Planned Organizational Change

1. GENERATIONS OF PLANNED ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE

2. ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
 It is an organization wide planned effort managed
from the top to increase organization effectiveness
& health through interventions in the organization’s
processes using behavioral science knowledge.

3. THE APPROACHES TO PLANNED CHANGE
 First Generation Approaches to organization
development
 Second Generation Approaches
 Third Generation Approaches

4. FIRST GENERATION APPROACHES TO
ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT
Types of First Generation Approaches are:
 Action Research
 Sensitivity Training
 Team building
 Sociotechnical Systems
 Quality of Work Life
 Survey Feedback

5. ACTION RESEARCH
Kurt Lewin, a social psychologist established this type
of approach for various types of social change like
race relations, leadership, eating habits & inter
group conflict.
Research needs to be closely linked to action if
organization members are to use it to implement
change.
Research followed by informed practice as opposed
to theory building.

6. Phases of Action Research include:
 Collecting research data about an ongoing system
 Feeding the data back to the system
 Taking action based on the diagnosis
 Evaluating the results of the action
 Participatory action research emphasizes the participation of
organization members as full partners & co researchers in the
entire action research process

7. SENSITIVITY TRAINING
Began in 1946 by Kurt Lewin when he was asked to conduct a
training workshop to improve community leadership.
Sensitivity training consists of lectures, role playing & group
discussions
Feedback became the learning source for personal insight &
development
Exercise

8. TEAM BUILDING
 It is used for work with intact teams & includes large
number of interventions like process consultation,
consensus building, intragroup conflict resolution
strategies, role analysis techniques & grid team
development.
 Now being used with self directed work teams, in
building up international teams & cross functional
teams & after mergers & acquisitions
 Exercise - grid

9. SOCIOTECHNICAL SYSTEMS
Introduced by Eric Trist, it views organization
simultaneously as a social & technical system both
of which must be considered & optimized as a goal
of any organizational change.

10. Major characteristics
 Work design /redesign
 Employee involvement
 Recognizes social and technical parts and
environment
 Recognizes Social Psychological outcomes
 Design should achieve high results by providing
high quality of work life to fulfill individual needs.
 Joint optimization of individual and organizational
needs

11. Burns and Stalker
 Unstructured informal flexible organic
 Structured formal less flexible mechanistic

13. Woodward’s technology classification
 Unit, small batch, tailor made,
 Mass production, large batch production
 Continuous process
Structure varied for the above
 Unit and process - organic structure
 Mass - mechanistic structure

14. Perrow
 Task variability
 Problem identifiability

17.  Thompson

20. Social System?
 Sequential, Reciprocal and pooled interdependence
respectively
 Mindfulness about the effect of technology upon
social system

21. Trist
 Among miners
 Technology redesigned work into cutting, shoveling,
advancing the face of the wall in each shift.
 Affected the morale of the workers resulted in low
productivity.

22. QUALITY OF WORK LIFE
 QWL programs emerged in Northern Europe in 1960s involved joint union
management teams formulating several type of strategies aimed at improving
employee productivity & satisfaction.
 Purpose- to work together outside the framework of collective bargaining
agreement to solve problems that labor & management experienced jointly.
 Initiatives like autonomous work groups, career development, reward
systems, group & intergroup relations, physical & social work environment
etc. were implemented.
 QWL programs led to the emergence of self managed work teams in which
groups of employees organized into teams who are given increased
autonomy & control over their jobs.

23. SURVEY FEEDBACK
Joint effort by supervisors & immediate subordinates
discussing survey data on employees’ perceptions
of a variety of factors concerning the management
& developing action plans together.

24. CONCEPTUAL BASIS OF FIRST
GENERATION OD APPROACHES
 Theory of change (Why & How change occurs)
 Theory of changing (What must be done to induce
change ; how to best ensure the success of a
change attempt)

25.  Widely accepted theory of change
 Teleological
 Goal/ end state driven/collaborative identification of
undesirable present / envisioning desired end state
 Cycle of goal formulation, implementation, evaluation
and modification
 Single organization as unit of change/ members are
primary change agents, consultants as facilitators/ role
of environment is less.
 Emergent constructive modality/depending on how
participants make sense

28.  Humanistic ideals
 Personal development
 Interpersonal competency
 Participation
 Commitment
 Satisfaction
 Work democracy
 QWL
Assumption: Human development will help organization
reach desired goals

29. Widely accepted theory of changing
 Lewin model

30. LEWIN’S MODEL OF PLANNED CHANGE
unfreeze
Change
refreeze

31. LEWIN’S MODEL OF PLANNED CHANGE
 State of equilibrium
 Disconfirming
 Moving to new behaviors
 Stabilizing at a new state of equilibrium

32. SECOND GENERATION APPROACH TO
ORGANIZATION CHANGE
 Since 1980s organizations faced unprecedented
changes
 Business environments – globally competitive
forcing companies to rethink their purposes &
directions
 For eg: American industries witnessed the decline
of manufacturing industries & the growth of service
industry & high tech industry.
 Primary characteristic of second generation OD
approaches is explicit attention to organizational
environment & the organization’s alignment with it.

