Page 17 - DMGT520_ORGANIZATION_CHANGE_AND_DEVELOPMENT

Organization Change and Development

Notes individual or among a group of cooperating individuals or organisations who are sufficiently
like-minded to act as a single collective entity. Teleology inherently affords creativity since the
entity, consisting of an individual or group, has the freedom to enact whatever goals it likes.
However, it implies a standard for judging change: development is that which moves the entity
toward its final state. Some teleological models incorporate the systems theory assumption of
equifinality; there are several equally effective ways to achieve a given goal. There is no
prefigured rule, logically necessary direction, or set sequence of stages in a teleological process.
Instead, these theories focus on the prerequisites for attaining the goal or end state: the functions
that must be fulfilled, the accomplishments that must be achieved, or the components that must
be built or obtained for the end state to be realized. These prerequisites can be used to assess
when an entity is developing: it is growing more complex, or it is growing more integrated, or
it is filling out a necessary set of functions. We are able to make this assessment because
teleological theories posit an envisioned end state for an entity and we are able to observe
movement toward the end state vis-a-vis this standard.

Dialectical Theory

A third school, dialectical theories, begins with the Hegelian assumption that the organisational
entity exists in a pluralistic world of colliding events, forces, or contradictory values that compete
with each other for domination and control. These oppositions may be internal to an
organisational entity because it may have several conflicting goals or interest groups competing
for priority. Oppositions may also arise external to the organisational entity as it pursues
directions that collide with those of others. In any case, a dialectical theory requires two or more
distinct entities that embody these oppositions to confront and engage one another in conflict.
Dialectical process theories explain stability and change by reference to the relative balance of
power between opposing entities. Struggles and accommodations that maintain the status quo
between oppositions produce stability. Change occurs when these opposing values, forces, or
events gain sufficient power to confront and engage the status quo. The relative power of an
antithesis may mobilize to a sufficient degree to challenge the current thesis or state of affairs
and set the stage for producing a synthesis.

Evolutionary Theory

Although evolution is sometimes equated with change, we use evolution in a more restrictive
sense to focus on cumulative changes in structural forms of populations of organisational entities
across communities, industries, or society at large As in biological evolution, change proceeds
through a continuous cycle of variation, selection, and retention. Variations, the creations of
novel forms are often viewed to emerge by blind or random chance; they just happen. Selection
occurs principally through the competition among forms for scarce resources, and the
environment selects those forms that best fit the resource base of an environmental niche.
Retention involves the forces (including inertia and persistence) that perpetuate and maintain
certain organisational forms.

Did u know? Retention serves to counteract the self-reinforcing loop between variations
and selection.
Thus, evolution explains change as a recurrent, cumulative, and probabilistic progression of
variation, selection, and retention of organisational entities. In organisation and management
applications, evolutionary theory is often used to depict global changes in organisational
populations.

12 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY