Change and innovation management

Individual Assignment
Section D
Name ID No
Habtamu Desalegn MAPM (1) 267/14

Submitted to DR. Tekalgn Gido

Submission date Oct 22 2022

Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2
Evolutionary change. .................................................................................................................................... 2
Incremental change. ..................................................................................................................................... 4
Revolutionary change. .................................................................................................................................. 5
Developmental change. ................................................................................................................................ 6
Transitional change. ...................................................................................................................................... 7
Transformational change. ............................................................................................................................. 8
References .................................................................................................................................................... 9

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Introduction

There are many issues to consider in managing organizational change, whether the changes you're
planning are minor or major. The first step in managing your people through change is identifying
the type of changes you are making to your organization.

Evolutionary change.

What Is Evolution?
The term evolution is used to describe prolonged periods of growth where no major upheaval
occurs in organization practices.

The progression of evolution is slow. The strategy is developed collaboratively. Senior

management should be involved, but they are not pushing change. Leadership tends to empower
individuals from all levels of the company to embrace change.

Change comes in different stages and everyone is expected to comprehend and welcome it.
Whether it be a whole company project is a small digital marketing one, any form of evolution has
various stages.

Organizations must have gradual development to survive. Those who effectively develop will have
a competitive advantage. The organization will fall into the economy’s tsunami of creative
destruction if it does not evolve.

Evolutionary change is change by convincing people. One or more “change agents” see an
opportunity for the organization to improve, and they pursue it by talking with other people and
building a proposal/prototype that is iteratively shopped around.
As examples: project management techniques that spread with use or changes to an incident
management process as teams figure out shortcuts.

Here are the characteristics of this evolutionary period:

· A functional organization structure is introduced to separate manufacturing from marketing

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activities, and job assignments become more specialized.
· Accounting systems for inventory and purchasing, are introduced.
· Incentives, budgets, and work standards are adopted.
· Communication becomes more formal and impersonal as a hierarchy of titles and positions
builds
· The new manager and his key supervisors take most of the responsibility for instituting
direction, while lower-level supervisors are treated more as functional specialists than as
autonomous decision-making managers,

Advantages
Highly likely that, if the change is implemented, it will become part of the culture. More people
have been involved in the design. More people identify with the change. Likely that the change
fits the organization, understanding the current situation. More brains around the problem, leading
to more thoughtful solutions.

Disadvantages
Very risky up front. High likelihood that people will not understand or will not buy in to the
change. Hard to build momentum. Haphazard. Changes may be introduced that do not move the
organization towards where it needs to go. This is compounded if there is not an organizational
“True North” or target condition. Can be “design-by-committee” where a sense of central direction
is lost. Especially true if there is not one clear owner/change agent. Hard to find people who are
good at making evolutionary change. It is a skill. What’s more, these people rarely take credit for
their work so you might not know who they are.

Incremental change gradually applies the change gradually, one step at a time. If an organization
chooses to adopt a new workplace protocol incrementally, for instance, then new rules and
guidelines would be implemented slowly over a period of time

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Organizational development is a natural process in which both the organization and its employees
evolve to a greater degree of focus and awareness. It’s a type of evolution (without religion) that
entails honing the ability to think logically, as well as being trustworthy and transparent.

It’s about decentralized and participatory decision-making, as well as the recognition that
everyone, regardless of status, has a meaningful role to play. Adherence to higher living principles
leads to solid stability, commitment to ethics and values, as well as a determination to be more
representative not just of customers, but also of the broader world.

Evolutionary Stage
Another characteristic occurs as organizations age and grows long-term growth, which is called
the evolutionary era. Most developing businesses do not increase for two years and then contract
for one; instead, those that survive a crisis often experience a history of uninterrupted development
without a big economic setback or significant internal turmoil.
The word “evolution” is appropriate for describing these calm times because only little differences
appear to be required to continue development while following the same general management
pattern.

Incremental change.

The concept that programs and organizations develop over time by making small alterations; that
is, by changing components or activities in increments, thereby building on the status quo. Change
might include continuous improvement as a quality management process or implementation of
new computer system to increase efficiencies. Many times, organizations experience incremental
change and its leaders do not recognize the change as such.
. Incremental Change When the three most recent regional plans for the province of Groningen
[16–18] are analysed, changes both in the aims and policies as well as in accompanying functional
maps are marginal. Once policies have been defined in the initial plan, they are to a large extent
repeated in subsequent plans. When the respective functional maps are measured the repetitive

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character becomes clear: approximately 2% of the land area is permitted to change its function
over the effective term of the three plans (e.g. 13 years). Despite the fact that there are numerous
natural or societal changes occurring in the same spatial area, the spatial planning options to change
functions or land-use in the next ten years after a regional plan is adopted, are limited to only 2%
of the area. The Groningen example highlights the ‘incrementality’ of change and is even more
appalling when compared with a preliminary climate adaptive design made for Groningen
province, in which approximately 30% of the land area potentially needs to undergo a functional
change [19]. These incremental changes are visualized as a straight but slowly rising line along
which the consecutive plans are positioned.

Revolutionary change.

The term revolution is used to describe those periods of substantial turmoil in organization life.
Revolutionary change. It is the change-by-mandate. You will often see this type of change in
reaction to (1) a leadership change or (2) a crisis.

Advantages

 Low risk of the change failing to take effect.

 Change will occur quickly.
 Change will have any resources needed.
 Political cover. For example if another department doesn’t like the change for some reason,
and they escalate to their management, whoever mandated the change feels ownership over
it and will be unlikely to back down. (Aside: this is not necessarily a good thing if the change
is at the expense of the larger organization.)
 Looks good on résumés and annual reports.
 Feels planned. Mandates that come from the same person often fit together–for example a
change this year to create a new Service Desk, followed by a change next year to implement
a new Service Desk tool.

