NAME: PATRICK MALAMA

STUDENT NUMBER: 201800617

COURSE: ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

COURSE CODE: BHR 331

PROGRAME: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

QUESTION: ORGANISATION DEVELOPMENT IS ESSENTIALLY A PLANNED CHANGE. EXPLAIN THIS

STATEMENT APPLYING THE RELEVANT CONCEPTS IN THE LOGIC, MEANING AND FACTORS THAT

FACILITATE CHANGE MANAGEMENT. PROVIDE A CONCRETEEXAMPLE FROM ORGANIZATIONS IN

ZAMBIA.

LECTURE: MR CHISANGA

DUE: 30 OCTOBER 2020

Organisations will undergo development for various reasons, sometimes it can be because
they are projecting increase in activities that require a lot of people, different system or
process, in order to adjust and maintain pace. In some cases organisational development is as
a result of poor performance in an organisation or declining performance of an organisation.

Companies and organisations around the world are facing a lot of difficulties in trying to
globalize. An organisation change refers to the planned changed in theory, while
organisational development refers to a long term effort under taken to improve problem
solving capabilities and adapting to change in both external and internal environment of the
organisation.

Three major organisational change theories being used to help organisation members manage
change, Lewin’s change model provides a general frame work for understanding
organisational change. This involves increasing forces pushing for change while decreasing
forces maintaining the current state, producing less tension and resistance to change.

The other model is the after research model, it depends on information gathered about the
organisation to guide subsequent actions. Results are then being evaluated and decided
whether new actions are needed.

Last but not the least, the contemporary approaches, this approach is adapted from action
research model, and with the difference being there is a higher level of member involvement
in the change the process. This involves organisation members to learn about their
organisation and how to change it.

Every system, organisation or human being has the tendency of striving to change for the
better. Although the process can be planned or unplanned, it involves continuous adjustment
to a new environment.

In other words, Organizational development is a set of behavioural science techniques

designed to plan and implement change in work settings. The major techniques of
organizational development attempt to produce some kind of change in individual employees,
work groups, and/or the entire organization.

The emphasis of the process change techniques is on the process to accomplish change.
Intervention methods in this category include survey feedback, team building, process
consultation, and quality of work life. Structural change techniques involve an adjustment in
the organization’s structure to accomplish change goals. Intervention methods in this
category include goal setting, job redesign, quality circles, and strategic planning.

Since change is inevitable, organisational development is a key to a successful organisation,

especially in an environment that is rapidly changing. Organisational development is a
planned change because; change is done in a well-planned systematic way.

When change is not properly planned, it is often resisted or becomes had to implement. Steps
in implementing change have been inverted and with the right change forces, it is easy to
implement change. Kurt Lewin who had introduced a psychological approach in
implementing change to avoid resistance, his research and work is used in organisational
development.

Zambian organisation operating in a perfect competition market are the ones that are usually
subjected to organisational development due to threats that the market has, in order to beat
the competition, organisations have to make sure they upgrade every now and then.

Zamtel as a Zambian network provider that has to compete with these other network
providers like MTN and Airtel, Zamtel has to make sure their technology is as advanced as
the other network providers or even better. This is to make sure that the organisation can keep
up with the competition that exists in a market.

With the pandemic at hand network providers are doing their best to utilize their services by
making sure they maximize their profits and this is because most of the activities during this
time are being done online.

With this being the case, Zamtel and the other organisations come up with development plans
in order to make sure they do not lose customers on the market. The most important and
probably the first development that these organisations have to plan for and implement is
technological development.

Customers always go for network providers that are reliable regardless of the conditions, for
this reason network providers plan for technological development that can increase or
improve their internet speed, strong wireless network etc.
Hypothetically if Zamtel was performing poorly and losing customers they would make loses
and cannot stay on the market for so long, therefore if an organization like Zamtel recognizes
their lack of profit maximization and ability to provide customers with the best network
services, they have to reevaluate their work and plan for development.

Organizational development can be done various ways and with different models. Using the
three phases of managing change by Kurt Lewin namely unfreezing stage, rearranging stage
and refreezing stage, Zamtel can improve their work by using the three stages.

I believe Lewin’s work can effectively work with internal affairs of the organization, in this
case Zamtel workers, the three stages can be used to improve interpersonal behavior of
employees.

Lewin proposed that the behavior of any individual in response to a proposed change is a
function of group behavior. Any interaction or force affecting the group structure also affects
individual behavior and capacity to change. Therefore, the group environment or field must
be considered in the change process.

The three stage model shows the organization’s status quo in this case, Zamtel’s bad
performance in the market and there is also a desired state that Zamtel needs to have and has
to implement change in order to reach that state. To understand group behavior and the
behavior of individual group workers during change process, the organization must evaluate
the totality and complexity of the field. This is also known as field theory, which is widely
used to develop change models.

