,Contents
Reading 1: Smith, Skinner, Read. 2020. The psychological philosophy: ‘changing minds’. Chapter 8
from Philosophies of Organizational change..........................................................................................2
Reading 2: Carter, 2013. Transformational leadership, relationship quality, and employee performance
during continuous incremental organizational change. Journal of Organizational Behaviour................4
Reading 3: Deszca, Cawsey, T.F 2020. Becoming a master change agent. Chapter 8 from Organizational
Change....................................................................................................................................................7
Reading 4: Higgs, M., Rowland, D. 2011. What does it take to implement change successfully? A study
of the behaviours of successful change leaders....................................................................................11
Reading 5: Deszca, Cawsey, T.F 2020. Managing recipients of change and influencing internal
stakeholders. Chapter 7 from Organizational Change...........................................................................14
Reading 6: Huy, Q.N., Corley, K.G., Kraatz, M.S. 2014. From support to mutiny: shifting legitimacy
judgments and emotional reactions impacting the implementation of radical change........................18
Reading 7: Oreg, S., Bartunek, J. M. 2018. An affect-based model of recipients’ responses to
organizational change events...............................................................................................................21
Reading 8: Thomas, R., Hardy, C. 2011. Reframing resistance to organizational change......................24
Reading 9: Balogun, J., Johnson, G. 2005. From intended strategies to unintended outcomes: the
impact of change recipient sensemaking..............................................................................................26
Reading 10: Ford, J.D., D’Amelio A. 2008. Resistance to Change: the rest of the story.........................28
Reading 11: Sonenshein, S. 2010. We’re changing-or are we? Untangling the role of progressive,
regressive, and stability narratives during strategic change implementation.......................................31
,Reading 1: Smith, Skinner, Read. 2020. The
psychological philosophy: ‘changing minds’. Chapter 8
from Philosophies of Organizational change
To any change agent, sympathetic to the psychological philosophy, a rational, top-down approach will
fail. Instead, change must emerge from the ground up through collaboration and a willing desire for
improvement.
Resistance-acceptance
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1969) developed a renowned five-stage model describing how people come to
terms with serious loss:
Bridges (1995) similarly describes three stages in the transition process: (1) endings, (2) the neutral
zone, and, (3) new beginnings.
The psychological philosophy of organizational change treats the impact of change as: complex,
powerful and potentially severe. People become accustomed to performing tasks in certain ways
that make them feel comfortable and proficient. Changing tasks or priorities undermines their sense
of mastery and replaces it with fears about inadequate performance, escalating workloads, ridicule
and termination. The key motif throughout the psychological philosophy is minimizing the trauma
and discomfort associated with organizational change (through encouraging employee involvement
and empowerment).
Some philosophies approach acceptance and rejection of change separately, while the psychological
philosophy conceptualized acceptance and rejection as polar extremes of a continuum: responses to
change.
Common psychological solutions for overcoming negative but intuitive responses to change include
empowerment, participation, education, facilitation and negotiation, job rotation, and job
enrichment. More abstract enabling factors are emotional intelligence and organizational spirituality
(meaning that the individual is the most important part of the organization. Critique of spirituality: it
doesn’t offer concrete ideas).
Resistance often proves counterproductive and can be manifested actively (aggressive challenge) or
passively (indirectly undermining). Employee resistance is known to accompany perceived unfairness,
increases in workload, unclear role definitions and uncertain managerial support.
Resistance should diminish as employees take ownership of decisions in a bottom-up approach to
change management (if employees drive change, success seems more likely).
Be aware that in rationalist empowerment programs, morale is a means to an end, not an end in
itself, which it is within the psychological philosophy as it beliefs change leaders need to counteract
feelings of powerlessness as they present major impediments to performance.
, Organizational Development (OD)
OD emphasizes that change managers must integrate the developmental needs of employees with
the strategic objectives of the organization as psychologically-fulfilled employees create and adapt to
change better than those who remain unfulfilled. OD commits to the premise that change must
emanate from a critical mass of engaged employees: better performance comes with interested,
valued and empowered employees. OD assumes that participation leads to contribution, which in
turn brings about learning as new approaches and insights find voice through debate.
OD practitioners assume that the way organizations manage and structure operations are
incompatible with the healthy fulfilment of employees’ potential (hierarchies and centralization
undermine personal expression). They think that change leaders must find ways to introduce open,
trusting and collaborative structures: the change agent does not dictate or direct change; they
instead act as facilitators to help organizational members solve their own problems.
Organizational Learning (OL)
OL creates a psychological approach that emphasizes knowledge. Open dialogue marks the essence
of OL, the dialogue process shapes meanings and experiences into a shared ‘schema’ or frame of
reference. Change, from the OL perspective, means challenging established ways of behaving, and
transpires when employees make sense of organizations, important issues, activities and events, and
then adapt accordingly.
Decision-making, reasoning and change
Systemic biases in predictions appear to be important to understanding the nature of change
responses.
- Impact biases refer to individuals’ tendencies to overestimate the effect of an emotional
event while overlooking the contextual circumstances. (e.g. euphoria work promotion:
afterwards workload increased, more stress)
- Prediction biases accompany skewed emotional arousal states. Current states get projected
into future imagined states, which reinforces why one should avoid food shopping when
hungry. Prediction biases might explain why managers so frequently underestimate how
difficult change will be, and how willing employees will be to engage positively.
- Distinction biases occur in predictions made during different modes of evaluation as well as
emotional states. (e.g. people evaluate options differently before and after the decision).
How past decisions worked out also affects the accuracy of future predictions. Memory introduces a
systematic bias.
More options can lead to worse experiences. Rather than choosing what they predict will lead to
greater happiness, people may select the option that offers the greatest immediate appeal or that fits
previous experience. Of all the variables affecting predictions, psychologists refer to the most obvious
as medium-maximization, when individuals resolve to focus on something other than the target
outcome.
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