Management of Change and Organisational Development - Essay Example

In our discussions, we realized that change means a variation or the altering of the established way of life or how we live and which people in an organization or an entity are accustomed to normally. We also concluded that the change that we required for organizational development could be affected by the internal or external environment in which we functioned and the change occurring in that environment. Change is usually premeditated, natural or imposed upon the persons it is likely to affect.

Every person in a particular group is often required to participate in change by waiting till the change occurs naturally or may take necessary steps that are preventive that can strengthen the group. Change may be external whereby it affects the development of a group and may include educational or cultural forces, social and economic forces while internal forces may include composition and policy of those involved, changes in the personnel, attitudes and feelings of those involved and the work involved amongst other factors.

McLean 2006 (p25) argues that change theorists such as Lewin argue that if you want to understand properly a system, it is important that the person first seek to change it in one way or the other. Therefore, a person must be part of the system that he is seeking to change in order to attain the best results. In the research by Lewin about management change and organizational development, he has found that every action research initiative is distinct from the other and that in finding the solution to each, each player must be taken to be unique and understanding the culture of the system.

Due to changes in organizations either through different phenomena such as technology and globalization, there has been a necessity for change management plans and strategies for their implementation. Therefore, as a group we were forced to effect change management and organizational development in order to keep in line with the need for improvements in the group environment and to remain aligned to the external influences of the organization. Organizational Development in the Group Organizational development is an effort aimed at improving the ability of a group or an entity to solve problems and renew itself through an effective management of the culture of the organization while emphasizing the culture of formal work force from the whole team as involved (McKinney and Howard 1998, p.167). It is always in a planned manner, identifies the problems in the group or organization, and develops strategies for solving the problems and improving on them, and seeks to change the system of particular entities as a whole for example the development of teams and strategy for management.

In order to achieve organizational development, there must be a strong desire in change from both the change initiator or the change agent and the person whom the change focuses on, which we tried our best to foster in the group by employing different strategies. Due to the changing face or dynamism of the environment in which an entity exists there are efforts made as a response known as organizational development. The factors that caused the need for organizational development in our group included rapid and unexpected changes and the sustained growth of organizations.

The other changes that necessitated the need for organizational development are increased diversity and change in managerial behaviour