PSY 6300 Module 6 Organizational Change Paper: Participation, Recipients' Reactions and Change Theory in a Merger Example

Two Food Banks, One Mission: Planning a Merger People Can Support

Student Name

Graduate Studies, Thomas Edison State University

PSY-6300: Organizational Theory

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Two Food Banks, One Mission: Planning a Merger People Can Support

Introduction

Our food bank is merging with a smaller food bank in the neighboring county, a move the two boards approved to reduce duplicated costs and reach more rural pantries. The announcement went badly. Staff at the smaller organization heard about it from a partner pantry before their own director told them, and rumors spread that their warehouse would close and their jobs would disappear. This paper uses research on organizational change to plan the merger in a way people can support.

Theories of Change

Kurt Lewin's classic model describes change in three stages: loosening the habits already in place (unfreezing), shifting to new behavior (moving) and making the new behavior stick (refreezing). Later models added more detailed steps, such as creating a sense of urgency, forming a guiding coalition, communicating a vision and building short-term wins. Most models agree that change requires preparing people, implementing new practices and consolidating them.

Participation and Resistance

Coch and French (1948) studied a pajama factory where frequent changes in jobs and methods led to resentment, lower output and high turnover. They introduced the same job changes to groups in different ways. A no-participation group was simply told about the change; its output dropped and stayed low, hostility toward management rose and 17 percent quit within 40 days. Groups that participated through representatives, or in which all members participated in designing the change, recovered quickly and soon exceeded their former output, with little hostility and no one quitting. The authors concluded that resistance to change can be reduced by group participation in planning it.

Organizing Change Research

Armenakis and Bedeian (1999) reviewed change research from the 1990s and organized it around four themes. Content issues concern what is changed, such as strategy or structure. Context issues concern the internal and external conditions, such as an organization's history with change or its environment. Process issues concern how change is carried out, including stages of implementation and the actions of change agents. Criterion issues concern which outcomes are used to judge change, including employees' attitudes and behaviors. They emphasized that successful change requires attention to all four, especially to readiness for change among those affected.

How Recipients React

Oreg et al. (2011) pulled together six decades of quantitative research on employees' reactions to organizational change. Reactions involved feelings, such as anxiety or enthusiasm, thoughts, such as evaluations of whether the change is needed and fair, and behaviors, such as supporting or resisting. Reactions were shaped by recipients' characteristics, such as their tolerance for uncertainty, by the change process, especially participation, communication, trust in management and the support provided, by the perceived benefits or harms of the change and by the organizational context. These reactions then carried over into job attitudes, including satisfaction, commitment and intention to leave, and into personal well-being.

Repairing the Start

The announcement violated the lessons of Oreg and colleagues' review: staff learned of the merger secondhand, which damaged trust in management, and uncertainty about jobs fed anxiety. The first step was a joint meeting led by both directors at the smaller food bank, acknowledging the mistake, sharing what was decided and what was not and committing to no layoffs during the first year, a commitment the boards approved.

A Participatory Design

Following Coch and French, I proposed integration teams with staff from both organizations for warehouse operations, delivery routes, volunteer management and partner relations. Each team will design how its area works in the merged organization, within budget limits set by the boards. The smaller food bank's warehouse, which rumors said would close, will be evaluated by the operations team using criteria the team helps set.

Planning Each Dimension

Using Armenakis and Bedeian's themes, the content of the change includes combined governance, routes and systems; the context includes the smaller organization's strong local identity and the stress of rising food demand; the process includes stages, a communication schedule and integration teams; and the criteria include staff retention, partner satisfaction, cost per meal and engagement surveys at six and twelve months.

A Communication Plan

Oreg and colleagues found that how change is communicated affects how people react. After the poor start, I proposed a communication plan with four parts: a written timeline posted at both sites and updated every two weeks, a question box whose answers are shared with all staff, monthly open meetings at alternating locations and a rule that staff hear any decision affecting their jobs from their own supervisor before it reaches partners or the public. The plan treats honest, timely information as a way to rebuild trust rather than a formality.

Readiness for Change

Armenakis and Bedeian stressed attention to readiness, the beliefs and attitudes that make people willing to support a change. At the smaller food bank, readiness is low because staff do not yet see why the merger is needed or how it could benefit them. Sharing the figures that led both boards to merge, such as rising demand and the cost of running two warehouses, and showing how rural pantries will gain more frequent deliveries can help staff understand the reasons and see a future for themselves in the merged organization.

Supporting the Leaders

Supervisors at both food banks will carry most of the change to their teams. Short training sessions on answering hard questions, a weekly call among supervisors and clear guidance on what they may promise will prepare them to lead conversations they did not choose to start.

Honoring Identity

The smaller food bank has deep roots in its county. Keeping its name on the county distribution center and preserving its local partner relationships can reduce the sense of loss that often fuels resistance in mergers.

Limits

Coch and French studied one factory in the 1940s, and later replications produced mixed results in different cultures. Mergers between nonprofits differ from corporate mergers. The organizations are invented.

Conclusion

Coch and French showed that participation turns resistance into ownership, Armenakis and Bedeian showed that change succeeds when its content, context, process and outcomes are all addressed and Oreg, Vakola and Armenakis showed that participation, communication and trust shape how people react. A merger planned with the people affected, communicated honestly and measured over time gives two food banks the best chance of becoming one organization serving more families, and it closes a course that began by asking what makes organizations effective.

References

Armenakis, A. A., & Bedeian, A. G. (1999). Organizational change: A review of theory and research in the 1990s. Journal of Management, 25(3), 293-315. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639902500303

Coch, L., & French, J. R. P. (1948). Overcoming resistance to change. Human Relations, 1(4), 512-532. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872674800100408

Oreg, S., Vakola, M., & Armenakis, A. (2011). Change recipients' reactions to organizational change: A 60-year review of quantitative studies. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(4), 461-524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886310396550