9-28-2013.md

Change Management - The Study of Organizational Change

Change management is an interdisciplinary program, drawing information from the fields of psychology, sociology, communication, and more. Much of this is due to the fact that change management has to do with the art of changing people.

• "95% of all change fails at the implementation phase."
• "There's nothing as tragic as when an elegant plan for change meets an ugly reality of why it won't work."

Two Papers

Applied - Critical thinking papers on how to use this information in the workplace.

• Uses a specific format (found within the repo).
• Choose a failed change attempt or one that is going to come about.
• Easiest to write about a change attempt that has actually failed.
• Failing that, write about something that should be changed.
• Identifiers should be removed from this paper in order to protect privacy.
• All papers get deleted at the end of the class.
• First paper is worth 40%, second is worth 60%.
• Papers are expected to be written as an elaborated outline, NOT as a composition.
• First paper is focusing on a micro level change, second paper is a macro change.

Functional Approach to Changing Attidude

Definition: Attitude is dictated by how functional it is to like something.

1. People develop reasons to justify their behavior

2. To convince them to change their behaviors, you must understand their reasons

3. Once you understand their reasons, you must develop a strategy that attacks the specific reason that form the basis of their justifications.

Katz’s functional approach

1. Instrumental function: I do it because I am rewarded for it.
   • Arises from need deprivation and maintained through reinforcement. Extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivation.
   • Changed by withdrawing rewards, increasing punishment and demonstrating new and better ways for achieving rewards. Use of contingent rewards.
2. Social adjustment function: I do it because everyone else does it and I fit in better.
   • Arises from strong need to be like others, need for affiliation and support. Self-monitors.
   • Changed by demonstrating that the current behavior is out of step with others and that new behavior will allow you to fit in better. Use of survey information to demonstrate evaluative norms not by descriptive norms.
3. Information function: I do it because I know how to do it. I understand the process.
   • Arises from need to predict what will happen in your environment, intolerance for ambiguity, need for closure.
   • Changed by creating environmental ambiguity so that current behavior no longer fits the current circumstances. New tasks create for which new routines do not work.
4. Value expressive function: I do it because it is congruent with my value system.
   • Arises from the desire to be consistent with your fundamental values. People who like to be consistent.
   • Changed by demonstrating that the current actions are not consistent with the values and/or new ones are more consistent.
5. Ego defensive function: I do it because it allows me to avoid admitting negative aspects of myself.
   • Arises from the desire to avoid acknowledging a bad aspect of self. People generally want to view themselves as being at least moderately good and want to avoid self-evaluation and/or bad feelings about self (e.g., guilty, shame).
   • Changed through self-insight, confrontation with weakness followed with factors that increase self-efficacy.
6. Key to successful change.
   • Match strategy to function. Mismatch makes it worse.
   • Identify multiple functions. Could be more than one reason.
   • Ego defensive is the hardest function to change.

Kelman’s functional approach

1. Compliance: People adopt new behaviors because they want to avoid punishments and gain rewards. Highly controlled environments.
   • Sources: Means control communicators, the supervisors have the ability and motivation to use rewards.
   • Condition: Create perceptions that choices are limited. Resistance is futile.
   • Types of message: Delineate role requirements and incentive systems.
   • Environment: Surveillance.
   • Types of targets: External locus of control or highly authoritarian individuals who accept the control of others.
   • Types of organizations: Top-down environments, incentive driven.
2. Identification: People adopt new behaviors because they want to establish a relationship with someone they admire.
   • Source: Attractive communicators, those who are like us, physically attractive, anyone we aspire to be like or with.
   • Condition: Must have a salient relationship with the communicator.
   • Types of message: Lay out what behaviors will establish the relationship.
   • Environment: Access to communicator.
   • Types of targets: Weak self-concepts, looking for meaning or success in their lives.
   • Types of organizations: Those created and developed by charismatic or transformational leaders.
3. Internalization: People adopt new behaviors because they fit their value system.
   • Source: Expert communicators
   • Condition: Value fit
   • Types of messages: Those that stress how the behavior flows from the values
   • Environment: No competing messages from other sources.
   • Types of targets: Low self monitors.
   • Types of organizations: Those based on ASA theory (attraction-selection-attrition).
4. Effectiveness.
   • Compliance and identification produce short term change.
   • Internalization produces long term change, but can create resistance to future change.
   • Internalization flows from arguments whereas identification flows from source.
   • Compliance requires the most control.

Impression Management Theory

1. People express opinions that are socially appropriate and in this way project a more positive image of themselves.
2. Socially appropriate opinions are those that are congruent with the expected opinions of others who are present.
3. When expressing socially appropriate opinions, people may contradict their attitudes. Attitudes are internal evaluations of something whereas opinions are expression of attitudes toward others.
4. When expressing opinions that contradict their attitudes, some people openly lie while some simply equivocate.
5. Some people are more likely to engage in impression management than are others. Self-monitors, people who are high in public self-conscious.

Attitudinal accessibility: People do whatever pops into their minds when they enter a situation.

1. Through repeated exposure and/or thought, people come to have attitudes that guide their behavior in a given situation.
2. When entering a situation, they look for cues that will tell them what they should do.
3. These salient cues active the typical attitude that they have learned fits the situation.
4. Once activated, the attitude guides their actions until the situation changes.
5. This process allows people to quickly respond to recurring situations.
6. The key to changing behavior is to have people unlearn old attitudes and learn new attitudes. The old way thinking vs. the new way.

Framing: Prospect Theory

1. The outcomes of a course of action can be framed in one of two ways

   • Gain frames focus on the benefits of doing something.

   Example: the gains resulting from doing something new.

   • Loss frames focus on what is lost by doing something.

   Example: the resource used to get something new.

2. The way a message is framed influences risk.

   • When things are framed as gains, people become risk averse and will choose safe options.
   • When things are framed as losses, people become risk takers and will choose risky options.

3. Example: Health care

   • Health exams are considered risky since something bad might be diagnosed. Hence, loss frames are more persuasive than are gain frames.
   • Change in lifestyle is not considered risky since the person is not yet sick. It is preventative. Hence, gain frames are more persuasive than are loss frames.

Norms

1. Types of norms
   • Descriptive norms: What most people do. Surveys
   • Evaluative norms: What most people think should be done. Has an evaluative component.
   • Descriptive norms often legitimatize and reinforces bad behavior whereas evaluative norms condemn it.
2. To change behavior, you have to do one of two things.
   • Demonstrate that the target’s behavior is contrary to descriptive norms.
   • Show that the target’s behavior is contrary to evaluative norms.

Psychological reactance. (Brehm)

1. People want to have the ability to control their decision making.
2. When their freedom to control their decision making is threatened, they become motivationally aroused (i.e., they feel psychological reactance).
3. The focus of psychological reactance is to restore decision freedom.
4. Conditions that produce the most reactance.
   • Forceful communication-highly direct, imperative with lots of intense nonverbal.
   • One-sided message rather than two-sided.
   • No justifications for the change.
   • Internal rather than external locus of control.
   • Having performed the behavior before.
   • Self-competence
   • Importance of the behavior.
   • The extent of restriction
   • Culture