Organizational Behaviour, emerging knowledge and practice for the real world, by S. McShane, M. Von Glinow (fifth edition) – Summary chapter 15

Lewin’s force field analysis model describes the forces that drive and restrain proposed organizational change. Driving forces are forces that lead to organizational change. Restraining forces are forces that maintain the status quo. Stability occurs when both forces are equal. Unfreezing occurs when there is disequilibrium between the driving and the restraining forces, leading to effective change. Refreezing occurs when systems and structures are introduced that reinforce and maintain the desired behaviours. This model states that effective change occurs by unfreezing the current situation, moving to the desired position and then refreezing the situation.

Subtle resistance to change is more common than overt resistance to change. Some people experience change as relational conflict, although experiencing it as a task conflict would be more productive. There are several reasons why employees resist change:

1. Negative valence of change
   Employees resist change when they believe the new situations will have more negative than positive outcomes.
2. Fear of the unknown
   Change has a degree of uncertainty and employees tend to assume they are worse off when they are unsure about the outcomes of the change.
3. Not-invented here syndrome
   This is resisting change when it comes from another place (e.g: department) than where the change is implemented.
4. Breaking routine
   People tend to resist change that requires them to break habits.
5. Incongruent team dynamics
   If there are incongruent norms in a team, change may be resisted.
6. Incongruent organizational systems
   If organizational systems are incongruent, change may be resisted.

Unfreezing occurs when the driving forces are stronger than the restraining forces. Increasing the driving forces can be done by using threats, but this is ineffective. Weakening the restraining forces doesn’t lead to motivation to change.

Developing an urgency to change can help produce change in the organization and can be done by informing and reminding employees about competitors and other forms of external turbulence. A successful company is often less vigilant about threats. Creating an urgency to change when the organization is ahead of the competition requires a lot of persuasive influence that helps employees visualize future competitive threats and environmental threats.

There are six main strategies for reducing the restraining forces:

1. Communication
   Continuously communication the need for change can reduce the restraining forces, but it is time-consuming and potentially costly. It decreases uncertainty about the future and creates an urgency to change.
2. Learning
   This helps employees perform better after the change as it also promotes their confidence in their ability to change.
3. Employee involvement
   The higher employee involvement, the more likely that change will be accepted and not resisted.
4. Stress management
   Reducing stressors can reduce resistance to change, as change is stressful.
5. Negotiation
   This can be used to exchange compliance to change for other benefits and thus reduce resistance to change.
6. Coercion
   This includes a range of assertive influence behaviours. It includes threatening and replacing staff that resists. Firing people that resist change leads to reduced resistance to change.

Refreezing can occur by changing the physical structure and situational conditions.

Effective change requires a strategic vision. This can be done by using transformational leadership. The guiding coalition is a group of people with a similar degree of commitment to the change. Members of the guiding coalition should be respected by peers (influence leaders). It is a formally structured group, whereas change also occurs through social networks. The viral change process adopts principles found in word-to-word marketing and viral marketing in order to advocate change. Pilot projects are used in order to test the effectiveness of the change as well as the strategies to gain employee support for the change without company-wide risks.

In order to diffuse the pilot project’s change to other parts of the company the pilot project must be successful (motivation), employees must have the ability to change and employees must have clear role perceptions.

There are four approaches to organizational change. The action research approach is a problem-focused change process that combines action orientation and research orientation. There are four main phases of action research:

1. Form client-consultant relationship
   This approach assumes that the change agent originates outside the system, so the process begins by forming the client-consultant relationship. Consultants determine the client’s readiness for change.
2. Diagnose the need for change
   This is systematic analysis of the situation and tests whether change is necessary.
3. Introduce intervention
   This is introducing an action to correct the problem.
4. Evaluate and stabilize change
   This is evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention and stabilize the change if the change had the desired effects.

Incremental change is fine-tuning the system and taking small steps toward a desired state. Rapid change is overhauling the system decisively and quickly. The appreciative inquiry is an organizational change strategy that directs the group’s attention away from its own problems and focusses participants on the group’s potential and positive elements. It examines successful events, organizations and work units. There are five appreciative inquiry principles: positive principle, constructionist principle, simultaneity principle, poetic principle and the anticipatory principle. The constructionist principle states that conversations don’t describe reality, they shape reality; talking about positive things leads to positive things. The simultaneity principle states that inquiry and change are simultaneous. The poetic principle states that organizations are open books, so we have choices in how they may be perceived, framed and described. The anticipatory principle states that people are motivated and guided by the vision they see and believe in for the future. This model makes use of the Four-D process: discovery, dreaming, designing and delivering. The effectiveness of this approach depends on the participants’ ability to let go of the problem-oriented approach.

The large group intervention approach states that change will be more successful when larger groups are included in the process than when only smaller groups are included in the process. Future search conferences are large group interventions in which participants identify emerging trends and develop strategies for the organization to realize potential under those future conditions. This approach minimizes resistance to change.

The parallel learning structures approach is a highly participative social structure developed alongside the formal hierarchy and composed of people across organizational levels who apply the action research model to produce meaningful organizational change.  It uses the action research model and consists of participants that are free from the constraints of the larger organization.