Deck 15: Organizational Change

Question 1

Unfreezing occurs by making the driving forces stronger, weakening the restraining forces, or a combination of both.

Answer 1

True
Explanation: Unfreezing occurs when the driving forces are stronger than the restraining forces.This happens by making the driving forces stronger, weakening or removing the restraining forces, or both.

Question 2

To bring about effective change, leaders typically create an urgency to change by buffering employees from the external environment.

Answer 2

False
Explanation: Creating an urgency to change typically occurs by informing employees about competitors, changing consumer trends, impending, government regulations, and other forms of turbulence in the external environment.These are the main driving forces in Lewin's model.They push people out of their comfort zones, energizing them to face the risks that change creates.In many organizations, however, leaders buffer employees from the external environment to such an extent that these driving forces are hardly felt by anyone below the top executive level.

Question 3

Fear of the unknown usually motivates employees to support organizational change.

Answer 3

False
Explanation: When employees do not know the probability of good or bad outcomes from a change, they tend to anticipate worse rather than better outcomes.

Question 4

Customer feedback provides a human element that can energize employees to change their current behavior patterns.

Question 5

The urgency for change must always be initiated from a problem-oriented perspective in order to be effective.

Question 6

Unfreezing occurs when the driving forces are weaker than the restraining forces.

Question 7

Exposing employees to external forces can strengthen the urgency for change, but leaders often need to begin the change process before problems come knocking at the company's door.

Question 8

Refreezing involves producing disequilibrium between the current state and the future state.

Question 9

When employees apply a cost-benefit analysis to a potential change, they consider only their own self-interest.

Question 10

The force field analysis model states that stability is achieved only when the driving forces for change subside and are replaced by restraining forces acting in the same direction.

Question 11

Even when present conditions are very bad, most people do not welcome an uncertain future.

Question 12

Resistance detracts from employees' sense of procedural justice.

Question 13

One reason why employees typically resist change is that they dislike predictable role patterns.

Question 14

When people support change, they typically assume that it is others who need to change.

Question 15

Team norms can contribute to resistance to change.

Question 16

Resistance is a form of voice.

Question 17

Subtle resistance is much more common than overt resistance.

Question 18

According to the force field analysis model, stability occurs when the driving forces and restraining forces are of approximately equal strength in opposite directions.

Question 19

Resistance is a form of conflict that should be viewed as relationship conflict.

Question 20

Resistance is motivational; it potentially engages people to think about change strategy and process.

Question 21

Change agents can often single handedly lead a change initiative.

Question 22

In order to bring about a change in a particular organization, employees need to break old routines and adopt new role patterns.The stress management strategy is best suited for this situation.

Question 23

Increasing the driving forces alone will not bring about change.

Question 24

Diffusion of change is more likely to succeed if some people who have worked under the new system are moved to other areas of the organization.

Question 25

Negotiation and coercion are necessary for people who will clearly gain something from the change and in cases where the speed of change is critical.

Question 26

Learning is the highest priority and first strategy required for any organizational change.

Question 27

Information systems and reward systems can both help to refreeze the desired conditions in organizational change.

Question 28

The group of people with a commitment to a change is called a dominant coalition.

Question 29

One problem with negotiation is that it tends to produce compliance rather than commitment to the change process.

Question 30

Firing people is the least desirable way to change organizations.

Question 31

The best way to manage resistance to change among those who will clearly lose out from the change is to introduce coercion practices.

Question 32

Unless the change must occur quickly or employee interests are highly incompatible with the organization's needs, employee involvement is almost an essential part of the change process.

Question 33

Coercion should never be used to manage change in organizations.

Question 34

Pilot projects are usually more flexible and less risky than centralized, organization-wide programs.

Question 35

Transformational leaders act as agents of organizational change.

Question 36

Learning increases employees' change self-efficacy.

Question 37

Action research is the process of determining whether the change process is ethical or not.

Question 38

Organizational rewards are powerful systems that refreeze behaviors.

Question 39

The communication strategy should be applied to reduce resistance to change where the change must occur quickly with little financial cost.

