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Week 9
Managing Changes

Robbins, Bergman, Stagg, Coulter: Management 4e © 2006 Pearson Education Australia

LEARNING OUTLINE

● What is change?
• Define organisational change.
• Explain why handling change is an integral part of
every manager’s job.
● Forces for change
• Identify the external and internal forces for change.
• Contrast using internal and external change agents.
● Two views of the change process
• Contrast the calm waters and white-water rapids
metaphors of change.
• Explain Lewin’s three-step model of the change
process.
• Discuss the environment that managers face today. 2
L E A R N I N G O U T L I N E (cont’d)

● Managing change
• Describe the options managers have for changing an
organisation’s structure.
• Discuss how changing technology influences
organisational change.
• Identify the different organisational development
techniques.
● Managing resistance to change
• Explain why people are likely to resist change.
• Describe how the force – field analysis can be used
to identify options to deal with resistance.
• Identify the six techniques for dealing with resistance
to change. 3
 L E A R N I N G O U T L I N E (cont’d)

● Contemporary issues in managing change

• Explain why changing organisational culture is so difficult and
how managers can do it.
• Identify what is involved in managing a downsized workplace.

• Describe employee stress and how managers can help

employees deal with stress.
• Discuss what it takes to make change happen successfully.
● Stimulating innovation

• Explain why innovation is not just creativity.

• Explain the systems view of innovation.

• Describe the structural, cultural, and human resource variables

that are necessary for innovation.
• Explain what idea champions are and why they’re important to
innovation.

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What is change?

● Organisational change
❍ Any alterations in the people, structure, or
technology of an organisation
● Characteristics of change
❍ Is constant yet varies in degree and direction

❍ Produces uncertainty yet is not completely

unpredictable
❍ Creates both threats and opportunities

● Managing change is an integral part

of every manager’s job.

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Forces for change

● External forces ● Internal forces

❍ Marketplace ❍ Changes in
organisational
❍ Governmental
strategy
laws and
regulations ❍ Workforce
changes
❍ Technology
❍ New equipment
❍ Labor market
❍ Employee
❍ Economic
attitudes
changes

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The manager as change agent

● Change agents
❍ People who act as catalysts and assume the
responsibility for changing process are called
change agents.
● Types of change agents
❍ Managers: internal entrepreneurs

❍ Non-managers: change specialists

❍ Outside consultants: change implementation

experts

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Change process viewpoints

● The calm waters metaphor

❍ Lewin’s description of the change process as a
break in the organisation’s equilibrium state
■ Unfreezing the status quo
■ Changing to a new state
■ Refreezing to make the change permanent

● White-water rapids metaphor

❍ The lack of environmental stability and predictability
requires that managers and organisations
continually adapt (manage change actively) to
survive.

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The change process

Figure 12.1 9
Managing change
Three categories of change

Figure 12.2 10
Organisational development techniques

Figure 12.3 11
Managing resistance to change

● Why do people resist change?

❍ The ambiguity and uncertainty that change
introduces
❍ The comfort of old habits
❍ A concern over personal loss of status, money,
authority, friendships, and personal convenience
❍ The perception that change is incompatible with the
goals and interest of the organisation

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Using force field analysis

● Kurt Lewin proposed that two sets of forces operate in

any system.
● Driving forces (encourage change)
● Resisting forces (discourage change)
● Equilibrium is when the forces are balanced against
each other.
● To make change managers may need to maximise
driving forces and minimise resisting forces.

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Techniques to reduce resistance to change

● Education and communication

● Participation
● Facilitation and support
● Negotiation
● Manipulation and co-optation
● Coercion

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Contemporary issues in managing change

● Changing organisational cultures

❍ Cultures are naturally resistant to change.

❍ Conditions that facilitate cultural change:

■ The occurrence of a dramatic crisis
■ Leadership changing hands
■ A young, flexible, and small organisation
■ A weak organisational culture

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How can cultural change be accomplished?

● Conduct a cultural analysis to identify cultural elements needing

change.
● Make it clear to employees that the organisation’s survival is
legitimately threatened if change is not forthcoming.
● Appoint new leadership with a new vision.
● Initiate a reorganisation.
● Introduce new stories and rituals to convey the new vision.
● Change the selection and socialization processes and the
evaluation and reward systems to support the new values.

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Managing the downsized workplace

Managing the
downsized workplace

Open and honest communication

Assistance to ‘downsized’ workers

Help for survivors of downsizing

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Handling employee stress

● What is stress?
❍ Stress
■ The physical and psychological tension an individual feels
when confronted with extraordinary demands, constraints,
or opportunities and their associated importance and
uncertainties.
■ Functional Stress
❏ Stress that has a positive effect on performance.

❍ How potential stress becomes actual stress

■ When there is uncertainty over the outcome.
■ When the outcome is important.

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Causes of stress

Figure 12.7 19
Symptoms of stress

Figure 12.8 20
Issues in managing change

● Reducing stress
❍ Engage in proper employee selection

❍ Match employees’ KSA’s to jobs’ TDR’s

❍ Use realistic job interviews for reduce ambiguity

❍ Improve organisational communications

❍ Develop a performance planning program

❍ Use job redesign

❍ Provide a counseling program

❍ Offer time planning management assistance

❍ Sponsor wellness programs

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Issues in managing change

● Making change happen successfully

❍ Embrace change—become a change-capable
organisation.
❍ Create a simple, compelling message explaining
why change is necessary.
❍ Communicate constantly and honestly.

❍ Foster as much employee participation as possible

—get all employees committed.
❍ Encourage employees to be flexible.

❍ Remove those who resist and cannot be changed.

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Characteristics of change-capable organisations

● Link the present and the ● Ensure diverse teams.

future.
● Encourage mavericks.
● Make learning a way of
life.
● Shelter breakthroughs

● Actively support and

● Integrate technology.
encourage day-to-day ● Build and deepen trust.
improvements and
changes.

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Stimulating innovation

● Creativity
❍ The ability to combine ideas in a unique way or to
make an unusual association.
● Innovation
❍ Turning the outcomes of the creative process into
useful products, services, or work methods

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 Systems view of innovation

Source: Adapted from R.W. Woodman, J.E. Sawyer, and R.W. Griffin, “Toward a Theory
of organisational Creativity,” Academy of Management Review, April 1993, p. 309.

Figure 12.9 25
Innovation variables

Figure 26
Stimulating and nurturing innovation

● Structural variables
❍ Adopt an organic structure

❍ Make available plentiful resources

❍ Engage in frequent inter-unit communication

❍ Minimize extreme time pressures on creative

activities
❍ Provide explicit support for creativity

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Stimulating and nurturing innovation (cont’d)

● Cultural variables
❍ Accept ambiguity

❍ Tolerate the impractical

❍ Have low external controls

❍ Tolerate risk taking

❍ Tolerate conflict

❍ Focus on ends rather than means

❍ Develop an open-system focus

❍ Provide positive feedback

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Stimulating and nurturing innovation (cont’d)

● Human resource variables

❍ Actively promote training and development to keep
employees’ skills current.
❍ Offer high job security to encourage risk taking.

❍ Encourage individual to be “champions” of change.

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