Organizational Change: Leadership and Management Strategies Essay

This essay delves into the complexities of managing organizational change, emphasizing the interplay between leadership, employee resistance, and the implementation of effective strategies. It begins by highlighting the psychological and emotional efforts required from employees during organizational shifts, referencing Lewin's argument on resistance and the need to address survival anxiety. The essay explores the concept of the 'principle of economic effort' and its impact on employee perception, suggesting that organizations must demonstrate the benefits of change to limit resistance and foster psychological safety. It then examines the models of change, including Lewin's unfreezing-change-refreezing model and Schein's model, underscoring the role of external forces and the importance of the learning narrative in facilitating change acceptance. The essay concludes by stressing the importance of involving employees and preparing them for transitions, especially in dynamic environments. It emphasizes that organizations can successfully navigate change by adopting strategies informed by Lewin's and Schein's models, developing principles that guide change, and fostering a positive transition experience for employees.

Running header: Managing Organizational Change 1
Manage Organizational Change
Student’s Name
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Managing Organizational Change 2
Managing Organizational Change
Organization change requires physical, psychological and emotional efforts of the
employee. Lewin argued that all changes meet resistance since people are not prepared for
change. This brings the anxiety of radical relearning that is coercive with no choice. Coutu
(2002) suggests that learning only happens when survival anxiety is greater than learning anxiety
thus leaders need to choose between increasing survival anxiety through coercion or by creating
a better environment for unlearning and new learning.
Organizational change is a problem that every manager struggles to achieve against the
forces that may seem to resist it. Resistance to change is based on the need to preserve the status
quo rather than change it through learning new things (Hussain, et al., 2016). Therefore for
change to occur in the organization Lewin suggests that the leader must add new forces for
change that will remove some existing characteristics of interpreting behavior in a way known as
unfreezing. The unfreezing process must prove the need for change and show reasons why the
past processes have not been effective and the need to unfreeze or change them (Marrow, 1999).
However, employees in the organization fear change because they focus on the economic benefit
that such change will bring to them (Nahavadi, 2015). This is called the principle of economic
effort which makes employees to question the utility benefit of the new change. Since change
will take different forms like restructuring the organization and making employees learn new
skills and methods the principle of economic effort suggests that there must be perceived benefits
in the new strategy that will meet the effort made by the employee to learn new skills and ideas.
The organization must enable the employee understand the net utility function in the new change
to limit resistance. This will create psychological safety that will push for greater productivity.
However, most organizations face a lot of resistance since they use survival anxiety to coerce

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employees to learn new ideas and adapt to change without giving them the option of economic
effort.
The fear of failure or trying new things is also one of the reasons why people fear change.
According to Cummings & Worley (2004) organizations establish certain processes that become
key components of employee’s life within the organization. Change will therefore lead to new
trends in behaviour and forces that need to be added to the organization and removal of the
existing behaviour. Schein’s model change suggests that unfreezing stage requires
disconfirmation, creating survival anxiety and triggering learning anxiety within the organization
(Nahavadi, 2015). This creates a state of confusion where people feel the fear of learning new
things that threaten what they knew. According to Schein (1992) this change can be triggered by
external forces of change that may require organizations to realign their strategies. For example,
the promise of Japanese management styles in the 1970s made American companies to undergo
new changes to align themselves with the changing trends in management. The learning narrative
is a change initiation strategy that allows organizations to develop mechanisms that can enhance
change acceptance. The learning narrative allows employees to appreciate the need for change
and the economic effort for the process. This allows identifying the gap between the present and
the future state that needs to be achieved. The learning narrative allows organizations to
introduce new strategies by setting principles that will guide the change process. This ensures
that employee’s fears are contained and the reason for change has been achieved.
On the other hand, of change is based on low tolerance for change due to the need to
acquire new skills. This is because organizational change requires people to rapidly change their
attitudes and behaviour without giving room for transition (Lamsa & Sintonen, 2006). Through
the learning narrative, management increases tolerance levels that limit resistance to change.

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Employees are allowed to undergo transition from the previous organizational processes to new
organizational process. In the case study there is need for management to allow transition period
so that employees can adapt to the new changes (Fedor, Caldwell, & Herold, 2006). The fact that
the organization is restructuring to increase efficiency, employees need to be prepared for the
new change processes that will require some employees being laid off while the organization will
develop a new system. The learning narrative will therefore set in place principles that will allow
the transition from the old system to the new system.
Organizational change is inevitable since the external environment is dynamic and keeps
on changing. This means that organizations have to put strategies in place to ensure that they
adapt to the ever-changing environment (Fugate, Kinicki, & Prussia, 2008). Managers need to
involve their employees to limit resistance to change. From Lewin’s model of change and
Schein’s concept of organizational change, organizations can achieve change through the
learning narrative by developing principles that will guide transition of change.

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References
Coutu, D. (2002, March). The Anxiety of Learning. Havard Business Review.
Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2004). Organization Development and Change. South-
Western College.
Fedor, D. M., Caldwell, S., & Herold, D. M. (2006). The effects of organizational changes on
employee commitment: A multilevel investigation. Personnel Psychology, 59, 1-29.
Fugate, M., Kinicki, A. J., & Prussia, G. E. (2008). Employee coping with organizational
change: An examination of alternative theoretical perspectives and models. Personnel
Psychology, 61, 1-36.
Hussain, S. T., Lei, S., Akram, T., Haider, M. J., Hussain, S. H., & Ali, M. (2016). Kurt Lewin's
chnage model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in
organoizatiponal change. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 30(15).
Lamsa, A.-M., & Sintonen, T. (2006). A narrative approach for organizational change in a
diverse organization. Journal of Workplace Learning, 18(2), 106-120.
Marrow, A. J. (1999). The Practical Theorist: The Life and Work of Kurt Lewin. New York.
Nahavadi, A. (2015). The Art and Sciece of Leadership. New Jersey: Pearson.
Schein, E. H. (1992). Organizational Culture and Leadership. San Fransisco: Jossey Bass.