Organisational change management - Essay Example

Such moves, however, may not be successful in ensuring the company’s progress. The Case Study D2, the auto components producer, introduced change due to external pressures such as competition from other auto parts manufacturers, and the financial recession that resulted in fewer customers. In response to these external pressures, D2 made some immediate changes to counter the down turn in revenue. To cut costs, the company stopped manufacturing some of its components while increasing the production of others in specific sites.

The company also made the decision to close down its UK Plant because it contained archaic manufacturing technical gadgets. Moreover, the company’s management is yet to divulge the new changes of the impending closure of the UK Plant to its employees. It is a fact that the workers based at the UK plant in Didcot will be shocked by their discharges because they are expecting continued business operations with even more investment or capital being directed into the operations there. It also has not deigned to share the new strategies with the firms remaining employees.

Only the higher ranking managers are aware of the strategies. Most researchers tend to first evaluate organisational change through the input of Kurt Lewin’s Field theory. The field theory asserts that all businesses exist in an active though constant state. To sustain this balance, businesses are compelled to make changes in reaction to forces that affect or influence the business’s field (Burnes 2004). Lewin’s model seeks to prove that most of the time, any kind of organisational change will be gradually realised.

Moreover, when a company is experiencing a crisis, any organisational changes it decides on are quickly implemented. The field’s theory states that when an organisation ahs to realise changes on a fast pace, it has to ensure that there are corresponding powerful forces working to see the needed changes become an accepted part of the organisation’s functions (Burnes 2004). The theory also asserts that there is a need to ensure that there is a dissuasion of any efforts that encourage the organisation’s status quo to remain.

Lewin’s model asserts that, when there is gradual change in an organisation, the necessary steps will take place in three stages: (i) The old, archaic and ‘accepted’ business operations or ways of doing things must be ‘unfrozen’ or removes altogether so that the coming changes can be allowed to take hold without any competing functions making the process difficult. In the ‘unfreezing process’, an organisation’s management will examine why the change is necessary while also looking into facts that exists and which might impair or assist the changes that will be suggested.

The management will also encourage workers to think as they do about the necessity of incorporating changes in the organisation in order to improve it. (ii) In the second stage, movement, the organisation starts to change its behaviour. These shifts in behaviour usually occur after the organisation’s personnel understand the how different options of change will work and have selected their preferred method of change (Cameron and Green 2004). In most organisations, the process of change is supervised or overseen by a specialist such as an organisational development practitioner. (iii) In the third stage of the field model, refreezing, the organisation generates structures and functions to