Managing Change

MANAGING CHANGE

Cada hora tiene su verdad[Each hour has its truth]

Alejandro Casona

Change is a necessary way of life. It is all around people: in the seasons, in their social environment, and in their own biological processes .Beginning with the first few moments of life, a person learns to meet change by being adaptive. A person's very first breath depends on ability to adapt from one environment to another. As indicated by the first quotation introducing this essay, each hour is different, offering people new experiences.

Since human beings are adaptive and familiar with change, how is it that they often resist change in their work environment? This question had troubled managers since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the fast peace of change required by the electronic age has made its solution more important. Even when managers use their most logical arguments to support a change, they frequently discover that workers are unconvinced of the need for it.

Work change

The nature of work change

The term "work change" refers to any alteration that occurs in the work environment. Its effect is illustrated in an elementary way by an experiment using air filled balloon. When a finger (which represents change) is pressed against the exterior of the balloon (which represent the organization), the contour of the balloon visibly changes at the point contact. Here an obvious pressure, representing change has produced an obvious deviation at the point of pressure. What isn't obvious, however, is that the entire balloon has been affected and has stretched slightly. As shown by this comparison, the generalization is drawn that the whole organization tends to be affected by change in any part of it.

The molecules of air in the balloon represent a firm's employees. It is apparent that those at the spot of pressure must make drastic adjustments.

Though the change did not make direct contact with the employees, it has affected them indirectly. Though none is fired (i.e., leaves the balloon), the employees are displaced and must adjust to a new location in the balloon. This comparison illustrates an additional generalization: change is a human as well as a technical problem.

Admittedly, the foregoing comparison is rough. A employing is not a balloon; a person is not a molecule; and people are not as free and flexible as air molecules in a balloon. What has been illustrated is a condition of molecular equilibrium in their social structure. This means that people develop an established set of relations with their environment. They learn how to deal with each other, how to perform their jobs and what to expect next. When change comes along, it requires them to make new adjustments as the organization seeks a new equilibrium. When employees are unable to make adequate adjustments, the organization is in a state of unbalance, or disequilibrium. Management's general human objective regarding change is to restore and maintain the group equilibrium and personal adjustment that change upsets.

Responses to change

Work change is further complicated by the fact that is does not produce a direct adjustment as in case of air molecules. Instead, it operates trough each employee's attitudes to produce a response that is conditioned by feelings toward the change. This relationship was illustrated in a series of classic experiments by Roethlisberger and his associates. In one instance lighting was improved regularly according to the theory that better lighting would lead to greater productivity. As was expected, productivity did increase. The lighting was decreased to illustrate the reverse effect-reduced productivity. Instead, productivity increased further! Lighting was again decreased. The result was still greater productivity! Finally, lighting was decreased to 0.06 of a footcandle, which is approximately equivalent to moonlight. According to Roethlisberger, "Not until this point was reached was there any appreciable decline in the output rate."

Obviously, better lighting was not by itself causing greater output. There was no direct connection between the change and the response. Some other intervening variable, later diagnosed as employees attitudes, had crept in to upset the expected pattern.

The way about the people feel about a change then determines how they will respond to it. These feelings are not the result of change; they are caused. One cause is personal history which refers to people's biological processes, their backgrounds, and their social experiences away from work. A second cause is in the work environment itself. It reflects that workers are members of a group and are influenced by its codes, patterns and norms.

Feelings are not a matter of logic. They are neither logical nor illogical but entirely apart from logic. They are nonlogical. Feelings and logic belong in two separate categories, just as inches and pounds do.

One cause of favorable feelings in the groups studied by Roethlisberger was the interest by the researchers in employee problems. This phenomenon later was called the Hawthorne effect, named after the factory where the research took place. The Hawthorne effect means that the mere observation of a group tends change it. When people are observed they act differently. These changes usually unintended and not recognized. They contaminate the research design, but normally they cannot be preserved.

Tough people individually interpret change, they often show their attachment to the group by joining with it in some uniform response to the change. This response makes possible such seemingly illogical actions as walkouts when obviously only a few people actually want to walk out. Other employees who are unhappy seize upon the walkout as a change to show their dissatisfaction and to confirm their affiliation with the group by joining with it in social action. Basically, the group responds with the felling, "we're all in this together. What ever happens to one of us affects all of us." John Donne, the seventeenth-century English poet, beautifully stated the philosophy of relationship as follows:

No man is an Iland, entire of it self;

every man is a peace of the Continent,

a part of the main; if a Cold be washed away

by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a

Promontorie where, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends

...