ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE

Organizational Development and Change

Organizational Development and Change

Organizational Change & Development

In order to analyze the given case of Custom Food and Feed Corporation, we have to clear our concepts about the organizational change and development. This will help us to have a clear understanding of Custom Food and Feed Corporation's problems. (Albrecht 2003)

Organizational Design is a formal, guided process for integrating the people, information and technology of an organization. It is used to match the form of the organization as closely as possible to the purpose(s) the organization seeks to achieve. Through the design process, organizations act to improve the probability that the collective efforts of members will be successful. The concept of organization change refers to a change brought in the organization on the organization-wide basis, thus changing the organizational design. Organizational Change reconfigures components of an organization to increase efficiency and effectiveness. (Amabile 2006)

It is different from the day to day changes that a company goes through like an addition of a new employee, modifying a program etc. The organization wide changes are different from these minor day to day changes in a sense that it affects almost each and every individual of the organization like a major restructuring of the whole organizational setup, modifications made in the company objectives, setting new missions or goals for the organization, introduction of new technologies in the organizational setup, re-engineering, mergers etc. The only way for organizations to survive in the present highly dynamic world is to keep changing. Organizations may create changes themselves, they may change internally or they may resist change but in no way they can stop it. The most successful organizations of the future will be those that develop and grow and to take advantage of the changes rather than to resist the change or wait until organizational change becomes inevitable. (Argyris 2001)

With the increase in pace of change it has become more and more difficult for the organizations to keep themselves up. Top managements of companies now worry that long term planning is nearly impossible because of the extreme difficulty in predicting changes in the long run. The best example of unpredictable changes is the transformation in the business, political and social climate of the United States as well as in the rest of the world, to some extent, in reaction to the incident of 11th September. Changes affecting the organizations can come from a variety of sources ranging from people, technology to new laws and regulations imposed by the government. These changes affect every aspect of an organization from its people to its processes as well as its structure.

Typically there are strong resistances to change. People are afraid of the unidentified. Many people think things are already just fine and don't understand the need for change. Many are intrinsically skeptical about change, particularly from reading about the idea of "change" as if it's a mythology. Many doubt there are effectual means to achieve major organizational ...