Organizational Change Management Theories

This assignment requires students to critically analyze a range of organizational change management models and theories. It asks them to delve into the applications of these models, evaluate their strengths and limitations, and examine their real-world impact on organizational change processes. The analysis should demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of key concepts and frameworks in organizational change management.

Running Head: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Organizational culture and responses to overcoming resistance to change
Student’s Name:
Institution Affiliation:

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Introduction and Background
All organizational management systems have a set type of cultures and behaviors that
enable them to achieve their objectives (Burnes et al., 2017). These management systems are not
consistent, and organization management always changes its system to improve its efficiency,
due to the continuous change of the employees, technological change, and social change of
customer. Organization change aims at redirecting it to the desired future. Factors that contribute
to variations in the culture ranges from cost reduction, technological, cultural change
redundancies and performance change (Nesterkin, 2013). Many organizations always face
problems in managing the changes, hence the basis of the article. The article looks at versed
issues from the theories, concepts of organizational management and how the changes can be
manageable. Organization culture is definable as set cultures and theories since there is no
correct one. Organizational culture is a system of collective values and beliefs used to control
the operation of every business.
Objectives and scope
The primary objectives and the scope of this report is hence to;
• determine main management concepts
• identify main management theories and approaches
• compare and contrast the major concepts and theories of operation management
• analyze the quality of different theories

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Discussion
There are internal and external factors that affect organizational change. These include
management styles or leadership, innovativeness process, and resources, the market, the
technological change, as well as the government laws and policies (Fieberg et al., 2015). The
resource includes the employees and finance. Employees refer to the non-management people
who are responsible for adopting and embracing any change to see its success. Technological
change and innovativeness refer to how creative is the leadership and the employees in adopting
new methods, organizational plans, and strategies in the business that may result in new or
efficient products and services to the competitive market. Technological change influences the
organizational change through adopting many easy ways of doing things. With the adoption of
new technology such as closed-circuit television cameras that creates anxiety among the staffs,
other technological changes tend to perform more work than physical labor hence will layoff
some workers. The competitiveness of the market creates more challenges on how to outdo the
rival companies, hence creating room for coming up with more satisfying products.
The management style and leadership refer to the management personnel who are
responsible for planning and controlling of all aspects in an organization (Matsuo, 2017). For any
change to occur successfully in an organization, the leadership must be to the task from
understating it to its implementation. The management style tends to influence on how the
leaders will be able to influence the employees to embrace and adopt the change. For example, to
eliminate resistance by the staffs, an autocratic manager may opt to adopt democratic or a
participatory management style. Therefore the change in management style will bring the crews
close to the management.

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Various theories explain the concepts of organizational culture and change within the
organization are documented. These include Awareness Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and
Reinforcement ADKAR Model, Kotter's Model, and Lewin’s Change Model. ADKAR Model is
more goal- oriented change management model (Wright, 2016). It has five factors for its success;
awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, reinforcement during its application. These factors aim at
driving each to move from current individual state to a person future state. It starts with the
individual and then continues to the whole organization. The management does this by
explaining to each the fundamental reason and advantages for the change creating awareness of
the objective of the process. The management, therefore, ensures that each person undertakes any
training required and information needed to enable every employee to perform the tasks required
in the changed environment. It will be upon the management to oversee the implementation of
the change, and any corrective measure addressed.
KOTTER MODE is an eight-step process for organizational change developed by John
(Garel, 2013). There are eight steps; establishing the sense of urgency by explaining why the
change is needed. The second is forming a powerful coalition by bringing together, all the
personnel that can lead the process of the change. The third stage leader establishes a vision and
strategy, for the change and then the information is relayed to the staffs. Empowerment of the
action is achievable through removing all issues that may object the implementation.The change
leader creates short-term wins and consolidates them for the long-term achievements. Finally, the
changes are achievable into the organization system through consistent implementation by all the
stakeholders while being overseen by the leaders.

