Organizations in rapidly growing, highly competitive business environments must embrace change. Change theories describe the effectiveness with which organizations can change their strategies, processes, and structures. The stages of organizational change are depicted by the action research model, the positive model, and Lewin’s change model. The three stages of Lewin’s model were investigated in this study: unfreezing, movement, and refreezing. Even though this model establishes general steps, additional information must be considered to adapt these steps to specific situations. This article provides a critical examination of change theories for various stages of organisational change. In this critical review, change management is presented as a constructive framework for managing organisational change at various stages of the process. The theoretical and practical implications of this review are discussed in this article.
The organisational environment’s change process
How the status quo could be challenged to achieve meaningful change
Lewin proposed that any individual’s behaviour in response to a proposed change is a function of group behaviour. Any interaction or force that affects group structure affects the individual’s behaviour and ability to change.
The status quo is described as the current situation in the Three-Stage Model of Change, but a change process—a proposed change—should then evolve into a future desired state. To understand group behaviour, and thus the behavior of individual group members during the change process, we must assess the field’s overall scope and complexity. This is also known as Field Theory, and it is widely used in the development of change models such as Lewin’s Model of change:
- Step 1: Unfreeze
A contagious disease, for example, can spread rapidly in a population and defy initial containment measures. Eventually, medical progress will allow the disease to be treated and virtually eradicated from the population.
According to Lewin, change is accompanied by similar resistance, but group forces (the field) prevent individuals from embracing this change. As a result, we must disturb the equilibrium state to instigate changeable behaviour. According to Lewin, emotional upheaval can disrupt group dynamics and the forces associated with self-righteousness among individual group members. There are certainly a variety of ways to disrupt the current status quo, and you should think about them.
- Step 2: Change
After you’ve “unfrozen” the status quo, you can start implementing your change. Because organizational change is notoriously complex, implementing a well-planned change process does not guarantee predictable results. As a result, you must plan for a variety of change options, ranging from the planned change process to trial-and-error. Examine what worked, what didn’t, what parts were resistant, and so on with each attempt at change.
During this evaluation process, two important drivers of the change implementation process’s success and long-term effectiveness are identified: information flow and leadership.
Sharing information across multiple levels of the organisational hierarchy, making a variety of skills and expertise available, and coordinating problem solving across the company are all examples of information flow.
Leadership is defined as the ability of certain individuals in a group to influence others to achieve common goals. A well-planned change process necessitates the development of a vision and motivation.
- Step 3: Refreeze
The final step, refreezing, is intended to maintain the change you’ve made. The goal is for the people involved to accept this new state as the new status quo, so they no longer oppose the forces attempting to implement the change. The new state transforms the group norms, activities, strategies, and processes.
Identify change supports and change barriers to help integrate the new changes into the culture.
Create and promote strategies for long-term change sustainability.
- Consider: Ensuring leadership and management support, as well as adjusting organisational structure as needed.
- Creating feedback processes.
- Developing a reward system.
- Provide both short-term and long-term training, support, and communication. Encourage both formal and informal methods of learning, and keep in mind the various ways in which employees learn.
The previously dominant behavior tends to reassert itself if appropriate steps to sustain and reinforce the change are not taken. To implement and freeze these new changes, you’ll need to consider both formal and informal mechanisms.
Lewin’s model of change provides an intuitive and fundamental understanding of how changes occur in the context of social behaviours observed at the individual and collective levels within a group.
