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 Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p

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Jezreel Jyl P. Hilado

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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts? (you are expected to read an article about this question) .. at least 3000 words   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyMon Dec 28, 2009 10:26 pm

In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts? (you are expected to read an article about this question) .. at least 3000 words


Another question to answer for this yuletide season.. Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Icon_biggrin Merry Christmas! Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Icon_santa


The world is rapidly changing into something too hard to easily predict, with a hundred opportunities and pitfalls passing by every moment. Typically, the concept of organizational change is in regard to organization-wide change, as opposed to smaller changes such as adding a new person, modifying a program, etc. Examples of organization-wide change might include a change in mission, restructuring operations like for example, restructuring to self-managed teams, layoffs, etc., new technologies, mergers, major collaborations, "rightsizing", new programs such as Total Quality Management, re-engineering, etc. Some experts refer to organizational transformation. Often this term designates a fundamental and radical reorientation in the way the organization operates.

Managing Organizational Change

It is important to have a change in the organization. In addition, such change should be successful and must contribute towards the success of the organization. The main objective of this paper is to characterize the prevalence of the change process in organizations and understand what occurs during organizational change and the forces responsible for unplanned organizational change. Organization change is a planned or unplanned transformation in an organization’s structure, technology, or people. However, there are internal as well as external factors forcing the change. Besides this, there are critical issues in the organizational development. One should be able to overcome such issues and led to effective change in the organization.



Typically, the concept of organizational change is in regard to organization-wide change, as opposed to smaller changes such as
adding a new person, modifying a program, etc. Examples of organization-wide change might include a change in mission,restructuring operations (e.g., restructuring to self-managed teams, layoffs, etc.), new technologies, mergers, major collaborations, "rightsizing", new programs such as Total Quality Management, re-engineering, etc. Some experts refer to organizational transformation. Often this term designates a fundamental and radical reorientation in the way the organization operates.


What Provokes "Organizational Change"?

Change should not be done for the sake of change -- it's a strategyto accomplish some overall goal. Usually organizational change is provoked by some major outside driving force, e.g., substantial cuts in funding, address major new markets/clients, need for dramatic increases in productivity/services, etc. Typically, organizations must undertake organization-wide change to evolve to a different level in their life cycle, e.g., going from a highly reactive, entreprenueral organization to more stable and planned development. Transition to a new chief executive can provoke organization-wide change when his or her new and unique personality pervades the entire organization.

Why is Organization-Wide Change Difficult to Accomplish?


Typically there are strong resistances to change. People are afraid of the unknown. Many people think things are already just fine and don't understand the need for change. Many are inherently cynical about change, particularly from reading about the notion of "change" as if it's a mantra. Many doubt there are effective means to accomplish major organizational change. Often there are conflicting goals in the organization, e.g., to increase resources to accomplish the change yet concurrently cut costs to remain viable. Organization-wide change often goes against the very values held dear by members in the organization, that is, the change may go against how members believe things should be done. That's why much of organizational-change literature discusses needed changes in the culture of the organization, including changes in members' values and beliefs and in the way they enact these
values and beliefs.


How Is Organization-Wide Change Best Carried Out?



Successful change must involve top management, including the board and chief executive. Usually there's a champion who initially instigates the change by being visionary, persuasive and consistent. A change agent role is usually responsible to translate the vision to a realistic plan and carry out the plan.
Change is usually best carried out as a team-wide effort. Communications about the change should be frequent and with all organization members. To sustain change, the structures of the organization itself should be modified, including strategic plans, policies and procedures. This change in the structures of the organization typically involves an unfreezing, change and re-freezing process.

The best approaches to address resistances is through increased and sustained communications and education. For example, the leader should meet with all managers and staff to explain reasons for the change, how it generally will be carried out and where others can go for additional information. A plan should be developed and communicated. Plans do change. That's fine, but communicatethat the plan has changed and why. Forums should be held for organization members to express their ideas for the plan. They should be able to express their concerns and frustrations as well.


Some General Guidelines to Organization-Wide Change

In addition to the general guidelines listed above, there are a few other basic guidelines to keep in mind.
1. Consider using a consultant. Ensure the consultant is highly experienced in organization-wide change. Ask to see references and check the references.
2. Widely communicate the potential need for change. Communicate what you're doing about it. Communicate what was done and how
it worked out.
3. Get as much feedback as practical from employees, including what they think are the problems and what should be done to resolve
them. If possible, work with a team of employees to manage the change.
4. Don't get wrapped up in doing change for the sake of change. Know why you're making the change. What goal(s) do you hope to accomplish?
6. Plan the change. How do you plan to reach the goals, what will you need to reach the goals, how long might it take and how will you know when you've reached your goals or not? Focus on the coordination of the departments/programs in your organization, not on each part by itself. Have someone in charge of the plan.
7. End up having every employee ultimately reporting to one person, if possible, and they should know who that person is. Job descriptions are often complained about, but they are useful in specifying who reports to whom.
8. Delegate decisions to employees as much as possible. This includes granting them the authority and responsibility to get the job done. As much as possible, let them decide how to do the project.
9. The process won't be an "aha!" It will take longer than you think.
10. Keep perspective. Keep focused on meeting the needs of your customer or clients.
11. Take care of yourself first. Organization-wide change can be highly stressful.
12. Don't seek to control change, but rather to expect it, understand it and manage it.
13. Include closure in the plan. Acknowledge and celebrate your accomplishments.
14. Read some resources about organizational change, including new forms and structures.

How organizational change occurs?

Significant organizational change occurs, for example, when an organization changes its overall strategy for success, adds or removes a major section or practice, and/or wants to change the very nature by which it operates. It also occurs when an organization evolves through various life cycles, just like people must successfully evolve through life cycles. For organizations to develop, they often must undergo significant change at various points in their development. That's why the topic of organizational change and development has become widespread in communications about business, organizations, leadership and management.

Causes of Organizational Structure.

In just a few months, the technology that an organization uses on an everyday basis may be outdated and replaced. That means an organization needs to be responsive to advances in the technological environment; its employees' work skills must evolve as technology evolves. Organizations that refuse to adapt are likely to be the ones that won't be around in a few short years. If an organization wants to survive and prosper, its managers must continually innovate and adapt to new situations.

Every organization goes through periods of transformation that can cause stress and uncertainty. To be successful, organizations must embrace many types of change. Businesses must develop improved production technologies, create new products desired in the marketplace, implement new administrative systems, and upgrade employees' skills. Organizations that adapt successfully are both profitable and admired.

Managers must contend with all factors that affect their organizations. The following lists internal and external environmental factors that can encourage organizational changes:

Generally:

• The external environment is affected by political, social, technological, and economic stimuli outside of the organization that cause changes.
• The internal environment is affected by the organization's management policies and styles, systems, and procedures, as well as employee attitudes.



Automation

Automation plays an increasingly important role in the global economy and in daily experience. Engineers strive to combine automated devices with mathematical and organizational tools to create complex systems for a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities.

Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond the scope of automation. Human-level pattern recognition, language recognition, and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities of modern mechanical and computer systems. Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than mechanical approaches even where automation of industrial tasks is possible.


Rationalization of Procedures


Rationalization is the second stage of organizational change where the organization uses information technology to streamline a standard operating procedure. A database that holds information of available rooms is an example of this stage.

Refers to streamlining of standard operating procedures, eliminating obvious bottlenecks, so that automation makes operating procedures more efficient. improves efficiency and effectiveness. This range of organizational structure causes the organization to examine its standard operating procedures, eliminate those no longer needed, and make the organization more efficient. Both types of change cause some disruption, but it's usually manageable and relatively accepted by the people.


Business Reengineering


Business process reengineering (BPR) is, in computer science and management, an approach aiming at improvements by means of elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the business process that exist within and across organizations. The key to BPR is for organizations to look at their business processes from a "clean slate" perspective and determine how they can best construct these processes to improve how they conduct business. Business process reengineering is a more complicated and risky type of organizational change. Using the information technology the organization redesigns whole business processes in order to reduce waste and increase efficiency.

Radical redesign of processes to improve cost, quality, service; maximize benefits of technology.
BR on the other hand, can cause radical disruption. The mere mention of the term nowadays strikes fear in the hearts of workers and managers at all levels. Why? Because many companies use it as a guise for downsizing the organization and laying off workers. Business process reengineering causes planners to completely rethink the flow of work, how the work will be accomplished, and how costs can be reduced by eliminating unnecessary work and workers. In order to make BPR successful, you must first redesign the process, then apply computing power to the new processes. If problems existed in the process before the new system was installed and those problems aren't resolved, the new system could actually make them worse. Very few processes in business are as efficient as they can possibly be. It's a fact of life. The idea behind successful BPR is to find improvements or even new opportunities. For instance, Federal Express and UPS both have online package tracking systems. That simple process was never economically feasible before the Internet. They had to reengineer their business processes to incorporate this new paradigm shift.

1. Aims at
2. eliminating repetitive, paper-intensive, bureaucratic tasks
3. reducing costs significantly
4. improving product/service quality


Paradigm Shifts

The term paradigm shift, as a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th-century theory of poetics, for instance.


Depending on the investment time horizon, the specific challenges and tools available may change, but the overall direction is unmistakable. The construction industry is about to experience a profound change: leaner organisations, more consistent and rigorous performance metrics, and relentless productivity improvements. The net result of these changes should also be increased profitability for those who are successful at mastering the new IT & technology tools with the promise to enable these changes.



REFERENCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
http://managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm


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emilio jopia jr.




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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: MIS2 Assignment #5   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyTue Dec 29, 2009 7:50 pm

In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts?

"Change is an absolutely critical part of business. And yes, your company does need to change—preferably now and not later, when you have no other choice."

Organizational change is any action or set of actions resulting in a shift in direction or proces that affects the way an organization works. Chang
can be deliberate and planned by leaders within the organization (i.e., shift from inpatient hospital focus to outpatient primary care model), or change can originate outside the organization (i.e., budget cut by Congress) and be beyond its control.
Change may affect the strategies an organization uses to carry out its mission, the processes for implementing those strategies, the tasks and fun
tions performed by the people in the organization, and the relationships between those people
Naturally, some changes are relatively small, whi others are sweeping in scope, amounting to an organizational transformation.

Perhaps the most asked but least answered question in business today is “What can we do to make our business survive and grow?” The world is rapidly changing into something too hard to easily predict, with a hundred opportunities and pitfalls passing by every moment.

IT can promote various degrees of organizational change ranging from incremental to far-reaching. Three kinds of structural organizational change that are enabled by IT:



(1) Automation,

(2)Rationalization,

(3)Reengineering.

(4)Paradigm shift



Each carries different rewards and risks.
The most common form of IT-enabled organizational change or the first phase of IT adoption is automation. This has allowed employees to automate a number of time-consuming and error-prone activities and gain benefits in cycle-time, productivity, and accuracy. For example, a main contractor makes use of standalone software to keep track all Request For Information (RFI) in a project.

A deeper form of organization change or the second phase of IT adoption is rationalization of procedures. Automation frequently reveals bottlenecks in production and makes the existing arrangement of procedures and structures painfully cumbersome. Rationalization of procedures involves the streamlining of standard operating procedures, which eliminates obvious bottlenecks, so that operating procedures become more efficient. Roughly speaking, it is a process of fine tuning the first step. For example, the main contractor implements an intranet and standardizes the data in RFI across all projects in the enterprise.

A more powerful type of organizational change or the third phase of IT adoption is business process reengineering, in which business processes are analyzed, simplified, and redesigned. Reengineering involves radically rethinking the flow of work and the construction business processes with the intention to radically reducing the costs of businesses. Using IT, organizations can rethink and streamline their business processes to improve speed, service, and quality. Business process reengineering reorganizes workflows, combining steps to cut waste and eliminating repetitive, paper-intensive tasks. It is much more ambitious than rationalization of procedures because it requires a new vision of how the process is to be organized. For example, the main contractor sets up an extranet to online collaborate with the architect for the RFI process.

Not many construction industry players have moved beyond the first phase of automation. However, there are some companies have committed to a continuing investment in technological advancement and organizational change. By changing how they are organized and do business, they have achieved far greater benefits than available through automation alone. Companies like this have succeeded in staying ahead of their competitors not merely by automating but by changing their organization as well. Their strategic advantage has been their preparedness and ability to continually innovative, and to manage the change necessary to gain substantial business benefits.


Paradigm shifts and reengineering often fail because extensive organizational change is so difficult to orchestrate . Why, then, do so many corporations contemplate such radical change? Because the rewards are equally high In many instances firms seeking paradigm shifts and pursuing reengineering strategies achieve stunning, order-of-magnitude increases in their returns on investment (or productivity). Some of these success stories, and some failure stories, are included throughout this book.

References:

http://www.organizedchange.com/decide.htm
http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html
http://managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm#anchor61645
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/dau/roberts.pdf
 
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Gleizelle Jen Dieparine

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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyWed Dec 30, 2009 10:18 pm

In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts?





In the world of organization, firms, businesses nowadays organizational change is not new for them because of the fast changing environment they tend to plan for the future in the survival and development of their organization . But because of rapid change in environment this it is hard for them to manipulate plan There are hundred of strategies but it is hard for them to choice the right strategic plan to equip for the survival of their organization.



Leaders and managers continually make efforts to accomplish successful and significant change -- it's inherent in their jobs. Some are very good at this effort (probably more than we realize), while others continually struggle and fail. That's often the difference between people who thrive in their roles and those that get shuttled around from job to job, ultimately settling into a role where they're frustrated and ineffective. There are many schools with educational programs about organizations, business, leadership and management. Unfortunately, there still are not enough schools with programs about how to analyze organizations, identify critically important priorities to address (such as systemic problems or exciting visions for change) and then undertake successful and significant change to address those priorities. This Library topic aims to improve that situation.



Managing Organizational Change



It is important to have a change in the organization. In addition, such change should be successful and must contribute towards the success of the organization. The main objective of this paper is to characterize the prevalence of the change process in organizations and understand what occurs during organizational change...



Managing Organizational Change

Organizational change is an ongoing process in order to bring the organizational systems and processes in line with the factors prevailing in the external and internal environment of the organization. The forces of organizational change include internal and external forces. Organization Development OD refers to the framework consisting of planned-change...



The major decisions

Instead of grasping for the latest technique, I suggest instead that organizations should go through a formal decision-making process that has four major components:


Levels, goals and strategies


Measurement system


Sequence of steps


Implementation and organizational change
The levels of organizational change



Perhaps the most difficult decision to make is at what "level" to start. There are four levels of organizational change:


shaping and anticipating the future (level 1)


defining what business(es) to be in and their "core competencies” (level 2)


reengineering processes (level 3)


incrementally improving processes (level 4)

First let's describe these levels, and then under what circumstances a business should use them.
Level 1- shaping and anticipating the future



At this level, organizations start out with few assumptions about the business itself, what it is "good" at, and what the future will be like.

Management generates alternate "scenarios" of the future, defines opportunities based on these possible futures, assesses its strengths and weaknesses in these scenarios changes its mission, measurement system etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Level 2 - defining what business(es) to be in and their "Core Competencies



Many attempts at strategic planning start at this level, either assuming that 1) the future will be like the past or at least predictable; 2) the future is embodied in the CEO's "vision for the future"; or 3) management doesn't know where else to start; 4) management is too afraid to start at level 1 because of the changes needed to really meet future requirements; or 5) the only mandate they have is to refine what mission already exists.

After a mission has been defined and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis is completed, an organization can then define its measures, goals, strategies, etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Level 3 - Reengineering (Structurally Changing) Your Processes



Either as an aftermath or consequence of level one or two work or as an independent action, level three work focuses on fundamentally changing how work is accomplished. Rather than focus on modest improvements, reengineering focuses on making major structural changes to everyday with the goal of substantially improving productivity, efficiency, quality or customer satisfaction. To read more about level 3 organizational changes, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."
Level 4 - Incrementally Changing your Processes



Level 4 organizational changes are focusing in making many small changes to existing work processes. Oftentimes organizations put in considerable effort into getting every employee focused on making these small changes, often with considerable effect. Unfortunately, making improvements on how a buggy whip for horse-drawn carriages is made will rarely come up with the idea that buggy whips are no longer necessary because cars have been invented. To read more about level 4 organizational changes and how it compares to level 3, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."
The Measurement System



Without measures of success, the organization does not know if it has succeeded in its efforts. Someone once said, “What gets measured gets improved.” Someone else said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

For more information on measurement systems and their place in organizational change, please see the "Balanced Scorecard" article, along with a number of articles where employee surveys are used.
Implementation and Organizational Change



The success of any organizational change effort can be summed into an equation:



Success = Measurement X Method X Control X Focused Persistence X Consensus

Like any equation with multiplication, a high value of one variable can compensate for lower levels on other variables. Also like any equation with multiplication, if one variable equals 0, the result is zero.



