Deck 14: Organizational Change

Question 1

Describe and compare action research and appreciative inquiry as formal approaches to organizational change.

Answer 1

Action research is a highly participative, open-systems approach to change management that combines an action-orientation (changing attitudes and behavior) with research orientation (testing theory). It is a data-based, problem-oriented process that diagnoses the need for change, introduces the intervention, and then evaluates and stabilizes the desired changes. Appreciative inquiry embraces the positive organizational behavior philosophy by focusing participants on the positive and possible. Along with this positive principle, this approach to change applies the constructionist, simultaneity, poetic, and anticipatory principles. The four stages of appreciative inquiry include discovery, dreaming, designing, and delivering.

Question 2

Discuss two cross-cultural and three ethical issues in organizational change.

Answer 2

One significant concern is that organizational change theories developed with a Western cultural orientation potentially conflict with cultural values in some other countries. Also, organizational change practices can raise one or more ethical concerns, including increasing management's power over employees, threatening individual privacy rights, and undermining individual self- esteem.

Question 3

Describe the elements of Lewin's force field analysis model.

Answer 3

Lewin's force field analysis model states that all systems have driving and restraining forces. Change occurs through the process of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. Unfreezing produces disequilibrium between the driving and restraining forces. Refreezing realigns the organization's systems and structures with the desired behaviors.

Question 4

Discuss the reasons why people resist organizational change and how change agents should view this resistance.

Question 5

Outline six strategies for minimizing resistance to change and debate ways to effectively create an urgency to change.

Question 6

Discuss how leadership, coalitions, social networks, and pilot projects influence organizational change.