and leads to intentionally generated response (French, Bell & Zawacki, 2006). This paper will discuss several organization development models..

The understanding I now have of Organization Development came at a point in which I was personally experiencing it myself. As someone who has undergone a reduction in work force, this course helped me better understand why transitions happen in a company that is going through an economical or global change. As someone who has worked for over 30 years, I experienced this for the first time ever in my life. I did not quite know the gest of what it all meant because I did not have an understanding regarding

For any business in the rapidly evolving world of business, planning and implementing successful organizational change is indispensable. Essentially, organizational change refers to a process whereby an organization strives to optimize performance in order to achieve its ideal state characterized by high performance and profitability (Côté & Mayhew, 2014). Any business would be more likely to lose its competitive edge, as well as fail to meet the demands of its loyal consumers if it doesn’t plan and implement change. Weiss (2012) emphasizes that all organizations ought to embrace change, and it’s imperative to note that successful organizational change doesn’t involve simple process of adjustments; instead it requires appropriate change management capabilities.

Organization development grew out of the human relations traditions of the 1940s and 1950s, and it has had enormous influence on management practices and thinking about how organizational effectiveness can be achieved. Critical manpower and resource shortages faced by all organizations, public and private, during World War II and in the immediate post-war years stimulated a search by social scientist and managers, separately and in cooperation with one another, for effective means to maximize the utilization of existing individual and organizational resources. (Ritcher, I 2007). Organization Development was by tradition about planned change efforts, instituted to enhance organization effectiveness within the context of the traditional, hierarchical, management-as-experts, top-down era. The legacy of leaders and organizations developed in this context remain. Organizational Development is about how organizations and people function and how to get them to function better. Organization transformation signals the need to transform mindsets, engage people and make the deep shift to the ongoing mutual learning environment needed for the long-lasting change characteristic of our world today.

On further analysis, I am going to apply Lewin’s behavioural theory of leadership to my experience of organisational change management. For example during an internship in UAB Transimeksa I worked in a transport department. Most of the work was done using computers. Whilst working there, the company had some major changes in their IT systems. Employees were warned about upcoming organisational changes still it was difficult to get used to new IT systems. Transport department was fully under the control of a general manager which I believe was more of a leader. Similarly, to Kotter’s (1990) thoughts on characteristics of a leader, our general manager was always seeking to align his subordinates to his vision. Furthermore, a general manager always tended to “involve individuals in decision-making and goal setting” (Lewin and Lippitt, 1938; Lewin et al. 1939) which made his style of leadership democratic. In the manner of researchers, democratic leadership is not only the most effective style but also “usually associated with greater levels of subordinate satisfaction” (Dawson and Andriopoulos, 2014). In contrast, I believe that democratic style of leadership in the

Koontz and Weihrich (1990) Organizational development as well as management coincide with one another. Organizational development seeks to offer a systematic process of identifying and solving problems as they occur over time. However, the greatest tasks of organizational developments are determining what techniques to use to make sure the organization continues to improve while fueling the growth of the organization (Koontz & Weihrich, 1990).