But in this assignment we are asked that in the spectrum of organizational change which is the radical type or the root of this changes ,is it automation ,rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm. Before we could answer that question we should define these words:





Automation



Automation refers to the use of computers and other automated machinery for the execution of business-related tasks. Automated machinery may range from simple sensing devices to robots and other sophisticated equipment. Automation of operations may encompass the automation of a single operation or the automation of an entire factory.
There are many different reasons to automate. Increased productivity is normally the major reason for many companies desiring a competitive advantage. Automation also offers low operational variability. Variability is directly related to quality and productivity. Other reasons to automate include the presence of a hazardous working environment and the high cost of human labor. Some businesses automate processes in order to reduce production time, increase manufacturing flexibility, reduce costs, eliminate human error, or make up for a labor shortage. Decisions associated with automation are usually concerned with some or all of these economic and social considerations.
For small business owners, weighing the pros and cons of automation can be a daunting task. But consultants contend that it is an issue that should not be put off. "We are creating a new ball game," wrote Perry Pascarella in Industry Week. "Failure to take a strategic look at where the organization wants to go and then capitalizing on the new technologies available will hand death-dealing advantages to competitors—traditional and unexpected ones."

Types of Automation
Although automation can play a major role in increasing productivity and reducing costs in service industries—as in the example of a retail store that installs bar code scanners in its checkout lanes—automation is most prevalent in manufacturing industries. In recent years, the manufacturing field has witnessed the development of major automation alternatives. Some of these types of automation include:

  • Information technology (IT)
  • Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM)
  • Numerically controlled (NC) equipment
  • Robots
  • Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS)
  • Computer integrated manufacturing (CIM)

Rationalization of procedures

Rationalization of procedures causes the organization to examine its standard operating procedures, eliminate those no longer needed, and make the organization more efficient. It's a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say!
Both types of change cause some disruption, but it's usually manageable and relatively accepted by the people.



Business process reengineering

Business process reengineering (BPR) is, in computer science and management, an approach aiming at improvements by means of elevating efficiency and effectiveness of the business process that exist within and across organizations. The key to BPR is for organizations to look at their business processes from a "clean slate" perspective and determine how they can best construct these processes to improve how they conduct business.
Business process reengineering (BPR) began as a private sector technique to help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to dramatically improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors. A key stimulus for reengineering has been the continuing development and deployment of sophisticated information systems and networks. Leading organizations are becoming bolder in using this technology to support innovative business processes, rather than refining current ways of doing work.[1]

Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 D12



Reengineering guidance and relationship of Mission and Work Processes to Information Technology.
Business process reengineering is one approach for redesigning the way work is done to better support the organization's mission and reduce costs. Reengineering starts with a high-level assessment of the organization's mission, strategic goals, and customer needs. Basic questions are asked, such as "Does our mission need to be redefined? Are our strategic goals aligned with our mission? Who are our customers?" An organization may find that it is operating on questionable assumptions, particularly in terms of the wants and needs of its customers. Only after the organization rethinks what it should be doing, does it go on to decide how best to do it.[1]
Within the framework of this basic assessment of mission and goals, reengineering focuses on the organization's business processes--the steps and procedures that govern how resources are used to create products and services that meet the needs of particular customers or markets. As a structured ordering of work steps across time and place, a business process can be decomposed into specific activities, measured, modeled, and improved. It can also be completely redesigned or eliminated altogether. Reengineering identifies, analyzes, and redesigns an organization's core business processes with the aim of achieving dramatic improvements in critical performance measures, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.[1]
Reengineering recognizes that an organization's business processes are usually fragmented into subprocesses and tasks that are carried out by several specialized functional areas within the organization. Often, no one is responsible for the overall performance of the entire process. Reengineering maintains that optimizing the performance of subprocesses can result in some benefits, but cannot yield dramatic improvements if the process itself is fundamentally inefficient and outmoded. For that reason, reengineering focuses on redesigning the process as a whole in order to achieve the greatest possible benefits to the organization and their customers. This drive for realizing dramatic improvements by fundamentally rethinking how the organization's work should be done distinguishes reengineering from process improvement efforts that focus on functional or incremental improvement.[1]




Paradigm Shift



paradigm shift, as a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th-century theory of poetics, for instance



In conclusion, for millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn states that "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory" (p. 67). It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. However, we are not restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state of consciousness is transforming and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious awareness expands.

. For example, the introduction of the personal computer and the internet have impacted both personal and business environments, and is a catalyst for a Paradigm Shift. We are shifting from a mechanistic, manufacturing, industrial society to an organic, service based, information centered society, and increases in technology will continue to impact globally. Change is inevitable. It's the only true constant.





With all those type of change for me the redical type or the root of theis changes is the paradigm shift because paradigm shift is define as evolutionary changes of life . Change is inevitable .Continue discovering new change for the satisfactory of self because people has no contentment . That’s why other changes had discover for helping the fast changing environment.





http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html

http://www.santarosa.edu/~ssarkar/cs66fl06/ch14notes.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering

http://managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm#anchor515854



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florenzie_palma

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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyThu Jan 07, 2010 5:28 am

Change is disruptive. Change is dangerous. Change is good. Change is necessary. Change is constant.


Idea What's "Organizational Change?"


Typically, the concept of organizational change is in regard to organization-wide change, as opposed to smaller changes such as adding a new person, modifying a program, etc. Examples of organization-wide change might include a change in mission, restructuring operations (e.g., restructuring to self-managed teams, layoffs, etc.), new technologies, mergers, major collaborations, "rightsizing", new programs such as Total Quality Management, re-engineering, etc. Some experts refer to organizational transformation. Often this term designates a fundamental and radical reorientation in the way the organization operates.

Idea Managing Organizational Change



Organizational change is an ongoing process in order to bring the organizational systems and processes in line with the factors prevailing in the external and internal environment of the organization. The forces of organizational change include internal and external forces. Organization Development (OD) refers to the framework consisting of planned-change interventions involving human interactions that seeks to improve organizational effectiveness. OD is an effective tool to manage change. The paper discusses the dynamics of change management.

Organizational change is important to usher in long-term success in an organization. A change entails realignment of organizational systems and processes. Managing change involves institutionalizing the philosophy of change in the organization. Effective change management entails creating a definitive vision and managing the transition to the desired future state. The paper examines the basic principles of organizational change and change management.

Idea What Provokes "Organizational Change"?


Change should not be done for the sake of change -- it's a strategy to accomplish some overall goal. (See Organizational Performance Management.) Usually organizational change is provoked by some major outside driving force, e.g., substantial cuts in funding, address major new markets/clients, need for dramatic increases in productivity/services, etc. Typically, organizations must undertake organization-wide change to evolve to a different level in their life cycle, e.g., going from a highly reactive, entreprenueral organization to more stable and planned development. Transition to a new chief executive can provoke organization-wide change when his or her new and unique personality pervades the entire organization.


Idea Why is Organization-Wide Change Difficult to Accomplish?




Typically there are strong resistances to change. People are afraid of the unknown. Many people think things are already just fine and don't understand the need for change. Many are inherently cynical about change, particularly from reading about the notion of "change" as if it's a mantra. Many doubt there are effective means to accomplish major organizational change. Often there are conflicting goals in the organization, e.g., to increase resources to accomplish the change yet concurrently cut costs to remain viable. Organization-wide change often goes against the very values held dear by members in the organization, that is, the change may go against how members believe things should be done. That's why much of organizational-change literature discusses needed changes in the culture of the organization, including changes in members' values and beliefs and in the way they enact these values and beliefs.


Idea How Is Organization-Wide Change Best Carried Out?


Successful change must involve top management, including the board and chief executive. Usually there's a champion who initially instigates the change by being visionary, persuasive and consistent. A change agent role is usually responsible to translate the vision to a realistic plan and carry out the plan. Change is usually best carried out as a team-wide effort. Communications about the change should be frequent and with all organization members. To sustain change, the structures of the organization itself should be modified, including strategic plans, policies and procedures. This change in the structures of the organization typically involves an unfreezing, change and re-freezing process.

The best approaches to address resistances is through increased and sustained communications and education. For example, the leader should meet with all managers and staff to explain reasons for the change, how it generally will be carried out and where others can go for additional information. A plan should be developed and communicated. Plans do change. That's fine, but communicate that the plan has changed and why. Forums should be held for organization members to express their ideas for the plan. They should be able to express their concerns and frustrations as well.


pale Some General Guidelines to Organization-Wide Change

(Note that the library topic Basic Overview of Major Methods and Movements to Improve Organizational Performance includes overviews of major methods and movements associated with organizational change. Readers would best be served to read the following basic guidelines as foundation for carrying out any of the methods associated with organizational change.)


In addition to the general guidelines listed above, there are a few other basic guidelines to keep in mind.

1. Consider using a consultant. Ensure the consultant is highly experienced in organization-wide change. Ask to see references and check the references.
2. Widely communicate the potential need for change. Communicate what you're doing about it. Communicate what was done and how it worked out.
3. Get as much feedback as practical from employees, including what they think are the problems and what should be done to resolve them. If possible, work with a team of employees to manage the change.
4. Don't get wrapped up in doing change for the sake of change. Know why you're making the change. What goal(s) do you hope to accomplish?
6. Plan the change. How do you plan to reach the goals, what will you need to reach the goals, how long might it take and how will you know when you've reached your goals or not? Focus on the coordination of the departments/programs in your organization, not on each part by itself. Have someone in charge of the plan.
7. End up having every employee ultimately reporting to one person, if possible, and they should know who that person is. Job descriptions are often complained about, but they are useful in specifying who reports to whom.
8. Delegate decisions to employees as much as possible. This includes granting them the authority and responsibility to get the job done. As much as possible, let them decide how to do the project.
9. The process won't be an "aha!" It will take longer than you think.
10. Keep perspective. Keep focused on meeting the needs of your customer or clients.
11. Take care of yourself first. Organization-wide change can be highly stressful.
12. Don't seek to control change, but rather to expect it, understand it and manage it.
13. Include closure in the plan. Acknowledge and celebrate your accomplishments.
14. Read some resources about organizational change, including new forms and structures.


Question Why do organizations change?

Significant organizational change occurs, for example, when an organization changes its overall strategy for success, adds or removes a major section or practice, and/or wants to change the very nature by which it operates. It also occurs when an organization evolves through various life cycles, just like people must successfully evolve through life cycles. For organizations to develop, they often must undergo significant change at various points in their development. That's why the topic of organizational change and development has become widespread in communications about business, organizations, leadership and management.

Leaders and managers continually make efforts to accomplish successful and significant change -- it's inherent in their jobs. Some are very good at this effort (probably more than we realize), while others continually struggle and fail. That's often the difference between people who thrive in their roles and those that get shuttled around from job to job, ultimately settling into a role where they're frustrated and ineffective. There are many schools with educational programs about organizations, business, leadership and management. Unfortunately, there still are not enough schools with programs about how to analyze organizations, identify critically important priorities to address (such as systemic problems or exciting visions for change) and then undertake successful and significant change to address those priorities.

Exclamation There are 4 types of changes in organizational change. These are:

• Automation
• Rationalization of Procedure
• Business Reengineering
• Paradigm Shift


bounce Automation


Automation is the use of control systems (such as numerical control, programmable logic control, and other industrial control systems), in concert with other applications of information technology (such as computer-aided technologies [CAD, CAM, CAx]), to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Processes and systems can also be automated.

Automation plays an increasingly important role in the global economy and in daily experience. Engineers strive to combine automated devices with mathematical and organizational tools to create complex systems for a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities.

Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond the scope of automation. Human-level pattern recognition, language recognition, and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities of modern mechanical and computer systems. Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than mechanical approaches even where automation of industrial tasks is possible.

Specialized hardened computers, referred to as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical)sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events. This leads to precisely controlled actions that permit a tight control of almost any industrial process.
Human-machine interfaces (HMI) or computer human interfaces (CHI), formerly known as man-machine interfaces, are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers, such as entering and monitoring temperatures or pressures for further automated control or emergency response. Service personnel who monitor and control these interfaces are often referred to as stationary engineers

Sleep The main advantages of automation are:


 Replacing human operators in tedious tasks.
 Replacing humans in tasks that should be done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, under the water, etc)
 Making tasks that are beyond the human capabilities such as handling too heavy loads, too large objects, too hot or too cold substances or the requirement to make things too fast or too slow.
 Economy improvement. Sometimes and some kinds of automation implies improves in economy of enterprises, society or most of humankind. For example, when an enterprise that has invested in automation technology recovers its investment; when a state or country increases its income due to automation like Germany or Japan in the 20th Century or when the humankind can use the internet which in turn use satellites and other automated engines.


Sleep The main disadvantages of automation are:


 Technology limits. Current technology is unable to automate all the desired tasks.
 Unpredictable development costs. The research and development cost of automating a process is difficult to predict accurately beforehand. Since this cost can have a large impact on profitability, it's possible to finish automating a process only to discover that there's no economic advantage in doing so.
 Initial costs are relatively high. The automation of a new product required a huge initial investment in comparison with the unit cost of the product, although the cost of automation is spread in many product batches. The automation of a plant required a great initial investment too, although this cost is spread in the products to be produced.

bounce RATIONALIZATION OF PROCEDURES

Rationalization is an attempt to change a pre-existing ad hoc workflow into one that is based on a set of published rules. There is a tendency in modern times to quantify experience, knowledge, and work. Means-end (goal-oriented) rationality is used to precisely calculate that which is necessary to attain a goal. Its effectiveness varies with the enthusiasm of the workers for the changes being made, the skill with which management applies the rules, and the degree to which the rules fit the job.

Julien Freund defines rationalization as "the organization of life through a division and coordination of activities on the basis of exact study of men's relations with each other, with their tools and their environment, for the purpose of achieving greater efficiency and productivity."

The rationalization process is the practical application of knowledge to achieve a desired end. Its purpose is to bring about efficiency, coordination, and control of the natural and social environment. It is a product of "scientific specialization and technical differentiation" that seems to be a characteristic of Western culture. Rationalization is the guiding principle behind bureaucracy and the increasing division of labor, and has led to an increase in both the production and distribution of goods and services. It is also associated with secularization, depersonalization, and oppressive routine.


bounce Business process reengineering



Business process reengineering (BPR) is the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises. BPR reached its heyday in the early 1990's when Michael Hammer and James Champy published their best-selling book, "Reengineering the Corporation". The authors promoted the idea that sometimes radical redesign and reorganization of an enterprise (wiping the slate clean) was necessary to lower costs and increase quality of service and that information technology was the key enabler for that radical change. Hammer and Champy felt that the design of workflow in most large corporations was based on assumptions about technology, people, and organizational goals that were no longer valid. They suggested seven principles of reengineering to streamline the work process and thereby achieve significant levels of improvement in quality, time management, and cost:

1. Organize around outcomes, not tasks.
2. Identify all the processes in an organization and prioritize them in order of redesign urgency.
3. Integrate information processing work into the real work that produces the information.
4. Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized.
5. Link parallel activities in the workflow instead of just integrating their results.
6. Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the process.
7. Capture information once and at the source.

By the mid-1990's, BPR gained the reputation of being a nice way of saying "downsizing." According to Hammer, lack of sustained management commitment and leadership, unrealistic scope and expectations, and resistance to change prompted management to abandon the concept of BPR and embrace the next new methodology, enterprise resource planning (ERP).



bounce Paradigm shift


Paradigm shift (or revolutionary science) is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) to describe a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. It is in contrast to his idea of normal science.

The term paradigm shift, as a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences.

According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).

Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th-century theory of poetics, for instance.

Since the 1960s, the term has been found useful to thinkers in numerous non-scientific contexts. Compare as a structured form of Zeitgeist.


flower The Spectrum of Organizational Change


Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Pictur10


This figure shows the four degrees of organizational change. Automation is the easiest (except for those people losing their jobs), and the most common form of change. But that doesn't mean you don't have to plan for the change first.

Rationalization of procedures causes the organization to examine its standard operating procedures, eliminate those no longer needed, and make the organization more efficient. It's a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say!

Both types of change cause some disruption, but it's usually manageable and relatively accepted by the people.

Business process reengineering, on the other hand, can cause radical disruption. The mere mention of the term nowadays strikes fear in the hearts of workers and managers at all levels. Why? Because many companies use it as a guise for downsizing the organization and laying off workers. Business process reengineering causes planners to completely rethink the flow of work, how the work will be accomplished, and how costs can be reduced by eliminating unnecessary work and workers.

But if you want to talk radical change, take a look at paradigm shifts. Now we're talking about changing the very nature of the business and the structure of the organization itself. We're talking whole new products or services that didn't even exist before. We're talking major disruption and extreme change!

The best example of a paradigm shift is looking right at you. Higher education is undergoing a major paradigm shift in the online delivery of education. Classes are now offered through the Internet so that students don't even go to classrooms. Many tried-and-true teaching methodologies are being radically altered to accommodate this shift in how education is offered.

