Theories of change Management

Student’s Name

Affiliation

Course

Date

Introduction

Change management is an effort to change organizations, teams and individual into aspiring future state. Effective change management has principles which entail application of sensitive implementation, thoughtful planning and consultation with, as well as involvement of, the people affected by the changes. Change must be achievable, measurable and realistic. This study focuses on three theory models that are commonly used by most companies in change management. They include Kotter’s 8 Step Change Mode, Lewin’s Change Management Model and Nadler’s Change model (Blokdijk, 2008).

Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model

This change model makes changes to become a campaign. The leaders of a company sells the urgency and convinces employees to change. There are 8 steps in this model. They include: Increasing the necessity for change; Building a team devotion to change; creating the revelation for change; communicating the need for change; empowering staff with the aptitude to change; creating short term goals; staying persistent; Making change to be permanent.

Advantages

This is an easy step-by-step model.

This model focuses on preparing and accepting change not the actual change.

Transition with this model is easier.

Disadvantages

Steps can’t be omitted.

The process is time consuming.

Lewin’s Change Management Model

Lewin’s Change Management Model was created in the 1950s by Kurt Lewin a psychologist. He acknowledged that many people preferred to work under definite zones of safety. Most companies preferred to use this model to enact the changes however it takes time to implement. Lewin classifies the model into three stages of change, they include;

The Unfreeze stage shows that most people tend to create an active effort to resist change. For them to overcome the tendency, a period of unfreezing must be commenced by motivation.

After initiating the change, the next step is the transition period which can take some time to become effective. Sufficient reassurance and leadership is essential for the method to be successful.

Refreeze – When change has been successfully implemented and accepted, the company becomes stable again, and staff refreezes as they work under the new rules.

Advantages

It is an easy to understand and simple framework for change management

Disadvantages

It takes time to implement

Nadler congruence model

According to David Nadler, there are four main elements of organizational structure: the informal organization, the tasks, the people and the formal organization (Hayes, 2007).

The people element consists of the persons involved in the venture – their skills, motivation and personality

The task element consists of work roles and how they interrelate with each other

The formal organization consists of the all the arrangement and processes that make the organization work – the organizational plan, routine supervision and reward systems.

The informal organization is actually all those organizational practices that are not often written down, although make a big difference to how people perform day to day: For instance organizational culture, Organizational politics, and issues of authority. The organization struggle’s if there is a difference between these four elements (Hayes, 2007)

Pros

This model is useful at analyzing where changes are going wrong

the model is good at diagnosis,

Cons

It does not so help at telling what one need to do about it.

Reference

Blokdijk, G. (2008). The change management toolkit (pp. 155-168) New York: Lulu/com

Esther Cameron, M. G. (2012) Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models tools and techniques of organizational change (3 ed., pp 56-356) London: Kogan Page Publishers.

Hayes, J. (2007). The theory and practice of change management (2nd Ed.). Basingstoke

[England: Palgrave Macmillan.