Book Review Help on Organizational Change

Abstract

Change Management is a vital mechanism for achieving the competitive edge that many organizations strive to achieve. Leaders and agents of change also experience competing obstacles of inspiring and respecting a more inclusive workforce, reporting to stakeholders, and preparing for the future in a challenging environment. The book titled as “Organizational Change: Development and Transformation” consisting of 12 chapters in 6 sections, begins with an description of the changing world faced by organizations in this era of advancement and technological development. Morover, this book This then deals with the management of organizational growth, a structured transition cycle that is frequently susceptible to organizational transformation forays, a more drastic and unexpected type of change. Future directions of change management are also being debated as the field of organizational change management and continues to develop, particularly in an international domain. Eventually, to illustrate the theory to practice relationship, “Organizational Change: Development and Transformation” offers 10 local and international research case studies and a compilation of electronic cases assisted by a case matrix. Various c ase studies, assessments, and related content pose the complexities of handling change in a practical way, addressing problems from a range of perspectives.

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Introduction

The book “Organizational Change: Development and Transformation” is written by four authors i.e. Dianne M. Waddell, Andrew Creed, Thomas G. Cummings and Christopher G.Worley. This is the 6th edition published by Cengage Learning Australia in 2017 and the publishing manager of this book is Dorothy Chiu. The subject of this book is organizational change and management and the ISBN of this book is 9780170366687. This book that describes change management as a challenge, especially because the world we exist in is in a very dynamic situation. The world of organizational development (OD) management, which is a structured transformation process, keeps evolving rapidly as terminology oscillates towards organizational transformation (OT), a more rapid and uncertain process. Leaders, and especially agents of change, experience divergent obstacles such as explanation and inspiring an extremely varied workforce, being available and answerable to a broad range of stakeholders, forecasting for the future in a rapidly chaotic circumstances, taking into account the ethical repercussions of decision-making and many more unpredicted problems (Warwick, 2016). The theme of this book is that organizational change has an impact on all dimensions of an organization. Advancement and transition cannot be a different event that takes place in one place without affecting the other components. Configuration and strategy are therefore fundamental to that. So change has a consequential trickle-down effect on organizations. There is interconnection between the processes of organization. Furthermore, this book’s structure divides chapters into sections to better coordinate our thoughts about change management. Each part outlines a research sector and change experience that is differentiated yet interlinked with the other parts and sections. Each opening part of the page shows you a chart of how these parts connect with each chapter. I found this book very interesting and interactive for learning and understanding the concepts of change management. This book has many flowcharts, tables and diagrams to express information in pictorial form which is very useful for readers. One of the basic diagram of this book is of managing in a changing environment and this depicts the overall summary of this book is as follows:

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This book provides a logical flow of the process and experience of organization development. This book starts with anecdotal view on change management and uses organization development (OD) as a mean to become acquainted with language. OD’s significance in modern business setting is implemented in light of the concept’s developmental character. The book gives a detailed illustration of organization development (OD) characterizing the planned change process, those doing the transformation, and the different kinds of interventions (Marshak & Bushe, 2018). It also presents the Organization Transformation (OT) notion. Furthermore this book includes a summary of functions and principles of change. Especially in the context of OD the term ‘ planned change’ is used. All OD methods base upon some planned change theory. Planned change theories explain the actions needed to alter strategies, mechanisms, and procedures to increase the effectiveness of an organization. It discusses and relates three theories, and describes the particular model of planned change that incorporates current conceptual advancements in OD. These three distinct theories of change are Lewin’s model of change, the model of action research and the positive model. All three models give different viewpoints of the stages in organizations by which planned change takes place. Moreover, opponents of OD critics have responded by pointing out so many issues with the conceptualization and practice of planned change. They talk about individual parts where planned change can be made better.

This book looks at the people who concern with OD in organizations and their specific personal traits as leaders in the transitional phase that is the result of process of change. This reasoning relates to three types of people: people who specialize in OD as a career or profession, people from relevant fields who have acquired any OD expertise and managers who have the OD capabilities intended to change their organizations or departments and improve them. A quick glance at OD professionals offers a far more subjective opinion of the area and helps comprehend the essential nature of OD as an assisting profession, including interpersonal relations between OD professionals and members of the organization.

This book also describes two sensitive issues confronting practitioners of change management i.e. resistance to change, which is an obvious response to any attempt to influence, and suiting their organizational techniques, systems and procedures to varying organizational cultures. Resistance is a dynamic and misinterpreted notion which was always criticized for the incompetence of a transformation process. A deep understanding of the subject and type of the resistance is extremely important, so that it can be deliberately tried in a constructive way. This book also gives a good overview of the design, implementation, and evaluation of interventions presently being part of OD (Levy, 2018). It characterizes an intervention as a series of planned events to support an organization’s performance, efficiency and usefulness to strengthen. Appropriate interventions are required to address the organization’s requirements and are centered on deterministic experience of the desired results and transition integrity to maintain change to the members of the organization (Stouten, Rousseau, & De Cremer, 2018).

The book keeps going with detailed information about OD interventions and explains interventions that allow organizations to constantly change themselves. Such mechanisms of change are especially relevant for organizations experiencing tumultuous workplaces where traditional forms of competitive advantage easily entrench (Vlados, 2019). It is extremely important to construct capacity for change effectively into the organization in order to continuously reactivate aspects of competitive advantage in order to maintain pace with a constantly changing environment. An approach of self-designing change enables an organization attain the full capability to develop and maintain its very own rapid change. Self-design includes multiple thresholds of the organization and numerous stakeholders, and encompasses a sequence of incremental practices i.e. knowledge acquisition, appraisal, appropriate treatment, configuration, formulation and examination.

This further mentions initiatives for changes referring to OD interventions, especially people and processes. While many interventions may be suitable only in certain situations, some were underlined that are most frequently used: performance assessment, self-improvement, objective and strategic planning, and extrinsic motivators. These supplement programs are one of the earliest in OD and they reflect efforts to change the working relationships between people. The initiatives seek to support group members evaluate their interactions and implement more appropriate ways to engage together.

This book is about interventions targeted at the social interactions between organization and environment. Since organizations are active and transparent mechanisms that occur in regulatory instances, in order to succeed and survive they ought to build and maintain appropriate connections with the environment. There are three types of environments that influence the development of the organization: the general environment, the task environment and the enacted environment. The last type of environment causes direct impact to the organization judgements based on behavior while the other two types of environment have only the effect on the impact of their actions and behavior. Hence, these different change programs are comparatively new additions to the OD field, which seek to make organizations stronger in correspondence with their environment and better match those external factors that negatively impact accomplishment and efficiency of an organization.

This book also introduces the different perspectives of OT and expresses interventions for organizational transformation, i.e. for shifting the organization’s unique character, as well as how it is constructed and how it contributes to its environment. These frame-breaking and often groundbreaking initiatives go much further than iteratively strengthening the organization, rather than concentrating on improving the way it sees itself. They usually occur in reference to serious environmental, technical or structural changes, or in preparation of them. These changes might encompass changes in the approach of the organization work, which may change its configuration and mechanism.

 

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