The Internet is causing all kinds of industries and businesses to alter their products, their services, and their processes in radical ways. Entire organizations are being created to handle the paradigm shifts involved in e-commerce. Look at the automobile industry as an example of this type of change: Traditional dealerships are being disrupted by automalls and online buying opportunities. How can a local dealer compete on price with these two environmental challenges? What is the dealers' role in the revolutionary changes taking place all around them?

If business process reengineering and paradigm shifting are so disruptive and so dangerous, why even try to do them? Because companies realize they have to take on the challenges in order to stay competitive. They have had to cut costs and streamline their operations because of global economic pressures, in addition to meeting the demands of their shareholders. And done well, the rewards can be tremendous.

Bottom Line: Continual change is a necessary part of corporate life. Managing organizational information requirements through planned analyses and structured system development rather than a haphazard approach will help you succeed.
REFERENCES:

http://jobfunctions.bnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=86979&tag=content;col1


http://managementhelp.org/mgmnt/orgchnge.htm


http://managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm


http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid182_gci536451,00.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift


http://www.santarosa.edu/~ssarkar/cs66fl06/ch14notes.htm


MY BLOG: http://florenzie-palma.blogspot.com
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jojimie

jojimie


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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyThu Jan 07, 2010 6:54 am

In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts? (you are expected to read an article about this question) .. at least 3000 words

The only thing that is permanent on the face of the earth is change; Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Pic10and this is also applied into different varieties of business. The change is somehow important if it is intended to begin the improvement. Every organization needs change in improving the business environment or managerial aspect. The change depends unto what extent it should reach and what difficulties it will cross. Sometimes, organization takes the changes to align in the economic variations and it is truly hard to pulse the wave of economic climate. Usually organizational change is provoked by some major outside driving force, e.g., substantial cuts in funding, address major new markets/clients, need for dramatic increases in productivity/services, etc. Typically, organizations must undertake organization-wide change to evolve to a different level in their life cycle, e.g., going from a highly reactive, entreprenueral organization to more stable and planned development. Transition to a new chief executive can provoke organization-wide change when his or her new and unique personality pervades the entire organization. Organizational change is defined as the process by which organizations reach the desired goals. Organizational change occurs when an organization restructures resources to increase the ability to create value and improve effectiveness. A declining company seeks ways to regain customers; a growing organization designs new products. A well-planned organizational change creates value for stakeholders. In a business manner, the organizational change is about a significant change in the organization, such as reorganization or adding a major new product or service. This is in contrast to smaller changes, such as adopting a new computer procedure. Organizational change can seem like such a vague phenomena that it is helpful. Any type of thinking about our world requires some kind of conceptual model, implicit or otherwise, which structures and guides our thinking and renders it meaningful. For studies of Organizational change, conceptual models and practical models are indispensable. Change is a necessary way of life in most organizations. Change is all around us in the dynamic society surrounding today’s organizations; the question of whether change will occur is no longer relevant. Organizational change is the alteration of work environment in organization.
Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Pictur14
Automation plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and in daily experience. Engineers strive to combine automated devices with mathematical and organizational tools to create complex systems for a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities.
Automation is the use of control systems (such as numerical control, programmable logic control, and other industrial control systems), in concert with other applications of information technology (such as computer-aided technologies [CAD, CAM, CAx]), to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Processes and systems can also be automated.
Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond the scope of automation. Human-level pattern recognition, language recognition, and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities of modern mechanical and computer systems. Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than mechanical approaches even where automation of industrial tasks is possible. Specialised hardened computers, referred to as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events. This leads to precisely controlled actions that permit a tight control of almost any industrial process. Human-machine interfaces (HMI) or computer human interfaces (CHI), formerly known as man-machine interfaces, are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers, such as entering and monitoring temperatures or pressures for further automated control or emergency response. Service personnel who monitor and control these interfaces are often referred to as stationary engineers. Currently, for manufacturing companies, the purpose of automation has shifted from increasing productivity and reducing costs, to broader issues, such as increasing quality and flexibility in the manufacturing process. The old focus on using automation simply to increase productivity and reduce costs was seen to be short-sighted, because it is also necessary to provide a skilled workforce who can make repairs and manage the machinery. Moreover, the initial costs of automation were high and often could not be recovered by the time entirely new manufacturing processes replaced the old. (Japan's "robot junkyards" were once world famous in the manufacturing industry.) Automation is now often applied primarily to increase quality in the manufacturing process, where automation can increase quality substantially. For example, automobile and truck pistons used to be installed into engines manually. This is rapidly being transitioned to automated machine installation, because the error rate for manual installment was around 1-1.5%, but has been reduced to 0.00001% with automation. Hazardous operations, such as oil refining, the manufacturing of industrial chemicals, and all forms of metal working, were always early contenders for automation.

Another major shift in automation is the increased emphasis on flexibility and convertibility in the manufacturing process. Manufacturers are increasingly demanding the ability to easily switch from manufacturing Product A to manufacturing Product B without having to completely rebuild the production lines. Flexibility and distributed processes have led to the introduction of Automated Guided Vehicles with Natural Features Navigation.
The main advantage of automation are:

* Replacing human operators in tedious tasks.
* Replacing humans in tasks that should be done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, under the water, etc)
* Making tasks that are beyond the human capabilities such as handling too heavy loads, too large objects, too hot or too cold substances or the requirement to make things too fast or too slow.
* Economy improvement. Sometimes and some kinds of automation implies improves in economy of enterprises, society or most of humankind. For example, when an enterprise that has invested in automation technology recovers its investment; when a state or country increases its income due to automation like Germany or Japan in the 20th Century or when the humankind can use the internet which in turn use satellites and other automated engines.
Controversial factors
* Unemployment. It is commonly thought that automation implies unemployment because the work of a human being is replaced in part or completely by a machine. Nevertheless, the unemployment is caused by the economical politics of the administration like dismissing the workers instead of changing their tasks. Since the general economical policies of most of the industrial plants are to dismiss people, nowadays automation implies unemployment. In different scenarios without workers, automation implies more free time instead of unemployment like the case with the automatic washing machine at home. Automation does not imply unemployment when it makes tasks unimaginable without automation such as exploring mars with the Sojourner or when the economy is fully adapted to an automated technology as with the Telephone switchboard.
* Environment. The costs of automation to the environment are different depending on the technology, product or engine automated. There are automated engines that consume more energy resources from the Earth in comparison with previous engines and those that do the opposite too.
* Human being replacement. In the future there is a possibility that the Artificial intelligence could replace and improve a human brain and the robots would become not only fully automated but fully autonomous from the human beings (Technological singularity)



Rationalization
is an informal fallacy of reasoning in which one constructs a logical justification for a belief, decision, action or lack thereof that was originally arrived at through a different mental process. It is a defense mechanism in which perceived controversial behaviors or feelings are explained in a rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation of the behavior or feeling in question. This process can be in a range from fully conscious (e.g. to present an external defense against ridicule from others) to mostly subconscious (e.g. to create a block against internal feelings of guilt).
Rationalization is one of the defense mechanisms proposed by Sigmund Freud, which were later developed further by his daughter Anna Freud.
According to the DSM-IV rationalization occurs "when the individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by concealing the true motivations for his or her own thoughts, actions, or feelings through the elaboration of reassuring or self serving but incorrect explanations."


Re-engineering
is the basis for many recent developments in management. The cross-functional team, for example, has become popular because of the desire to re-engineer separate functional tasks into complete cross-functional processes. Also, many recent management information systems developments aim to integrate a wide number of business functions. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, knowledge management systems, groupware and collaborative systems, Human Resource Management Systems and customer relationship management systems all owe a debt to re-engineering theory.


Paradigm shift is a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt an array of stances (e.g., Marxist criticism, Deconstruction, 19th-century-style literary criticism), which may be more of less fashionable during any given period but which are all regarded as legitimate.
It is a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change.



References:
http://ivythesis.typepad.com/term_paper_topics/2009/08/organizational-change.html
http://www.santarosa.edu/~ssarkar/cs66fl06/ch14notes.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(fallacy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_reengineering
http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift




lol! You are always welcome to visit on my personal blog:lol!
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Ma.AnnKristineTomada

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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Ass-5   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyTue Jan 12, 2010 10:05 pm

In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts? (you are expected to read an article about this question) .. at least 3000 words

Dec. 23, 2009

First and foremost, I want to discuss first the major types of change, models of change AND more.

Major Types of Organizational Change


Typically, the phrase “organizational change” is about a significant change in the organization, such as reorganization or adding a major new product or service. This is in contrast to smaller changes, such as adopting a new computer procedure. Organizational change can seem like such a vague phenomena that it is helpful if you can think of change in terms of various dimensions as described below.

Organization-wide Versus Subsystem Change


Examples of organization-wide change might be a major restructuring, collaboration or “rightsizing.” Usually, organizations must undertake organization-wide change to evolve to a different level in their life cycle, for example, going from a highly reactive, entrepreneurial organization to one that has a more stable and planned development. Experts assert that successful organizational change requires a change in culture – cultural change is another example of organization-wide change.

Examples of a change in a subsystem might include addition or removal of a product or service, reorganization of a certain department, or implementation of a new process to deliver products or services.


Transformational Versus Incremental Change


An example of transformational (or radical, 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.

Examples of incremental 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.

Remedial Versus Developmental Change

Change can be intended to remedy current situations, for example, to improve the poor performance of a product or the entire organization, reduce burnout in the workplace, help the organization to become much more proactive and less reactive, or address large budget deficits. Remedial projects often seem more focused and urgent because they are addressing a current, major problem. It is often easier to determine the success of these projects because the problem is solved or not.
Change can also be developmental – to make a successful situation even more successful, for example, expand the amount of customers served, or duplicate successful products or services. Developmental projects can seem more general and vague than remedial, depending on how specific goals are and how important it is for members of the organization to achieve those goals.

Some people might have different perceptions of what is a remedial change versus a developmental change. They might see that if developmental changes are not made soon, there will be need for remedial changes. Also, organizations may recognize current remedial issues and then establish a Adapted from “Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development” – to obtain the entire book, select “Publications” at http://www.authenticityconsulting.com developmental vision to address the issues. In those situations, projects are still remedial because they were conducted primarily to address current issues.

Unplanned Versus Planned Change


Unplanned change usually occurs because of a major, sudden surprise to the organization, which causes its members to respond in a highly reactive and disorganized fashion. Unplanned change might occur then the Chief Executive Officer suddenly leaves the organization, significant public relations problems occur, poor product performance quickly results in loss of customers, or other disruptive situations arise.

Planned change occurs when leaders in the organization recognize the need for a major change and proactively organize a plan to accomplish the change. Planned change occurs with successful implementation of a Strategic Plan, plan for reorganization, or other implementation of a change of this magnitude.

Note that planned change, even though based on a proactive and well-done plan, often does not occur in a highly organized fashion. Instead, planned change tends to occur in more of a chaotic and disruptive fashion than expected by participants.


Organizational Change in Today's Economy



As organizations evolve and come to be seen as dynamic, coping systems, the concept of how they change and methods by which they manage change has continued to be refined. Managing a process of change in an organization can be a highly complex task and is often essential for effective organizational development (OD).


This topic will discuss an overview of the change process faced by many organizations.

Different models of change will be highlighted and the resistance to change displayed by many employees will be examined.

A. The Focus of Change

Leavitt et al. (1973) proposed that change may focus on 1 of 4 subsystems in an organization:
Structure - levels of hierarchy, spans of authority, centralisation.
Technology - complexity, degree of employee usage, operator control & responsibility.
People - values, beliefs, attitudes, motives, drives, competencies, KSAs.
Task - job design, repetitiveness, physical & cognitive demands, autonomy & discretion

B. Lewin's Force Field Model

A classic model of OD, commonly referred to as the 'force field' model, was proposed by Kurt Lewin in 1951. He described organizations as systems which are held in a constant state of 'equilibrium' by equal and opposing forces. The model suggests that a range of 'driving forces', which exert a pressure for change, are balanced by a number of opposing 'resisting forces'. Driving forces urging change might include the availability of new technology, economic pressure from competitors or even changes in local or national legislation. Conversely, resisting forces might include a firmly established organizational culture and climate or industry-specific customs. Lewin proposed that any process of organizational change can be thought of as implementing a move in the equilibrium position towards a desired or newly established position.

C. The Three-stage Process of Change
To elaborate on his model, Lewin also suggested a three-stage process of change implementation which is necessary for effective change within an organization. Those three stages are:
Unfreeze - Creation of motivation to change.
An organization must be prepared for any change which is about to occur. This process is known as 'unfreezing' and involves the investigation of resisting forces. Any premature unilateral or authoritarian increase in driving forces for change will, according to the Lewin model, be met by an equal and opposite increase in resisting forces. No change will occur unless there is motivation within the organization to do so. If there is no motivation, it must be induced. This is often the most difficult part of any change process. Change not only involves learning, but unlearning something that is already present and well integrated into the personality and social relationships of the individuals. It is for this reason that an organizations culture can often act as a resisting force to change.
Practice: The following methods are often used by managers and OD consultants to unfreeze an organizational system:
Disconfirmation or a lack of confirmation of present behaviours or attitudes.
Creation of guilt, discomfort or anxiety to motivate change.
Creation of psychological safety by reducing barriers to change or reducing threat caused by past failures.
Provision of information to employees and stakeholders giving knowledge of the first stage of the change process.
Change - Adjusting the equilibrium.
Developing new attitudes, beliefs, values and behaviours based on new information. Once the resisting forces have been investigated, understood and minimized, the change can be implemented. Resisting forces are reduced and driving forces increased. Doing so adjusts the position of equilibrium towards the desired balance position.
Practice: There are three main approaches with which change may be implemented:
Rational - Empirical
Change, or OD, is seen as a process of rational persuasion whereby the benefits of the change are logically explained to those who are influenced by it.
Normative - Re-educative
This approach also assumes employees are rational individuals, but acknowledges the existence of socio-cultural norms within organizations. It challenges established values, beliefs, attitudes and norms and re-educates employees into the new techniques of working.
Power - Coercive
This method of change involves a process of the imposition of legitimate authority. Feedback may be denied and no alteration to plans may take place as a result of resistance. This approach simply forces through change by authority.
Practice: Methods used by managers and OD consultants to lead change:
Establishing a sense of urgency.
Forming a powerful leading coalition.
Creating and communicating a vision.
Empowering others to act on the vision.
Planning for and creating short-term wins.
Institutionalizing new approaches.
Refreeze - Making routine.
For a change to become routine and accepted into the day-to-day practices of an organization, the organization must go through the final stage of refreezing the organizational system. A variety of strategies may be adopted to achieve this, including new rules, regulations and reward schemes to reinforce the change process and maximize the desired behaviours of staff or employees.

D. The Seven-stage Model of Change

Whilst Lewin's model provides a simple and understandable representation of the organizational change process, more recent models have developed his model and extended the idea into more depth. In 1980, Edgar Huse proposed a seven-stage OD model based upon the original three-stage model of Lewin.
1.Scouting - Where representatives from the organization meet with the OD consultant to identify and discuss the need for change. The change agent and client jointly explore issues to elicit the problems in need of attention.
2.Entry - This stage involves the development of, and mutual agreement upon, both business and psychological contracts. Expectations of the change process are also established.
3.Diagnosis - Here, the consultant diagnoses the underlying organizational problems based upon their previous knowledge and training. This stage involves the identification of specific improvement goals and a planned intervention strategy.
4.Planning - A detailed series of intervention techniques and actions are brought together into a timetable or project plan for the change process. This step also involves the identification of areas of resistance from employees and steps possible to counteract it.
5.Action - The intervention is carried out according to the agreed plans. Previously established action steps are implemented.
6.Stabilization & Evaluation - The stage of 'refreezing' the system. Newly implemented codes of action, practices and systems are absorbed into everyday routines. Evaluation is conducted to determine the success of the change process and any need for further action is established.
7.Termination - The OD consultant or change agent leaves the organization and moves on to another client or begins an entirely different project within the same organization.
Practice: The 7-stage model is a useful heuristic to illustrate the complex nature of organizational change. However, such neat linear models are prone to oversimplify situations. The pace of organizational change in today's rapidly developing economic climate can result in the 'refreezing' stage never being reached or completed. This means that organizational systems often undergo a continuous series of change interventions and rarely revert to a stabilized state of equilibrium. In other words, change is often so rapid and recurrent that the system fails to restabilize itself before the next change initiative is conducted. Organizations prone to fashion and fads in managerial practice particularly suffer from this effect.

