Exam 7: Managing Change and Innovation

Techniques to change people and the quality of interpersonal work relationships are termed 'organisational development'.

Who theorised the change process involving unfreezing, changing and refreezing?

One reason people resist change is that it substitutes ambiguity for uncertainty.

In a short essay, list and discuss the four conditions that are most likely to facilitate cultural change.Include an example of each condition to support your answer.

Techniques to change people and the quality of interpersonal work relationships are termed ________.

In a short essay, discuss innovation to achieve outcomes in the form of economic, environmental and social sustainability and list five important elements for integrating sustainability into the innovation process.

Stress is an adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure placed on them for extraordinary demands, constraints or opportunities.

Cultural change is easier when the organisational culture is strong.

A company that decides to decentralise its sales procedures is managing what change category?

Fred's Stress Fred was not handling the change in his department well.The company had recently changed hands and, even though no-one had lost their job, people had been changing jobs and were being asked to move to different locations.The new leadership had a completely different outlook than those people he had worked under for the past 21 years.Fred found that he was unable to concentrate at work and generally felt like he did not like his job anymore.At home, he was getting headaches and having trouble sleeping, which only enhanced his feeling that things were not going to work out well for him.When he thought about it, he had always hated change.He worked in the job he did partially because it was considered stable (boring to some)and predictable.Fred's new boss kept trying to convince him that he was a valuable employee and that new opportunities, along with salary increases, were in his future.Unfortunately, what Fred wanted was to have things the way they used to be. -Refer to Fred's Stress (Scenario).Fred was obviously feeling stress.Which of the following is NOT a factor in the definition of stress?

Lightspeed.com.au Edwin Edwards is a team leader for Lightspeed.com.au, an e-business that has employees in every global time zone.Some of the factors that the team has to contend with are deadlines, strong work ethic, creativity-innovation chain, high-speed turnaround and professionalism.As team leader, Edwin sees team members via videoconference only a few times per year or via compressed video via internet a few times more per year.A frustration that he is encountering himself is that he works with all of these people and does not have control over their 'actual' work or the few organisational rules, regulations and policies.Yet, due to the position he is in, he feels he gets all of their complaints.The team does not deal well when a member offers an innovative, 'off-the-wall' solution to a team problem; team members seem to have more trouble with this than any other team-conflict issue.What he likes most about leading the team is that they seem to prefer getting their objective accomplished instead of wasting time trying to decide who should be doing what tasks. -Refer to Lightspeed.com.au (Scenario).When Edwin feels frustrated that he does not have control over team members' 'actual' work or the organisational rules, regulations and policies, he is contending with ________.

It is not possible to stimulate innovation except by selecting people who appear to have innovation as part of their personality.