Assignment – A
Question 1 What are the common pitfalls while implementing organizational change? Discuss in detail.
Question 2 How is organizational change different from organizational development? Discuss, quoting suitable example.
Question 3 How do organizations know when they should change? What cues should an organization look for? Discuss in detail.
Question 4 What are the various factors accelerating change? Explain the sources of individual and organizational resistance to change.
Question 5 What is an OD Intervention? Discuss the OD values necessary for dealing with individuals, team and organization.
Assignment – B
Question 1. Explain different kinds of OD interventions specially designed to improve team
Question performance. Explain the human process approach to OD.
Question 2. (a) State and explain various theories of planned change in detail.
(b) List and explain the steps that managers can take to minimize resistance to change.
Question 3. Discuss and exemplify the relevance of intergroup development OD intervention in the organisation.
CROSS – TRAINING EMILY
Emily, who has the reputation of being an excellent worker, is a machine operator in a furniture manufacturing plant that has been growing at a rate of 15% to 20% each year for the past decade. New additions have been built onto the plant, new plants opened in the region, workers hired, new product lines developed, lots of expansion, but with no significant change in overall approach to operations, plant lay-out, ways of managing workers, or in the design processes. Plant operations as well as organizational culture are rooted in traditional Western management practices and logic, based largely on the notion of mass production and economies of scale. Over the past four years, the company has been growing in number and variety of products produced and in market penetration; however, profitability has been flattening and showing signs of decline. As a result, management is beginning to focus more on production operations (internal focus) rather than new market strategies, new products, and new market segments (external focus), in developing their strategic plans. They hope to get manufacturing costs down, improve consistency of quality and ability to meet delivery times better, while decreasing inventory and increasing flexibility.
One of several new programs initiated by management in this effort to improve flexibility and lower costs was to get workers cross-trained. However, when a representative from Human Resources explained this program to Emily’s supervisor, Jim, he reluctantly agreed to cross-train most of his workers, but NOT Emily.
Jim explained to the Human Resources person that Emily works on a machine that is very complex and not easy to effectively operate. He has tried many workers on it, tried to train them, but Emily is the only one that can consistently get product through the machine that is within specification and still meet production schedules. When anyone else tries to operate the machine, which performs a key function in the manufacturing process, it either ends up being a big bottle neck or producing excessive waste, which creates a lot of trouble for Jim.
Jim goes on to explain that Emily knows this sophisticated and complicated machine inside and out, she has been running it for five years. She likes the challenge; she says it makes the day go by faster, too. She is meticulous in her work, a very skilled employee who really cares about the quality of her work. Jim told the HR person that he wished all of his workers were like Emily. Jim was adamant about keeping Emily on this machine and not cross-training her. The HR person was frustrated. He could see Jim’s point but he had to follow executive orders: “Get these people cross-trained.”
Around the same period of time, a university student was doing a field study in the section of the plant where Emily worked and Emily was one of the workers he interviewed. Emily told the student that, in spite of the fact that the plant had some problems with employee morale and excessive employee turnover, she really liked working there. She also mentioned that she is hoping that she did not have to participate in the recent “Program of the Month” which was having operators learn each other’s jobs. She told the student that it would just create more waste if they tried to have other employees run her machine.
Emily seemed to take a special liking for the student and began to open up to him. She told him that her machine really didn’t need to be so difficult and touchy to operate, with a couple of rather minor design changes in the machine and better maintenance, virtually anyone could run it. She had tried to explain this to her supervisor a couple of years ago but he just told her to “do her work and leave operations to the manufacturing engineers.” She also said that, if workers up stream in the process would spend a little more time and care to keep the raw material in slightly tighter specifications, it would go through her machine much more easily and trouble-free, but that they were too focused on going fast. She expressed a lack of respect for the managers who couldn’t see this and even joked about how “managers didn’t know anything.” Questions:
Question 1. Identify the sources of resistance to change in this case.
Question 2. Discuss whether this resistance is justified or could be overcome.
Question 3. Recommend ways to minimize resistance to change in this incident.
Assignment – C
1. Change efforts to overcome the pressures of both individual resistance and group conformity is called:
d) Planned change
2. “First-order change” is change that:
a) Is multidimensional, multilevel, discontinuous, and radical
b) Provides insight into the ability of some individuals to resist change
c) Is linear and continuous
d) Is very threatening
3. ________ is an OC approach that focuses on data collection and analysis using a scientific methodology
a) Action research
b) Lewin’s three step model
c) Organizational development
d) Process consultation
4. When people resist change because they hear what they want to hear and they ignore information that
challenges those perception, they are resisting change because:
