Organizational Change, Balance, Learning and Stakeholders

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1) Why do organizations decline? What steps can organizational leaders take to halt decline and restore organizational growth?

One of the leading causes of organizational decline is failing to properly assess internal and external threats that challenge their survival (Rosenzweig, 2008). Through the different lifecycles or stages of an organization there are specific threats that have to be overcome to successfully avoid declining. There are threats to a new organization of quickly declining based on overcoming being new to the markets. In more mature stages, organizations face the threat of decline from external factors such as changes to the market environments or competition. Internal sources can cause threat of decline as well. Such factors as culture, leadership, and other managerial factors can cause decline if not handled correctly (Rosenzweig, 2008).

No matter what the reason for decline is, managers must take quick and decisive action to halt declines and spur growth again in order for organizations to sustain success. Once the decline stage begins, the organization will continue declining until managers can figure out the root cause and stop it (Rosenzweig, 2008).

Organizations in crisis will often see managers react by changing things, often resulting in restructuring or downsizing. If this doesn't work, the organization will decline into a crisis mode and forces managers to take radical actions such as shutting down or merging divisions, complete reorganization, or other measures to try and halt the decline and try to save the company. Many times, this will result from organizations shareholders electing a completely new management team to come in and take over the decline and try to manage recovery of the company before its too late (Rosenzweig, 2008).

2) What is organizational change? Describe and explain the forces for and resistances to organizational change.
Organizational change occurs when companies decide to adopt new ideas or new behaviors. This could be driven by a technology change or by a product change. A technology change impacts how the organizations production process works and consequently impacts how the entire organization functions as a whole. By changing technology, the organization changes (Wick, 2008).

A product change in an organization means that the company is changing the original product or service it currently has into something different. This may be a complete overhaul of production lines or it could be strong modifications to the current products to make them different, thus both would be considered organizational change (Wick, 2008). An example of this could be an automotive company ...