Navigating Organizational Change

Author(s):  
Nancy Kymn Harvin Rutigliano ◽  
Nadine V. Wedderburn ◽  
John M. Beckem II

Organizational change is a critical process for the survival of any organization in the 21st century. Resistance to change, oftentimes presented by stakeholders within an organization, is a major impediment to the process and can lead to chaos. While being a driver of change, chaos complicates and often impedes transformation. Thus, while chaos necessitates highly dynamic change, resistance stands in the way of mobility. The goal of thriving through chaos and change poses challenges to leaders, managers, and an organization's many stakeholders, while also providing opportunities for learning and growth within the organization. Hence, a sophisticated approach aimed at eliminating, weakening, adapting or transforming different aspects of resistance serves the organization and its stakeholders with the benefits of acceptance, learning and growth. This chapter discusses factors that spark resistance to organizational change and presents opportunities to generate collective acceptance and promote learning among stakeholders.

Author(s):  
Theodore E. Zorn ◽  
Jennifer Scott

Organizational change and innovation are generally treated as unquestioned goods, but some have argued that there exists a darker side to these phenomena. Change is often resisted or only grudgingly accepted by those involved and, given the assumed virtues of change and innovation, resistance has traditionally been considered an obstacle to overcome. This chapter will first consider the dark sides of change—that is, negative aspects, in particular change initiatives that are undertaken for ethically questionable reasons, using ethically questionable means, or resulting in deleterious consequences. Second, it reviews resistance to change—that is, an aversive cognitive, emotional, or behavioral response to a change initiative. Using a framework to consider the substance, processes, and outcomes of change initiatives, practical and theoretical implications are provided for a more nuanced approach to acknowledge the connections between perceptions of a change initiative as potential dark side judgments and resultant resistance behaviors.


2021 ◽  
pp. RTNP-D-20-00078
Author(s):  
Kim McMillan ◽  
Amélie Perron

Background and purposeOrganizational changes are increasingly rapid and continuous in health care as organizations strive to meet multiple external pressures. Much change in health care fails and nurse resistance is commonly blamed for such failure. Nurse resistance to organizational change is often described as overt behaviours and are deemed destructive to the change process. Much of the literature describing organizational change comes from the perspectives of administrators, there is little known about nurses’ experiences of organizational change. The purpose of this inquiry was to explore the nature of frontline nurses’ experiences of rapid and continuous change.MethodsA qualitative critical hermeneutic design was applied. 14 Registered Nurses participated in face-to-face interviews. Openended questions were used. The setting was an urban pediatric teaching hospital located in Canada. Research ethics board approval was obtained as required. Member reflections ensured accurate portrayals of participant’s experiences.ResultsThe findings from this study suggest that acts of resistance to change are not overt, but rather covert behaviors in micro-ethical moments. Nurses engaged in resistance as means to provide morally authentic care at the bedside. These acts were utilized to take back power over their practice amidst feelings of powerlessness, however, paradoxically, when participants described the concept of power, they understood it solely in the context of feeling powerless within the planning, implementation and evaluation of organizational change initiatives. Nurses engagement with resistant behaviours in the context of organizational change demonstrated ethical action and political agency that enabled morally authentic nursing practice.Implications for practiceThe findings from this study offer new understandings of a well-established concept in nursing and can be used when considering the ethical dimensions of nursing work amidst rapidly changing health care institutions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 47-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blanca Grama ◽  
Ramona Todericiu

AbstractOver the past decades, the focus of the scientists has shifted towards the area of organizational change. The concept has been approached from several perspectives and studied by numerous disciplines and refers to a shift or transformation of an organization, of several components of the organization or of the processes that lie within. Being in an environment characterized by competitiveness and complexity, organizations are under a constant need of change, of progress, while the aim of each change is to improve the aspects that make this happen. The dynamics of the labour force market has contributed to the creation of an environment in which organizations are permanently facing the need to implement various changes regarding their strategy, structure, processes or culture. Henceforth, the factors that can alter the implementation of change benefit from an increased focus. Understanding the reason for which some employees can resist change can have major financial implications for the organization. When considering the human resources involved in the change, nothing seems simple; most of the times things are not as they should be, and most of the employees experience a resistance to change, sometimes in the form of change-specific cynicism, a notion defined as the belief of employees that the organization in which they work lacks integrity. This paper represents the cultural adaptation of Change-Specific Cynicism Scale (a scale proposed by David J. Stanley in 1998, validated on the Canadian population), to the specifics of the Romanian population and supplies a method of evaluating change-specific cynicism for the specialized literature. Statistic results have shown that the Change-Specific Cynicism Scale has a high level of internal consistency (α=0,84) and can be used exclusively for equivalent populations. Moreover, this paper aims to approach the term organizational cynicism and its role in the context of organizational change.