E. Popular Change Management Interventions

Survey Feedback - A complex and skilled set of procedures involving the design, administration, analysis and feedback of a series of questionnaires to tap staff attitudes and opinions. Feedback meetings are also held with staff to change attitudes and modify behaviour.
Quality Circles (QCs) - Where small groups of employees who work in a similar field meet regularly to identify, analyse, and solve product-quality and production problems and to improve general operations. Helps to motivate change by increasing perceptions of employee participation, communication and job satisfaction. Although QCs have been shown to influence staff attitudes, this impact may not necessarily translate into higher levels of production.
Process Consultation (PC) - A client-centred approach to help the client organization to help itself. PC has the underlying objective of facilitating and developing the capacity of the client organization to self-rejuvenate over the longer term. The process of PC is a set of activities conducted by the OD consultant that helps the client to perceive, understand, and act upon the process events that occur in the client's environment in order to improve the situation. PC may be compared to the 'purchase of expertise' concept and the 'doctor-patient' analogy.
Team Building - Groups of workers are formed into 'T-groups' (or 'encounter groups') and examine intra-group processes and their own interpersonal styles and impacts upon others. However, there is weak evidence of success as T-groups are often poorly facilitated and are commonly left purposefully unstructured by the 'trainers'.
F. The Focus of Change Management Agents
Technician - The client organization diagnoses their own problems and formulates their own solutions. The OD consultant merely comes in to implement their plans. In this situation the organization is in complete control.
Expert - The client organization diagnoses their problems and the consultant is hired to propose solutions. In this case there is a joint ownership of the solution.
Coach - In this case the organization is aware of a problem and can see symptoms but is not certain what exactly the problem is, or how to go about finding a solution. Here, the consultant helps the organization to understand their problems. In this scenario there is a joint ownership of both the problem and solution between the consultant and the organization.

Mentor / Counselor - Relationship based on support & partnership. Enables org to help itself. Consultant operates at very senior level. Sets up future success, as the org solves its own problems.

References:

http://managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm
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IK




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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyTue Mar 09, 2010 10:53 pm

Sir Gamboa,

Due to the accident that I had in the school for the past few months, I wasn’t able to pass my assignments on time. In regards to this, our class Mayor, Ms. Marren Joy Pequiro and I had a conformity that allows me to submit and posts my assignments in this forum with consideration.
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IK




Posts : 46
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Join date : 2009-06-19

Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyTue Mar 09, 2010 11:00 pm


Typically, the concept of organizational change is in regard to organization-wide change, as opposed to smaller changes such as adding a new person, modifying a program, etc. Examples of organization-wide change might include a change in mission, restructuring operations (e.g., restructuring to self-managed teams, layoffs, etc.), new technologies, mergers, major collaborations, "rightsizing", new programs such as Total Quality Management, re-engineering, etc. Some experts refer to organizational transformation. Often this term designates a fundamental and radical reorientation in the way the organization operates. Change should not be done for the sake of change -- it's a strategy to accomplish some overall goal. Usually organizational change is provoked by some major outside driving force, e.g., substantial cuts in funding, address major new markets/clients, need for dramatic increases in productivity/services, etc. Typically, organizations must undertake organization-wide change to evolve to a different level in their life cycle, e.g., going from a highly reactive, entrepreneurial organization to more stable and planned development. One of the prime and most basic mover for organizational changes to be done is the business cycle. This refers to the pattern indicated by an organization’s economic growth. Economic growth is aggregate and one of the basic standards is the gross domestic product. The gross domestic product is tracked in a monthly record and some of the most important decisions are made with inferences to the GDP result. The typical cycle of an organization/business follows the pattern of: expansion of above average growth, a peak, a contraction of below average growth and a trough or low point. Organizational changes usually occur during the lowest point of company sales so as to provide immediate, temporary or long term solutions to maintain the company afloat. But it isn’t limited to just that, sometimes it also happens even in the peak phase so as to maintain the highest point of sales and increase the sales capability. There are several ways to keep the company afloat in hard times and four are presented here: rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, paradigm shift or automation.

Rationalization of procedures is the application of efficiency or effectiveness measures to an organization. Rationalization can occur at the onset of a downturn in an organization's performance or results. It usually takes the form of cutbacks intended to bring the organization back to profitability and may involve layoffs, plant closures, and cutbacks in supplies and resources. It often involves changes in organization structure, particularly in the form of downsizing. The term is also used in a cynical way as a euphemism for mass layoffs. Rationalization provides the easiest way of achieving an immediate action and plan to keep the company due to the fact that its factors are so easily reached. One’s the alarm is ringing (low sales), massive data gathering is done and reports are made to the higher level officials. Then the brainstorming follows for an algorithmic plan to follow. The usual thought of this phase is to keep sales(even though it’s low), assess the productivity of the company to maintain or improve current trend, halt the plunge, find ways to improve current situation(short term solutions) and lastly seek ways for long term plans and growth. The systematic approach due to it being a basic rule and the quick repercussions after the decisions are made make this very viable yet as mentioned above, it makes the employees prone to lay-offs. This cutback in workforce would save maintenance costs but would cut productivity especially for labor-intensive businesses. Usually, the company opts for quality rather than quantity produced. Quality raises the price and can be sustained with low production and costs till the company takes its stride back. Same can be said of closing plants for these add to productivity but drastically increases maintenance costs and supply costs. The company also keeps its pocket tight and will take less risky investments to for gain.

Business process reengineering (BPR) began as a private sector technique to help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to dramatically improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors. A key stimulus for reengineering has been the continuing development and deployment of sophisticated information systems and networks. Leading organizations are becoming bolder in using this technology to support innovative business processes, rather than refining current ways of doing work. Reengineering recognizes that an organization's business processes are usually fragmented into subprocesses and tasks that are carried out by several specialized functional areas within the organization. Often, no one is responsible for the overall performance of the entire process. Reengineering maintains that optimizing the performance of subprocesses can result in some benefits, but cannot yield dramatic improvements if the process itself is fundamentally inefficient and outmoded. For that reason, reengineering focuses on redesigning the process as a whole in order to achieve the greatest possible benefits to the organization and their customers. This drive for realizing dramatic improvements by fundamentally rethinking how the organization's work should be done distinguishes reengineering from process improvement efforts that focus on functional or incremental improvement. This follows a cycle: design to be, test and implement to be, identify processes and review, update, analyze or as is. As the name implies, this method heavily involves innovation rather than refining of current ways. This starts as a design to be as a result of brain storming then put to test. If it passes and gives satisfactory results, it is implemented or the processes are reviewed for another round of testing. This is both capital and labor intensive due to the arduous tasks that it implies but unlike the rationalization method which gives immediate yet shaky results, this one gives short term results and opens the doors for long term solutions and radical changes if the test is successful. But the tests would have to be done during the contraction period or else, the company can’t take taking a risk during the trough or lowest point of sales stage. A pre-requisite of this method is a proper record of monthly sales volume, discernment of the company’s needs over wants and proper assessment of the company’s condition, maintenance and productivity costs. This method also involves expertise and proper leveling of the market platform, its ins and outs and the cohesive teamwork effort for a better furnished test and appreciated results.

Paradigm shift is a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change. This is usually brought upon by a radical, a highly optimistic person whose personality pervades others to follow his lead. Paradigm shift is not an end result but a means that is continually changing. The radical person who introduced it would eventually be proven as obsolete as time passes, or as better processes or means become available. The factors that bring this one about vary from person to person due in fact to the person’s temperament, educational background, attitude, convictions or influences. Paradigm shifts can happen at any stage of the business cycle but great risk to chance is given because the primary person must have the sufficient attributes to bring this one change. Because paradigm shift brings drastic changes, major factors become resistant forces to it. The fear of the unknown is one thing. Most people rely on the traditional and the well proven old ways rather than starting again at the bottom to re-familiarize things that are new. Another thing is the hierarchy of business platforms. The radicals are usually the new blood or the newly employed and the hierarchy works against them due to the pride and responsibility and satisfaction that a higher position entails. These difficulties are just a few of the many things to be faced if you are a radical but the hardest is rejection of idea. Usually, the radical loses heart in pursuing his subject any further due to a number of conflicts brought upon him and the fear of losing his job if he doesn’t keep his trap shut.

Automation is the use of control systems (such as numerical control, programmable logic control, and other industrial control systems), in concert with other applications of information technology (such as computer-aided technologies [CAD, CAM, CAx]), to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Processes and systems can also be automated. Automation plays an increasingly important role in the world economy and in daily experience. Engineers strive to combine automated devices with mathematical and organizational tools to create complex systems for a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities. Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond the scope of automation. Human-level patter recognition, language recognition, and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities of modern mechanical and computer systems. Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than mechanical approaches even where automation of industrial tasks is possible.

Specialised hardened computers, referred to as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events. This leads to precisely controlled actions that permit a tight control of almost any industrial process. Human-machine interfaces (HMI) or computer human interfaces (CHI), formerly known as man-machine interfaces, are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers, such as entering and monitoring temperatures or pressures for further automated control or emergency response. Service personnel who monitor and control these interfaces are often referred to as stationary engineers. Automation gives a variety of solutions depending on how it is utilized. Automation is the name and game of today’s generation. Many things that are thought of as impossible dreams are now being achieved. Automation also gives more satisfactory results due to the fact that it uses mathematical precision in its production. It also induces quicker production of goods and lesser errors due to the fact that human intervention is at minimal. It also gives more variability due to the wide options that it gives and greater control.


I, for my personal viewpoint after expounding on the four main points choose automation as the most radical type of change in an organization. The business cycle involves all four but differs them widely. The rationalization method is usually done during the lowest point of the monthly sales report to provide immediate result. But as expounded above, it usually just keeps the funds in tight check and the resources well managed but the production falls due to lay offs of the workforce/employees. Rationalization also works in just a short time to halt or put a brake on the slide the company incurred but on taking back the stride of the company, it won’t fair well. Business reengineering, on the other hand can not be done during the low periods due to the high risk that the experimenting period entails. It also involves extreme fund management to make the best out of the experiment and filter the results to analyze and finalize to be implemented. It also involves radical tinkering of the organization at large making displacements and changes that could make or break the company in taking the long run. Re-engineering also takes on stakeholder meetings or higher level men to confer with one another. Differences should be set aside and a single goal should be put forward but more often than not, re-engineering brings stakeholders to change stands and buy or sell portions of the company depending on the effect and finality of the decisive result made. Paradigm shift is offset due to the fact that it doesn’t necessarily provide a solution, only a dose of motivation to find better ways. Paradigm shift, out of the four runs more serious opposing forces because it plays mainly on the person’s viewpoint and temperament. Background and understanding of the problem at hand alters its effect from situation to situation. Automation on the other hand gives wider choices and has long term effects even if it is done during the organization’s lowest sales month. Automation involves capital but unlike business re-engineering, it has more credible results and brings a better yield. It also takes on the “limited resources” problem like rationalization but it doesn’t compromise productivity unlike rationalization that gives up the workforce. Automation requires maintenance but better than employees, it limits “human error” which becomes the main reason of faulty work by employees making the maintenance worth the pay. It only takes one presentation for automation to take the field unlike paradigm shift which most people are hesitant of. This era also supports the automation clearly by advanced marketing strategies and more sophisticated application due to technological advancements. And the current era of technological advancements make it obvious that the world is getting interconnected and we need technologies to harness such trend to keep up with this unprecedented change. Due to this automation, becomes a necessary tool to improve current economic standing and give the necessary stride to keep abreast with the changing economic platform. In terms of long term solutions, automation greatly increases market survivability and is a great help in advancing its own due to the fact that technology builds on itself for it to increase in capacity.


References:
http://www.quickmba.com/econ/macro/business-cycle/
http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/rationalization.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation
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Fritzielaine A. Barcena

Fritzielaine A. Barcena


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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyThu Mar 18, 2010 5:39 am

Organizational changes is not a common event happens in the world of business and technology. The changes of the environment and the society may affect the organization and the organizational changes happens. Organizational changes may happen a lot of time because the organization should adopt into fast changing environment. The most factor of organizational changes is the most famous term nowadays which "technology". As the time passes by, technology changes or upgraded into a better one. Therefore, as the technology changes, moat organizations should adopt the changes for some reasons, such as a good competition and better technology.

Organizational change is the term used to describe the transformation process that a company goes through in response to a strategic reorientation, restructure, change in management, merger or acquisition or the development of new goals and objectives for the company. The realignment of resources and the redeployment of capital can bring many challenges during the transformation process and organizational change management seeks to address this by adopting best practice standards to assist with the integration of new company vision.

Organizational change is not just change for the sake of change itself. The major precursor for organizational change is some form of exogenous force such as an external event. Cuts in a companies funding, the streamline of operations due to a merger are common examples of the magnitude of an event that creates organizational change and development. Companies that are nearing the end of the product life cycle make organizational changes in response to exiting a market or reorienting resources to new or existing business operations.

Significant organizational change occurs, for example, when an organization changes its overall strategy for success, adds or removes a major section or practice, and/or wants to change the very nature by which it operates. It also occurs when an organization evolves through various life cycles, just like people must successfully evolve through life cycles. For organizations to develop, they often must undergo significant change at various points in their development. That's why the topic of organizational change and development has become widespread in communications about business, organizations, leadership and management.
Leaders and managers continually make efforts to accomplish successful and significant change -- it's inherent in their jobs. Some are very good at this effort (probably more than we realize), while others continually struggle and fail. That's often the difference between people who thrive in their roles and those that get shuttled around from job to job, ultimately settling into a role where they're frustrated and ineffective. There are many schools with educational programs about organizations, business, leadership and management. Unfortunately, there still are not enough schools with programs about how to analyze organizations, identify critically important priorities to address (such as systemic problems or exciting visions for change) and then undertake successful and significant change to address those priorities. This Library topic aims to improve that situation.


Typically, the phrase “organizational change” is about a significant change in the organization, such as reorganization or adding a major new product or service. This is in contrast to smaller changes, such as adopting a new computer procedure. Organizational change can seem like such a vague phenomena that it is helpful if you can think of change in terms of various dimensions as described below:

1. Organization-wide Versus Subsystem Change
Examples of organization-wide change might be a major restructuring, collaboration or “right-sizing.” Usually, organizations must undertake organization-wide change to evolve to a different level in their life cycle, for example, going from a highly reactive, entrepreneurial organization to one that has a more stable and planned development. Experts assert that successful organizational change requires a change in culture – cultural change is another example of organization-wide
change.
Examples of a change in a subsystem might include addition or removal of a product or service, reorganization of a certain department, or implementation of a new process to deliver products or services.


2. Transformational Versus Incremental Change
An example of transformational (or radical, 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.
Examples of incremental 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.

3. Remedial Versus Developmental Change
Change can be intended to remedy current situations, for example, to improve the poor performance of a product or the entire organization, reduce burnout in the workplace, help the organization to become much more proactive and less reactive, or address large budget deficits. Remedial projects
often seem more focused and urgent because they are addressing a current, major problem. It is often easier to determine the success of these projects because the problem is solved or not.
Change can also be developmental – to make a successful situation even more successful, for
example, expand the amount of customers served, or duplicate successful products or services.
Developmental projects can seem more general and vague than remedial, depending on how specific goals are and how important it is for members of the organization to achieve those goals. Some people might have different perceptions of what is a remedial change versus a developmental Change.

4. Unplanned Versus Planned Change
Unplanned change usually occurs because of a major, sudden surprise to the organization, which causes its members to respond in a highly reactive and disorganized fashion. Unplanned change might occur when the Chief Executive Officer suddenly leaves the organization, significant public relations problems occur, poor product performance quickly results in loss of customers, or other disruptive situations arise.
Planned change occurs when leaders in the organization recognize the need for a major change and proactively organize a plan to accomplish the change. Planned change occurs with successful implementation of a Strategic Plan, plan for reorganization, or other implementation of a change of this magnitude.

For millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn states that "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory" (p. 67). It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. However, we are not restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state of consciousness is transforming and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious awareness expands.

Spectrum Of IT


IT can promote various degrees of organizational change ranging from incremental to far-reaching. Three kinds of structural organizational change that are enabled by IT:



(1) Automation,

(2) Rationalization,

(3) Reengineering.


Each carries different rewards and risks.
The most common form of IT-enabled organizational change or the first phase of IT adoption is automation. This has allowed employees to automate a number of time-consuming and error-prone activities and gain benefits in cycle-time, productivity, and accuracy. For example, a main contractor makes use of standalone software to keep track all Request For Information (RFI) in a project.

A deeper form of organization change or the second phase of IT adoption is rationalization of procedures. Automation frequently reveals bottlenecks in production and makes the existing arrangement of procedures and structures painfully cumbersome. Rationalization of procedures involves the streamlining of standard operating procedures, which eliminates obvious bottlenecks, so that operating procedures become more efficient. Roughly speaking, it is a process of fine tuning the first step. For example, the main contractor implements an intranet and standardizes the data in RFI across all projects in the enterprise.

A more powerful type of organizational change or the third phase of IT adoption is business process reengineering, in which business processes are analyzed, simplified, and redesigned. Reengineering involves radically rethinking the flow of work and the construction business processes with the intention to radically reducing the costs of businesses. Using IT, organizations can rethink and streamline their business processes to improve speed, service, and quality. Business process reengineering reorganizes workflows, combining steps to cut waste and eliminating repetitive, paper-intensive tasks. It is much more ambitious than rationalization of procedures because it requires a new vision of how the process is to be organized. For example, the main contractor sets up an extranet to online collaborate with the architect for the RFI process.

