Social Representation Theory: The Evolution Of Organizational Change

Introduction The evolution of change is important to an organization in order to explore new opportunities, allow employees to be creative while learning new ideas and skills, and ultimately help to give an organization a competitive edge over adversaries in their field. Change allows an organization to keep up with economic conditions and advancing technology, while helping an organization’s growth opportunities and the needs of its customer base. Change is never easy for any business. An organization’s transitional change process will gain resistance from people within an organization who are use of old policies and technology (Carroll, 2002). People who resist change are those who feel that the changes will only make things worse as time

This type of attitude is part of the social representation theory. This theory looks at how people respond socially to change in an organization (Grant, 2005). An organization must make sure that any changes that will affect people in an organization will be a benefit for all concerned. In 1951, Kurt Lewin invested changes in an organization and developed what is known as the three stages of change. These changes are: unfreezing which looks at the attitudes of people and how they feel about change, while establishing a motive for employees to change, moving which looks at implementing change to the desired outcome, and refreezing which embeds and initializes the new behaviors of people who made the changes, while finding ways for people not to drift back to the old way of doing their jobs (Palmer, Pg. 324, 2017). When implementing any type of change a company must analyze why the changes need to happen, what changes need to occur, and how will these changes affect the company and the employees within it. It is important that a company identifies any problems in the change process, and make the proper changes to make the transitional changes work for the organization. The initiation of change is important for the growth and longevity of any

There are five elements that influence the success of the transitional changes and they are: bringing awareness to the organization that a change needs to happen, desire to participate and support the change process, bring knowledge about how to change, apply new techniques, skills, and behaviors needed so employees have the ability to learn changes, and consequently, reinforce the changes to make sure the company keeps and sustains change policies. The changes are known as the ADKAR change model developed by the Prosci consulting company. The five elements of change is a guideline for many companies to make successful transitional changes within their organization. The Mckinsey successful transitional change tactic checklist is another guide that companies use for successful changes. These consist of goals the company wishes to achieve, the structure of the programs put in place along with what the programs entails, how to operate it, the responsibilities of employees, their roles in the change process, and who is responsible for making the changes possible. The list also includes who will be involved in initiating the program, communication of what the transition will be, and finally, who will take on the leadership role to make sure the changes are done correctly (Palmer, pg. 321, 2017) The role of the leader is very important to make sure