33. TYPES OF SECOND GENERATION APPROACHES
Organizational transformation
Large scale interventions
Both with less commitment to previous strategies and policies
Case: Ford

34. ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION
Transformational change involves fundamentally
altering the organization’s vision, mission, strategy
& operating philosophy.
Transformation depends considerably on the
leadership of CEO

35. LARGE SCALE INTERVENTIONS
Types of large scale interventions are open space
technology, future search & real time strategic
change

36. LARGE SCALE INTERVENTIONS- TYPES
OPEN SPACE TECHNOLOGY
Least structured of the large scale methods was developed by
Harrison Owen
FUTURE SEARCH
Future search is a future oriented conference developed by
Weisbord & his colleagues
Aims to explore possible agreements b/w people with divergent
views & interests & to do consensus planning with them.
REAL TIME STRATEGIC CHANGE
Typically the largest of the large group change initiatives

37. CONCEPTUAL BASIS OF SECOND
GENERATION OD APPROACHES
 Punctuated equilibrium
 Long periods of stability (convergence phase)
 Incremental, adaptive, greater consistency of internal
activities consistent with deep structures
 Punctuated by short periods of fundamental change
(divergence phase)
 Reorientation and recreation
 Affecting deep structures

38.  Purposeful social construction
 Explicitly linked with environmental change
 Participation oriented towards specific strategic
goal of the organization within a given time frame
and space

39. THIRD GENERATION APPROACH TO
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
 Also concerns major changes and transformations
 Based on the assumptions that past can play an
important role in organization’s ongoing life and
change effort. (unlike 2nd generation approaches)
 The two major interventions –
 Learning Organizations
 Appreciative Inquiry

40. LEARNING ORGANIZATION
 Typically viewed as an adaptive change in
behavioral response to a stimulus – the learning of
routines
 Gaining increasing relevance in recent times

41. LEARNING ORGANIZATION - CORE
PROCESSES AND PRACTICES
 Five Disciplines forming the cornerstones of a
Learning Organization are:
1. Systems Thinking
2. Personal Mastery
3. Mental Models
4. Building Shared Vision
5. Team Learning
(Peter Senge’s “the Fifth Discipline”)

42. LEARNING ORGANIZATION – A DISTINCT
APPROACH
 Adapting to an uncertain and fast changing
environment is the goal.
 Developing a learning organization through
organizational capacity building, increasing the
capacity to learn (to acquire, share and utilize
knowledge than immediate problem-solving)
 Shared vision, collective commitment to learning as
the core energy for organizational change
 Learning Capacity of organizations enhanced
through fostering group processes, individual
enhancement of thought processes etc.

43. LEARNING ORGANIZATION – CONCEPTUAL
BASIS
 Focus on building individual/group capacity to learn,
than on immediate business problems or opportunities.
(similarity with sensitivity training – first generation
approach)
 Focus on making the entire organization capable of
continuous learning – System level approach. Strategy,
executive leadership, culture, governance etc.
discussed with individual/group issues.
 Change envisioned by learning organization is
continuous
 Development of individual and collective skills and
organizational processes to continuously reflect,
reinterpret, reframe and redirect the patterns of
thoughts, actions and practices.

44. APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY – CORE PROCESSES
AND PRACTICES
 Based on 3 assumptions :
1. Social Systems are socially constructed. (People
creating their own realities through dialogue and
enactment)
2. Every social system has multiple positive elements.
(Members draw energy for change and action through
positive aspects of the system. Negative aspects tend
to lead to defensive behavior)
3. It is possible to build consensus around positive
elements in an organization. (Positive imagery builds
affirmation, and constant affirmation maintains its
members’ momentum and energy)

45. 5 generic processes of appreciative inquiry :
1. Choose the positive as the focus for inquiry
2. Inquire into stories of life-giving forces
3. Locate themes that appear in the stories and select
topics for further inquiry
4. Create shared images for a preferred future
5. Find innovative ways to create that future
Appreciative Inquiry used for purposes like –
Strategic redesign, transformations, sensitivity to others’
perspectives, change efforts in global settings…

46. APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY – CONCEPTUAL BASIS
 Based on a belief that Organizational members have the
capacity to create their own future – hence change
process can take place at any point of time.
 Depends on narratives, stories, dreams and visions that
stimulate human imagination ; instead of scientific,
cause and effect type of thinking.
 Relies on intervention methods that “appreciate” positive
aspects of organizations – past and future. Assumption
– better for motivating people for participation, facilitate
free generation of ideas
 Views past as a viable resource for generating future
possibilities.

47. SOME IMPLICATIONS
 First-Generation Approaches – propose a 3 step
framework of “unfreeze, move, freeze” (Kurt Lewin)
 Second-Generation Approaches – alignment of
organizations and their environments
 Third-Generation Approaches – views learning as a
continuous, ongoing and cumulative process
(learning organizations); identifies and envisions of
positive aspects of organizations as ways to drive
and implement change (appreciative inquiry)

48.  Four types of tensions –
1. Positive focus Vs Negative focus
2. Continuous Vs Episodic
3. Proactive Vs Reactive
4. Open Vs Closed
 These exemplify characteristics of change.
 The 3 generations differ in how they manage tensions arising
out of these dualities.
 Managing these dualities through –
1. Selection
2. Separation
3. Integration
4. Transcendence
 An alternative approach is Connection.
Legitimates dualities by giving respect, showing
empathy and curiosity to differences. This
approach seeks to “embrace differences”

49.  Through Connection, dualities remain connected,
use each other to generate insights and are open to
new interpretations.
 Advantages :
1. Enables to draw a realistic picture of planned
organizational change by bringing out its complexity
and dynamicity.
2. Provides a framework for making tacit processes
explicit and available for examination. Gives criteria for
evaluation of approaches towards planned change.
3. Offers practical implications – an awareness of hidden
dynamics associated with change and its
consequences

50.  Discussion