Posted: August 30th, 2015

Organisational Change and Development.

Discussion Questions

Q1.

Drawing on your readings express in 200 words your interpretation and meaning of these two phrases: organisational change and organisational development.

Q2.

Our focus in Topic 2 is on the Nature of Change. We discussed six types of environmental pressures for change that managers face, as well as five potential forces for change that are internal to organisations. As a change manager, to what extent can you identify such forces of change – both external and internal – propelling your organisation towards change. You can refer to either your current or past organisation.

Q3

From your knowledge of different organisations, either from experience or from the business press, identify companies and their changes that fit:

• Fine-tuning (anticipatory and incremental)
• Adaptation (reactive and incremental)
• Reorientation (anticipatory and discontinuous)
• Re-creation (reactive and discontinuous)

In your opinion, which of these changes was most successful ? Why ?

Q4

In Topic 4 we address issues of recognising the need for change, starting the change process (Part 1) as well as diagnosing the need for change and gathering and interpreting information for diagnosis (Part 2). Change occurs as a process, not as an event. Organisational change does not happen because there was an announcement, a kick-off meeting or even a go-live date. Individuals do not change simply because they received an email or attended a training program. When we experience change, we move from what we had known and done, through a period of transition to arrive at a desired new way of behaving and doing our job.

Based on your experience at work or elsewhere, list any problems you have encountered in the early stages of the change process that have been associated with:

• choice of change agent
• quality of the change relationship
• identification of the group to be targeted for change
• specification of the change issues

Q5

One of the commonly cited causes for the lack of success of organisational change is ‘resistance to change’. As such, it is not surprising that it is a phenomenon that encourages some strong responses.

• What symptoms of resistance have you experienced?
• Have you experienced both active and passive forms?
• Have you experienced them as a resistor yourself (as a recipient of change)?
• Have you experienced them as someone responsible for the management of change (as an initiator of change)?
• If you could ‘rewind the tape’ would you do anything differently?

Q6

According to John Kotter (e.g. 1995) there is a fundamental difference between ‘change management’ and ‘change leadership’. Change management is basically a set of tools and a set of mechanisms that are designed to ensure that the change is kept under control. Change leadership is much more associated with putting an engine on the whole change process, with urgency and vision.

Consider one of the following statements and post your response:

• Vision is crucial in achieving successful organisational change.
• Vision is an overrated concept.
• Visionary leaders hinder organisational change.
• The success of a vision depends on the cultural context in which it is used.

Q7

How change gets communicated and talked about is crucial to its success. Failure to tackle appropriate change communication strategies can have damaging consequences.

What’s your view:

How central should CEOs and supervisors be in the change communication process? What are they key issues from your point of view?

Q8

Despite the seemingly universal agreement that a thorough training needs analysis (i.e. the process of gathering, assessing and analysing data to determine the training needs for an organisation) should underpin all training plans and budgets it does not often take place and is often not done in organisations (Garavan et al. 1995).

Determine how to begin a change process focused on becoming a learning organisation to increase the competitive capability of the organisation. What approach might you take to the development of the learning and development needs analysis process and why?

Q9

Sometimes, according to Hayes (2014), those leading change give insufficient attention to developing a change strategy fit for purpose

Identify a recent change in your organisation and critically assess the effectiveness of the strategy used to implement it. What situational variables did the organisation under estimate or even fail to take into account when shaping the change strategy?

Q10

This topic investigates change management intervention techniques. There is no one right formula for this as every organisation and environmental context is different.

Evaluate and select the most appropriate change management intervention technique to support the implementation.

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