Not many construction industry players have moved beyond the first phase of automation. However, there are some companies have committed to a continuing investment in technological advancement and organizational change. By changing how they are organized and do business, they have achieved far greater benefits than available through automation alone. Companies like this have succeeded in staying ahead of their competitors not merely by automating but by changing their organization as well. Their strategic advantage has been their preparedness and ability to continually innovative, and to manage the change necessary to gain substantial business benefits.

AUTOMATION
Consolidation and technological advances have made radio automation affordable and necessary for modern broadcast facilities. In response to the industry, automation systems are becoming better described as digital-asset management systems. Simple cart replacement isn't the goal anymore. Stations expect digital playback systems to help manage media inventories, automatically record and insert live feeds and voice tracks, work seamlessly with satellite formats and operate as a live assistant for shows. The need for interaction, control and insertion from a distance has become extremely important, as have WAN-based media sharing and the ability to manage multiple stations from a central site.

Most manufacturers have addressed these needs, and now these systems offer much more than radio automation. Many systems available are designed to take advantage of interaction with Rich Media associated with radio and audio content. This capability has direct applications as stations exploit their Internet presence. Automation systems can send “now playing” data to Web pages, and some companies offer solutions that allow listeners to hear radio on specially designed audio players with a station logo and sponsor ad space, as well as methods for Internet listeners to click and find out more about the music or spot being played or even begin a purchase process. This type of interactivity is still in the early stages but expect this information and extra features to be a part of future digital radio iterations.

Perhaps the decision has been made for the engineer, as a member of a larger company. If this is the case, this information may be able to give you an idea of how the system works and how its features can be used in the station. Use this information as a beginning, following up the research by contacting the manufacturer or the broadcast equipment dealer for more information.



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kristine_delatorre

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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyFri Mar 26, 2010 8:34 am

In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts? (you are expected to read an article about this question)


Before we can say what spectrum of organizational change that is most radical type of change, we must identify each of the following to fully understand its concepts.

WE ARE NOT HUMAN BEINGS, HAVING A SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE, WE ARE SPIRITUAL BEINGS HAVING A HUMAN EXPERIENCE.

Perhaps the most asked but least answered question in business today is “What can we do to make our business survive and grow?” The world is rapidly changing into something too hard to easily predict, with a hundred opportunities and pitfalls passing by every moment.

To add to this confusion, there are hundreds, if not thousands of techniques, solutions and methods that claim to help business improve productivity, quality and customer satisfaction.

The major decisions

Instead of grasping for the latest technique, I suggest instead that organizations should go through a formal decision-making process that has four major components:

bullet Levels, goals and strategies
bullet Measurement system
bullet Sequence of steps
bullet Implementation and organizational change
The levels of organizational change
Perhaps the most difficult decision to make is at what "level" to start. There are four levels of organizational change:

bullet shaping and anticipating the future (level 1)
bullet defining what business(es) to be in and their "core competencies” (level 2)
bullet reengineering processes (level 3)
bullet incrementally improving processes (level 4)
First let's describe these levels, and then under what circumstances a business should use them.

Level 1- shaping and anticipating the future
At this level, organizations start out with few assumptions about the business itself, what it is "good" at, and what the future will be like.

Management generates alternate "scenarios" of the future, defines opportunities based on these possible futures, assesses its strengths and weaknesses in these scenarios changes its mission, measurement system etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."

Level 2 - defining what business(es) to be in and their "Core Competencies
Many attempts at strategic planning start at this level, either assuming that 1) the future will be like the past or at least predictable; 2) the future is embodied in the CEO's "vision for the future"; or 3) management doesn't know where else to start; 4) management is too afraid to start at level 1 because of the changes needed to really meet future requirements; or 5) the only mandate they have is to refine what mission already exists.

After a mission has been defined and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis is completed, an organization can then define its measures, goals, strategies, etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."

Level 3 - Reengineering (Structurally Changing) Your Processes
Either as an aftermath or consequence of level one or two work or as an independent action, level three work focuses on fundamentally changing how work is accomplished. Rather than focus on modest improvements, reengineering focuses on making major structural changes to everyday with the goal of substantially improving productivity, efficiency, quality or customer satisfaction. To read more about level 3 organizational changes, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."

Level 4 - Incrementally Changing your Processes
Level 4 organizational changes are focusing in making many small changes to existing work processes. Oftentimes organizations put in considerable effort into getting every employee focused on making these small changes, often with considerable effect. Unfortunately, making improvements on how a buggy whip for horse-drawn carriages is made will rarely come up with the idea that buggy whips are no longer necessary because cars have been invented. To read more about level 4 organizational changes and how it compares to level 3, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."



One organization we consulted with has had a more positive experience with the incremental approach. We trained an internal facilitator, helped them deliver training in a just-in-time fashion, and had them focus on specific technical problems. The teams management formed reduced initial quality defects by 48%.

The disadvantages of such an incremental approach include avoiding structural, system-wide problems, and assumes existing processes need modest improvement. In addition, using incremental approaches can be frustrating to employees and management if (pick a buzzword) does not catch on in the organization. As a result of these disadvantages, many organizations experience a high risk of failure in the long run.

What level do I choose?
These levels have much of the same goals: increasing customer satisfaction, doing things right the first time, greater employee productivity, etc. Despite these similarities, they differ substantially in the methods they use to achieve these goals.

Levels one through three, on one hand, focuses on "big picture" elements such as analysis of the marketplace, out-sourcing, purchase/sale of subsidiaries, truly out-of-the box" thinking and substantial change in the management and support systems of the company . In my experience, companies that use these methods tend to have a high need for change, risk-tolerant management, relatively few constraints and have substantial consensus among its management on what to do. Types of industries include those whose environment requires rapid adaptation to fast-moving events: electronics, information systems and telecommunication industries, for example.

Companies using mostly incremental tools (level 4) have management that perceives only a modest need for change, is relatively risk-avoidant, has many constraints on its actions and only has a modest consensus among themselves on what to do. Instead of focusing on new opportunities, they wish to hone and clarify what they already do. Types of industries that often use these methods include the military, aerospace, and until recently, health care organizations. Those organizations whose strategic planning solely focuses on refining an existing mission statement and communicating the paragraph also fall into using incremental (level 4) methods.

When discussing the continuum of structural vs. incremental change, its important to realize that what labels companies use are not important here. One must carefully observe their actions. Many companies have slogans, "glitter" recognition programs and large budgets to provide "awareness" training in the buzzword they are attempting to implement. The key, however, is to note what changes they are really making. If management is mostly filling training slots with disinterested workers and forming a few process improvement teams, they are using level three methods. If they are considering changes in business lines, re-organizing by customer instead of by function, or making major changes in how the everyday employee is being paid, they are using level 3 methods.

Unfortunately, all of this discussion hinges in management's belief about how much change is necessary. This belief often hinges on their often unassessed beliefs of 1) how well the organization performs compared to other organizations (a lack of benchmarking); and 2) what the future will be.

As a result, my recommendation is that organizations conduct scenario/strategic planning exercises (level 1) anyway, even if they have already decided that level 4 (incremental) methods will suffice to solve their problems. This way management can be aware of the limitations of the lower-level methods they are using and realize when it is best to abandon these lower-level methods for something more substantive.

Based on this exercise, comparison of existing internal processes with world-class examples (benchmarking) and market analysis, management may come to realize how much change is necessary. The greater the gap between what the organization needs to be and how it currently operations and what businesses it is in, the more it suggests that greater change is necessary, and greater restructuring is necessary.

This decision is very important. IBM in the mid 1980’s felt that the future would be much like the past and a result didn't have to change much. They did not realize how much microcomputers would replace the functions of their bread-and-butter business, the mainframe. The net result was tens of thousands of people were laid off, with the company suffering the first losses in its history.

Goals
Based on whatever level work you are doing, the opportunities that are found need to be evaluated to determine which of them best suit the existing and future capabilities of the organization and provide the most "bang for the buck" in terms of improvement in your measures of success. In addition, goals need to have the resources and management determination to see to their success.

Goals also need to be SMART, that is:

Specific - concrete action, step-by-step actions needed to make the goal succeed

Measurable - observable results from the goal's accomplishment

Attainable - The goal is both possible and is done at the right time with sufficient attention and resources

Realistic- The probability of success is good, given the resources and attention given it.

Time-bound- The goal is achieved within a specified period of time in a way that takes advantage of the opportunity before it passes you by.



Some examples include:

bullet “We will expand into the polystyrene market within the next five years and achieve 20% market share”
bullet We will decrease the time from research to customer delivery by 50% within two years
bullet We will increase the quality of our largest product by 20% in three years.
Strategies
Where goals focus on what, strategies focus on how. Some examples include:

bullet “We will re-engineer our research and development process”
bullet “We will evaluate and improve our sales and marketing department”
bullet We will conduct a SWOT analysis and then define our core competencies


Additional examples of strategies are included in the "Moving from the Future to your Strategy" chapter.

Wait a second. Aren't goals and strategies really the same. They are in one sense as they both need to be SMART. As what you might guess, the goals of a level are achieved by creating strategies at the lower levels.

The Measurement System
Without measures of success, the organization does not know if it has succeeded in its efforts. Someone once said, “What gets measured gets improved.” Someone else said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

For more information on measurement systems and their place in organizational change, please see the "Balanced Scorecard" article, along with a number of articles where employee surveys are used.



PARADIGM SHIFTS

a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change.

For example, agriculture changed early primitive society. The primitive Indians existed for centuries roaming the earth constantly hunting and gathering for seasonal foods and water. However, by 2000 B.C., Middle America was a landscape of very small villages, each surrounded by patchy fields of corn and other vegetables.

Agents of change helped create a paradigm-shift moving scientific theory from the Plolemaic system (the earth at the center of the universe) to the Copernican system (the sun at the center of the universe), and moving from Newtonian physics to Relativity and Quantum Physics. Both movements eventually changed the world view. These transformations were gradual as old beliefs were replaced by the new paradigms creating "a new gestalt" (p. 112).

Likewise, the printing press, the making of books and the use of vernacular language inevitable changed the culture of a people and had a direct affect on the scientific revolution. Johann Gutenberg's invention in the 1440's of movable type was an agent of change. Books became readily available, smaller and easier to handle and cheap to purchase. Masses of people acquired direct access to the scriputures. Attitudes began to change as people were relieved from church domination.

Similarly, agents of change are driving a new paradigm shift today. The signs are all around us. For example, the introduction of the personal computer and the internet have impacted both personal and business environments, and is a catalyst for a Paradigm Shift. We are shifting from a mechanistic, manufacturing, industrial society to an organic, service based, information centered society, and increases in technology will continue to impact globally. Change is inevitable. It's the only true constant.

In conclusion, for millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn states that "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory" (p. 67). It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. However, we are not restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state of consciousness is transforming and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious awareness expands.


BUSINESS REEENGINEERING as been around for quite some time: a lot has been written about it in both the practitioner trade press and the academic research journals. However, the controversy still remains if there is any accurate description of BPR, or if BPR is just a fad: an appealing label to tag on to whatever your company is doing to suggest that your latest and greatest work is 'in vogue.' To get some bearing about the question of what is BPR and what is the role of information systems and human factors in that process, you may like to start here.

What is BPR?

Start with Overview Article on BPR that covers key concepts regarding BPR, Processes, Myths about BPR, Relation between BPR and information technology, Role of IS function in BPR, BPR Methodology, Failure of BPR Projects, and Future of BPR. It also contains hyperlinks to selected references. On a related note, you may also like to peruse the diverse notions of 'Enterprise Architecture' as they are relevant to planning and implementing organizational change. These notions are presented in this Overview Article on Enterprise Architecture within a framework of Strategic Capabilities Architecture.

A few other papers that add to the perspective explained in the overview paper are listed below for additional reading on: "What is BPR?"

* Business Process Innovation: What Is It? A text book definition and the six-step approach. The 'radical' and 'dramatic' improvement aspects should be noted for contrasting with the following articles.
* Business Process Reengineering (Dean) A review of diverse perspectives on BPR and argument for the 'humanistic' approach to business transformation.

Business process reengineering (BPR) is the analysis and redesign of workflow within and between enterprises. BPR reached its heyday in the early 1990's when Michael Hammer and James Champy published their best-selling book, "Reengineering the Corporation". The authors promoted the idea that sometimes radical redesign and reorganization of an enterprise (wiping the slate clean) was necessary to lower costs and increase quality of service and that information technology was the key enabler for that radical change. Hammer and Champy felt that the design of workflow in most large corporations was based on assumptions about technology, people, and organizational goals that were no longer valid. They suggested seven principles of reengineering to streamline the work process and thereby achieve significant levels of improvement in quality, time management, and cost:

1. Organize around outcomes, not tasks.
2. Identify all the processes in an organization and prioritize them in order of redesign urgency.
3. Integrate information processing work into the real work that produces the information.
4. Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized.
5. Link parallel activities in the workflow instead of just integrating their results.
6. Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the process.
7. Capture information once and at the source.

By the mid-1990's, BPR gained the reputation of being a nice way of saying "downsizing." According to Hammer, lack of sustained management commitment and leadership, unrealistic scope and expectations, and resistance to change prompted management to abandon the concept of BPR and embrace the next new methodology, enterprise resource planning (ERP).


Information systems are of strategic importance of any company. They are constanly developed, redesigned,
modernised… This should be a controlled process managed by top management, deployed by those that know the technologies. IT specilists’ oportunity to advance in a company

REFERENCES:

http://www.organizedchange.com/decide.htm
http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html
http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid182_gci536451,00.html
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http://kjdelatorre.blogspot.com/
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ailaine adaptar


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Age : 104

Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyFri Apr 09, 2010 5:21 pm

In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts? (you are expected to read an article about this question) .. at least 3000 words

Overview:
“What can we do to make our business survive and grow?”
This is the question that David Chaudron, PhD has considered as the most asked but leased answered question in business today. In his article Begin at the beginning in organizational change, he stated that the world is fast shifting into something he believed too hard to easily forecast with an attached hundred opportunities and pitfalls passing by each moment. “To add to this confusion, there are hundreds, if not thousands of techniques, solutions and methods that claim to help business improve productivity, quality and customer satisfaction. A company President, CEO or business owner has so many choices in these buzzwords, whether they are called Total Quality Management, Customer Satisfaction, Re-engineering or Teambuilding. They are like new shoppers in a giant grocery store: They are hungry, but there are so many brands, sizes and varieties you don’t know what to buy”, he said.
Chaudron said that in response to this confusion stated above, many had done nothing. Majority is often afraid of making the wrong choices, thus making them decide to do nothing at all. Some, as for alternative, change the strategies they bring into play every few months, using the “program du’jeur” – a method of organizational change otherwise known as MBS (Management by Best Seller) as he explain it. “Neither of these responses helps the organization in the long run. Changing nothing will produce nothing. Implementing a different buzzword (Total Quality, Just in Time, Re-engineering, etc.) every few months often creates a “whipsaw” effect that causes mass confusion among your employees. These buzzwords are often a hammer in search of a nail, techniques applied with no clear focus as to the why, expected results or return on investment”.
“One of the organizations we consulted with started on this path. Senior management proclaimed in a memo that Total Quality should be a way of life. One senior vice president declared that he wanted 25% of his organization using Total Quality tools within a year. This caused tremendous excitement in the organization, However, the follow-through was delayed, occasionally inappropriate and sometimes not there. Many employees became discouraged with the process and considered it just another management fad. With the next business downturn, virtually all training had stopped and little enthusiasm was left.
Other organizations clearly focus on technical problems and on improving what they had. They are initially successful, but become victims of their own success. I call this an improved, planned incremental approach. Their initial quality improvement teams may be so successful they rapidly create more teams, without the qualitative organization-wide changes (re-engineering) necessary to sustain a permanent effort.
One organization we worked with had over 70 quality improvement teams in a plan with only 300 employees. They had shown little results after their first successes, and asked us what their next steps should be. We suggested the union’s leadership in their efforts, look at restructuring their organization along more product-focused lines, and possibly start profit sharing. They were not interested in taking any of these actions. A few months later, its parent company shut down the site, partly because of its poor productivity.
Organizations need to move beyond the buzzwords into deciding what actions they need to perform that will help them grow and develop. In response to this problem, this article will provide you a framework for coping with organizational change independent of buzzwords or the latest management fad. Organizations must first decide on the framework their organizational change long before they choose a buzzword to implement”, he added.

