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Change Management Essay

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Change Management

"Toto, I’ve got a feeling that we’re not in Kansas any more."

Dorothy, Wizard of Oz

Over the past few decades, large-scale organizational change has become a way of life in American business. Many organizational changes, however, have failed to deliver promises of increased productivity and morale, decreased costs, decreased waste , and increased customer satisfaction. A common theme among these failures is a lack of understanding of the power of the collective human system to obstruct the progress of initiatives. The result has been to reinforce fear, defensiveness, and cynicism among workers toward change efforts (Dooley, 1998).

Failure of an organizational change for businesses has both short term and …show more content…

They ask themselves, "Where did this come from?", "What is going on?", "I didn’t know anything about this!", or "This isn’t what I agreed to!" (Department of Defense, __ ).

After the shock of the new situation has passed, most people, if they view the change as a negative impact on their personal situation, become very angry. They may begin to talk about the new situation in very negative terms, such as, "It won’t work!" or "I’m not going to support this!" This anger, if not addressed, may lead to some workers actually trying to sabotage the change process. A person going through this phase will make up excuses why they should not be held accountable for anything that goes wrong with the organization as a result of the change such as "Don’t blame me if it doesn’t work!" Once workers have accepted the change as real and that it is going to happen, they begin to rationalize their role in the new situation (Department of Defense, ___ ).

Productivity will also fluctuate during change. Productivity, at a given level before change, will drop during the period of transition. After the change is complete, this level should rise to a new higher level (Wakulczyk, 1995).

As organizations change more frequently and radically, the training profession is getting more deeply involved in the change process. Trainers used to assist an organization change by teaching the skills needed to carry it out, as determined by

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