BUSI 616 Week 7 Change Management Strategy Example

Readiness, Participation and a Fair Hearing: A Change Management Strategy for a Laboratory's Quality Initiatives

What Is Changing

Shenandoah Dental Arts, the composite laboratory whose crown remake rate has guided this project, is moving three quality initiatives from pilot to standard practice: a second designer's review of unclear margins, a rule that designers request a rescan instead of guessing and a reason code on every remake. All twelve designers, the intake desk and about 400 dental practices are affected. Goetsch and Davis (2016) note that quality initiatives fail more often from the way they are introduced than from their content, so the strategy matters as much as the procedures.

Strategy 1: Build Readiness First

Armenakis et al. (1993) distinguish readiness, which is created before a change, from resistance, which appears after it. Their model holds that a readiness message should convey two things: that the organization is falling short of where it needs to be, and that it is able to get there. Leaving out either half invites trouble: urgency without confidence breeds anxiety, and confidence without urgency breeds complacency. For Shenandoah, the owner would present the Pareto chart and the pilot results together at a full staff meeting. The message would avoid blame: the Pareto chart describes the process, not individual designers, and the owner would say so plainly. Armenakis and colleagues also stress the credibility of the person delivering the message, which argues for the owner speaking alongside one of the pilot designers, whose word carries weight with colleagues at the bench. The remake figures show the gap, and the pilot shows the gap can be closed by people in this building.

Strategy 2: Let Technicians Shape the Procedure

Drawing together 79 quantitative studies spanning six decades, Oreg et al. (2011) identified the change process, including participation, communication and support, as one group of antecedents that shapes how recipients respond. The three pilot designers will therefore draft the written procedure with two designers who were not in the pilot, and the full group will review it before it takes effect. Participation here is not a courtesy. Designers know which scanners produce blurred margins and which practices send the weakest scans, and their knowledge will make the procedure better. Support matters as well: designers who have never asked a dentist's office for a rescan will get a short script and the intake desk's backing, so the new rule does not leave them to argue with a busy practice alone.

Strategy 3: Give Dentists a Fair Hearing

Rescan requests change dentists' routines. A short letter carrying the remake data will go to each practice, and the intake supervisor will call any practice that objects. The letter will present the rescan as a benefit to the dentist, fewer second appointments for remakes, rather than as a laboratory rule. Practices that send the most unclear scans will also be offered a short visit from a senior technician to review scanning technique.

Biblical Integration

When Greek-speaking believers complained that their widows were overlooked in the daily food distribution, the apostles neither dismissed the complaint nor imposed a solution. Instead, the Twelve gathered the disciples and invited them to pick seven men of good reputation for the task, a plan the whole group welcomed (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Acts 6:1-6). Naming the problem honestly and involving the people affected is a pattern Shenandoah can follow, and it treats technicians and dentists as partners in the change rather than as obstacles to it.

References

Armenakis, A. A., Harris, S. G., & Mossholder, K. W. (1993). Creating readiness for organizational change. Human Relations, 46(6), 681-703. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872679304600601

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2016). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality (8th ed.). Pearson.

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