Content area
Full text
Keywords Change management, Effectiveness, Strategy, Communications
Abstract Explains how we used the change message components of discrepancy, appropriateness, efficacy, principal support, and personal valence and the message conveying strategies of active participation, persuasive communication and management of information suggested by Armenakis and colleagues to help an organization create readiness for a major reorganization. We describe and evaluate our experiences from our initial coaching with the president, through initial management meetings to determine the new business unit's strategy and structure, to the initial company-wide announcement of the plans. We conclude with a set of observations and lessons and suggestions for future research on the use of the change message framework.
Implementing organizational change is one of the most important, yet, least understood skills of contemporary leaders. It is quite common for the business press to report that numerous organizations have experienced less than desirable performance improvements and unfavorable employee reactions to needed organizational changes (see Gilmore et al., 1997). We feel that some of the negative responses to organizational changes are caused by leaders' oversight of the importance of communicating a consistent change message. The change message both conveys the nature of the change and shapes the sentiments that determine reactions to the change.
Typically, the process of organizational change is thought of as unfolding in three phases (e.g. Armenakis et al., 1999; Lewin, 1947). During the first phase, readiness, organizational members become prepared for the change and ideally become its supporters. In the second phase, adoption, the change is implemented and employees adopt the new ways of operating. However, the adoption period is a trial or an experimental period and employees can still ultimately reject the change. The third phase, institutionalization, flows from efforts to maintain the adoption period and reinforce the changes until they become internalized and the norm. We conceptualize these three phases of the change process with the Mobius strip depicted in Figure 1. The strip clearly shows that the phases of change overlap and that the whole process is continuous as institutionalized changes themselves become the focus of future change efforts.
The change message and its communication can serve to coordinate the three change phases by providing the organizing framework for creating readiness and the motivation to adopt and...