Group Activity 2
What does the model tell us?
Can we use this model of change in our organisations?
Consider implications and
Identify a model of change to help explain change within an organisation you have experienced
Post points raised in the group blog
In the session 2, we learnt about the models of change. From this lecture and some readings, I know that there are some different models of change, and I think each model has its existing reason and possibility. Meanwhile, Rogers’ Diffusion Model of Change is one of the most widely used models. Rogers’ Diffusion Model of Change “describes the patterns of adoption, explain the mechanism, and assist in predicting whether and how a new invention will be successful” (Rogers, 2003). It is widely accepted that there are five different adaptor categories in this diffusion process, called innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards respectively. Besides, the model presents a bell-shaped distribution. It has been believed that it occurs over time and can be seen as having five distinct stages (Rogers, 1995).
ReplyDeleteCan we use this model of change in our organizations? I think the answer is positive. The model of change gives us an explanation about why organizations need to change and how this change process promotes development and innovation. Moreover, the model gives me some enlightenment about how to properly recognize the different adapter categories and to diffuse the change and innovation.
I was once as an intern in an industrial association which belongs to the local Industrial and Commercial Bureau. In this association, the workforce is comparatively elder and their main job is to assistant bureau’s civil servants, to inspect the business license. Although they are not local civil servants, due to its special position, they have less stress. However, a conflagration happened in “Huadu” market in my city. This fire resulted in much serious property loss, and caused a quite bad influence in the local. Therefore, the local government claimed that the bureau must close inspect the business scope and business license of the local individual enterprises’. At the same time, the bureau hoped to improve the performance, and enhance the IT application in their daily work. Therefore, the bureau introduced an on-line system.
At first, there are a few staff can take this new system. The “innovators” includes the main leaders and some high status in this bureau and association. Those innovators all have good academic qualifications, and one of the leaders is postgraduate from England. While, there was a women, who also has a good qualification and was the dean of this association, firstly adopt this new system, because she want to get a high performance and then increase her income.
Because this system was enforced, the number of adopters began to increase over time. At the same time, the early adapters always help the late adapters, and gave them some suggestions. Broadly speaking, the atmosphere is good.
While, there is one staff who still resisted this new system. Because he would retire this year, he was not willing to learn new system. Besides, his performance in the association is not well, due to lack of career-dedication. Therefore, he can not use this system well. In my opinion, this person is a laggard.
In conclusion, the Rogers’ Diffusion Model of Change can be used to explain some changes and innovation of different organizations. However, the model is not unique. There still some other models, like “S-curve” model by Roger in 1995. In my organization, the discrepancy in adoption mainly based on the educational status, social status, performance, and their desire (like income, or promotion, etc.). Besides, the different in age may not the major reason, but some psychological change caused from age also has impact on the diffusion in some specific organization.
In class， we mainly talked about the Diffusion of Innovations model which is used to describe the patterns of adoption, explain the mechanism, and assist in predicting whether and how a new invention will be successful. After reading some other materials related to the model after class, I achieve a better understanding of this model, as well as changes in my organization.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the model, there are three types of innovation-decisions:
Optional Innovation-Decision：This decision is made by an individual who is in some way distinguished from others in a social system.
Collective Innovation-Decision This decision is made collectively by all individuals of a social system.
Authority Innovation-Decision：This decision is made for the entire social system by few individuals in positions of influence or power.
Also, there are 5 factors determining the possibility whether the innovation will be made full use of: relative advantage (compared with the old way), compatibility, complexity or simplicity, trialablity and observability;
As for the process of acceptance of a new idea, there are several steps for individuals: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation. Standing on the point of a whole organization, there are 5 typical types of people holding different attitudes toward innovation: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. According to the author, people belonging to the former group are more likely to be younger, richer, in higher social class, which are all the factors helping them take risks. It seems to be a rational conclusion, but in my opinion, the attitudes towards risks not only depend on these factors, the personality and character of individuals also exert great influence on their reaction toward changing. After all, the Diffusion of Innovations model is still a wonderful theory to help us understand and control changes in our organizations. Then I would like to share some of my experiences with you.
I would like to discuss two different changes in my working place---Guangzhou new oriental school, a profitable training school.
ReplyDeleteThe first change is quite common. With the development of our school (or our company), most of our classrooms are equipped with various multimedia tools, which will enable teachers to give courses in different ways with the help of new technology. I think it belongs to the Collective Innovation-Decision for the reason that the applying new technology in various fields, including education, is an obvious trend in recent years. Compared with the traditional ways of teaching,
Relative advantages :
1.The efficiency of a courses will be improved for the time spent on writing is saved.
2.More materials can be used, which will enable students to learn the knowledge from different aspects. For example, when one of the passages talking about “a puma” is taught, teachers can show students some videos instead of simply tell them the relative words and expressions.
3.Once well preparing for a course, the materials can be used repeatedly, although teachers may spend long time making ppt and finding more materials.