Zamtel change experts will first under take the unfreezing phase; this involves getting rid of
the old behaviors that were not productive. The unfreezing stage is like the process of making
a meal, the first change before anything else can happen is to unfreeze food, preparing them
for change, whether they are frozen and require thawing, or raw food requiring washing.

The model uses the same philosophy mentioned in the above paragraph, therefore old
behaviors have to be gotten rid of before implementing change. Zamtel’s change
implementers have to determine which changes should be made, ensuring support from
stakeholders and also creating the need for change.
The next stage which is rearranging involves the evaluation process; there are two important
drivers of successful and long term effectiveness of the change implementation process which
are information flow and leadership.

During this stage the organization and its change implementers will influence certain
individuals in the group of workers in the organization. A well planned change process
requires defining a vision and motivation.

Apart from that, promoting and empowering can also be done by Zamtel during this stage,
encouraging Zamtel workers to get more involved proactively with the change and support
managers providing daily and weekly direction to staff. This can be done to the workers who
seem to be resisting the change; this can be done by giving a role in the change process to a
worker who seems to be against the change.

The final stage of Lewin’s model is refreezing; the organization at this point aims at
sustaining the change they have enacted. The goal is for the people involved to consider this
new state as the new status quo, the workers norms, activities, strategies and processes are
transformed per the new state.

The organization will now be at its best performance and the key is to keep it that way for as
long as it can. This can be done be training workers, develop and promote ways to sustain the
change in the long term.

Organizational development is a systematic process that requires good planning and

analyzing a lot of data before the organization starts declining. This is the reason why certain
procedures have to be followed for it to be a success. There are other models of planned
change used in organizational development by other researchers and will be explained in the
following paragraphs.

Another researcher by the name of Edgar Schein published his models that contributed to
organizational development. There is an old Chinese proverb that says “give a man a fish and
feed for a day but if you teach a man to fish, you fed him for the rest of his life. This proverb
captures the underlying philosophy of Edgar Schein’s theory of organizational consultation as
presented in his book. Process Consultation: Organizational Development (1988).
As an organization that is aiming to develop with reference to one of Schein’s models,
purchase expert model, the survey brings in information on what the organization has to
improve on. Not only has that, during the survey the consultant also figured out what other
organizations are doing in order to beat their competitors.

Process consultation is organized in three parts. In part one, Schein shares both his definition
of the process consultation and its underlying assumptions. Part two provides a brief over
view of its historical roots and examines the seven relevant major human process that are, in
Schein’s opinion, at the heart of the process consultation.

In order to develop well-thought-out planned change or organizational development for each

of the company’s unique challenges, organizations employ Schein’s organizational consulting
models, along with additional organizational communication and persuasion concepts to help
guide their responses.

In many ways this organizational development is a response to an ordinary help-wanted ad.

Accordingly, like with any planned change, a central aim of this response is for the consultant
to establish credibility in the eyes of Zamtel. Thus, each organizational challenge includes a
hypothetical “experience” section to establish the consultant’s credibility. This portion draws
influence from credibility theory and other source factors which are taught.

With such a wide spectrum of approaches and disciplines among professional consulting
occupations, an important objective of this project is to explore underlying theoretical
principles that generally influence the field of organizational consulting. As Schein (1988)
emphasizes, understanding theoretical assumptions that underlie the various approaches to
consultation is critical to understanding the broader concept of organizational development.

Organizational development is essential for any organization; Zamtel and any other
organization that aims to maximize profits or grow as an organization have to plan for these
developments in a systematic way.

Change is a consequence of the threats and challenges to the organization arising from the
environment and the need to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Therefore it cannot be
avoided; different organizational development models can be applied in order to develop.
Other models that can effectively produce good results with organizational development are
SMART and SWOT. These are used to analyze the external and internal environment of the
organist ion in order to understand and effective plan for change.

In conclusion, an organization cannot rely solely on an internal or external change leader to

reinforce and implement changes. A mixture of both would be needed to bring about changes
as they each possess different types of knowledge and skills, forming an internal- external
consulting team.

A balance needs to be struck in everything done. Since the opportunities an organization

faces is huge and business markets are vast, organizations need to rely on not individual, but
groups of people who are able to complement each with their knowledge, continuous
feedbacks and commitment to learn from one another, hence making it more effective than
individuals working alone.

Therefore organizational development is a planned change that is systematically done

following well designed models, nevertheless some models might not work as effectively as
they did back then when they were introduced and this is because of the changes that take
place over time, which is the same reason why organizational development is essential.
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