Question 40

Pilot projects get diffused quickly when employees understand how the practices in a pilot project apply to them even though they are in a completely different functional area.

Question 41

Lewin's force field analysis model appeals to all cultures because it is based on a logical linear sequence.

Question 42

Using the action research model instead of the other models such as the parallel learning approach enables an organization to eliminate the threat of violating individual privacy rights.

Question 43

The first step in the Four-D model of appreciative inquiry is dreaming, in which participants envision what might be possible in an ideal organization.

Question 44

Future search conferences are meetings among a small task force of senior executives who have been given the mandate to identify a change agent on a particular corporate strategy.

Question 45

One ethical concern with some organizational change programs is that they may threaten the employee's self-esteem.

Question 46

Appreciative inquiry tries to break away from the approach to change advocated by action research.

Question 47

The emerging philosophy of positive organizational behavior directs the group's attention away from its own problems and focuses participants on the group's potential and positive elements.

Question 48

Practices such as action research avoid the use of management's power to induce compliance and conformity and is less likely to create ethical issues.

Question 49

Action research maintains the view that having a research orientation is less important than having an action orientation.

Question 50

The positive principle advocates the view that people are motivated and guided by the vision they see and believe in for the future.

Question 51

An important feature of parallel learning structures is that they operate within the existing organizational hierarchy.

Question 52

How we perceive and understand the change process depends on the questions we ask and language we use throughout that process.This is called the constructionist principle.

Question 53

Some change experts recommend introducing rapid change when the organization wants to overhaul a system quickly and decisively.

Question 54

A unique feature of appreciative inquiry is that it breaks away from the problem-solving mentality by reframing relationships around what is positive and possible.

Question 55

The main objective of force field analysis is to help change agents to:

A)identify ways to control the external environment.
B)find ways to increase the driving forces for change.
C)diagnose a situation better by understanding the driving and restraining forces for change.
D)determine whether change is necessary in the organization or not.
E)determine and single out the force that causes organizational resistance for change.

Question 56

Which of these forces pushes organizations toward a new state of affairs?

A)Process forces
B)Driving forces
C)Equilibrium forces
D)Restraining forces
E)Freezing forces

Question 57

Appreciative inquiry is always the best approach to changing team or organizations, because it is almost always successful.

Question 58

Action research is a problem-focused process of organizational change.

Question 59

A parallel learning structure is an organizational change approach in which a social structure is constructed alongside the formal hierarchy to increase the organization's learning.

Question 60

Future search events minimize resistance to change by severely limiting involvement from employees.

Question 61

Refreezing refers to:

A)getting one's own way in organizational politics.
B)a management practice used to discourage newcomers from engaging in organizational politics.
C)aligning the organization's systems with the desired behaviors to support and reinforce the new role patterns.
D)repeating the change process to obtain better organizational outcomes and employee performance.
E)producing disequilibrium between the driving and restraining forces of change.

Question 62

Increasing the driving forces and reducing the restraining forces tends to:

A)reduce the need for change.
B)unfreeze the status quo.
C)refreeze the status quo.
D)decrease environmental stability.
E)produce environmental equilibrium.

Question 63

Senior executives at a large retail organization want employees to become more customer-friendly.Employees think they are serving customers well enough and the company is the dominant player in the market.What should the executives do to create an urgency to change in this situation?

A)Stop trying to convince employees that they should change their behavior and use other strategies to gain market share.
B)Keep pushing employees to change even though they don't see the need to change and attempt to replace the existing change agent.
C)Introduce punishments for employees who do not become more customer-friendly.
D)Inform employees about the driving forces in the external environment indicating that the company's dominant position will be threatened unless they become more customer-friendly.
E)Introduce a reward-punishment scheme to promote the change in the organization.

Question 64

Creating urgency for change is most closely associated with:

A)the delivering stage of appreciative inquiry.
B)the final stage of a search conference.
C)reducing the restraining forces.
D)the process of increasing the driving forces.
E)refreezing the desired conditions.

