Essay 3
Response: Among the first stories in the first chapter of Managing Organizational Change, the one story that seemed very interesting is the way the Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital made a turnaround from suffering from losses and almost laying off employees to making profits upto $1.2 billion. Just about any organization when committed to transparency and a continual improvement in quality should be able to achieve this outcome without any issues. The appointment of a Chief Operating Officer also ensured that medical staff coordinated well with management and met goals in the areas of regulatory compliance and performance assessment. Without a doubt, these measures reflected the core values of consistent improvement and transparency (Palmer, Dunford & Buchanan, 2017).
Discuss the six images of managing change and how each can affect an organization.
Response: The six images of managing change are change manager as Director, Navigator, Caretaker, Coach, Interpreter and Nurturer. While the first three images involve controlling the organization and the outcomes they desire for it, the next three are a little different. As a coach, a desire to shape the organization in a certain way by inculcating certain the right values, skills and drills. As an interpreter, one has to make sense of certain developments and events and create meaning for their employees. Finally, the Nurturer is one who encourages self-organization and is of the opinion that even small changes can have a big impact on organizations with unintended outcomes (Palmer, Dunford & Buchanan, 2017).
Discuss the six environmental pressures for change faced by managers.
Response: The six environmental pressures for change include fashion, demography, external mandate, geopolitics, reputation and hypercompetition. While fashion involves making organizational changes that appear progressive, demography involves the retirement of older Baby Boomer generations. As for external mandate and geopolitics, this will occur when there is pressure from the outside through regulation and legislation or even pressure from Third World countries as they are destinations for outsourcing. Apart from this, natural or manmade disasters that occur in one part of the world can affect in others. As for hypercompetition and reputation, when companies from other sectors begin to sell products that are in yours, this pressure to make changes to your organization is as real as can get. Also, the final environmental pressure to change stems from maintaining a positive reputation as this clearly is a big factor in their survival in the market. Of course, in having discussed these external pressures, and apart from changing organizations based on these pressures, there are times when organizations resist these pressures, delay their response and in some cases, not even recognize these issues as important at all. In fact, in some cases, where a crisis has occurred, organizations still don't change (Palmer, Dunford & Buchanan, 2017).
Discuss and provide examples of the differences between first-order and second-order change.
Response: While first-order change involves initiatives that solve certain problems by a number of continuous, even adaptive improvements, this does not challenge current methods and thinking at all. In other words, no major changes are made to the product but just small ones. Second-order changes are the introduction of new products, services or even ways of doing business that can be rather disruptive in the organization and which leads to organizational transformation. As for examples that differentiate the two, the improvement of safety features in vehicles are first-order changes while the manufacture of electric-powered vehicle by companies that aren't in the automotive section are an example of second-order change (Palmer, Dunford & Buchanan, 2017).
References
Palmer, I., Dunford, R. & Buchanan, D A. (2017). Managing Organization Change: A Multiple Perspectives Approach (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill Education.