Shaping and anticipating the future
This is he said as the first level of organizational change that one must consider. “Organizations start out with few assumptions about the business itself, what it is "good" at, and what the future will be like.”
Management generates alternate "scenarios" of the future, defines opportunities based on these possible futures, assesses its strengths and weaknesses in these scenarios changes its mission, measurement system etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy. ", Chauron stated.
Defining what business(es) to be in and their "Core Competencies
This second level is what he said that the many attempts at strategic planning start at this level, either assuming that:
1) the future will be like the past or at least predictable;
2) the future is embodied in the CEO's "vision for the future";
3) management doesn't know where else to start;
4) management is too afraid to start at level 1 because of the changes needed to really meet future requirements;
5) the only mandate they have is to refine what mission already exists.
After a mission has been defined and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis is completed, an organization can then define its measures, goals, strategies, etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."
Reengineering (Structurally Changing) Your Processes
This is the third level as Chaudron explained: "Either as an aftermath or consequence of level one or two work or as an independent action, level three works focuses on fundamentally changing how work is accomplished. Rather than focus on modest improvements, reengineering focuses on making major structural changes to everyday with the goal of substantially improving productivity, efficiency, quality or customer satisfaction. To read more about level 3 organizational changes, please see "A Tale of Three Villages".”.
Incrementally Changing your Processes
The level 4 organizational changes are focusing in making many small changes to existing work processes. Oftentimes organizations put in considerable effort into getting every employee focused on making these small changes, often with considerable effect. Unfortunately, making improvements on how a buggy whip for horse-drawn carriages is made will rarely come up with the idea that buggy whips are no longer necessary because cars have been invented. To read more about level 4 organizational changes and how it compares to level 3, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."

Chaudron said, “One organization we consulted with has had a more positive experience with the incremental approach. We trained an internal facilitator, helped them deliver training in a just-in-time fashion, and had them focus on specific technical problems. The teams management formed reduced initial quality defects by 48%.
The disadvantages of such an incremental approach include avoiding structural, system-wide problems, and assumes existing processes need modest improvement. In addition, using incremental approaches can be frustrating to employees and management if (pick a buzzword) does not catch on in the organization. As a result of these disadvantages, many organizations experience a high risk of failure in the long run.”
What level do I choose?
“These levels have much of the same goals: increasing customer satisfaction, doing things right the first time, greater employee productivity, etc. Despite these similarities, they differ substantially in the methods they use to achieve these goals.
Levels one through three, on one hand, focuses on "big picture" elements such as analysis of the marketplace, out-sourcing, purchase/sale of subsidiaries, truly out-of-the box" thinking and substantial change in the management and support systems of the company . In my experience, companies that use these methods tend to have a high need for change, risk-tolerant management, relatively few constraints and have substantial consensus among its management on what to do. Types of industries include those whose environment requires rapid adaptation to fast-moving events: electronics, information systems and telecommunication industries, for example”, he explained.
Companies using mostly incremental tools (level 4) have management that perceives only a modest need for change, is relatively risk-avoidant, has many constraints on its actions and only has a modest consensus among themselves on what to do. Instead of focusing on new opportunities, they wish to hone and clarify what they already do. Types of industries that often use these methods include the military, aerospace, and until recently, health care organizations. Those organizations whose strategic planning solely focuses on refining an existing mission statement and communicating the paragraph also fall into using incremental (level 4) methods.
When discussing the continuum of structural vs. incremental change, its important to realize that what labels companies use are not important here. One must carefully observe their actions. Many companies have slogans, "glitter" recognition programs and large budgets to provide "awareness" training in the buzzword they are attempting to implement. The key, however, is to note what changes they are really making. If management is mostly filling training slots with disinterested workers and forming a few process improvement teams, they are using level three methods. If they are considering changes in business lines, re-organizing by customer instead of by function, or making major changes in how the everyday employee is being paid, they are using level 3 methods.
Unfortunately, all of this discussion hinges in management's belief about how much change is necessary. This belief often hinges on their often unassessed beliefs of 1) how well the organization performs compared to other organizations (a lack of benchmarking); and 2) what the future will be.
As a result, my recommendation is that organizations conduct scenario/strategic planning exercises (level 1) anyway, even if they have already decided that level 4 (incremental) methods will suffice to solve their problems. This way management can be aware of the limitations of the lower-level methods they are using and realize when it is best to abandon these lower-level methods for something more substantive.
Based on this exercise, comparison of existing internal processes with world-class examples (benchmarking) and market analysis, management may come to realize how much change is necessary. The greater the gap between what the organization needs to be and how it currently operations and what businesses it is in, the more it suggests that greater change is necessary, and greater restructuring is necessary.
This decision is very important. IBM in the mid 1980’s felt that the future would be much like the past and a result didn't have to change much. They did not realize how much microcomputers would replace the functions of their bread-and-butter business, the mainframe. The net result was tens of thousands of people were laid off, with the company suffering the first losses in its history.
Goals
Based on whatever level work you are doing, the opportunities that are found need to be evaluated to determine which of them best suit the existing and future capabilities of the organization and provide the most "bang for the buck" in terms of improvement in your measures of success. In addition, goals need to have the resources and management determination to see to their success.
Goals also need to be SMART, that is:
Specific - concrete action, step-by-step actions needed to make the goal succeed
Measurable - observable results from the goal's accomplishment
Attainable - The goal is both possible and is done at the right time with sufficient attention and resources
Realistic- The probability of success is good, given the resources and attention given it.
Time-bound- The goal is achieved within a specified period of time in a way that takes advantage of the opportunity before it passes you by.

Some examples include:
• “We will expand into the polystyrene market within the next five years and achieve 20% market share”
• We will decrease the time from research to customer delivery by 50% within two years.
• We will increase the quality of our largest product by 20% in three years.
Strategies
Where goals focus on what, strategies focus on how. Some examples include:
“We will re-engineer our research and development process”
“We will evaluate and improve our sales and marketing department”
We will conduct a SWOT analysis and then define our core competencies

Additional examples of strategies are included in the "Moving from the Future to your Strategy" chapter. Wait a second. Aren't goals and strategies really the same. They are in one sense as they both need to be SMART. As what you might guess, the goals of a level are achieved by creating strategies at the lower levels.
The Measurement System
Without measures of success, the organization does not know if it has succeeded in its efforts. Someone once said, “What gets measured gets improved.” Someone else said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
For more information on measurement systems and their place in organizational change, please see the "Balanced Scorecard" article, along with a number of articles where employee surveys are used.
Implementation and Organizational Change
The success of any organizational change effort can be summed into an equation:

Success = Measurement X Method X Control X Focused Persistence X Consensus
Like any equation with multiplication, a high value of one variable can compensate for lower levels on other variables. Also like any equation with multiplication, if one variable equals 0, the result is zero.
On employee involvement
Some organizations involve employees right from the start, where they have significant influence in the strategic plan of the organization. This kind of involvement tends to reduce employees’ resistance, which is always a very important factor in the success of any organizational change. Such organizations as Eaton, Eastman Chemical and Rohm and Haas have used such an approach.
Such employee involvement, however, might also be threatening to management’s traditional power. Some organizations decide employee involvement will be limited to implementing the strategic decisions management makes, or further limit involvement to purely task-focused teams working on technical problems. Many aerospace organizations have used this approach.
Focused persistence, good project management and the sequence of implementation
The sequence of implementation is also an important factor. There are four basic options, with many variations of them. The first involves the entire organization from the start, with the whole organization intensively working at once on making the change. Ford Motor Company is currently restructuring its entire organization, moving from planning to implementation in nine months.
Another option is a more relaxed approach, in which divisions or business units of the organization go at their own pace. This option can often become an incremental approach like the first or second village. Many conglomerates or other companies with diverse operations try this approach.
A third option is similar to the previous one, with the focus being on individual business units doing the implementation. In this case, however, business units implement roughly the same things in roughly the same time schedule. Unisys, the computer company, is using this method on some of its organizational change efforts.
A fourth option is to create a pilot project in one division or business unit, learn from its mistakes, and then apply those lessons to the rest of the organization. Examples of this option include the Saturn car facility at General Motors and the Enfield plant of Digital Equipment Corporation. It’s important to note here that creating pilot projects is a high-risk business. In both cases, the lessons learned from these pilot projects have not gained widespread acceptance in their parent companies due to their heavily ingrained cultures.

Here's some information about the history of Paradigm Shifts:

According to Wikipedia "Paradigm shifts tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be stable and mature, as in physics at the end of the 19th century. At that time, physics seemed to be a discipline filling in the last few details of a largely worked-out system. In 1900, Lord Kelvin famously stated, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." Five years later, Albert Einstein published his paper on special relativity, which challenged the very simple set of rules laid down by Newtonian mechanics, which had been used to describe force and motion for over two hundred years. In this case, the new paradigm reduces the old to a special case in the sense that Newtonian mechanics is still a good model for approximation for speeds that are slow compared to the speed of light. Philosophers and historians of science, including Kuhn himself, ultimately accepted a modified version of Kuhn's model, which synthesizes his original view with the gradualist model that preceded it. Kuhn's original model is now generally seen as too limited.

Kuhn himself did not consider the concept of paradigm as appropriate for the social sciences. He explains in his preface to "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" that he concocted the concept of paradigm precisely in order to distinguish the social from the natural sciences (p.x). He wrote this book at the Palo Alto Center for Scholars, surrounded by social scientists, when he observed that they were never in agreement on theories or concepts. He explains that he wrote this book precisely to show that there are no, nor can there be any, paradigms in the social sciences. Mattei Dogan, a French sociologist, in his article "Paradigms in the [Social Sciences]," develops Kuhn's original thesis that there are no paradigms at all in the social sciences since the concepts are polysemic, the deliberate mutual ignorance between scholars and the proliferation of schools in these disciplines. Dogan provides many examples of the non-existence of paradigms in the social sciences in his essay, particularly in sociology, political science and political anthropology."

Conclusion:
The automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shift, as I understand through the help of those articles I have read, are all considered radical type of change that are present to any type of organizational transform. These are all to be observed, as these are inevitable, and be acted accordingly. But as I gone through my readings, as I for my own point of view and understanding, I would conclude that the most radical type of change is the paradigm shift. ^_^

References:
David Chaudron, PhD. Begin at the beginning in organizational change
http://www.organizedchange.com/decide.htm
Michael W. Durant, CCE, CPA. Managing Organizational Change.
http://www.crfonline.org/orc/pdf/ref4.pdf
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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Assignment # 5   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyTue Jun 29, 2010 11:01 pm

In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts? (you are expected to read an article about this question) ..

The change constitutes numerous meaning. The word “change” is similar with alteration, modification, variation, transformation, revolution, conversion, adjustment, amendment and etcetera. In every different application, process and preference of the word “change” it only shows and explain one thing, what is good and better now may not be useful tomorrow. It is true in every aspect of life, and it is most feasible and clear in the world of technology at this very moment and for the next generation. We have to remember that we are in a fast-changing environment and what happens tomorrow can be very different from today. From that context alone, changes in an organization can be considered inevitable. Even the slightest changes can make a huge difference for the organization. Therefore, the type of radical change for the organization should be properly weighed according to the level of risk as well as the return of investment for the organization.
Organizational Change…
Organizational change is any action or set of actions resulting in a shift in direction or process that affects the way an organization works. Change can be deliberate and planned by leaders within the organization, or change can originate outside the organization and be beyond its control. Change may affect the strategies an organization uses to carry out its mission, the processes for implementing those strategies, the tasks and functions performed by the people in the organization, and the relationships between those people. Naturally, some changes are relatively small, while others are sweeping in scope, amounting to an organizational transformation. Change is a fact of organizational life, just as it is in human life. Organizational change is the term used to describe the transformation process that a company goes through in response to a strategic reorientation, restructure, change in management, merger or acquisition or the development of new goals and objectives for the company. The realignment of resources and the redeployment of capital can bring many challenges during the transformation process and organizational change management seeks to address this by adopting best practice standards to assist with the integration of new company vision. Organizational change is not just change for the sake of change itself. The major precursor for organizational change is some form of exogenous force such as an external event. Cuts in a companies funding, the streamline of operations due to a merger are common examples of the magnitude of an event that creates organizational change and development. Companies that are nearing the end of the product life cycle make organizational changes in response to exiting a market or reorienting resources to new or existing business operations. Organizational processes are the systematic way a company defines, organizes and implements its operations through the stages of the product life cycle. This can include strategic measures to improve business performance, proprietary models and intellectual property that contribute to an organizations goals and objectives. Process improvement is closely related to life cycle management. At any stage of companies operations, the analysis of inputs and outputs can be audited, assessed and graded according to a set of performance requirements. Improving productivity, minimizing costs, reducing social costs and environmental emissions form part of the process improvement paradigm. A company continually works towards organizational process improvement to enhance its bottom line. The organizational change process can be analyzed by breaking down the stages of the product or service life cycle. By identifying each stage and the procedures used, organizations are better able to assess the impact of changes and build models to quantify the effects of the change on the companies’ organizational processes. Change management seeks to balance the goals and objectives of an organization and align capital and resources to optimize a company’s performance. The organizational change can be brought about by the fast changing environment or acts as a strategic move in order to adapt in the current situation or get ahead with the competition. Either way, the organizational change that can occur in an organization can be defined into four kinds of structural organizational changes that is brought about by information technology. These are: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts.

Causes of Organizational Change
Companies are required to modify productive processes or strategic goals and aims in response to an external influence, change in consumer behavior or a shift in the industry landscape. This necessitates a reorientation of capital, resources, employees and corporate systems. Below are some of the common causes of organizational change:
Exit Strategy at The End of the product Life Cycle: As the market for a companies product reaches maturity, market growth and profits begin to diminish. Despite the fact that cost cutting occurs and marketing budgets are reduced, when the opportunity cost of deploying capital and resources to another more favorable opportunity presents, companies either sell off existing operations or cease production altogether. This can be in response to a new superior product release, a change in consumer purchasing habits or the introduction of a new technology. Irrespective of the cause, capital and labor are redeployed to new more promising business activities. The exit strategy is a common cause of organizational change.
Change in Government: Employees that work for government departments can find existing initiatives get discontinued when a change in government takes place. The subsequent refocus of priorities that takes place as a result of the new governments mandate can create redundancies or a radical change in the way the department conducts its affairs.
Mergers and Acquisitions: When two competitors merge the existing business operations of both companies get centralized and streamlined. This can result in the merging of departments and processes, cost cutting and a redeployment of existing resources. Mergers and acquisitions are one of the most frequent causes of organizational change.
Strategic Refocus: When the company changes its business processes to adopt a new paradigm organizational change ensues. Consider the plight of a company that shifts its focus form a product centric to a customer centric platform. New manufacturing specifications, new marketing and a change in logistical operations create a change reaction for change throughout the organization.
Structural Change: When new administrative processes get introduced, organizational change results. Consider the ramifications of centralizing an archiving process using computer technology. Old redundant processes get replaced by new software and hardware and staff members are required to retrain to operate the new systems.

Process Oriented: When a company redefines its manufacturing operations by changing its manufacturing process to a JIT operation, infrastructure, warehousing and logistical operations are required to be redesigned and deployed. This structural shift in the way a product is created has a domino effect on organizational change.

