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Organizational Change and
Innovation
Organizational Culture
Understanding Organizational Culture
The values that make up an organization's culture are often taken for granted by employees. Myths, stories, and symbolic elements can be part of an organization's culture and effectively transmit its complex concepts. The statement "the customer is always right" is an example of a cultural value. Innovation and organizational culture are generally related, as strong organizational cultures can foster innovation. Organizational cultures can vary across divisions and even across managers within the same organization. A company intranet that is rarely updated can still have a strong effect on company culture if its content is good. Intranets that contain features like "like it or not?" feedback tools and allow employee contributions reflect a participative culture that values employee input. Entrepreneurial activities are typically not as welcome in large organizations as they are in smaller ones. Innovation often involves targeted aspects of the organization rather than being pervasive throughout.
Socialization and Culture Change
Socialization programs can change new employees' values, but employees are not solely socialized through observation. Not all firms have cultural values that are consistent with high performance. Changing organizational culture is difficult, but major companies have managed to do so. Managers interested in changing cultures should attempt to substitute stories and myths that support old cultural values with new ones. A major obstacle to changing an organization's culture is that upper- level managers may sometimes inadvertently revert to old patterns of behavior. Most managers are in a position to influence, if not create, an organizational culture. Organizational culture is not independent of organizational performance. If a company's top managers engage in illegal or unethical behavior, these become the enacted values and norms of the firm.
Assumptions are highly resistant to change, and strong cultures are not always better than weak cultures.
Conflict Cultures
A dominating conflict culture is active and disagreeable, with open confrontations and heated arguments accepted. An avoidant conflict culture strives to preserve order and control or maintain harmony and interpersonal relationships, tending to avoid addressing conflict. A collaborative conflict culture involves employees actively managing and resolving conflicts cooperatively to find the best solution for all involved parties.
Diversity and Inclusion
Inclusion reflects the extent to which majority members value efforts to increase minority representation and whether the qualifications and abilities of minority members are questioned.
Technology and Culture
Intranets can have a strong effect on company culture, with narrow- scope intranets reinforcing a culture of secrecy and information hoarding.
Innovation
Innovation is the process of creating and doing new things that are introduced into the marketplace as products, processes, or services. Radical innovations are major breakthroughs that change or create whole industries, while incremental innovations create new functionality by assembling existing parts in new ways.
Strength and Positivity of Culture
The strength or weakness of a culture reflects the degree to which the culture resists change. The positivity or negativity of a culture reflects the degree to which the culture is consistent with employee behaviors and values.
Organizational Culture
Levels of Organizational Culture
Organizational culture consists of four main levels:
Artifacts : These are the visible elements of culture, such as the physical environment, dress code, stories, symbols, and rituals. Artifacts represent the most superficial level of culture.
Types of Conflict Cultures
Dominating Conflict Culture : This culture is characterized by active, disagreeable conflict management norms, where individuals seek to impose their will on others.
Collaborative Conflict Culture : This culture is characterized by active, agreeable conflict management norms, where individuals work together to find mutually satisfactory solutions.
Avoidant Conflict Culture : This culture is characterized by passive, agreeable conflict management norms, where individuals try to avoid or suppress conflicts.
Passive-Aggressive Conflict Culture : This culture is characterized by passive, disagreeable conflict management norms, where individuals express their disagreements indirectly or through subtle, undermining behaviors.
Managing Cultural Symbols
Managers can use cultural symbols to shape and reinforce the desired organizational culture. Examples of cultural symbols include:
Physical environment (e.g., office layout, dress code) Rituals and ceremonies (e.g., awards, celebrations) Stories and legends about the organization or its leaders Slogans, logos, and other visual representations of the organization's identity
By carefully managing these cultural symbols, managers can influence employees' perceptions, behaviors, and beliefs, ultimately shaping the organization's culture.
Organizational Change and Development
Constant Change and Responsiveness
Employees must be prepared for constant change in the workplace. As the rate of technological change increases, it is important to respond more quickly to change in order to make proper decisions. (False) Advances in information processing and communication have paralleled each other.
Lewin's Model of Planned Change
Lewin's model of planned change involves three steps: unfreezing, change, and refreezing. Unfreezing is the process by which people become aware of the need for change.
Refreezing is the process of generating actual change in the organization. (False)
Continuous Change Process Model
The final step in the continuous change process model involves recognizing and defining a problem. (False)
Training and Development
A major problem with training programs is transferring employee learning to the workplace. Management development programs rely heavily on participative methods such as case studies and role playing to instruct employees. Total quality management efforts usually focus on teams, and the principles of team building must be applied to make them work. The survey feedback process includes five distinct stages that begin with problem identification. (False) Process analysis involves developing plans for improvement.
Resistance to Change
A change in the organization may threaten the specialized expertise that individuals and groups have developed over the years. Groups that are satisfied with current resource allocation methods may resist any change they believe will threaten future allocations. Because of perceptual limitations such as lack of attention or selective attention, a person may not recognize a change in a rule or procedure and thus may not alter his or her behavior. Many efforts to create change in organizations adopt too narrow a focus. Problems related to resistance, control, and power can be overcome by broad participation in planning the change. Open communication is an important factor in managing resistance to change and overcoming information and control problems during transitions. Managers should take a holistic view of the organization and the change project in order to successfully manage change and development. Employees who contribute to the change in any way need to be rewarded.
