Managing Organizational Change

In this dynamic business environment, change is inevitable. Changes can be planned, or unintentional: depending on the driving forces behind. The major forces for change can be derived from the nature of the workforce, technology, economic shocks, competition, social trends, and world politics (Robbins & Judge, 2011). In this post the author will explain the Kotter’s eight –step approaches to managing organizational change and discuss how his company handles the planned changes in term of organization reconstruction.

When changes are inevitable, the leaders usually design some adequate steps to make the change go smooth, effective and permanently. Kurt Lewin argued that successful change in organizations should follow three steps: unfreezing the status quo, movement to a desired end state, and refreezing the new change to make it permanent (Robbins & Judge, 2011, cited in Lewin, 1951). John Kotter further expanded the Lewin’s model to include an eight-step plan for implementing change. The eight stages are: 1) establishing a sense of urgency 2) creating a guiding coalition 3) developing a vision and strategy 4) communicating the change vision 5) empowering broad-based action 6) generating short-term wins 7) consolidating gains and producing more change and 8) institutionalizing new approaches in the culture (Kotter, 1996). Kotter asserted that many changes failed because some steps were ignored, such as missing the creation of a sense of urgency, vision, or coalition. Using Kotter approaches, let’s analyze a recent change happened in Science Application International Corporation (SAIC), the company the author is working for.

SAIC provides scientific, engineering, systems integration and technical services and solutions pr...

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...ld improve the change process. The author believes that if the SAIC reconstruction is implemented successfully, the company will be more productive, efficient, agile and competitive.

Works Cited

Havenstein, W. (July 22, 2010). [Memo From the CEO: Organizational Changes].

Havenstein, W. (October 11, 2010). Message from the CEO. SAIC internal email.

Kotter, J. P. (1996). Transforming organizations. Executive Excellence, 13(9), 1.

Kotter, J. P. (2007). Leading change: Why transformational efforts fail? Harvard Business Review, 85, 96-103.

Lewin, K. (1951). Field Theory in Social Science. New York: Harper & Row.

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2011). Organizational Behavior (14 ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Schuler, R. S. (1980). Definition and conceptualzation of stress in organizations. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 189.