Terminologies of Radical Type of change
1.Automation is the use of control systems (such as numerical controlprogrammable logic control, and other industrial control systems), in concert with other applications of information technology (such as computer-aided technologies [CAD, CAM, CAx]), to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention. In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Processes and systems can also be automated.
Automation plays an increasingly important role in the global economy and in daily experience. Engineers strive to combine automated devices with mathematical and organizational tools to create complex systems for a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities. Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond the scope of automation. Human-level pattern recognition, language recognition, and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities of modern mechanical and computer systems. Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than mechanical approaches even where automation of industrial tasks is possible. Specialized hardened computers, referred to as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events. This leads to precisely controlled actions that permit a tight control of almost any industrial process. Human-machine interfaces (HMI) or computer human interfaces (CHI), formerly known as man-machine interfaces, are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers, such as entering and monitoring temperatures or pressures for further automated control or emergency response. Service personnel who monitor and control these interfaces are often referred to as stationary engineers.
Advantages
• Replacing human operators in tedious tasks.
• Replacing humans in tasks that should be done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, under the water, etc)
• Making tasks that are beyond the human capabilities such as handling too heavy loads, too large objects, too hot or too cold substances or the requirement to make things too fast or too slow.
• Economy improvement. Sometimes and some kinds of automation implies improves in economy of enterprises, society or most of humankind. For example, when an enterprise that has invested in automation technology recovers its investment; when a state or country increases its income due to automation like Germany or Japan in the 20th Century or when the humankind can use the internet which in turn use satellites and other automated engines.
Disadvantages
• Technology limits. Current technology is unable to automate all the desired tasks.
• Unpredictable development costs. The research and development cost of automating a process is difficult to predict accurately beforehand. Since this cost can have a large impact on profitability, it's possible to finish automating a process only to discover that there's no economic advantage in doing so.
• Initial costs are relatively high. The automation of a new product required a huge initial investment in comparison with the unit cost of the product, although the cost of automation is spread in many product batches. The automation of a plant required a great initial investment too, although this cost is spread in the products to be produced.
2. Rationalization of Procedure.It is the streamlining of standard operating procedures, eliminating obvious bottlenecks, so that automation makes operating procedures more efficient.
• Deeper change - streamlining of procedures to improve efficiency.
• Automation often reveals bottlenecks in production, existing procedures become painfully cumbersome.
• Procedures change to remove bottlenecks
Example in banks, which have standard rules for issuing account numbers, and standard methods for calculating interest and account balances. The actual procedure divides the product line in to four zones: The least profitable products would be dropped. Products that need to be in the catalog would be outsourced, thus simplifying the supply chain and manufacturing operations.
The cash-cows would remain and the balance would be improved with a better focus in product development, operations, and marketing. Because these products no longer need to subsidize the "losers," they can now sell for less.
The combination of better focus and lower overhead changes will soon restore the "lost" revenue from the dropped products.
• The Value of Product Line Rationalization. Eliminating or outsourcing low-leverage products will immediately:
• Increase profits by avoiding the manufacture of products that have low profit or are really losing money because of their (unreported) high overhead demands and inefficient manufacture/procurement
• Improve operational flexibility because, typically, low-leverage products are inherently different with unusual parts, materials, set-ups, and processing. Often, these are older products that are built infrequently with less common parts on older equipment using sketchy documentation by a workforce with little experience on those products.
• Simplify Supply Chain Management. Eliminating the products with unusual parts and materials will greatly simplify supply-chain management.
• Free up valuable resources to improve operations and quality, implement better product development practices, and introduce new capabilities like build-to-order & mass customization.
"Product line rationalization freed up a lot of people!"
- Jon Milliken, VP Engineering, Fisher Controls div., Emerson Electric
• Improve quality from eliminating older, infrequently-built products, which inherently have more quality problems than current, high-volume products that have benefited from continuous improvement and current quality programs and techniques.
• Focus on most profitable products in product development, manufacturing, quality improvement, and sales emphases. Focusing on the most profitable products can increase their growth and the growth of similarly profitable products. According to Richard Koch, writing in The 80/20 Principle
• Protect most profitable products from "cherry picking" (launching a competitive attack on the most profitable products), which is becoming more common as "virtual," cyberspace enterprises skim off the most profitable products.
• Stop cross-subsidizes. Remaining products will no longer have to subsidize the "dogs" and so they can generate more profit or offer a more competitive selling price.
3. Business Process Re-engineering (BPR): The radical redesign of business processes, combining steps to cut waste and eliminating repetitive, paper-intensive tasks to improve cost, quality, and service and to maximize the benefits of information technology
• Involves radical rethinking
• Can change the way an organization conducts its business
• IT allowed Baxter to be a manager of its customer’s supplies
• Strikes fear, its expensive, its very risky and its extremely difficult to carry out and manage
• Develop the business vision and process objective
• Identify the processes to be redesigned (core and highest payback)
• Understand and measure the performance of existing processes
• Identify the opportunities for applying information technology
• Build a prototype of the new process
4.Paradigm shifts
Paradigm: The word "paradigm" was originally one of those obscure academic terms that has undergone many changes of meaning over the centuries. The classical Greeks used it to refer to an original archetype or ideal. Later it came to refer to a grammatical term. In the early 1960s Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) wrote a ground breaking book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in which he showed that science does not progress in an orderly fashion from lesser to greater truth, but rather remains fixated on a particular dogma or explanation - a paradigm - which is only overthrown with great difficulty and a new paradigm established. Thus the Copernican system (the sun at the center of the universe) overthrew the Ptolemaic (the earth at the center) one, and Newtonian physics was replaced by Relativity and Quantum Physics. Science thus consists of periods of conservatism ("Normal" Science) punctuated by periods of "Revolutionary" Science.
Paradigm Shift : When anomalies or inconsistencies arise within a given paradigm and present problems that we are unable to solve within a given paradigm, our view of reality must change, as must the way we perceive, think, and value the world. We must take on new assumptions and expectations that will transform our theories, traditions, rules, and standards of practice. We must create a new paradigm in which we are able to solve the insolvable problems of the old paradigm. Definition: Radical re-conceptualization of the nature of the business and the nature of the organization
• Change in view of business and its organization • Affects design of entire organization • Transforms how business conducts business and possibly nature of organization
Paradigm shift (or revolutionary science) is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) to describe a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. It is in contrast to his idea of normal science.The term paradigm shift, as a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th-century theory of poetics, for instance.Since the 1960s, the term has been found useful to thinkers in numerous non-scientific contexts. Compare as a structured form of Zeitgeist.
Conclusion
In a correlation to being a radical change in an organization, automation is the type of change that uses technology to the tasks in an organization more efficiently and effectively. Automation have the lowest risk but also the lowest return of investment or reward for an organization. It just means that among the four types of structural changes that can occur in an organization, automation is the least radical change because of the low risk as well as the low reward that an organization can get. During automation, new bottlenecks in production are frequently revealed and make the existing arrangement of procedures and structures painfully cumbersome. This is where a deeper form of structural change called the Rationalization of Procedures can be adapted. Basically, the rationalization of procedures is streamlining of procedures and eliminating obvious bottlenecks that are revealed by automation for enhanced efficiency of operations. A more powerful type of organizational change is what we call as Business Process Reengineering. In plain definition, business process reengineering is the reorganization of way business is run. It is a management approach that examines aspects of a business and their interaction and attempts to improve the efficiency of the underlying processes. It is in business process reengineering in which business processes are analyzed, simplified and redesigned. Using information technology, organizations can rethink and streamline their business processes to improve speed, service and quality. Business reengineering reorganizes work flows, combining steps to cut waste and eliminating repetitive, paper intensive tasks. It is usually much more ambitious than rationalization of procedures, requiring a new vision of how the process is to be organized. Reengineering is the radical redesign of business processes that depends upon information technology intensive radical redesign of workflows and work processes. Compared to automation and rationalization of procedures, business process reengineering change conquers higher risk however it also covers the possibility of higher rewards for the organization. Rationalizing procedures and redesigning business processes are limited to specific parts of a business. New information systems can ultimately affect the design of the entire organization by transforming how the organization carries out its business or even the nature of the business. A more radical form of business change is called Paradigm Shift. Paradigm shift involves rethinking the nature of the business and the nature of the organization. In many instances firms seeking paradigm shift and pursuing reengineering strategies achieve stunning, order or magnitude increases in their returns on investment.
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Venus Millena

Venus Millena


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Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 Empty
PostSubject: Re: Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p   Assignment 5 (Due: December 23, 2009, before 01:00p - Page 3 EmptyThu Jul 08, 2010 10:39 am


In the spectrum of organizational change, which is the most radical type of change: automation, rationalization of procedures, business reengineering, or paradigm shifts? (you are expected to read an article about this question) .. at least 3000 words


What is organizational change?

Organizational change is an ongoing process in order to bring the organizational systems and processes in line with the factors prevailing in the external and internal environment of the organization. The forces of organizational change include internal and external forces. Typically, the concept of organizational change is in regard to organization-wide change, as opposed to smaller changes such as adding a new person, modifying a program, etc. Examples of organization-wide change might include a change in mission, restructuring operations (e.g., restructuring to self-managed teams, layoffs, etc.), new technologies, mergers, major collaborations, "rightsizing", new programs such as Total Quality Management, re-engineering, etc. Some experts refer to organizational transformation. Often this term designates a fundamental and radical reorientation in the way the organization operates.

Importance of organizational change.

An organization operates in an environment of constant change. In order to survive, it is imperative for the organization to anticipate any change in the environment and proactively work towards eliminating the effect of the same .It is therefore important to have a change in the organization. In addition, such change should be successful and must contribute towards the success of the organization.

Leaders and managers continually make efforts to accomplish successful and significant change -- it's inherent in their jobs. Some are very good at this effort (probably more than we realize), while others continually struggle and fail. That's often the difference between people who thrive in their roles and those that get shuttled around from job to job, ultimately settling into a role where they're frustrated and ineffective. There are many schools with educational programs about organizations, business, leadership and management. Unfortunately, there still are not enough schools with programs about how to analyze organizations, identify critically important priorities to address (such as systemic problems or exciting visions for change) and then undertake successful and significant change to address those priorities. This Library topic aims to improve that situation.

To really understand organizational change and begin guiding successful change efforts, the change agent should have at least a broad understanding of the context of the change effort. This includes understanding the basic systems and structures in organizations, including their typical terms and roles. This requirement applies to the understanding of leadership and management of the organizations, as well. Organizational change should not be conducted for the sake of change. Organizational change efforts should be geared to improve the performance of organizations and the people in those organizations. Therefore, it's useful to have some understanding of what is meant by "performance" and the various methods to manage performance in organizations.

How organizational change occurs?

Significant organizational change occurs, for example, when an organization changes its overall strategy for success, adds or removes a major section or practice, and/or wants to change the very nature by which it operates. It also occurs when an organization evolves through various life cycles, just like people must successfully evolve through life cycles. For organizations to develop, they often must undergo significant change at various points in their development. That's why the topic of organizational change and development has become widespread in communications about business, organizations, leadership and management.

Causes of Organizational Structure.

In just a few months, the technology that an organization uses on an everyday basis may be outdated and replaced. That means an organization needs to be responsive to advances in the technological environment; its employees' work skills must evolve as technology evolves. Organizations that refuse to adapt are likely to be the ones that won't be around in a few short years. If an organization wants to survive and prosper, its managers must continually innovate and adapt to new situations.

Every organization goes through periods of transformation that can cause stress and uncertainty. To be successful, organizations must embrace many types of change. Businesses must develop improved production technologies, create new products desired in the marketplace, implement new administrative systems, and upgrade employees' skills. Organizations that adapt successfully are both profitable and admired.
The levels of organizational change
Perhaps the most difficult decision to make is at what "level" to start. There are four levels of organizational change:
shaping and anticipating the future (level 1)
defining what business(es) to be in and their "core competencies” (level 2)
reengineering processes (level 3)
incrementally improving processes (level 4)

First let's describe these levels, and then under what circumstances a business should use them.
Level 1- shaping and anticipating the future
At this level, organizations start out with few assumptions about the business itself, what it is "good" at, and what the future will be like.
Management generates alternate "scenarios" of the future, defines opportunities based on these possible futures, assesses its strengths and weaknesses in these scenarios changes its mission, measurement system etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."

Level 2 - defining what business(es) to be in and their "Core Competencies
Many attempts at strategic planning start at this level, either assuming that 1) the future will be like the past or at least predictable; 2) the future is embodied in the CEO's "vision for the future"; or 3) management doesn't know where else to start; 4) management is too afraid to start at level 1 because of the changes needed to really meet future requirements; or 5) the only mandate they have is to refine what mission already exists.
After a mission has been defined and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis is completed, an organization can then define its measures, goals, strategies, etc. More information on this is in the next article, "Moving from the Future to your Strategy."

Level 3 - Reengineering (Structurally Changing) Your Processes
Either as an aftermath or consequence of level one or two work or as an independent action, level three work focuses on fundamentally changing how work is accomplished. Rather than focus on modest improvements, reengineering focuses on making major structural changes to everyday with the goal of substantially improving productivity, efficiency, quality or customer satisfaction. To read more about level 3 organizational changes, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."

Level 4 - Incrementally Changing your Processes
Level 4 organizational changes are focusing in making many small changes to existing work processes. Oftentimes organizations put in considerable effort into getting every employee focused on making these small changes, often with considerable effect. Unfortunately, making improvements on how a buggy whip for horse-drawn carriages is made will rarely come up with the idea that buggy whips are no longer necessary because cars have been invented. To read more about level 4 organizational changes and how it compares to level 3, please see "A Tale of Three Villages."

One organization we consulted with has had a more positive experience with the incremental approach. We trained an internal facilitator, helped them deliver training in a just-in-time fashion, and had them focus on specific technical problems. The teams management formed reduced initial quality defects by 48%.
The disadvantages of such an incremental approach include avoiding structural, system-wide problems, and assumes existing processes need modest improvement. In addition, using incremental approaches can be frustrating to employees and management if (pick a buzzword) does not catch on in the organization. As a result of these disadvantages, many organizations experience a high risk of failure in the long run.

Some General Guidelines to Organization-Wide Change

(Note that the library topic Basic Overview of
Major Methods and Movements to Improve Organizational Performance includes
overviews of major methods and movements associated with organizational change.
Readers would best be served to read the following basic guidelines as
foundation for carrying out any of the methods associated with organizational
change.)
In addition to the general guidelines listed above,
there are a few other basic guidelines to keep in mind.


1. Consider using a consultant. Ensure the
consultant is highly experienced in organization-wide change. Ask to see
references and check the references.


2. Widely communicate the potential need for
change. Communicate what you're doing about it. Communicate what was done and
how it worked out.


3. Get as much feedback as practical from
employees, including what they think are the problems and what should be done
to resolve them. If possible, work with a team of employees to manage the
change.


4. Don't get wrapped up in doing change for the
sake of change. Know why you're making the change. What goal(s) do you hope to
accomplish?


6. Plan the change. How do you plan to reach the
goals, what will you need to reach the goals, how long might it take and how
will you know when you've reached your goals or not? Focus on the coordination
of the departments/programs in your organization, not on each part by itself.
Have someone in charge of the plan.


7. End up having every employee ultimately
reporting to one person, if possible, and they should know who that person is.
Job descriptions are often complained about, but they are useful in specifying
who reports to whom.


8. Delegate decisions to employees as much as
possible. This includes granting them the authority and responsibility to get
the job done. As much as possible, let them decide how to do the project.


9. The process won't be an "aha!" It will
take longer than you think.


10. Keep perspective. Keep focused on meeting the
needs of your customer or clients.


11. Take care of yourself first. Organization-wide
change can be highly stressful.


12. Don't seek to control change, but rather to
expect it, understand it and manage it.


13. Include closure in the plan. Acknowledge and
celebrate your accomplishments.


14. Read some resources about organizational
change, including new forms and structures.
Automation

Automation is the least risky IT-change by which the organization purchases technology in order to make the life of its employees easier and their job more effective. A relevant example in the operations of a hotel might be the creation of the setting up of a computer network and purchase of workstations.

Is the use of control systems (such as numerical control, programmable logic control, and other industrial control systems), in concert with other applications of information technology (such as computer-aided technologies [CAD, CAM, CAx]), to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention.[1] In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Processes and systems can also be automated.

Automation plays an increasingly important role in the global economy and in daily experience. Engineers strive to combine automated devices with mathematical and organizational tools to create complex systems for a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities.Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond the scope of automation. Human-level pattern recognition, language recognition, and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities of modern mechanical and computer systems. Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than mechanical approaches even where automation of industrial tasks is possible.
Specialized hardened computers, referred to as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events. This leads to precisely controlled actions that permit a tight control of almost any industrial process. Human-machine interfaces (HMI) or computer human interfaces (CHI), formerly known as man-machine interfaces, are usually employed to communicate with PLCs and other computers, such as entering and monitoring temperatures or pressures for further automated control or emergency response. Service personnel who monitor and control these interfaces are often referred to as stationary engineers.

Rationalization of Procedures

Rationalization is the second stage of organizational change where the organization uses information technology to streamline a standard operating procedure. A database that holds information of available rooms is an example of this stage.

Refers to streamlining of standard operating procedures, eliminating obvious bottlenecks, so that automation makes operating procedures more efficient. improves efficiency and effectiveness. This range of organizational structure causes the organization to examine its standard operating procedures, eliminate those no longer needed, and make the organization more efficient. Both types of change cause some disruption, but it's usually manageable and relatively accepted by the people.

Business Reengineering

Business process reengineering is a more complicated and risky type of organizational change. Using the information technology the organization redesigns whole business processes in order to reduce waste and increase efficiency.
Reengineering starts with a high-level assessment of the organization's mission, strategic goals, and customer needs. Basic questions are asked, such as "Does our mission need to be redefined? Are our strategic goals aligned with our mission? Who are our customers?" An organization may find that it is operating on questionable assumptions, particularly in terms of the wants and needs of its customers. Only after the organization rethinks what it should be doing, does it go on to decide how best to do it.
Within the framework of this basic assessment of mission and goals, reengineering focuses on the organization's business processes--the steps and procedures that govern how resources are used to create products and services that meet the needs of particular customers or markets. As a structured ordering of work steps across time and place, a business process can be decomposed into specific activities, measured, modeled, and improved. It can also be completely redesigned or eliminated altogether. Reengineering identifies, analyzes, and redesigns an organization's core business processes with the aim of achieving dramatic improvements in critical performance measures, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.
Reengineering recognizes that an organization's business processes are usually fragmented into subprocesses and tasks that are carried out by several specialized functional areas within the organization. Often, no one is responsible for the overall performance of the entire process. Reengineering maintains that optimizing the performance of subprocesses can result in some benefits, but cannot yield dramatic improvements if the process itself is fundamentally inefficient and outmoded. For that reason, reengineering focuses on redesigning the process as a whole in order to achieve the greatest possible benefits to the organization and their customers. This drive for realizing dramatic improvements by fundamentally rethinking how the organization's work should be done distinguishes reengineering from process improvement efforts that focus on functional or incremental improvement.

