An Unplanned Change
Page 1
An Unplanned change
Cari Spier
HCS/587
November 28, 2011
Barbara P. Carter
Page 2
An Unplanned Change
Change is making something different from the way it was. It can be planned or unplanned. Unplanned change can bring about resistance. In the Tales of Woe at Concord Bookshop (Mehegan, 2003), resistance was met at full force. The owners of the bookshop made an unplanned change to restructure the management team due to a financial slide. Instead of having three tenured managers they hired one general manager from the outside. The current staff of the bookshop would remain, no jobs would be lost, and however the three managers would be demoted to staff level. This created resistance among the staff resulting in many choosing to resign. Resistance to change may arise from two sources: organizational barriers and individual barriers (Spector, 2010). Some individual barriers that I see occurring in the Concord Bookshop incident are fear of the unknown; managers failing to furnish realistic information in a timely fashion can add to an employee’s uncertainty (Spector, 2010). A second barrier would include reduction in personal need fulfillment; lacking an understanding of management’s intentions often leads to a disruption of employee’s expectations (Spector, 2010). This resulted in some Concord Bookshop staff to resign. The owners made no attempt to discuss their financial situation or plan to change management to the staff.
With a planned change, the process should be a smooth transition to an achievable goal. Unplanned change, on the other hand, leads to unplanned outcomes and the inability to achieve goals. If organizations would practice by the three steps in Lewin’s change theory, a planned change could bring about a positive result. The three steps are the unfreezing phase, the moving phase and the refreezing phase (Spector, 2010). The unfreezing phase is when you find a problem that needs to be solved. Then you try to determine if
An Unplanned change
Cari Spier
HCS/587
November 28, 2011
Barbara P. Carter
Page 2
An Unplanned Change
Change is making something different from the way it was. It can be planned or unplanned. Unplanned change can bring about resistance. In the Tales of Woe at Concord Bookshop (Mehegan, 2003), resistance was met at full force. The owners of the bookshop made an unplanned change to restructure the management team due to a financial slide. Instead of having three tenured managers they hired one general manager from the outside. The current staff of the bookshop would remain, no jobs would be lost, and however the three managers would be demoted to staff level. This created resistance among the staff resulting in many choosing to resign. Resistance to change may arise from two sources: organizational barriers and individual barriers (Spector, 2010). Some individual barriers that I see occurring in the Concord Bookshop incident are fear of the unknown; managers failing to furnish realistic information in a timely fashion can add to an employee’s uncertainty (Spector, 2010). A second barrier would include reduction in personal need fulfillment; lacking an understanding of management’s intentions often leads to a disruption of employee’s expectations (Spector, 2010). This resulted in some Concord Bookshop staff to resign. The owners made no attempt to discuss their financial situation or plan to change management to the staff.
With a planned change, the process should be a smooth transition to an achievable goal. Unplanned change, on the other hand, leads to unplanned outcomes and the inability to achieve goals. If organizations would practice by the three steps in Lewin’s change theory, a planned change could bring about a positive result. The three steps are the unfreezing phase, the moving phase and the refreezing phase (Spector, 2010). The unfreezing phase is when you find a problem that needs to be solved. Then you try to determine if
References: Spector, B (2010). Implementing organizational change: Theory into practice (2nd ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Mehegan, D (2003). “Tales of Woe at Concord Bookshop”. December 23, 2003 p E1. Boston Globe