Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Managing Change and Innovation - Coggle Diagram
Managing Change
and Innovation
How do organizations implement planned changes?
Most changes that employees experience in an organization do not happen by chance.
Managers often make a concerted effort to alter some aspect of the organization.
What happens affects organizational members.
Definition:
Efforts to assist organizational members with a planned change are referred to as
organizational development
.
Organizational development focuses on constructively changing the attitudes and values of organization members so they can more readily adapt to the organization’s changes and be more effective in achieving the goals after changes have been made. Open communications and trust are important in the process.
Popular Organizational Development techniques:
Survey feedback
Process consultation
Team building
Intergroup development
All of these techniques rely heavily on group interactions and cooperation.
How do managers manage resistance to change?
Managers should be motivated to initiate change, because they are concerned with improving the organization’s effectiveness.
However, change is not easy in an organization, because it can be disruptive and scary. Organizations and their members can build up inertia that causes them to resist any change, even if that change might be beneficial.
Why do people resist organizational change?
There are several reasons, including:
Uncertainty
Habit
Concern over personal loss
Belief that the change is not in the organization’s best interest
Uncertainty
is one reason for resistance to change.
Change replaces the known with uncertainty.
When organizational change happens, some may fear that they will be unable to cope with the change and may develop a negative attitude toward the change or behave poorly if required to change.
Habit
is another cause of resistance to change.
People are creatures of habit. Life is complex, so most people rely on programmed responses or habits to cope with the complexity.
Therefore, when confronted with change, the tendency of most people to response in accustomed ways becomes a source of resistance.
The fear of losing something
already possessed is another cause of resistance.
Change threatens the investment people already have made in the status quo.
The more people have invested in the current system, the more they resist change. These people fear losing the benefits that they value.
Another cause of resistance is a person’s belief that
the change is incompatible with the goals and interests of the organization
. Not everyone sees things the same way, thus the value one person sees in change may not be seen by another.
This type of resistance actually can be beneficial to an organization if expressed in a positive way.
When managers see resistance as dysfunctional and potentially harmful to an organization, several techniques exist to
reduce and possibly eliminate resistance to change.
They include:
Education and communication
Participation
Facilitation and support
Negotiation
Manipulation and co-optation
Coercion
Coercion
-
This technique is useful when a powerful group’s endorsement is needed.
Advantage: inexpensive and an easy way to gain support
Disadvantage: may be illegal and may undermine the change agent’s credibility
Manipulation and co-optation
-
This technique is useful when a powerful group’s endorsement is needed.
Advantage: inexpensive and easy way to gain support
Disadvantage: can backfire, causing the change agent to lose credibility
Negotiation
-
This technique is useful when resistance comes from a powerful group.
Advantage: can “buy” commitment
Disadvantage: potential high cost and opens doors for others to apply pressure too
Facilitation and support
-
This technique is useful when resisters are fearful and anxiety ridden.
Advantage: can facilitate needed adjustments
Disadvantage: expensive and no guarantee of success
Participation
-
This technique is useful when resisters have the expertise to make a contribution.
Advantage: increase involvement and acceptance
Disadvantage: time-consuming and has the potential for a poor solution
Education and communication
-
This techniques is useful when resistance is due to
misinformation
.
Advantage: clear up misunderstandings
Disadvantage: may not work when mutual trust and credibility are lacking
What reaction do employees have to organizational changes?
For many employees, change creates stress.
Stress usually is not a good thing. If an employee suffers from too much stress, his or her work might be negatively affected – leading to lower efficiency and effectiveness.
Definition: Stress
is the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures placed on them from extraordinary demands, constraints, or opportunities.
Stress is not always bad. It can be positive and cause people to achieve extraordinary results. However, stress in many cases, especially in workplaces, can have negative effects on people and organizations.
Stress is more often associated with constraints and demands.
A constraints prevent you from doing what you desire and demands refer to the loss of something desired.
Remember, that although the conditions might be right for stress to surface, it might not happen.
Two conditions
are necessary for
potential stress to become actual stress
. They are:
There must be uncertainty over the outcome,
The outcome must be important.
The symptoms of actual stress can be either behavioral, physical, and/or psychological. In most cases, more than one symptom appears when a person is under stress.
Symptoms of Stress: Behavioral
Changes in productivity
Absenteeism
Job turnover
Changes in eating habits
Increased smoking or consumption of alcohol
Rapid speech
Fidgeting
Sleep disorders
Symptoms of Stress: Physical
Changes in metabolism
Increased heart and breathing rates
Raised blood pressure
Headaches
Potential of heart attacks
Symptoms of Stress: Psychological
Job-related dissatisfaction
Tension
Anxiety
Irritability
Boredom
Procrastination