CHAPTER 10: TYPES AND FORMS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
CHAPTER 10: TYPES AND FORMS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Organizational change is an ongoing process with important implications for organizational effectiveness. An organization and its members must be constantly on the alert for changes from within the organization and from the outside environment, and they must learn how to adjust to change quickly and effectively. Organizational change is the movement of an organization away from its present state and toward some future state to increase its effectiveness. Forces for organizational change include competitive forces; economic, political, and global forces; demographic and social forces; and ethical forces. Organizations are often reluctant to change because resistance to change at the organization, group, and individual levels has given rise to organizational inertia.
Sources of organization-level resistance to change include power and conflict, differences in functional orientation, mechanistic structure, and organizational culture. Sources of group-level resistance to change include group norms, group cohesiveness, and groupthink and escalation of commitment. Sources of individual-level resistance to change include uncertainty and insecurity, selective perception and retention, and habit. According to Lewin’s force-field theory of change, organizations are balanced between forces pushing for change and forces resistant to change. To get an organization to change, managers must find a way to increase the forces for change, reduce resistance to change, or do both simultaneously.
Types of change fall into two broad categories: evolutionary and revolutionary. The main instruments of evolutionary change are sociotechnical systems theory, total quality management, and the development of flexible workers and work teams. The main instruments of revolutionary change are reengineering, restructuring, and innovation. Often, the revolutionary types of change that result from restructuring and
CHAPTER SUMMARY
Organizational change is an ongoing process with important implications for organizational effectiveness. An organization and its members must be constantly on the alert for changes from within the organization and from the outside environment, and they must learn how to adjust to change quickly and effectively. Organizational change is the movement of an organization away from its present state and toward some future state to increase its effectiveness. Forces for organizational change include competitive forces; economic, political, and global forces; demographic and social forces; and ethical forces. Organizations are often reluctant to change because resistance to change at the organization, group, and individual levels has given rise to organizational inertia.
Sources of organization-level resistance to change include power and conflict, differences in functional orientation, mechanistic structure, and organizational culture. Sources of group-level resistance to change include group norms, group cohesiveness, and groupthink and escalation of commitment. Sources of individual-level resistance to change include uncertainty and insecurity, selective perception and retention, and habit. According to Lewin’s force-field theory of change, organizations are balanced between forces pushing for change and forces resistant to change. To get an organization to change, managers must find a way to increase the forces for change, reduce resistance to change, or do both simultaneously.
Types of change fall into two broad categories: evolutionary and revolutionary. The main instruments of evolutionary change are sociotechnical systems theory, total quality management, and the development of flexible workers and work teams. The main instruments of revolutionary change are reengineering, restructuring, and innovation. Often, the revolutionary types of change that result from restructuring and