Chapter 7 Smith & Graetz Flashcards
What are the most fundamental building blocks of an organization?
Its people
What is the key motif throughout the psychological philosophy?
Minimizing the trauma and discomfort associated with organizational change.
What does the psychological philosophy encourage
Employee involvement and empowerment in organizational decisions
What are the key issues for employees?
- Loss of turf
- attachement
- meaning
- opportunity
- identity
- control
What drives resistance to change?
Fear of loss drives resistance to change.
How do Rational and systems philosophies view resistance?
as any structural, cultural, systemic, or strategic barrier that impedes either introduced or externally pressured change.
How do psychological approaches view change?
Something that naturally draws a complex response.
The acceptance or rejection of change may be conceptualized as a continuum that stretches from commitment to resistance.
Commitment and resistance do not occur seperately.
What unhelpful responses does change stimulate according to advocates of the psychological philosophy?
- Uncertainty,
- Lack of tolerance,
- Differences of opinion concerning the need for change,
- Threatened self-importance.
What are common psychological solutions for overcoming negative but intuitive responses to change?
Empowerment,
participation,
education,
facilitation,
negotiation.
Most of the time resistance proves counterproductive.
Which types of resistance do people show?
- Actively: where change is aggressively challenged
- Passively: where change is indirectly undermined
Aphaty exists somewhere between resistance and acceptance.
Empowerment according to change psychologists aims at?
Aims to foster community, contribute to society, and help organisational members feel better about their work.
Empowerment strives less to give power away and more assumes that employees already have it.
Why is empowerment troublesome to implement?
Employees may not want to be empowered if it leads to:
- more work,
- responsibility,
- risk
Some employees do not want the ‘power’ to make decisions if it means accepting accountabillity for the outcomes.
Kirkman, Jones and Shapiro found in their research that employee resistance accompanies:
- perceived unfairness,
- increases in workloads,
- unclear role definition,
- uncertain managerial support,
- absence of team support.
Another common approach is coaching and mentoring. What is coaching?
What is mentoring?
Coaching in a business refers to training, guidance and feedback about specific tasks and performance.
The coach in an organizational change context provides a special form of advice about personal improvement and behaviour.
Mentor can be from within or outside the workplace with the role to provide guidance through emotional support and tutoring.
How can emotional intelligence be acquired
Through the development of four broad competencies and capabilities:
- self-awareness
- self-management
- social awareness
- relationship management
What can organizational spirituality generate?
- honesty
- trust
- creativity
- morale
- satisfaction
- commitment
- financial performance
What does organizational spirituality entail?
It inextricably connects with an individual’s search for meaning about their life, their work, and their organization.
Spans a ‘bridge’ of values and principles between organizations and employees.
Spiritual growth results, marked by maturity and enhancement of both inner virtues and their outward expression
What does OD explores?
It explores the human side of change responses.
To what in a change context does OD converges?
OD converges on:
the values of employees,
intentions of employees,
perceptions of employees,
whose personal experiences of change need to be positively managed.
By its humanistic background, what does OD emphasizes?
The value of employees as a tremendous resource for learning, development, and productivity.
However, in order to reach their potential, employees must be placed in working environments that encourage self-determination, creativity and the opportunity for flexible responses to change.
What is the difference between psychologically-fulfilled employees and those who remain unfulfilled?
Fulfilled employees create and adapt better to change than the unfulfilled employees
What kind of environment does OD try to create?
It tries to create working environments that meet employees’ needs, support inter-personal relationships, promote satisfaction and fulfilment, and bolster commitment.
Establish an alignment between all organizational functions.
What do OD agents do and what not?
They act as facilitators to help organizational members solve their own problems. Action research becomes the change intervention.
They do not dictate or direct change.
Criticism on OD
- does not offer generic prescriptions for change.
- Fails to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
- Most tools and techniques makes implementation confusing.