Question 65

Employee involvement is almost an essential part of the change process unless the:

A)benefits of change are unknown to the employee.
B)organization is looking for a gradual change.
C)change must occur quickly in the organization.
D)employee strength of the organization is huge.
E)organization is planning to introduce continuous changes.

Question 66

Which of the following change management strategies should be given a priority when employees need to break old routines and adopt new role patterns?

A)Coercion
B)Employee involvement
C)Learning
D)Stress management
E)Negotiation

Question 67

When managing change, learning interventions should be used:

A)to break routines that cause resistance to change.
B)when the organization wants to reduce the cost of implementing change.
C)when employees resist change due to negative valence of change.
D)in all change management activities.
E)only when all other strategies have failed.

Question 68

The highest priority and first strategy required for any organizational change is to:

A)alter the responsibilities of senior executives in the organization.
B)introduce stress management counseling to the employees.
C)train employees who do not possess the skills required under the new conditions.
D)communicate the need for change and keep employees informed about what they can expect from the change effort.
E)negotiate a new set of relations among those who will clearly lose out from the change.

Question 69

Unfreezing refers to:

A)getting one's own way in organizational politics.
B)ineffective management practices that discourage newcomers from staying with the organization.
C)ensuring that the change effort is diffused to others within the organization.
D)the process of improving organizational communication.
E)producing disequilibrium between the driving and restraining forces of change.

Question 70

Which of the following types of resistance to change is a strategy to "prove" that the decision is wrong?

A)Negative valence of change
B)Not-invented-here syndrome
C)Fear of the unknown
D)Breaking routines
E)Incongruent organizational systems

Question 71

One way that communication minimizes resistance to change is by:

A)generating an urgency to change.
B)encouraging negotiation.
C)eliminating organizational politics.
D)promoting speedy refreezing.
E)encouraging stress management.

Question 72

Which of these forces are commonly called resistance to change?

A)Process forces
B)Driving forces
C)Parallel learning structures
D)Restraining forces
E)Unfreezing forces

Question 73

By creating ________, employee involvement reduces the fear of the unknown and the not-invented-here syndrome.

A)stress
B)a sense of entitlement
C)a sense of ownership
D)a goal
E)transformation

Question 74

BusCorp.wants to introduce a new procedure for processing customer requests.If this change will require employees to break old routines and adopt new role patterns, the preferred strategy for dealing with resistance to this change such as this is:

A)communication.
B)learning.
C)stress management.
D)negotiation.
E)coercion.

Question 75

One problem of the learning strategy has in minimizing resistance to change is that it:

A)tends to change people too quickly.
B)leads to long-term antagonism with the change agent.
C)creates compliance but not commitment to the change process.
D)is a time-consuming process.
E)attempts to change the drives instead of reducing the restraining forces.

Question 76

One problem that communication, learning, and employee involvement have in minimizing resistance to change is that they:

A)can lead to more subtle forms of resistance.
B)lead to long-term antagonism with the change agent.
C)create compliance but not commitment to the change process.
D)are time-consuming.
E)are not effective when the change effort needs more employee commitment.

Question 77

Which model of organization change explicitly refers to unfreezing the current situation and refreezing the desired state?

A)Parallel learning structures
B)Process consultation
C)Appreciative inquiry
D)Quantum change
E)Force field analysis

Question 78

Resistance to change:

A)should be viewed as task conflict.
B)refers to the fact that employees are happy with the status quo and can perform well only in the status quo.
C)is the change agents' distorted perception of employee behavior based on their own doubts about the success of the change process.
D)indicates that change is not required in the organization.
E)is an impediment to change.

Question 79

In organizational change, unfreezing may occur by:

A)increasing the restraining forces.
B)increasing the driving forces.
C)reducing the urgency to change.
D)changing individuals in key positions.
E)reducing the pace of the change.

Question 80

Increasing the restraining forces and reducing or removing the driving forces would:

A)make the change process more difficult to implement.
B)remove any resistance to change.
C)have no effect on the change process.
D)give the change agent more power in the change process.
E)align the organization's systems and structures with the desired behaviors.