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Lewin’s Change Model is a change that assumes that any change is a plan and people are
always the cause of those changes. The model aims at reducing all types of resistance to the
changes by using the driving and restraining forces. The driving forces are the motivational
reasons for a change in people while the restraining forces are those that hinder people in
adopting such a change. The model has got three steps, these include; Unfreezing, a process of
preparing for change that tends to uncover the fear of the unknown through communication.
After communication, employees need to acquire knowledge and information through training on
the change, and then they are allowed to manage their stress through discussing the change with
colleagues. The employer should give ultimatums, to employees who do not embrace the change
to either accept or be sacked. For those who have accepted the change, should be motivated to
achieve the objective. Changing step is the actual stage of the modification. At these stages, there
are new learning on behaviors and systems. Refreezing is reinforcement stage. At this juncture,
feedback is collected, and the management does the motivation.
Similarities and Differences
Every model is adaptable depending on its strength and applicability to the organization
in making the desired change (Bagno, 2017). It is observable that every step found in ADKAR
Model is also present in the Lewin’s Model as explained below. The unfreezing step in Lewin’s
Model represents the awareness, desire and knowledge stage in ADKAR M model. The changing
step in Lewin’s model represents the ability stage in the while the refreezing is equivalent to the
reinforcement stage in ADKAR. The KOTTER’S eight steps are also available in the Lewin’s
model. The unfreezing stage equivalent’s the first four stages of KOTTER’S model that are
establishing the sense of urgency for change, creating the guiding coalition, developing a

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strategy and communication of the change. KOTTER emphasizes more on this stage. The
changing step is in steps number 5-7 of the KOTTER model, which involves empowering broad-
based action and creation of short terms goals. The last two stages are equivalent to the
refreezing stage in the Lewin’s model.
Both KOTTER and Lewin’s recognize the aim of reducing the resistance and
preparing the employees for change (Bagno, 2017). Although both ADKAR and KOTTER have
the same aspect with the Lewins, all of them have different components of organizational change
from one another. While Lewis focuses on creating awareness and knowledge, ADKAR insists
on the creating the desire for change. KOTTER insist on the leadership contribution during the
organizational change rather than on individual change as in ADKAR and Lewin’s models.
While the ADKAR and Lewin’s model try to eliminate the resistance of the change, KOTTER
insists on risk-taking and finding solutions to the problems. Even though both ADKAR
KOTTER insist of reinforcing the organizational change, ADKAR does it at an individual level,
unlike KOTTER that insist that it is through the leadership.
Addressing resistance to organizational change
Change is unavoidable in everyday’s life of an organization (Rese et al., 2011). Some of
the employees do not welcome the change. The following are ways how to avoid and manage
such resistance;
The first stage is changed preparation, a stage where the leader must formulate the
anticipated points in the strength and better way on how to address them. The resistance can be
avoidable at the early stage through proper communication. Any change in an organization

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should be communicated to those that it is going to impact. Engaging the staffs through listening
to their views makes the change justifiable and helps in removing any doubts in their minds.
Relate the change to other issues that people care for such as their health, their promotions or
even regarding the increase of salary. As a result, they get motivated.
The second stage is change management, whereby all the resistant’s plan is of the five
stages which are the communication method, creates awareness of the change to the staffs. The
sponsorship program creates good participatory by building a coalition support with the senior
leaders. The coaching plan outlines the main steps involved in the change. The training program
empowers the staffs with the skills and knowledge that are very useful for the modification while
the resistance management plan, addresses any obstacle that will be encounter during the
implementation.
The third stage is reinforcement stage, a stage where the leader collects all the feedback
to help understand the rate of adoption and compliance with adopted culture. The feedback will
allow the manager to know the shortcomings and address them effectively while upholding the
wins to the betterment of the company. In case, of any resistance, the leader should work out on
identifying the cause of that strength and understanding the reason behind that resistance. There
might be some reasons such as lack of awareness of the change or fear of the job loss. After such
identifications, the change management team should engage the right leaders to address the
problem.
Conclusion

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Every organizational change aims at redirecting the organization to the desired system
that is more efficiency. It is the team to choose the model that conforms to the objective and
change required. For those who don’t possess much knowledge can opt for the ADKAR which is
evident and straightforward unlike Lewin’s that explain less, while KOTTER will be more
applicable when the change is supposed to be made by the top leadership. It is also observable
that the models overlap one another, so combine all the models by the management would
provide the best organizational change. Therefore, the selection of a model should depend on the
knowledge and experience possessed by the person who is implementing the change.

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