Mngt 5590 Integrative Paper

Organization Behavior Integrative Paper

Thomas Edward Pearson

Webster University

Authors Note

This paper was prepared for, MNGT 5590, taught by Professor Chester

Introduction:

Change can be difficult regardless if it is in our personal life or within a business. Often times we meet resistance because our own emotions and behavior or those of others. Change is not intended to make our life more difficult, but rather more organized and effective. This is the same for businesses that are trying to be more productive at well. In the books, The Heart of Change written by John Kotter and Dan Cohen and in Ivancevich’s Organizational Behavior and Management, the authors discuss how to organize change within a business. Both books discuss how leaders can implement change by managing and understanding the emotions and behaviors of employees. In order to compare and contrast both books, I will organize this paper by utilizing the eight-step process that Kotter and Cohen discusses in The Heart of Change. The steps include: increase urgency, build the guiding team, get the vision right, communicate for buy-in, empower action, create short-term wins, don’t let up, and make change stick. (Kotter & Cohen, 2002)

Discussion:

Step 1 - Increase Urgency: Regardless of the size, all organizations that desire to be successful, leaders utilize a sense of urgency in order to get employees motivated and energized (Kotter & Cohen, p.3). Kotter and Cohen state that without this sense of urgency, companies would find it difficult to make any “large-scale change” (Kotter & Cohen, p. 15). Complacency, immobilization, deviance, and pessimistic attitudes are all behaviors that can derail needed change (Kotter & Cohen, p.17). Ivancevich discusses how “urgency relates to time” (Ivancevich, Konopaske, & Matteson, p. 406). The manager must address the most critical issues first. “The more significant the problem, as determined by its urgency, impact and...