Very Short Question and Answers
1. State the main forces for organizational change.
The major forces for change are enlisted as follows:
a) External force: It forces the organization to change.
It includes:
- Nature of the workforce
- Technology
- Economic shocks
- Competition
b) Internal force: It forces the organization to adopt change.
In includes:
- Goal change
- Internal change
- Organizational structure
2. Define organizational change.
Organizational change refers to any alteration in a work environment and the ways in which employees must act. In another word, change refers to something which affects the occurs to an organization, a group, or an individual.
3. Define resistance to change.
The obstacle faced by the change from the resistant employees of the organization is known as resistance to change. Overcoming resistance to change is one of the most difficult tasks.
4. Write the meaning of sensitivity training.
Interactive training that focuses on helping employees in the development of better awareness of potential and roles in an organization is known as sensitivity training. In this training, aspects like dynamics, environment, the need for change, etc. are addressed.
5. What is the process of consultation?
It is one of the most common methods of process interventions. As per the method, external consultants are hired for the intervention process. This external consultant provides information, technique, etc. in regard to employee communication, interaction, cooperation, etc.
Short Questions and Answers
1. Describe the goals of organization development. What prerequisites are required for organization development?
Goals of Organization Development
The main goals of organisational development are as follows::
- Improve organizational performance as measured by profitability, market share and innovativeness.
- Make organizations better adaptive to their environment which always keeps on changing.
- Make the members willing to face organizational problems and contribute creative solutions to the organizational problems.
- Improve internal behaviour patterns such as interpersonal relations, intergroup relations, and level of trust and support among the role players.
- Understand self and others, openness and meaningful communication and involvement in planning for organizational development.
- Achieve organizational growth by total human inputs by way of research and development, innovations, creativity and exploiting humans.
Pre-requisites of Organizational Development
Organizational development does not emerge itself. There are some conditions, which must be accomplished as prerequisites. Some of the key pre-requisites to organizational development are explained as follows.
- Top-level management’s commitment: There should be the explicit commitment of the top management to change and improve the organization, denoting its time and resources to this long term effort. The management should take the risk and experiment, with new methods of handling the problems, be keen to assess its own behaviours and attitudes for personal development purpose, and be able to tolerate confusing results which may occur at the initial stages of the OD programme.
- Strong and influential change facilitator: The existence of strong and competent internal change facilitators and resourceful individuals, who can perform the role of internal change agents, provides momentum to the OD work.
- Successful past experience: Successful experience with the earlier efforts in some parts of the organization provides momentum to further efforts and thus, forms a significant prerequisite, to the effective performance of an organizational development programme.
- Capable external consultants: The involvement of capable and experimented external consultants, especially during the earlier stages of OD work, provides the objectivity and variety of skills, which may make the programme highly effective. However, it is necessary that the consultant develop the internal change facilitators and the problem-solving ability of the organization instead of making the organization dependent upon itself.
- Influential managers: The presence of some influential managers, who act as like link pins between crucial groups and are willing to introduce change and experiment with new methods of work, forms another prerequisite to a successful OD programme.
- Internalization of OD efforts: The internationalization of concern for renewal, re-education, constant assessment of the organizational health and corporate excellence forms a very crucial prerequisite to effective OD effort.
- Built-in reward system: There is a prerequisite in the form of built-in reward systems. Attempts should be made to build the reward systems for the effective performance of results.
2. What are the organizational forces that make an organization necessary to change?
Forces that Lead to Organizational Change
Change is a law of nature; we live in a dynamic world where nothing remains static. Everything around us keeps on changing
Organization change refers to the alteration of structural relationships and role of the people in the organization. It is largely structural in nature. These changes may be pressurized by internal or external forces, may affect only one or all the levels and departments or may be related to the organizational structure (hierarchy), people, technology, working or social environment, etc.
The key internal and external forces that force organizations to change are explained briefly.
a) Internal Forces
Forces induced by the organization itself are known as internal forces.
The key internal forces are explained briefly:
i)Goal change: Change in organizational goal makes it necessary for organization to change.
ii)Sequential change: Every organizational change requires readjustments, sequential changes and supportive change. For example, the creation of new department may cause the appointment of some new managerial position, which in turn may necessitate reallocation of authority, responsibility and duties of the concerned department.
iii)Employees pressure: Every increasing demand of the employees for better job security and job satisfaction, better safety and welfare, congenial working environment, higher wages and perquisites, participation in managerial process and more authority and power also precipitate changes in the organization structure and pattern.
b) External Forces
An organization has no control over the external forces. Some of the common external forces are listed below;
i)Economic forces: It includes;
- The economic condition of country
- Inflation and exchange rate
- Income distribution and resource availability
- Govt. liberalization and privatization policy.
ii) Market forces: It includes;
- Growth of electronic commerce
- Work force diversity in terms of culture, gender, age skills and professionalism etc.
iii)Technological forces: It includes;
- Sophisticated information technology, robotics, faster and cheaper computers
- Innovation and experimentation
- Reshaping of jobs arising from new developments in technology
iv) Socio-culture forces: It includes;
- Delayed marriage, people attitude toward society
- People’s norms and, value toward society.
v) Political forces: It includes;
- The change in political forces collapse of Soviet Union, reunification of Germany, collapse of Saddam Hussain regime in Iraq.
- In creasing activating of pressure groups.
Long Question and Answers
1. Why do people resist organizational change? Discuss the approaches to managing organizational change.
Organizational Resistance to Change
a) Individual resistance: Individuals are considered the main source of resistance to change due to their perceptions, personalities and needs. Because of the following reason individual resist the change.
- Habit: Once we become habituated to anything, it will be difficult to change that habit. As human beings, we are creatures of habit. Changes in old work habits create resistance. Employees tend to respond to accustomed work.
- Security: Employees may fear the loss of job security, reduction in pay and increase in workloads. The cost of change may be higher than the benefits of change.
- Economic reasons: These include the fear of unemployment, fear of reduced work hours and consequently less pay after the change, fear of demotion and low wages, etc. Whenever people sense that new machinery passes a threatening challenge to their existence, they resist change.
- Social reasons: Change often results in a disturbance of the existing social relationships. People in work organizations develop some sort of informal relationships and any change breaking these relationships will be strongly resisted. Group pressure also brings about resistance to change in individuals.
b) Organizational resistance: The organization itself is another key source of resistance to change. Many times, the resistance to change is initiated by the organization as a whole or by the top management. The main reasons for organizational resistance are explained briefly.
- Inflexibility in organizational structure: Some organizational structure has a built-in mechanism for resistance to change. For instance, in typical bureaucratic structures where the chain of command is clearly spelt out, authority, responsibilities and duties are clearly defined, the flow of information is stressed through the proper, channel and the entire pattern is highly mechanistic and rigid, and any change in the organization structure or pattern would be difficult.
- Resource constraints: Organizational change usually invoice a huge expenditure. In this regard, resource usually is a major constraint. In such a situation, change is resisted by the departmental heads and employees. This is true, when government forces the organizations to introduce certain technological, organizational, or social changes but does not provide adequate human and physical resources, the organizations oppose such changes. Similarly, when trade unions pressurize management to introduce certain changes for the safety, welfare and comforts of the employees, the management put resistant to such changes for a lack of availability of funds.
- Fear of loss of investment: In case when organizations have invested huge capital in their permanent assets and training of employees, they are afraid of their capital being sunk, if they introduce new technology.