Organizational Change and Development Flashcards
Change in Organizations
Change in Organizations
- External forces: new technologies, changes in employee demographics, and competition.
- Internal Forces: new management, internal conflicts, and employee dissatisfaction.
- Planned Change: management or employees deliberately choose new policies.
- Unplanned change: spontaneous and may occur in response to unexpected material shortages, new government regulations, or natural disaster.
- Organizational development: the interventions that are used to facilitate planned change.
Lewin’s Force Field Analysis
planned change
Lewin’s force field analysis of planned change:
- organizations continually respond to forces that either promote or resist change.
- driving forces: promote change and include pressure from management and new competition.
- restraining forces: resist change and include employee hostility, apathy, and malfunctioning equipment.
- balance between driving and restraining forces: status quo OR if driving forces become stronger than restraining forces then change is likely.
Lewin’s change in 3 stages
Lewin’s change in 3 Stages
- Unfreezing: need for change is recognized and steps taken to make members of the organization receptive to change.
- Changing: moving the organization in the new direction and includes helping employees acquire new behavior, values, and attitudes.
- Refreezing: supporting the changes that have been made to help stabilize the organization at a new state of equilibrium.
Nadler’s Systems Model
Nadler’s Systems Model
effective organizational change requires addressing four factors:
- informal organizational elements (communication patterns, leadership)
- formal organizational elements (formal structures/processes).
- individual characteristics of employees and managers
- characteristics of employee and managerial tasks
change in any one factor will cause change in the other factors.
Organizational Develpment (OD) Interventions
Orgainizational Development Interventions:
rely on behavioral science principles and techniques to facilitate planned change.
Common OD approaches:
- Quality of work life programs (QWL)
- quality circles (QC)
- self-managed work teams (SMWT)
- process consulation
- survey feedback
- total quality management (TQM).
- Quality of Work Life Programs
QWL: Quality of Work Life
designed to humanize work and the work environment.
- emphsis on employee empowerment
- process of enabling workers to set their own goals, make decisions, and solve problems w/in their sphere of responsibility and authority.
- focus on lower-level employees and emphasize worker participation and involvement in all stages of decision making.
- Quality Circles (QC)
Quality Circles
Japan popular, introduced by Deming, and then in America as part of QWL interventions.
- small voluntary group of employees who work together to discuss job-related problems and solutions.
- representatives of QC then present their solutions to management.
- positive impact on employee attitudes but effects on job performance are equivocal.
- Self-Managed Work Teams
Self-Managed Work Teams
SMWTs are autonomous work groups whose members are trained in the skills needed to effectively perform the group task.
- like QCs they are a group that work as a unit.
- But not just report to management, they actually make hiring, budget, and other decisions that were previously made by managers.
- teamthink: encouraging divergent views, discussion of doubts, and recognizing the ethical consequences of decisions. (opposite of groupthink).
- Process Consultation
PROCESS CONSULTATION (communication)
activities designed to assist members help themselves by improving their ability to perceive, understand, and alter the processes that are undermining their interactions with one another.
- process consultant: observes and helps employees help identify ways to improve their future interactions.
- focus on behaviors rather than attitudes and focus on behaviors related to communication, leadership, decision-making, conflict resolution, and members’ roles in groups.
- Survey Feedback
Survey Feedback
focus on employee attitudes, opinions, and perceptions and has three steps.
- Data Collection: interviews all levels of workers to ID issues and develops a survey to a large sample. summarizes data from survey
- Data Feedback: results of survey are discussed in small group meetings led by a group member. Start at top of management and spreads down. Try to pinpoint specific problems.
- Action Planning: specific action plans for overcoming identified problems and making improvements are developed.
employees must be assured that their responses are kept confidential, and that the management must be willing to act on the survey results.
- Total Quality Management TQM
Total Quality Management TQM
focus on customer satisfaction, employee involvement and empowerment, continuous improvement (Kaizen) in the quality of goods and services, and ongoing measurement of performance in order to ID problems.
- teamwork and decision-making at all levels of the organization.
- top-level commitment to quality, focus on processes not tasks, setting stringent work standards (zero defects).
- change from traditional vertical managerial hierarchy to flatten horizontal structure that has parallel work teams and fewer managers.
- HOWEVER, research says it is not always successful because it’s rarely implemented effectively.
- like workers are allowed to make suggestions to management but not to actually make decisions themselves.
Basic Reason for OD
organizational development interventions
Why Organizaitonal Developement Interventions?
- the most common reason is to improve productivity.
- also to increase responsivity to customers, improve the companys competitive position, and enhance employee morale.
