Organizations and Change

Organizations experience two kinds of change: unplanned, or crescive change, and planned, or deliberate change. (Stojkovic et al., 2008) This essay will focus on the fundamental elements of planned organizational change. We will provide an example of how a police agency undergoing deliberate change could follow these steps.

Planned change involves 5 general steps: planning, identification of problems, forecasting, and generating appropriate alternative solutions to problems. The final stage is choosing the appropriate solution and embarking upon the implementation process. Each will be explained further, below.

Organizational change can occur due to the result of pressures from the external environment (such as new legislation, or community pressure), or from an internal conflict within the agency. In either case, a performance gap, due to external or environmental change, external repercussions to the agency’s actions, internal technical or structural changes , or extensive employee turnover, is recognized. (Stojkovic et al, 2008). Administrators do not choose to begin organizational change randomly. Once a performance gap is made apparent to the agency administrator, she will be motivated to modify the internal workings of the agency to adapt to these pressures. Planned organizational change is a bridge that links the organization with its environment (lecture notes, P. Smith, 2010). Criminal justice agencies embark upon organizational change in an effort to adapt to changing environments (political support, legislative changes, etc). Our example will focus on an administrator changing a police agency from a traditional patrol-centric model to a professional, problem-solving model. In many large cities the p...

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...and being willing to take risks will support innovation and organizational change efforts.

In our example in San Jose, Milwaukee and New York, agencies decided to involve community members in the solution to the problem. Through community based and church based groups, joint working groups were created to address both cultural and race competency and community relations. The result was the police and community members working together in new ways, and increasing communication between them.

Organizations experience two kinds of change: unplanned, or crescive change, and planned, or deliberate change. (Stojkovic et al., 2008). Crimimal justice agencies must be able to adapt to both kinds of change, as they react to unplanned environmenal events such as changes in legislation and internal deliberate changes needed in order to maintain organizaitonal health.