Organizational Change Implementing Organizational Change

Change is a necessary process that all organizations need in order to survive and compete in the market. However, planning, implementing and managing a change is one of the greatest challenge even for the most successful organizations. This paper will explain the three phases of organizational change that were given by Kurt Lewin and the reasons of failure of Concord Bookshop in bringing a successful change.

Kurt Lewin stated following three phases of organizational change (Marquis and Huston, 2009):

Unfreezing: This is the first phase of organizational change process which involves preparing the organization to accept the necessary change. This requires breaking down of the existing status quo so that new system can be introduced. This step is the creation of motivation to change as change cannot occur without motivation.

Change: After unfreezing, the next phase is to bring the change by developing new beliefs, behaviors and attitudes according to the new direction. This is only possible...

This is the phase of adjusting the position of equilibrium in the organizational change process.
3. Refreezing: When the people have started using the new ways of working, it is time to refreeze which means to make sure that these new methods are used all the time and in routine business. It is the time to institutionalize the changes, create leadership, maximize employee's behaviour and adapt the new methods forever.

Concord bookshop, a 64 years old store of New England was not able to bring a successful change because it only recognized the need for bringing a change. It was not able to properly implement the change because it did not correctly follow the organizational change process. It failed on all three levels of the change process and as a result losses were faced the by the bookstore owners.

The first and most important reason behind the failure of Concord bookshop in bringing a change was owner's inability to unfreeze the organization. Owners failed…