Models of Change

Three-Stage Model of Change
Kurt Lewin propounded a three-stage model of change in 1951 that has come to be known as
the unfreezing-change-refreeze model. This model requires prior learning to be rejected and replaced by a new method.
Unfreezing
Unfreezing as a concept entered the change literature early to highlight the observation that the stability of human behavior was based on "quasi- stationary equilibria" supported by a large force field of driving and restraining forces. For change to occur, this force field had to be altered under complex psychological conditions because, as was often noted, just adding a driving force toward change often produced an immediate counterforce to maintain the equilibrium. This observation led to the important insight that the equilibrium could more easily be moved if one could remove restraining forces since there were usually already driving forces in the system. Unfortunately restraining forces were harder to get at because they were often personal psychological defenses or group norms embedded in the organizational or community culture.

How to unfreeze?
1. Disconfirmation
All forms of learning and change start with some form of dissatisfaction or frustration generated by data that disconfirm our expectations or hopes. Disconfirmation, whatever its source, functions as a primary driving force in the quasi-stationary equilibrium. Disconfirming information is not enough, however, because we can ignore the information, dismiss it as irrelevant, blame the undesired outcome on others or fate, or, as is most common, simply deny its validity. In order to become motivated to change, we must accept the information and connect it to something we care about.
2. Anxiety/Guilt
The disconfirmation must arouse what we can call "survival anxiety" or the feeling that if we do not change we will fail to meet our needs or fail to achieve some goals or ideals that we have set for ourselves ("survival guilt"). In order to feel survival anxiety or guilt, we must accept the disconfirming data as valid and relevant. What typically prevents us from doing so, what causes us to react defensively, is a second kind of anxiety which we can call "learning anxiety," or the feeling that if we allow ourselves to enter a learning or change process, if we admit to ourselves and others that something is wrong or imperfect, we will lose our effectiveness, our self-esteem and maybe even our identity. Most humans need to assume that they are doing their best at all times, and it may be a real loss of face to accept and even "embrace" errors.
3. Creation of Psychological Safety or Overcoming of Learning Anxiety
Unless sufficient psychological safety is created, the disconfirming information will be denied or in other ways defended against, no survival anxiety will be felt, and, consequently, no change will take place. The key to effective change management, then, becomes the ability to balance the amount of threat produced by disconfirming data with enough psychological safety to allow the change target to accept the information, feel the survival anxiety, and become motivated to change.
The true artistry of change management lies in the various kinds of tactics that change agents employ to create psychological safety. For example, working in groups, creating parallel systems that allow some relief from day to day work pressures, providing practice fields in which errors are embraced rather than feared, providing positive visions to encourage the learner, breaking the learning process into manageable steps, providing on-line coaching and help all serve the function of reducing learning anxiety and thus creating genuine motivation to learn and change.

Change
How to Change?
Changing through Cognitive Restructuring : Helping the clients to see things, judge things, feel things and react to things differently based on a new point of view obtained through
a. Identifying with a new role model, mentor etc.
b. Scanning the environment for new relevant information.

Refreeze
How to Refreeze?
New way of doing things has to be reinforced through rewards and punishment mechanizm as also through various motivational techniques.
The main point about refreezing is that new behavior must be to some degree congruent with the rest of the behavior and personality of the learner or it will simply set off new rounds of disconfirmation that often lead to unlearning the very thing one has learned. The classic case is the supervisory program that teaches individual supervisors how to empower employees and then sends them back into an organization where the culture supports only autocratic supervisory behavior. Or, in Lewin's classic studies, the attempt to change eating habits by using an educational program that teaches housewives how to use meats such as liver and kidneys and then sends them back into a community in which the norms are that only poor folks who can't afford good meat would use such poor meat.
The implication for change programs are clear. For personal refreezing to occur, it is best to avoid identification and encourage scanning so that the learner will pick solutions that fit him or her. For relational refreezing to occur, it is best to train the entire group that holds the norms that support the old behavior.
It is only when housewives groups met and were encouraged to reveal their implicit norms that change was possible by changing the norms themselves, i.e. introducing collectively a new set of standards for judging what was"ok" meat.

