Forum 3-2: Academic Content PURPOSE No organization or individual can escape change. The thought of change, however, raises anxieties because people fear economic loss, inconvenience, uncertainty, and a break in normal social patterns. Almost any change in structure, technology, persons, or strategies has the potential to disrupt comfortable interaction patterns. For this reason, people typically resist change. The strategic management process itself can impose major changes on individuals and processes. Reorienting an organization to get people to think and act strategically, for example, is not an easy turnaround. This exercise gives you practice managing resistance to change under many different situations. INSTRUCTIONS In Step Six, Ebner and Smith (2015) discuss how strategic planning can expose both task and relationship conflict. Additionally, they describe factors that can make people more likely to resist change. For each scenario below, describe the specific things you would do to overcome the obstacles to change utilizing the 3-point process advocated by Ebner and Smith. Specifically, you should provide a rationale for your approach, along with a description of the process you would use. You are the Chief Executive Officer and majority shareholder for a company that owns a private hospital in a small rural town. Your hospital has 6 Vice Presidents and 100 non-management employees. A large metropolitan healthcare system makes an excellent financial offer to acquire your hospital. The acquiring healthcare system does not assure you or your hospital’s Vice Presidents of a job after the acquisition. You want to accept the offer because it is a premium price, and you could get a job elsewhere if needed. A conflict has arisen between the Vice Presidents with half of them wanting to accept the acquisition offer, while the other half are opposed. You are the Administrator of a medium-sized Christian school system that has raised $1 million to devote to capital improvement expenses this year. Your two facility managers (one at the elementary school and the other at the high school) are at odds on how the funds should be used and both believe their facility/operation needs the money the most. Neither manager could use half the money for the particular improvements needed. Explain how you would solve a conflict between the two managers.
