Analysis of Organizational Change Management using Lewin's Model

This report provides an analysis of organizational change management, emphasizing the significance of communication within the framework of Kurt Lewin's change model. The report begins by defining change management as a systematic process for handling changes in organizational structure and employee behavior, highlighting the importance of leadership, senior management commitment, timely communication, and employee support. The core of the report focuses on Lewin's three-stage model: unfreezing, change, and refreezing. The unfreezing stage involves communicating the need for change to employees to gain their understanding and acceptance. The change stage involves implementing changes through education, communication, and support. The refreezing stage ensures that the new changes are integrated and maintained within the organization. The report emphasizes that effective communication is crucial for the success of change management, as it mitigates resistance from employees and facilitates their engagement in the change process. The report concludes that effective communication is a key characteristic for successful change management. The report references several key academic sources to support its analysis.

RUNNING HEAD: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT
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Organizational Change Management

Organizational Change management
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Change Management
Change Management is a systematic process for managing the new business process in
organization structure within a company and is related to successfully handling the behavior of
people at the time of change1. The successful change management is based on following
characteristics that are ability of leader to implement change, commitment of senior
management, timely communication about need of change, and supporting employees during
implementation. From all of these characteristics the most important and significant is
communication2.
Lewin change model includes three stages that are unfreezing, change and refreezing.
The first stage includes unfreezing of status quo or challenging the current position. The goal of
change agent or leader at this stage is to communicate to employees about need of change and
make employees aware about benefits of change. It is essential for leader to communicate
employees in the organization that change is good for gaining competitive advantage and this can
be done by examining the external forces. Communication is a key at the time of unfreezing
stage so that employees get idea about the change. The aim of communicating about change is to
make employees aware about change process so that they can understand its necessity and
accepts the change and stay motivated during the process of change 3
The next stage is change, employees are aware about change at this stage they start
implementing or accepting change in their routine and business activities. Change can be
managed effectively by making employees familiar with the change through educating them,
communicating with them and support or understand them during change. At this phase,

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employees start learning new processes, change their behavior and way of thinking and helps in
completely adapting the change in an organization.
Final stage of change model is freezing the moment or changes made in organization are
refrozen and accepted or implemented in all levels which now considered as the new state or
status quo of the organization. At this phase manager ensure that new things are adapted by each
individual at every level without any resistance. Some awards and acknowledgement are used to
positively reinforce the new state or to ensure that employees do not go back to their old working
structure and repeat current structure in doing a task4.
From the above change model it is clearly identified that communication plays a
significant role in success of change management as effective communication can leads to low
resistance of changes from employees. With effective communicator by leader the employees
feel comfortable to share their views about change process. From stage first of lewin model it
can be said that if need of change and benefit of change cannot be communicated well. It
becomes difficult for leader to adopt next two stages, because there are chances that employee’s
resistance is high when leader try to implement change in second stage of lewin model. If
resistance of change from employee is high, change process leads to failure. Hence, from the
above analysis of lewin change model it is examined that for a successful change management
communication is a key or can be considered as essential characteristic in process of change.

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Figure 1: Kurt Lewin’s Model of Change
Ensure that
employees
are ready for
changeUnfreez
e
Execute the
intended
change
Change Ensure that
the change
become
permanent
Refreeze

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References
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1. Hayes, J. The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 5th ed.; Palgrave : UK, 2018.
2. Cameron, E.; Green, M. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools
and techniques of organizational change; Kogan Page Publishers: UK, 2019.
3. Hussain. Kurt Lewin's change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee
involvement in organizational change.. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge 2018, 3 (3), 123-127.
4. Bakari, H. How Does Authentic Leadership Influence Planned Organizational Change? The Role of
Employees’ Perceptions: Integration of Theory of Planned Behavior and Lewin's Three Step Model.
Journal of Change Management 2017, 155-187.
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