Burke-Litwin Model of Organizational Change
This model was developed by Warner Burke and George Litwin. This model identifies the variables involved in creating first-order and second order change which are also termed as transactional and transformational change respectively.
First Order Change/Transactional Change
First Order change aims at improving the organizational climate by implementing incremental changes in the workplace. Organizational climate is peopl'e collective assessment in terms of whether it is a good or bad place to work, whether it is friendly, warm, cold, hard-working, easy-going and so on. These perceptions are based on managerial practices and organizational systems and procedures.
In case of First Order change, Structure, Management Practices and Management Systems (Procedures and Polices) are altered.
First Order change can be brought about by a transactional leader (generally a proactive manager) who can motivate people to accomplish organizational objectives within stipulated time-frame.
Second Order Change/Transformational Change
Second Order Change is aimed at altering the organizational culture.
Organizational Culture has three aspects: Artefacts, Values and Assumptions.
In case of Second Order Change, Vision/Mission, Organizational strategy, Leadership and Organizational Culture are altered.
Second Order Change is brought about by trasnformational leader who enables his followers to transcend their abilities to perform exceedingly well and thus contribute towards organizational effectiveness.

Porass-Robertson Model of Planned Change
Basic Premises
OD interventions alter features of work settings.
Change in the work settings lead to change in the individual behaviour at workplace.
Change in the individual behaviour leads at workplace leads to individual development and improvement in organizational outcomes/performance.
Porras-Robertson Model shows how OD interventions can be linked to factors in the work setting. For example, OD interventions that focus on goals, strategies, and rewards will affect organizing arrangements. Interventions that focus on culture, management style and interaction process will affect social factor. Interventions that focus on job design and workflow design will affect technology.
Work settings
· Organizing Arrangements
· Social Factors
· Physical Setting
· Technology
Organizing Arrangements
Organizing arrangements comprise of formal elements of organizations developed to provide the coordination and control necessary for organized activity.

Elements of Organizing Arrangements:
i. Goals: a projected state of affairs that a person or a system plans or intends to achieve—a personal or organizational desired end-point in some sort of assumed development.
ii. Strategies: a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal or set of goals.
iii. Structure: hierarchy and reporting arrangements.
iv. Administrative policies and procedures: while policies are framework for decision-making, procedures are how the policy rolls down step by step.
v. Administrative systems: a set of interacting or interdependent policies and procedures forming an integrated whole administrative mechanism.
vi. Reward systems: how the fruits of labour are distributed in the organization.
vii. Ownership: the pattern of accountability towards accomplishing desired outcomes.
Social Factors
Social factors comprise of the individual and group characteristics of the people in an organization, their patterns and processes of interaction, and the organizational culture.

Elements of Social Factors:
i. Culture
ii. Management Style: characteristic ways of making decisions and relating to subordinates. It may be autocratic, paternalistic, democratic, and laissez faire.
iii. Interaction Processes: patterns of feedback, comment, questioning, doubting, clarifying etc.
iv. Informal patterns and networks
v. Individual attributes: self-esteem, physical fitness and moral reasoning

Physical Setting

Physical setting refers to the characteristics of the physical space in which organizational activity occurs.

Elements of Physical Setting:
i. Space configuration
ii. Physical ambience
iii. Interior design
iv. Architectural design

Technology

Technology refers to everything directly associated with the transformation of organizational inputs into outputs.

Elements of Technology:
i. Tools, equipments, machinery
ii. Information Technology
iii. Job design
iv. Workflow design
v. Technical expertise
vi. Technical procedures
vii. Technical systems

[P.S. The content in this blog-post is based on Organization Development: Behavioural Science Interventions for Organization Improvement by Wendell L French and Cecil H Bell, Jr. and Kurt Lewin's Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning by Edgar H. Schein (sourced from the website of Society for Organizational Learning)]