Author(s):  
James J. Coleman

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry


Author(s):  
Kaori Kashimura ◽  
Takafumi Kawasaki Jr. ◽  
Nozomi Ikeya ◽  
Dave Randall

This chapter provides an ethnography of a complex scenario involving the construction of a power plant and, in so doing, tries to show the importance of a practice-based approach to the problem of technical and organizational change. The chapter reports on fieldwork conducted in a highly complex and tightly coupled environment: power plant construction. The ethnography describes work practices on three different sites and describes and analyses their interlocking dependencies, showing the difficulties encountered at each location and the way in which the delays that result cascade through the different sites. It goes on to describe some technological solutions that are associated with augmented reality and that are being designed in response to the insights gained from the fieldwork. The chapter also reflects more generally on the relationship between fieldwork and design in real-world contexts.


Space Policy ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-96
Author(s):  
Alain Dupas
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-134
Author(s):  
Angelika Moskal

Abstract: The shaman figure is most often associated with primitive communities, inhabiting, among others Siberia. The shaman plays one of the most important roles in them - he is an intermediary between the world of people and the world of spirits. Responds to, among others for the safe passage of souls to the other side and protects her from evil spirits. However, is there room for representatives of this institution in contemporary Polish popular literature? How would they find themselves in the 21st century? The article aims to show the interpretation of the shaman on the example of Ida Brzezińska, the heroine of the books of Martyna Raduchowska. I intend to introduce the role and functions of the „shaman from the dead”, juxtaposing the way Ida works (including reading sleepy margins from a rather unusual dream catcher, carrying out souls and the consequences that await in the event of failure or making contact with the dead) with the methods described by scholars shamans. The purpose of the work is to show how much Raduchowska tried to adapt shamanism in her work by modernizing it, and how many elements she added from herself to make the story more attractive.


Author(s):  
Iliya Ivanov ◽  

At the advent of the 21st century, digital technologies have changed the way that hotel industry brings value to tourists around the world. The aim of this scientific report is to present the opportunities and perspectives for hotel business for digital transformation, as a crucial instrument for the growth of the industry and for meeting the needs of the new digital generation of consumers. With its potential, digital transformation is reshaping the industry, giving strategic advantages to companies focused on digital transformation of the business.


Author(s):  
Joseph Yeager ◽  
Michael L. Saggese

Organizational change for mental health providers is becoming the rule rather than the exception as outside forces such as regulatory agencies and third-party payers exert increasing influence on the delivery of services. The pressure to adapt to shrinking budgets combined with demands for more effective services often puts many provider agencies on the defensive. In short, agencies must be able to demonstrate that they are, in fact, succeeding at cutting cost, increasing revenues, and improving effectiveness simultaneously. However, implementing organizational change is fraught with many challenges, not the least of which is the natural human resistance to change. This study provides a clear and simple process for identifying the most common reasons for the inevitable human resistance to change and suggests a strategy for overcoming that resistance to bring about successful organizational objectives.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dylan B. Van der Schyff

I demonstrate here how Aristotle's teleological conception of nature has been largely misunderstood in the scientific age and I consider what his view might offer us with regard to the environmental challenges we face in the 21st century. I suggest that in terms of coming to an ethical understanding of the creatures and things that constitute the ecosystem, Aristotle offers a welcome alternative to the rather instrumental conception of the natural world and low estimation of subjective experience our contemporary techno-scientific culture espouses. Among other things, I consider how his conception of orexis and eudaimonia (happiness or, as I prefer here, "the flourishing life") might be extended to include the eco-system itself, thus allowing us to better understand the moral meaning of nature. I conclude with a look at the way in which modern phenomenology re-addresses the fundamental Greek concern with ontology, meaning and human authenticity. I consider the ways in which phenomenology reasserts the value of direct human experience that was so important to Aristotle; and I consider how this view, and that of Deep ecology, may help us to experience nature - and all of Being for that matter - in a more authentic, meaningful and altogether ethical light.


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