Change Management Literature Review

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 What is Change and Change Management?

In this section I will be trying to explain change management; before that I think it will be useful to describe change and change management and also the differences between them.

Change can be accepted as the movement out of a current state through a transition state and to a future state. Change happens everywhere. Changes can be internally motivated or externally motivated. Changes can be anticipated or unexpected. When we want to talk about change an organizational perspective has to be taken in the given examples:

Moving to documented and managed processes from ad hoc processes.

Moving to an integrated system from numerous legacy systems.

Merging two organizations.

Introducing

To begin, it has to be looked at the formal definitions of project management and change management - two key disciplines required to bring a change to life. These are two commonly accepted definitions that help us begin to think about these two distinct but intertwined disciplines. (Creasey, 2015)

Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements. Project management is accomplished through the application and integration of the project management processes of initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. (PMBOK® Guide, Third Edition)

Change management is the process, tools and techniques to manage the people-side of change to achieve the required business outcome. Change management incorporates the organizational tools that can be utilized to help individuals make successful personal transitions resulting in the adoption and realization of change. (PMBOK® Guide, Third Edition)

Between project and change management there are differences in process and tolls of

Kurt Lewin’s Change Model described the three stages as unfreezing, movement and refreezing.

Unfreezing phase can be described as where the way of being business, people mental models and habits are criticized.

Movement phase can be described as where major determinants of movement, magnitude of change and level of certainty or uncertainty associated with the change are taken place.

Refreezing phase can be described as where reinforce the change until it becomes more established and actions taken to prevent reversion to old patterns. The habitual behaviors and perceptions are strong. The change may not be permanent. This is not accepted.

These definitions are used because they describe perfectly how the change process is. The mental models of the companies and workforce are rigid. It is hard to change this. Creating open communication and training are very effective on the change. This model describes the habits as an ice, when you take an ice from deepfreeze at first you should unfreeze it. Then you should reshape it and you can refreeze it.

Figure 3: ( Kurt Lewin’s Change Model / Bulutlar,