Radical redesign of processes to improve cost, quality, service; maximize benefits of technology.
BR on the other hand, can cause radical disruption. The mere mention of the term nowadays strikes fear in the hearts of workers and managers at all levels. Why? Because many companies use it as a guise for downsizing the organization and laying off workers. Business process reengineering causes planners to completely rethink the flow of work, how the work will be accomplished, and how costs can be reduced by eliminating unnecessary work and workers. In order to make BPR successful, you must first redesign the process, then apply computing power to the new processes. If problems existed in the process before the new system was installed and those problems aren't resolved, the new system could actually make them worse. The main proponents of reengineering were Michael Hammer and James A. Champy. In a series of books including Reengineering the Corporation, Reengineering Management, and The Agenda, they argue that far too much time is wasted passing-on tasks from one department to another. They claim that it is far more efficient to appoint a team who are responsible for all the tasks in the process. In The Agenda they extend the argument to include suppliers, distributors, and other business partners.

Re-engineering is the basis for many recent developments in management. The cross-functional team, for example, has become popular because of the desire to re-engineer separate functional tasks into complete cross-functional processes. Also, many recent management information systems developments aim to integrate a wide number of business functions. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, knowledge management systems, groupware and collaborative systems, Human Resource Management Systems and customer relationship management systems all owe a debt to re-engineering theory. Very few processes in business are as efficient as they can possibly be. It's a fact of life. The idea behind successful BPR is to find improvements or even new opportunities. For instance, Federal Express and UPS both have online package tracking systems. That simple process was never economically feasible before the Internet. They had to reengineer their business processes to incorporate this new paradigm shift.

1. Aims at
2. eliminating repetitive, paper-intensive, bureaucratic tasks
3. reducing costs significantly
4. improving product/service quality

The impact of BPR on organizational performance
The two cornerstones of any organization are the people and the processes. If individuals are motivated and working hard, yet the business processes are cumbersome and non-essential activities remain, organizational performance will be poor. Business Process Reengineering is the key to transforming how people work. What appear to be minor changes in processes can have dramatic effects on cash flow, service delivery and customer satisfaction. Even the act of documenting business processes alone will typically improve organizational efficiency by 10%.

How to implement a BPR project
The best way to map and improve the organization's procedures is to take a top down approach, and not undertake a project in isolation. That means:
• Starting with mission statements that define the purpose of the organization and describe what sets it apart from others in its sector or industry.
• Producing vision statements which define where the organization is going, to provide a clear picture of the desired future position.
• Build these into a clear business strategy thereby deriving the project objectives.
• Defining behaviours that will enable the organization to achieve its' aims.
• Producing key performance measures to track progress.
• Relating efficiency improvements to the culture of the organization
• Identifying initiatives that will improve performance.
Once these building blocks in place, the BPR exercise can begin.
Advantages
• Replacing human operators in tedious tasks.
• Replacing humans in tasks that should be done in dangerous environments (i.e. fire, space, volcanoes, nuclear facilities, under the water, etc)
• Making tasks that are beyond the human capabilities such as handling too heavy loads, too large objects, too hot or too cold substances or the requirement to make things too fast or too slow.
• Economy improvement. Sometimes and some kinds of automation implies improves in economy of enterprises, society or most of humankind. For example, when an enterprise that has invested in automation technology recovers its investment; when a state or country increases its income due to automation like Germany or Japan in the 20th Century or when the humankind can use the internet which in turn use satellites and other automated engines.

Disadvantages
• Technology limits. Current technology is unable to automate all the desired tasks.
• Unpredictable development costs. The research and development cost of automating a process is difficult to predict accurately beforehand. Since this cost can have a large impact on profitability, it's possible to finish automating a process only to discover that there's no economic advantage in doing so.
• Initial costs are relatively high. The automation of a new product required a huge initial investment in comparison with the unit cost of the product, although the cost of automation is spread in many product batches. The automation of a plant required a great initial investment too, although this cost is spread in the products to be produced.

People change Organizations
Organizations can't change without people changing first. It is the collective action of individual change that emerges as organizational change. One approach to understanding how individuals change is the Tran theoretical Model (TTM), which is also known as Stages of Change (SOC). Change cannot be commanded, yet it is possible to influence individual change.

Change agents also play a key role in influencing organizational change. Note that the emphasis is on influencing change versus "managing change" which is debatable. This pdf focuses on the Internal Networker, drawing from some of Peter Singe’s papers from around 1996. The three roles (executive leader, local line leader, and internal networker) all come from Senge. The split between the formal & informal organization and strategic & tactical orientation have been added to emphasize the domain of each role. The function of change agent role model has also been added since this is a critical role the internal networker plays in organizational change. The linkage between the executive leader and the local line leader was also shifted to an empowering relationship that is really bi-directional in how it gains its strength. Traditionally, empowerment is something thought of being given to someone else. However, this overlooks the possibility of self-leadership through testing boundaries of empowerment. All too often, limits on empowerment are assumed and never tested. Therefore, it is essential to add a pull component to empowerment.

In initiating organizational change, the first step is raising awareness that some change is needed. An Organizational Assessment can be used as a point for initiating the dialogue that is necessary for organizational change to gain grassroots acceptance.

Resistance to change
• Inertia - comfort with the status quo
• Timing - conflicts with other initiatives and/or priorities
• Surprise - proper groundwork has not been done so people are caught off guard (need for change not established)
• Misunderstanding - benefits not properly understood
• Cultural pressure - some who may want to change are held back by others in the organization
• Self-interest - conflicting personal priorities
• Differing assessment - conflicting agreement over the value of the benefits associated with the change

Points of leverage
• Education and communication - raising awareness of the nature of the change and the associated benefits (objective is to gain commitment)
• Involvement - gaining buy-in through participation in the decision-making process and implementation (objective is to gain commitment or at least compliance)
• Support - helping people adjust to the physical and mental aspects of the change (objective is to gain compliance and possibly commitment)
• Negotiation - establishing an acceptable agreement that gains sufficient support for the change process (objective is to gain compliance)
• Manipulation - use of individual rewards and benefits to gain cooperation (objective is to gain compliance)
• Coercion - threat or use of punishment to force compliance (but not commitment)

Organization Culture
Culture drives how things are really done in the organization. The Culture for High Performance paper details some of the cultural attributes that can influence how well an organization performs toward meeting its potential. (Slightly shorter version of this paper)
Perhaps the most asked but least answered question in business today is “What can we do to make our business survive and grow?” The world is rapidly changing into something too hard to easily predict, with a hundred opportunities and pitfalls passing by every moment.

Organizations need to move beyond the buzzwords into deciding what actions they need to perform that will help them grow and develop. In response to this problem, this article will provide you a framework for coping with organizational change independent of buzzwords or the latest management fad. Organizations must first decide on the framework their organizational change long before they choose a buzzword to implement.
Paradigm Shift

Paradigm shift is actually changing the very nature of the business and the structure of the organization itself. We're talking whole new products or services that didn't even exist before. We're talking major disruption and extreme change. Think of a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change. The term paradigm shift, as a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th-century theory of poetics, for instance.
In conclusion, for millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn states that "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory" (p. 67). It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. However, we are not restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state of consciousness is transforming and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious awareness expands.
Paradigm shifts occur from time to time in business as well as in science. And as with scientific revolutions, they are often hard fought, and the ideas underlying them not widely accepted until long after they were first introduced. What's more, they often have implications that go far beyond the insights of their creators.
One such paradigm shift occurred with the introduction of the standardized architecture of the IBM personal computer in 1981. In a huge departure from previous industry practice, IBM chose to build its computer from off the shelf components, and to open up its design for cloning by other manufacturers. As a result, the IBM personal computer architecture became the standard, over time displacing not only other personal computer designs, but over the next two decades, minicomputers and mainframes.
Using this method will take high risks and give a high or great reward for the organization if it is a success. When if it is a failure it would results the organization will go down or bankruptcy or worst the organization will be closed.
The spectrum of organizational change is composed of four parts, arranged from lowest to highest in terms of both risks and rewards: automation, rationalization of procedures, business re-engineering, and paradigm shift. Meanwhile, the term radical is synonymous with essential, major, thorough, sweeping, and drastic. So when we say radical organizational change, we are referring to a type of organizational change that will bring about largely significant and drastic changes.
Radical means departing markedly from the usual or customary and it also means extreme while paradigm shift means a new perspective on things. It is sometimes known as extraordinary science or revolutionary science (Thomas Khun). A paradigm shift is a radical change of pace in our paradigms, a fundamental change in our unconscious view of reality. It is a transformation of the way humans perceive events, people, environment, and life altogether. It can be a national or international shift, and could have dramatic effects, whether positive or negative, on the way we live our lives today and in the future.

among the four types of organizational change, the most radical type is paradigm shifts. The most common is automation and also the easiest. Automation and rationalization of procedures are slow moving and slow changing strategies. These two types of change carry low rewards but offer little risk. In contrast, business reengineering and paradigm shifts are faster; carry high rewards but offer high chances of failure.
Automation deals with the use of Information Technology (IT) in order to speed up the process of a certain task. Rationalization of procedures is the reformation of operating procedures, removal of bottlenecks to make the operating procedures of the organization more efficient. Business reengineering is the redesigning of the business processes to improve measure of performance while paradigm shifts is the re-conceptualization or change of the nature of the business and the organization itself.
Organizations could have major disruption when it is done. Although we could say that it is very dangerous because it talks about extreme change and taking high risk but still many of the organizations use it and also business reengineering. Why extreme change? As defined above, it is because it deals with changing the very nature of the business, the structure of the organization and it also deals with new products or services. Same as other individuals, organizations use paradigm shifts as their strategy to change in order to stay competitive. I have read from an article that because of the global economic pressure, organizations realized that they have to take on the challenges to meet the demands of their shareholders.

One of the most important things to know about building a new information system is that this process is one kind of planned organizational change. Frequently, new systems mean new ways of doing business and working together. The nature of tasks, the speed with which they must be completed, the nature of supervision (its frequency and intensity), and who has what information about whom will all be decided in the process of building an information system. This is especially true in contemporary systems, which deeply affect many parts of the organization. System builders must understand how a system will affect the organization as a whole, focusing particularly on organizational conflict and changes in the locus of decision-making. Builders must also consider how the nature of work groups will change under the impact of the new system. Builders determine how much change is needed.New information systems can be powerful instruments for organizational change.

The most common form of IT-enabled organizational change is automation. The first applications of information technology involved assisting employees perform their tasks more efficiently and effectively. Calculating paychecks and payroll registers, giving bank teller’s instant access to customer deposit records, and developing a nationwide network of airline reservation terminals for airline reservation agents are all examples of early automation. Automation is akin to putting a larger motor in an existing automobile.

A deeper form of organizational change – one that follows quickly from early automation – is rationalization procedure. Automation frequently reveals new
bottlenecks in production, and makes the existing arrangement of procedures and structures painfully cumbersome. Rationalization of procedures is the streamlining of standard operating procedures, eliminating obvious bottlenecks, so that automation can make operating procedures more efficient.

A more powerful type of organization change is business re-engineering, in which business processes are analyzed, simplified, and redesigned. Re-engineering involves radically rethinking the flow of work; the business procedures used to produce products and services with a mind of radically reduce the costs of business. A business process is a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome. Some examples of business processes are developing a new product, ordering goods from a supplier, or processing and paying an insurance claim. Using information technology, organizations can rethink and streamline their business processes to improve speed, service and quality. Business re-engineering reorganizes workflows, combining steps to cut waste and eliminating repetitive, paper-intensive tasks (sometimes the new design eliminates jobs as well). It is much more ambitious than rationalization of procedures, requiring a new vision of how the process is to be organized. Rationalizing procedures and redesigning business processes are limited to specific parts of a business. New information systems can ultimately affect the design of the entire organization by actually transforming how the organization carries out its business or even the nature of the business itself.

The still more radical form of business change is called a paradigm shift. A paradigm shift involves rethinking the nature of the business and the nature of the organization itself. Banks, for instance, may decide not to automate, rationalize, or reengineering the jobs of tellers. Instead they may decide to eliminate branch banking altogether and seek less expensive source of funds, like international borrowing. Retail customers may be forced to use the Internet to conduct all their business, or a proprietary network. A paradigm shift is akin to rethinking not just the automobile, but transportation itself.

Paradigm shifts and re-engineering often fail because extensive organization change is so difficult to orchestrate. Some experts believe that 70% of the time they fail. Why then do so many corporation entertain such radical change, because the rewards are equally high. In many instances firms seeking paradigm shifts and pursuing re-engineering strategies achieve stunning, order-of magnitude increases in their returns on investment (or productivity).
In response to this confusion, many do nothing, often afraid of making the wrong choices. Others change the techniques they use every few months, using the “program du’jeur” method of organizational change, otherwise known as MBS (Management by Best Seller). Neither of these responses help the organization in the long run. Changing nothing will produce nothing. Implementing a different buzzword (Total Quality, Just in Time, Re-engineering, etc.) every few months often creates a “whipsaw” effect that causes mass confusion among your employees. These buzzwords are often a hammer in search of a nail, techniques applied with no clear focus as to the why, expected results or return on investment.
One of the organizations we consulted with started on this path. Senior management proclaimed in a memo that Total Quality should be a way of life. One senior vice president declared that he wanted 25% of his organization using Total Quality tools within a year. This caused tremendous excitement in the organization, However, the follow-through was delayed, occasionally inappropriate and sometimes not there. Many employee became discouraged with the process and considered it just another management fad. With the next business downturn, virtually all training had stopped and little enthusiasm was left.
Other organizations clearly focus on technical problems and on improving what they had. They are initially successful, but become victims of their own success. I call this an improved, planned incremental approach. Their initial quality improvement teams may be so successful they rapidly create more teams, without the qualitative organization-wide changes (re-engineering) necessary to sustain a permanent effort.
One organization we worked with had over 70 quality improvement teams in a plan with only 300 employees. They had shown little results after their first successes, and asked us what their next steps should be. We suggested the union’s leadership in their efforts, look at restructuring their organization along more product-focused lines, and possibly start profit sharing. They were not interested in taking any of these actions. A few months later, its parent company shut down the site, partly because of its poor productivity.
Organizations need to move beyond the buzzwords into deciding what actions they need to perform that will help them grow and develop. In response to this problem, this article will provide you a framework for coping with organizational change independent of buzzwords or the latest management fad. Organizations must first decide on the framework their organizational change long before they choose a buzzword to implement.
Explaining change and how it occurs has been a central theme in management and related disciplines. In a recent literature search using change and development as key words, researchers found more than a million articles on the subject in the disciplines of psychology, sociology, education, business, economics, as well as biology, medicine, meteorology, and geography (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995). We know from this research that concepts, metaphors, and theories used to investigate change have yielded a rich, diverse theoretical landscape. Yet, at the same time, such diversity often has confounded rather than enlightened. It is difficult to compare and contrast theories and their results, let alone work out the relationships among them, when different units, levels of analysis, time frames, and perspectives are employed. Ideally, it would be useful to have a basic road map to guide us through the conceptual maze. While no map could possibly cover the entire terrain, one that puts the major elements of change into relief would be of advantage. That is the intention of this article. The goal is to provide an overview of change—its definition, scope, pace, and processes, with particular attention paid to radical change given the focus of this Special Issue. We seek to answer such questions as: “What is change? What are the types of change? How does change occur?” in order to inform the efforts to dramatically transform acquisition policy and process. While acquisition reform is not in the foreground of this analysis, it certainly provides the impetus and rationale for this endeavor. We begin with a conceptual framework that provides the backdrop for our understanding of radical change. We introduce four types of change that are differentiated by two dimensions—the pace and the scope of change. Building on these two dimensions, radical change is defined as the swift, dramatic transformation of an entire system. In the next section, we explore alternative explanations of how radical change occurs. Here the attention shifts to how change happens rather than what actually is changed. Four radical change processes are examined: radical change by chance, radical change by consensus, radical change by learning, and radical change by entrepreneurial design. We explore radical change by entrepreneurial design in the next section, since the overall focus in the symposium is how individuals can influence the radical change process. The intent is to outline various strategies and tactics that well-known public entrepreneurs have employed to affect radical change. The article concludes by identifying the conceptual framework’s most important implications for acquisition reform, such as whether radical change in acquisition can be pursued and who would be the likely public entrepreneurs leading the charge.

Conclusion
To be successful, business process reengineering projects need to be top down, taking in the complete organization, and the full end to end processes. It needs to be supported by tools that make processes easy to track and analyze.
In conclusion, for millions of years we have been evolving and will continue to do so. Change is difficult. Human Beings resist change; however, the process has been set in motion long ago and we will continue to co-create our own experience. Kuhn states that "awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory" (p. 67). It all begins in the mind of the person. What we perceive, whether normal or metanormal, conscious or unconscious, are subject to the limitations and distortions produced by our inherited and socially conditional nature. However, we are not restricted by this for we can change. We are moving at an accelerated rate of speed and our state of consciousness is transforming and transcending. Many are awakening as our conscious awareness expands.
ARTICLES:

Organizational Change and Development, by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Copyright 1997-2009.
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