Historical Points of Organizational Change Coursework

Historical Points of Organizational Change - Coursework Example Organizational change has its biggest paradox in the fact that its peak production period is probably time to start implementing significant change. Finally, there is limited knowledge on how to implement organization change. However, organization change is inevitable and must be managed in order to attain the best out of it. While planned organizational change occurs according to steps, the real change does not. One historical perspective of organizational change is industrial and organizational psychology (Burke, 2009). In the time before and just after WWII, industrial psychology only dealt with military, industrial, and business organizations. Its major thrust dealt with testing and studies focused on efficiency and morale. Industrial psychology in the late 1940s to the early 1950s dealt with psychological test development and supervisory training. In 1953, Fleishman carried out studies to determine whether the behaviors and attitudes of the supervisors would change after a two week program. Two leadership actions were reflected by tests; initiation of structure and consideration of a leader’s subordinates. However, training can only be effective if the organization has the climate to support the training goals. Industrial psychologists have increased comprehension of organizational change during WWII and beyond. Another perspective into organizational change comes from the systems theory, introduced in 1950 by Van Bertalanffy (Langer et al, 2009). The theory approaches the organizations as interdependent parts with specific functions, as well as interrelated responsibilities. The emphasis with the perspective in organizational change is that real systems interact with, and are open to, acquisition of new properties via emergence, leading to continual evolution. Instead of bringing down an organization to its