Disadvantages

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  Change may not become part of the culture before focus shifts. The change may roll back a
few months after leadership changes focus.
 Loss of political capital: because the change was less inclusive up front, political capital is
lost.
 Job security for the leader: if the change does not provide the benefit expected, or otherwise
fails, the people who mandated the change may lose their job. (Aside: setting this expectation
is definitely a bad way to manage, as it creates huge incentives for leaders to make the
change look like it worked.)
 Opportunity cost: other improvements may be needed but everyone is tied up working on the
mandated improvement.
 Not necessarily a “good fit” for the organization: the current situation was likely not
understood well, so the solution applied often leaves pain points or gaps.
 Often treats people like robots.

Developmental change.

Developmental changes are those you make to improve current business procedures. As long as
you keep your staff well informed of changes and give them the training they need to implement
process improvements, they should experience little stress from development change.

Examples of developmental change include:

 improving existing billing and reporting methods

 updating payroll procedures

 Refocusing marketing strategies and advertising processes.

Developmental change may be your first step to making further changes to your business that will
help you meet the demands of your market. Managing these small steps well demonstrates to your
team that you are taking a sensible, measured approach to change. When making developmental
changes, it's important for you to:

 explain to staff your rationale for the changes

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  skill your staff to use new processes and technology

 show your staff your commitment to minimising the impacts of change on your business.

Organizational development (OD) is a field of study that addresses change and how it affects
organizations and the individuals within those organizations. Effective organizational
development can assist organizations and individuals to cope with change. Strategies can be
developed to introduce planned change, such as team-building efforts, to improve organizational
functioning. While change is a “given,” there are a number of ways to deal with change -- some
useful, some not. Organizational development assists organizations in coping with the turbulent
environment, both internally and externally, frequently doing so by introducing planned change
efforts. Organizational development is a relatively new area of interest for business and the
professions. While the professional development of individuals has been accepted and fostered by
a number of organizations for some time, there is still ambiguity surrounding the term
organizational development. The basic concept of both professional development and
organizational development is the same, however, with an essential difference in focus.
Professional development attempts to improve an individual’s effectiveness in practice, while
organizational development focuses on ways to improve an organization’s overall productivity,
human fulfillment, and responsiveness to the environment (Cummings & Huse, 1988). These goals
are accomplished through a variety of interventions aimed at dealing with specific issues, as well
as through ongoing processes.

Transitional change.

A transition is defined as “a gradual, continuous process of societal change, changing the character
of society (or a complex part) structurally”.
Transitional change seeks to achieve a known desired state that is different from the existing one.
It is episodic, planned and second order, or radical. De Roo attributes dynamics to this change:
between two stable phases a dynamic phase enables the system to shift from an old (weak) context
towards a new (stronger) one. Various studies on change management demonstrate that this change
can only take place if a crisis has been experienced. Corresponding schemes all describe this

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transition as a fluent line up to a certain point where chaotic circumstances appear. Out of this
chaos a new fluent line emerges. The fluency of the transition implies that the system itself is not
fundamentally transformed. After the transition the same system has reached a new stable state of
a higher complexity or quality.

Transformational change.

Transformational change is radical or second order in nature¯ it requires a shift in assumptions

made by the organization and its members. Transformation can result in an organization that differs
significantly in terms of structure, processes, culture and strategy. It may, therefore, result in the
creation of an organization that operates in developmental mode - one that continuously learns,
adapts and improves.
Fundamental change might be changing an organization’s structure and culture from the traditional
top-down, hierarchical structure to a large amount of self-directing teams. Another example might
be Business Process Re-engineering, which tries to take apart (at least on paper, at first) the major
parts and processes of the organization and then put them back together in a more optimal fashion.
Transformational change is sometimes referred to as quantum change. Folke and colleagues
describe a transformation as “the capacity to transform the stability landscape itself in order to
become a different kind of system, to create a fundamentally new system when ecological,
economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable”. Transformation is divided in
three phases: preparing, navigating and stabilizing. The moment between preparing and navigating
transformation is defined as the window of opportunity, where “the presence of many options a
sequence of events yet a short time-frame leading to the start of a transformation”. This process is
Sustainability called transformation, but it can be questioned if the change described is (limited to)
a change of direction within one system instead of a transformation of one system into
fundamentally other.

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References
1. Ackerman, L.S. (1986). ‘Development, Transition or Transformation: The Question of
Change in Organizations’, Organizational Development Practitioner, December, pp. 1-8.

2. Dirks, K.T., Cummings, L.L. and Pierce, J.L. (1996). ‘Psychological Ownership in Organizations: Conditions under
which individuals promote or resist change’. In: Woodman, R.W. and Pasmore, W.A. (eds.) Research in
Organizational Change and Development, Vol. 9: 1-23.

3. Barnowe, J.T., King, G. and Berniker, E. (1992). ‘Personal Values and Economic Transition
in the Baltic States,’ Journal of Baltic Studies, 23 (2), pp. 179-190.
4. Bergquist, W. (1993). The Postmodern Organization: Mastering the Art of Irreversible
Change, Jose-Bass Publisher.
5. Bluedon, A.C. (2000). ‘Time and Organizational Culture’, in Ashkanasy, N.M., Wilderom,
P.M. and Peterson, M.F. (Eds) Handbook of Organizational Culture & Climate, pp. 117-128.
Sage Publications.
6. Burns, T. and Stalker, G.M. (1961). The Management of Innovation. London: Tavistock Publications.
7. Clark, E. and Soulsby, A. (1999). Organizational Change in Post-Communist Europe: Management and
transformation in the Czech Republic, Routledge.

8. Internet