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Lewin's Change Process Analysis

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The change process can have various stages. One of the best known was Lewin’s (1951) force field model of change. He believed the change process occurred in three stages – unfreezing, changing and refreezing. In the unfreezing phase individuals become aware that old ways of doing things are no longer sufficient. In the changing phase individuals choose a new favourable way of doing things. The refreezing stage involves the chosen new approach becoming established within the organisation. Lewin believed all three stages were required for successful change, trying to skip one or more would be an unintelligent move. Types of change. According to Beer, Eisenstat & Spector, 1990, there are two main types of change. One focuses on changing the attitudes of individuals within an organisation and involves changing things like attitudes, values, team building activities. The hope is that new attitudes and skills will cause beneficial behavioural change throughout the organisation. The other type of change focuses on changing the roles of individuals within an organisation which requires changing work roles. This is achieved through reorganizing workflow, redesigning jobs by including different responsibilities, proposing new ideas for evaluation of work and rewarding work. Again the hope is that with new work roles will come new and improved …show more content…

Resistance to a new change can occur for reasons such as distrust in leaders, doubts about the need for change, doubts that the benefits from change would outweigh the the costs, possible loss of power and status and fear of personal failure. Resistance to change should be recognised as the presence of strong values and emotions and not as a sign of ignorance. Leaders need to understand that it is more effective to change both attitudes of individuals as well as work roles instead of trying to change just one or the

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