Reference no: EM13217679

Understanding and Coping with Change

Change is everywhere, yet very few people seem to embrace the concept. We are, for the most part, creatures of habit and follow daily routines. When change occurs, our activities and thought patterns are disrupted.

Write a four- to five-page APA formatted paper (excluding the title and reference pages), using a minimum of three scholarly sources in addition to the textbook, analyzing the internal and external factors contributing to an individual's resistance to change.

Describe a situation where you or someone you know was resistant to change as identified in one of following areas:
a.Self-interest

b.Lack of understanding

c.Lack of trust in management

d.Differing assessments of the need for change

e.Low tolerance for change

Explain whether the resistance to change was caused by an internal or external factor. Using Kotter's theory for change, provide a plan for overcoming that resistance. What will be done and how will you know that the plan has worked?
* PLEASE NO COPY AND PASTE it has to be written in your own words. it gets checked for originality and it needs to be written APA Style/format
Additional Requirements

Min Pages: 4
Max Pages: 6
Level of Detail: Only answer needed
Other Requirements: This is Chapter 9 & 10 Summary review: Book is Organizational Behavior , Author: Donald Baack.

Chapter 9 summary: Chapter Summary
Communication involves the transmission, reception, and processing of information. Three models of communication are linear, interactive, and transactional. These models of communication include a sender, a method of transmission, a receiver, and potential barriers to communication.

Interpersonal communication includes oral, nonverbal, and written elements. Nonverbal components include kinesic cues, appearance and dress, artifacts, touch, space, and paralanguage. Written communications include memos, e-mails, instant messages, letters, and reports.

Numerous barriers to communication exist. Barriers can be associated with every element of a basic communication model, or as sender, encoding, transmission medium, decoding, receiver, and feedback barriers. A second approach analyzes communication barriers in terms of individual differences, situational factors, and transmission problems. Overcoming these barriers includes duties carried out by the sender, the receiver, and both parties.

Formal communication consists of information that travels through organizationally designated channels. Many traditional written channels have been adapted to more sophisticated technologies. Computer-based digital channels include e-mail, instant messaging, social media, videoconferencing, intranets, and extranets.

The types of messages that travel over formal channels include job instructions, job rationales, standardized information, team and group coordination efforts, questions, answers, decisions, plans, and ideological indoctrination. In formal channels, information richness represents the information carrying capacity of a medium. Channels range from lean to moderately rich to rich. Communication in teams, groups, departments, and sometimes larger organizations include chain, wheel, circle, and all-channel networks.

International settings create extensions of individual interpersonal barriers to communication as well as completely new challenges. The most commonly cited barriers to communication in international business include language, slang, methods of greeting, conversational directness, the use of silence, eye contact, ethnocentrism, differences in meanings of nonverbal cues, personal space issues, and the use of symbols and cultural icons.

Overcoming international communication barriers begins with the deployment of a cultural assimilator to prepare messages and individuals for interactions with members of other countries. Translators assist when multiple languages are present. Expatriate employees benefit from cultural training. Those chosen for assignments should exhibit a willingness to adapt to new cultures.
Chapter 10 Summary: Chapter Summary
An organization is a system of consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more persons. Organizations consist of two or more people in a social setting, with division of labor, a hierarchy of authority, coordination of activities, and a common purpose or goal. Organizations can be profit-seeking, nonprofit, or governmental.

Organizing involves the deployment of organizational resources designed to achieve strategic objectives and includes the division of labor, the creation of departments, the establishment of formal lines of authority, and the use of mechanisms of coordination. The three steps of organization include job design, departmentalization, and completion of the company's structure by drawing lines of authority and responsibility.

Departmentalization takes place by constructing departments or divisions in which similar jobs are located together. Forms of departmentalization include departmentalization by function, product, process, customers, geographic areas, and strategic business units, and the matrix form.

Organizing involves completion of the company's structure by establishing lines of authority and responsibility. Three types of authority are line authority, staff authority, and functional authority. Responsibility or accountability is the obligation to carry out tasks as assigned by the supervisor. The concept of parity of authority and responsibility proposes that there should be equal levels of authority and responsibility in each position. When an organizational design has been completed, several key elements are in place, including the chain of command/hierarchy of authority as well as vertical and horizontal dimensions of structure.

The chain of command will be strongly influenced by the degree of centralization and decentralization present within the organization. Organizational design also dictates company flexibility and adaptability through the use of mechanistic or organic structural forms.

Emerging technologies have led to two new types of organizational design. Virtual organizations are geographically distributed, with members bound by a long-term common interest or goal, communicating and coordinating their work through information technology. The boundaryless organization seeks to eliminate internal barriers and hierarchy along with the vertical and horizontal boundaries between a company and its customers and suppliers.

The world of business has experienced an increasing rate of change. Still, individual employees resist change for numerous reasons, including self-interest, lack of understanding, lack of trust, disagreement about the need for a change, and a low tolerance for change. Managers can respond to resistance through tactics including education, communication, participation, involvement, facilitation, support, manipulation, cooptation, and coercion. Lewin's three-step model involves unfreezing, moving, and refreezing employee opinion and behavior. Kotter's eight-step approach elaborates on the same process.

Organizational structure and changes in organizational structure influence a series of outcomes. These impact the nature of a manager's job. Among outcomes influenced by organizational design are the number and types of decisions made at all ranks; the amount of authority held at all levels; the number of tasks performed by entry-level employees; formality of relationships; role clarity and role ambiguity; and perceived chances for advancement.