a) economic factors
b) the fear of unknown
c) selective information processing
d) the security needs
5. John Kotter built on Lewin’s three-step model to create a more detailed approach for implementing ______.
a) Action research
b) Economic shocks
d) Social trends
6. Which of the following is a source of organizational resistance to change?
b) Group Inertia
c) Economic factors
7. Basically an operational change on a calculated basis as response to internal and external demands is a
a) Fundamental change
b) Planned Change
c) Strategic Change
d) Transformational change
8. Kurt Lewin’s three-step model for successful change in organizations includes:
a) Unthawing, changing, freezing
b) Unfreezing, moving, freezing
c) Unfreezing, moving, and refreezing
d) Unfreezing, changing, and refreezing
9. Action Research was first defined by
a) Kurt Lewin
b) John Collier
b) French and Bell
c) None of the above
10. Which is not an Internal Change?
a) Change in Equipments
b) Job restructuring
c) Change in Employee Attitude
d) Change in Business cycles
11. In Incremental change there is a
a) small change
b) radical change
c) gradual change
d) significant change
12. A change agent is:
a) an external or an internal agent
b) a behavioral scientist
c) both a and b
d) a national scientist
13. Which of the following is a tactic that managers can use to reduce resistance to change?
c) Education & Communication
d) all of the above
14. Which one of the following is not a part of Effective Change Management?
a) Motivating Change
b) Initiating Change
c) Creating Vision
d) Developing political support
15. In the moving stage of the Lewin’s Model
a) driving forces within the organization provide disconfirming information that shows discrepancies between the organization’s desired state and its current state to reduce potentially resisting forces
b) supporting mechanism stabilize the organization at a new state of equilibrium
c) driving forces focus on developing new behaviors that may differ from prior habits
d) none of the above
16. What is not true about Organizational Development?
a) It’s a systematic approach
b) It’s a response to change
c) It’s an unplanned change
d) It’s a scientific approach
17. An OD technique that involves unstructured group interaction in which members learn by observing and
participating rather than being told is:
a) Survey Feedback
b) Team Building
c) Sensitivity Training
d) Process Consultation
18. Interventions that are aimed at improving communication ability are:
a) Structural interventions
b) Intergroup interventions
c) Interpersonal interventions
d) Process consultation
19. Inter group development seeks to
a) facilitate entry and exit of members into groups
b) change attitudes, stereotypes and the perceptions the group have of each other
c) change the group structure and leadership
d) Merge two groups into functioning teams
20. When organizational development involves radical change that is multidimensional and multilevel it is
most likely going through
a) Structural change
b) Technological change
c) First order change
d) Second order change
21. Grid Organization Development technique was designed by
a) Robert R Blake
b) Jane S Mouton
c) Roger Harrison
d) Both a and b
22. Team building intervention which is designed to clarify role expectation is
a) Grid OD
b) Role Analysis Technique
c) Role negotiation Technique
d) Job design
23 In managerial Grid, an individual’s style can be best described as which of the following:
a) the way one dresses
b) one’s concern for production and people
c) how one interacts with management
d) the way one deals with the problem
24. The assumption underlying the use of survey feedback in OD is
a) surveys are the best way to collect data
b) a great deal of data is collected
c) it is used to provide feed back and to initiate change in the organization
d) responses can be easily be interpreted
25. The first T group was formed
a) to facilitate decision making
b) to work on group projects
c) to make group more cohesive
d) as people reacted to data as their own behavior
26. The following is not the stem of OD
a) Laboratory training
b) Action research / Survey feedback
c) Strategic change
d) managerial Grid
27. Strategic change interventions involve improving
a) The alignment among an organization’s environment, strategy and organization design
b) The organization’s relationship to its environment
c) The fit between the organization’s technical, political and cultural systems.
d) All of the above
28. The third party attempts to make intervention aimed at opening communication and confronting the
problem including which of the following
a) ensuring mutual motivation
b) coordinating confrontation efforts
c) both the above two
d) collecting data
29. Which of the following is not a fundamental assumption underlying process consultation?
a) the group is the building block of organization
b) groups are the basic units of change
c) a skilled party can help the group in joint diagnosis
d) it is an agenda less meeting
30. Which of the following is not a step of Role analysis technique?
a) role incumbent’s expectations of others
b) Role negotiation
c) role expectations
d) role profile
31. Which of the following areas do OD practitioner needs to be familiar with to bring about strategic change
a) competitive strategy
b) team building
d) all of the above
32. In fundamental change there is
a) redefinition of current purpose or mission
b) abrupt change in organization’s strategy
c) change of all or most of the organization components
d) response to an even or a series of events
33. Coaching and Counseling is an OD technique which is used for
34. Third Party Intervention an OD technique which is used for
35. Role Negotiation an OD technique which is used for
36. Consultant client relationship does not follow
a) Understanding the actual client..
b) Slowly and gradually understanding of the whole system
c) Finding out the inter-related and inter-dependent groups.
d) misrepresentation and collusion
37. Which of the following statements is false?
a) In an organization, it is not essential to have regular changes and development in order to bring
b) Organization brings a change mainly because of planned and unplanned change.
c) Sometimes organization is resistant to change
d) Organizational change is important to usher in long-term success in an organization
38. OD is often defined as:
a) anything done to better an organization
b) a planned effort to improve the effectiveness of the organization
c) training function of the organization
d) all of the above
39. Which is not the area of issue in consultant-client relationship?
a) Mutual Trust
b) Career Development
c) Nature of Consultant’s Expertise
d) Entry and Contracting
40. Which of the following is an external change?
a) performance gaps
b) change in products
c) advances in information process
d) change in organizational size