Change is inevitable for every organisation to be healthy and productive while organisational development as a generic term embraces a wide range of intervention strategies in both structural and social processes of an organisation. Organisational development programmes are packaged to drive organisational change agenda.
The changes, however, are aimed at the individual, group and total organisational development, driven at improving overall performance and effectiveness. Organisational development (OD) is a strategic long-term effort, led and supported by top management to specifically improve the organisation’s visioning, empowerment, learning and problem-solving processes through ongoing collaborative management or organisational culture.
Organisational development (OD) and Change
MEANING OF ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE
Organisational change is a radical transformation in the functioning of organisational processes. It involves reshaping the organisation’s structure, culture, processes and other design elements, and can be characterized as both systemic and sometimes revolutionary because the entire nature of the organisation is altered significantly and fundamentally.
Countries like Nigeria have witnessed such radical transformations first in the 1970s when the indigenization decree of 1976 was being implemented by the administration of Murtala Mohammed-Olusegun Obasanjo, by which time erstwhile foreign companies are being transformed into indigenous organisations and in later years when processes of privatization and commercialization of governmental organisations were taking place. Such semantics as reorganisation, restructuring, reengineering, downsizing, rationalization, rightsizing, outsources are associated with organisational change in one way or the other.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT
The relationship between OC and OD is to the extent that in organisations that will manage change effectively, change becomes the driving force that perpetuates future success and growth. This is because change becomes an opportunity for increasing efficiency. OD is systematic OC.
TYPES OF CHANGE
What can a manager change, aside from him/herself? He/she can change three things; the structure, the technology and the people.
i. Changing the Structure. This means reworking or redesigning the work specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, the span of control, centralization, formalization, job redesign or actual structural design.
ii. Changing Technology. The work processes, methods and equipment are the focus of change.
iii. Changing People. The culture, attitudes, expectations, perceptions and behaviour of individuals and groups are the focus of change.
THEORIES OF ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE
Theories or models provide an explanatory framework for the relationship between variables. The theories discussed below give direction for the implementation of change programmes by organisations. The change theories are those of Kurt Lewin, Ronald Lippit, Jeanne Watson and Bruce Wesley, Burk-Litwin and Fagen and the Systems Theory.
Kurt Lewin’s Model. He, in the 1940s, introduced a model for the proper management of an effective change process. Successful change can be planned and the change process was viewed as composing three steps; unfreezing old behaviour; that is, the status quo, change to a new state; that is, the new behaviour and refreezing to make the new behaviour permanent.
i. Unfreezing stage. During this stage preparation, motivation and readiness are created among people to change old behaviour through the creation of discomfort or lack of confirmation which may cause guilt or anxiety. The change agent has to make provision for a psychological safety net while adjusting to the new behaviour. On the whole unfreezing is to move out of the equilibrium state by increasing the driving forces and decreasing the restraining forces.
ii. Moving stage. The client is assisted to see things, judge them, feel them, and react to them differently based on a new point of view using new role models, mentors and by creating environmental scanning or new and relevant information.
iii. Refreezing stage. The new behaviour is institutionalized in the people’s personality, attitudes by use of a reward system that is focused on the new behaviour.
Ronald Lippit, Jeanne Watson and Bruce Wesley’s Change Model
Expanding Lewin’s model, they expanded the three stages into a seven-stage model representing the consulting process as follows:
i. Phase 1: Developing a need for change
ii. Phase 2: Developing a changing relationship
iii. Phase 3: Clarifying the client’s systems problem
iv. Phase 4: Examining alternative routes and goals
v. Phase 5: Transforming intentions into actual change efforts
vi. Phase 6: Generalizing and stabilizing change
vii. Phase 7: Achieving a terminal relationship with clients.
These steps are logically laid out in achieving OD in organisations by consultants.
Burk-Litwin’s Model of Organisational Change
The model is about how to create first and second-order change. The first order change occurs with some fundamental characters remaining the same, whereas in the second-order change the nature of the organisation is fundamentally and substantially altered leading to crucial organisational transformation. This model identifies two key aspects of the organisation the culture and the climate.
Organisational climate is viewed as people’s perceptions and attitudes about the organisation that is easy to change, while organisational culture is deep-seated assumptions, values and beliefs that are enduring, unconscious and difficult to change.
Using this model OD interventions are directed towards Organisational development (OD) and Change”
