Organizational Change: Article Review - MGT 331: Organizational Behavior. (A brief review of 3 related articles, see references for article links)

Essay by Robert KestenbaumUniversity, Master's January 2003

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Organizational Change: Article Review

In a business environment that is struggling to recuperate after the stock market bubble burst, 9/11, Enron and other corporate scandals, change has become the keyword for survivability in a volatile market. CEO's and Boards of Directors are now being scrutinized for every action taken, whether it is benign or malignant. Stockholders are clamoring for change within the organization to provide insurance against any decrease in share value or dividends. With this in mind, a review was conducted on several articles that discuss the current trend in organizational change, including the reasons for the change, how the change affects the employees and whether the methodologies used to implement change are effective.

Change, according to Anderson, Klein and Stuart (2000), is a consciousness choice that unfortunately, due to poor planning by the change managers, fails to achieve its goal. Change managers set themselves up for failure by failing to take a whole-system approach to implementing the change.

When change managers address the four quadrants of change, they have a better chance in achieving their goals for change.

Anderson, Klein and Stuart (2000) present the four quadrants of change as a graphical representation of the different aspects and 'personalities' of change. Quadrant one deals with the individual/internal aspect of change, covering cognitive, psychological and spiritual development. Quadrant two deals with the individual/external aspect, covering technical and interpersonal skills. Quadrant three covers the collective/internal aspects, specifically the domain of culture within the organization. The final quadrant, quadrant four, deals with the collective/external aspects, including organizational design, technology workflow, policies and procedures (Anderson, 2000).

It is within quadrants three and four that many organizations fail while implementing change. According to Axelrod (2001), organizations fail because the change management actually increases bureaucracy, reinforces top-down management and increases resistance (Axelrod, 2001). However,