Concord Bookshop Organizational Change
In today’s unstable economy many organizations are under tremendous pressure to advance and survive. The Concord Bookshop is one of these small organizations that needed to make a change to better compete with the innovation of their competitors. With the rise in larger bookstore chains and Internet sales the small bookstores future is uncertain. Without some interventions the bookstore would not survive. The implementation of a new organizational model will ensure that the company survives and becomes profitable. Strategic renewal requires organizational change, reinvention, invention, and redesign of business process and organizational structure (Spector, 2010).
Kurt Lewin’s change three stage model offers an effective approach to strategic change. In the first stage of the theory, which is the Unfreezing. In this stage group members become dissatisfied with the status quo (Spector, 2010). The second stage of the theory which is moving. During this stage the group members alter their behaviors and patterns (Spector, 2010). The final stage is refreezing. It is during this stage that the group members institutionalize the new patterns of behavior into a new status quo (Spector, 2010). In the final stage of Lewin’s theory this is when lasting changes are implemented and become permanent.
In the case of Concord Bookshop the board recognized that it needed to compete with the large bookstore chains and book sales on the Internet. The organizations leadership decided to make changes without trying to unfreeze some of the behaviors of the employees within the organization. The employees resisted the change, by denying the fact that the bookstores finances were in bad shape. Some even left the organization as resistance to the changes that were going to be taking place. Management made changes without including or informing the employees who would be affected. For the unfreezing process to be more effective, employees needed to know that a change was about to occur, and also feel that they are included in the process. According to Schein (2002), “The essence of an effective unfreezing process is a balancing of enough discomfort to arouse an optimal level of anxiety or guilt, or arousing learning anxiety to cause denial or other defense mechanisms (Schein, 2002). If the employees in the organization feel too much anxiety in regards to changes that are to take, their resistance to the changes will delay learning. This delay will then inhibit the changes from becoming permanent.
Without the proper unfreezing the changes that were implemented more than likely took longer to implement and also were not as easily accepted. This ultimately affects the refreeze. The refreeze in the case of the Concord Bookshop, didn’t happen. After all of the changes were implemented, the behaviors of the staff also needed to change which also didn’t happen. According to Schein (2002), “For new behaviors to last, they must first fit into the personality of the individual or the culture of the group that is being changed.” Change is a perpetual process with various stages; we are constantly bombarded with unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. We have to adapt to survive for the future. References
Schein, E. H. (2002). Models and tools for stability and change in human systems. Reflections, 4(2), 34-46.
Spector, B. (2010). Implementing Organizational Change: Theory Into Practice (2nd ed.). Newark, NJ: Prentice Hall.