Task 1 Change Management Emergent or Planned Change Week 1 Adeel Khan

Article 1 - Emergent change and planned change competitors or allies?

The case of XYZ construction

Change has become an evident part of organizations in todays world. Organizational change
which was an occasional event in the past has now become a part of the DNA of the
organizations. Organizational change varies in magnitude and type and at times changes are
incremental in nature such that they are hard to identify and at times these organizational
changes are large enough that they make an impression on all the stakeholders. This calls for
an effective management of organizational change in order to ensure the accomplishment of
objectives defined for the particular organizational change. This article focuses on this very
mantra and presents two different views of organizational change i.e. emergent change and
planned change and seeks to explore that whether these two are competitors or supporters of
each other.

Contribution from Lewin (Burnes, 2004) is considered significant in terms of presenting the
planned change process. According to him planned change is actually targeted towards
enhancing the effectiveness and operation of the human aspect of the organization through
participative, group and team-based programs of change. He talks about unfreezing, moving
and refreezing process thus indicating that change is a well-planned and linear process.
However, this planned approach is not free from criticism as critics are of the view that the
organizational and environmental dynamics that exist today demand for emergent change i.e.
ongoing accommodations, adaptations, and alterations that produce fundamental change
without a priori intentions to do so. Two perspectives of punctuated equilibrium and
continuous transformation are considered important in this regards. Punctuated equilibrium
talks about short bursts of revolutionary periods of fundamental change whereas continuous
change calls for the need to continuously change in a fundamental manner. So the question
arises that are these two changes in competition with each or can they get along.

The case study conducted by Burnes (2004) on XYZ construction finds the bold strokes and
long marches as the two approaches to change where one calls for rapid and major structural
changes and the other covers slow, incremental change initiative that are designed for
changing culture and behaviours. This research concludes that rather than opting for one form
of change organizations must look out to implement organizational change by using both
 Task 1 Change Management Emergent or Planned Change Week 1 Adeel Khan

emergent and planned change process and they should focus on using them in a way that each
complements the other.

Article 2 - Managing planned and emergent change within an operations management

environment

Disagreement exists on establishing the most adequate approach for changing organizations.
Planned change on one hand is viewed as the change process in which the organization
moves from one fixed state to another fixed state. This happens as a result of a series of
pre-planned steps and is often characterized by Lewins (1958) three-stage model of freezing,
unfreezing and refreezing. This approach is based on the view that for ensuring successful
adoption of a new state or behaviour the previous one must be discarded and also is of the
view that there is no disagreement in terms of the course of action that needs to be followed.

On the other hand, the critics of planned change voice for emergent change and are of the
view that the uncertainty of environment throws weight in favour of emergent change as
compared to planned change. The emergent change calls for bottom-up action based on the
fact that the pace of change is so instant and complicated that as it occurs it is almost
impossible for the senior management to get involved by identifying, planning and
implementing the actions at the micro level.

The author in this article uses case study approach to collect data from the two sites of a
manufacturing organization. The analysis takes into consideration change initiatives taken in
the organization and suggests that the change implementation and management process
covered both planned and emergent change approaches where a continuous communication
between senior and middle management and resulting adjustments were part of the change
initiatives taking place in the organization. Senior managers are involved in establishing
general policies but the middle managers are the ones that are close to the outside and even
inside influences and thus modifications or alterations are made based on the coordination
and feedback taking place between the two. The research further represented that the change
process was influenced by a number of varying forces which influenced the process
differently. The paper concludes by suggesting the effects of accounting measures, removing
project champions and socio-economic factors in the local area on the change initiative. One
of the final most significant learning of this research is that an ineffective change programme
can also be fruitful provided it is managed appropriately and correctly.