Generational Differences
Generation X includes people who were born between 1960 and 1980. Baby Boomers were born between the years 1945 and 1960. The group of people born between 1980 and 2000 are called Millennials.
Organization development is designed to improve organizations and is based on knowledge of the behavioral sciences. It attempts to plan organization changes and includes both spontaneous initiatives and planned changes.
Quality of Work Life
The degree to which members of a work organization are able to satisfy important personal needs through their experiences in the organization is called quality of work life.
Most quality-of-work-life efforts espouse the goal of humanizing the workplace.
The expected benefits from quality-of-work-life programs include positive attitudes, increased effectiveness of the organization, increased goal accomplishment, and increased productivity. Increased centralization of leadership is not an expected benefit.
Technological Change
Technological change focuses on the way inputs are transformed into outputs.
Task Redesign
The second step in the integrative framework for the implementation of task redesign is diagnosis of the work system and context.
When introducing job changes, managers must consider the total work environment within which the job exists, whether the job changes require adjustments in other organizational components, whether workers have or can easily obtain the newly required skills, and who will design the changes. They do not need to consider how to limit what employees know about the changes.
People-Oriented Change Techniques
Popular types of people-oriented change techniques include training, management development, team building, and survey feedback.
A major problem of training programs is transferring employee training to the workplace.
With respect to management development, the value of management development is not a proven fact.
The use of data collected through the survey feedback process should not be limited to only top management review. The results are returned to all levels of the organization and used for solving problems and identifying problems. The results are also aggregated by group or department.
Resistance to Change
All of the following statements about change are true, except that resistance to change should be eliminated.
Management should consider resistance to change as a signal to carefully examine the advantages and disadvantages of a change.
Organizational sources of resistance to change identified by Katz and Kahn include threatened expertise, group inertia, and overdetermination (also called structural inertia). Centralization is not an organizational source of resistance to change.
Employees may resist change due to social factors, such as disruption of good working relationships.
Keys to Successful Change Management
When managers consider the impact of a change on the culture, the dominant coalition, and the people, tasks, and structure of the organization, they are more likely to be successful because they have taken a holistic view.
Keys to successful change management include rewarding those who contribute to change, securing top management support, encouraging participation by those affected by the change, and fostering open communication. Maximizing employee job satisfaction is not a key to successful change management.
Open communication helps reduce the spread of rumors regarding a change.
Securing top management support helps avoid problems of power and control, keeps key managers informed, and gets the dominant coalition on the side of change. It does not help reduce fear of obsolescence.
Generational Differences
The generation characterized by a distinct and separate life stage in between adolescence and adulthood, in which young people jump from job to job and relationship to relationship, is the Millennials.
Millennials are generally characterized by celebrating diversity, being group oriented, being optimistic, and understanding technology quickly. They do not tend to want everyone to be treated the same.
On the job, Millennials generally prefer positive reinforcement, clear job assignments, flexibility in how to do their jobs, and to be treated as individuals. They do tend to prefer to work in teams.
Individual Sources of Resistance to Change
Habit : Occurs when it is easier to do a job the same way every day, and learning an entirely new set of steps makes the job more difficult.
Fear of the Unknown : Occurs when people are simply scared of anything unfamiliar.
Social Factors : Occurs when people resist change for fear of what others will think.
Lack of Awareness : Occurs when people do not alter their behavior because they don't realize that a change has been made.
Economic Factors : Occurs when people fear that change will make their jobs obsolete or reduce their opportunities for future pay increases.
Lewin's Process Model of Planned Change
Unfreezing : The process of preparing the organization for change by reducing the forces maintaining the status quo.
Change : The process of implementing the desired change.
Refreezing : The process of stabilizing the change by reinforcing the new behavior through various mechanisms.
Survey Feedback Process
The survey feedback process involves the following steps: 1. Collecting data through surveys 2. Analyzing the data 3. Providing feedback to the organization 4. Developing action plans based on the feedback 5. Implementing the action plans 6. Evaluating the effectiveness of the changes
Organizational Development (OD)
Organizational development is a system-wide organization development involving a major restructuring of the organization or institution of new programs. It is the process of planned change and improvement of the organization through the application of scientific knowledge.
Quality of Work Life (QWL) Programs
Quality of work life programs differ, but most espouse a goal of humanizing the workplace. These programs focus on improving the work environment and employee satisfaction.
Continuous Change Process Model
The continuous change process model emphasizes that change is constantly occurring at various stages within the organization, rather than a one-time event.
Change Agent
A change agent is a person who helps manage a change effort.
Organizational Control
Organizational control is the process of ensuring that the organization's activities and outputs conform to its plans and objectives.
Organizational Learning
A learning organization is one that facilitates the learning of all its members and continuously transforms itself.
