The purpose of this paper is to review and summarize the basic notions regarding organizational change presented in Hy Resnick's article, "A Leadership Challenge." Also, the implications of these notions for gifted and talented teachers working in public schools are formulated and discussed.
Organizational Change Principles And Their Implications For
Gifted and Talented Public School Teachers
Resnick's article addresses how managers can facilitate desirable organizational changes, e.g. changes in the physical environment, or in a company's information systems, or in ongoing programs, and so forth. According to Resnick, effective management of change rests upon: (1) recognizing and correcting for erroneous assumptions about change; (2) understanding those preconditions needed to effect successful change; (3) knowing the dimensions of the proposed changes; (4) operating upon established principles of change; and (5) understanding the nature of organizational resistance to change.
Erroneous assumptions about change include the assumptions that people will necessarily resist any change, that the planning of change is somehow independent from its implementation (i.e. the assumption that one organizational collective can plan the change while another can implement it), and that any change can be managed regardless of the organizational context (i.e., a context in which the history of change has been negative).
Managers facilitating change need to operate from truthful assumptions. First, it needs to be understood that people do not resist changes unless they have no input in planning them; without this input, people tend to feel like the organization is trying to change them rather than its policy or programs.
Second, those people expected to implement change must be made a part of the planning process. This helps people to feel like partners in the process of bringing change about and overcomes any resistance. And, ...