Human Resource Management Lecture #3 Managing Organizational Change

Internal Drivers

• Performance

• Innovation

• Human resources

• Participation

• Leadership

• Conflict

• Safety

External Drivers

• Social

• Technological

• Economic

• Political

• Legal

• Ecological

Sources of individual resistance to change

• Economics

• Security

• Habit

• Selective perception

• Loss of freedom or inconvenience

• Fear of the unknown

Sources of organizational resistance to change

• Organizational culture

• Structural inertia

• Existing contracts or agreements

• Established resource allocations

• Loss of expertise

• Threats to power relationships

Lewin’s theory of planned change

• Change is a social process:

  • Equilibrium

  • Resistance to change

• Managing change involves:

  • Forcefield analysis

  • Creating a critical mass

What is Lewin’s theory of Forcefield analysis

A decision-making tool used to analyze and understand the forces that influence a situation or change process.

How to conduct a force field analysis

1. Define the current situation and the desired situation

2. Identify all restraining forces

3. Identify all driving forces

4. Evaluate forces and assign a score

5. Design a plan of action

Driving forces

Positive forces for change

Restraining forces

Obstacles for change

What is Lewin’s theory of Planned Change

Focuses on the process of change itself, outlining how organizations or individuals can transition from a current state to a desired future state.

Three stages of Lewin’s theory of Planned Change

1. Unfreezing: thaw “ways of doing”

   • Increase driving forces, reduce resisting forces or combination of both

2. Movement: modify behaviors by seeing “organization as a system of learning”

3. Refreezing: embed changes to avoid regression by positive reinforcement, by coaching, by revising rules governing behavior

Critical mass

The point at which enough people within an organization or group have adopted or supported a change

Consultants’s Standard

Same as Lewin’s Theory of Planned Change, but broken down in 8 steps instead of 3.

• Unfreeze

  1. Establish a sense of urgency

• Move

  2. Guiding coalition

  3. Change vision

  4. Communicate the change vision

  5. Empower others to take action

  6. Generate short time wins

• Freeze

  7. Consolidate gains, promote change

  8. Institutionalise new approaches

What are Dynamic Capabilities

Resources that allow organizations to seize opportunities when they come along.

Dynamic Capabilities: Adaptive Capability

Flexible adjust of business priorities, management and organization structures

Dynamic Capabilities: Absorptive Capability

Bring in and use new information and knowledge

Dynamic Capabilities: Innovative Capability

Develop and create new products and markets

Adaptive capability: The Flexible Firm Model

The flexible firm: The speed with which an organization can adjust its workforce

• Numerical flexibility: Ability of a firm to adjust the number of employees based on demand

• Functional flexibility: Ability of a firm to shift employees into different roles or tasks

Absorptive capability: Absorptive Capacity

Absorptive Capacity = The capacity of the organization to access information from outside the organization, bring it in the organization, learn from it and convert that learning into new knowledge.

• Aims at knowledge transfer and strong social ties within and outside the organization

Innovative Capability: Exploitation and Exploration

Innovation Capability = Management systems that encourage knowledge creation and proactive behavior at all levels of the organization, and a strategy oriented towards innovation.

• Exploitation = Optimizing existing capabilities and existing expertise

• Exploration = Learning new things, taking risks

  • Succesful innovation is not about radical shifts and doing something completely different, but about the balance between exploration and exploitation.

How do you build dynamic capabilities?

Dynamic capabilities can be developed by human resource maangement, by investing in workforce scalability, in a learning organization, and by balancing exploration/exploitation for innovation.

What is a career

Work experiences a person has throughout their life, which can include changes in jobs or breaks between jobs, from the time they start working until they retire

Career succes

Succesful careers are important to individuals, organizations and society because they comprise wealth, good performance and low unemployment costs.

Two ways to define career success

1. Objective measures

   • Salary, promotions, job titles

2. Subjective measures

   • Personal satisfaction, purpose, work-life balance

Contested vs Sponsored Careers: Contested

The most qualified and skilled people win the best careers

• Level of education

• Networking skills

Contested vs Sponsored Careers: Sponsored

Those with the right connections and who receive help from influential others win the best careers

• Access to career sponsorship

• Opportunities for training and development

Protean careers

• Objective career success replace by subjective career success

  • Personal sense of fulfillment is more valued than money

• More equal relationship between employers and employees

  • Autonomy and flexibility

• The freedom to choose my own career path is one of my most important values

  • People make their careers more self-directed and flexible (for example: freelancer)

Employability

Employability = Being employable: being able to find a job, being able to keep it, and being able to obtain new employment if needed

Employability Radius

The range of jobs and tasks that one is able to perform

Employability competences

A set of resources that helps individuals broaden their employability radius

Factors impacting employability

1. Employability radius

2. Employability Competencies

3. Contextual Constraints

   • External factors that may limit employability (economic downturns, industry-specific changes)

4. Predictors of current employability

5. Current employability of individual

6. Broadening conditions: Personal, contextual

   • enhancing skills and providing growth opportunities

7. Transition conditions: Personal, contextual

   • how easily an individual can shift between roles or adapt to new job markets

Dealing with change

• Organizations need dynamic capabilities

• Employees need to maintain their employability

Flexicurity theory

Concept that aims to strike a balance between flexibility for employers and security for employees.

• Employment Transition Support Policies:

  1. Employment law allows easy hiring and firing

  2. Guarantee of income in transition periods (social welfare/unemployment)

  3. Support for career transitions (job training, networking, funds)

  4. Educational policies, stimulate lifelong learning

Organizational results of transformational leadership behaviors