Compatibility: both teachers and students are used to depending on the traditional ways with chalk and blackboard. To use the new technology means both should change their original thinking model to adapt to it.
Complexity or simplicity: it depends on how the teachers use it. Learning to make ppt is not a hard task if the teacher have the basic skills to use computers, but to make an excellent one may take a long time and great effort.
Trialablity: it is easily experimented in class and the effect can be quickly examined through students’ reaction.
Observability: since teachers should take a laptop to use all the new technologies, colleagues will easily notice others’ application of new technologies, but what also should be mentioned it’s not quite convenient to know how others use it unless we have a discussion about the topic.
In this process, the innovators are those who have special interest in new technology and they are not afraid of challenging traditional ways. The early adopters are those who have chances to see others use the tools in teaching process and have a strong will to try themselves. The early majority use the new tech because they realize it is certain that this new way will finally take the place of the traditional ways and they want to adopt it quickly, otherwise, they may fall behind. The late majority find others use it successfully and really save lots of time and energy, which confirms that it is a wise idea to introduce new technology to education. So the new equipments are widely used in our school and almost every new teacher will prepare for a laptop before they giving their first courses. Also, there exist laggards who always refuse to use any new ways of teaching. The interesting point is that they do not lack money and they totally have the ability to afford risks. What they stress is that teachers are the center of the classes， who should never be replaced by ppt or other high-tech. The core reason is they are respected and loved by students just because their wonderful courses, rather than other equipments.
All in all, introduction of new technology and changing the way of teaching encounter few problems in our organization. The most important thing is even the laggards won’t be blamed for their refusing to use the new technology because any possible way of teaching is accepted here.
The second change I would like to discuss is more complex and suffering. Developing from a small training school to the first quoted company (n.y. comex) in education in China, our school have to expand in a high speed to meet the request of investors. At first, teachers here only gave the most difficult courses, such as Toefl, GRE ,GMAT and LSAT and they were surrounded by hundreds of students. There’s no doubt that teachers who had the ability to stand on the platform of new oriental school were respected by both students and the school. Also, many of them were the idols of students and even the idols of the society. However, to expand the market, the company focused more attention on lower level markets such as small children, primary school students and middle school students, whose parents are willing to spend large amount of money on education. Another obvious change is that students want to get more individual attention, so the student number in a class dropped quickly------ 40-50 on average------10 percent of the previous number, which not only influences teachers’ income but also exerts negative effect on their feeling. Many teachers feel that they are no longer valued or even respected. How to face the change? It’s a big problem for both teachers and the organization.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the model we learnt, the change is an Authority Innovation-Decision for the leaders in this organization determined the developing direction of the company. The innovators are the leaders of the organization who can get most benefit from the new model. The early adopters are those who have relative high positions in the organization and they are following the decisions of the leaders quickly.
But the early majority seemed hard to form and lots of teachers choose to leave rather than accepting the new model. Some of the new teachers recognized by the organization recently are gradually accepting the new model on the condition that they know little about the past of this organization. Perhaps they may become the early majority.
Nevertheless, for the company, the quality of the courses may be badly influenced by the loss of a great number of outstanding teachers who have already worked for other competitive training schools or have begun their own career in this field.
So the situation is the change is continuing but whether the company will survive or develop through the rainstorm of change remains uncertain.
In my opinion, during the process, the feelings of the old teachers are omitted to such an extent that great resistance brought by the change may stop the company from developing fast if no useful measures are taken as soon as possible and I will give attention to the development of the company and rethink about the details in this process.
---------by Azalea Yan
ReplyDeleteWhat does the model tell us?
Roger’s model (Diffusion of Innovations) tells us how technological innovation is implemented in the organization.
First, we have to understand the technological innovations have to pass through 5 stages (knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation). With these 5 stages, we have to pay attention to some points, for example: Mass media channels are relatively more important at the knowledge stage. Interpersonal channels are relatively more important at the persuasion stage.
Also, the below components are important in Roger’s model.
1) Innovation decisions are classified as optional, collective, and authority-based
2) The characteristics of an innovation include relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability.
3) Different adopter categories are identified as innovators (venturesome), early adopters (respectable), early majority (deliberate), late majority (skeptical), and laggards (traditional).
4) Important roles in the innovation process include opinion leaders, change agents and change aides.
In short, Diffusion of Innovation Theory can be treated as a descriptive tool to provide guidance as to how to accelerate the rate of adoption.
Source: http://www.rogerclarke.com/SOS/InnDiff.html
Can we use this model of change in our organizations?
Consider implications and identify a model of change to help explain change within an organization you have experienced
I would say that the organization I worked at is almost implemented all stages of this model. Actually, according to Roger’s model, interpersonal channels are relatively important at persuasion stage. Based on my experience, my organization had spent more time on implementation stage. Since the top and senior management has already passed through the first 3 stages (knowledge, persuasion, and decision). The most important of the change of technological innovations is how to put it to use. As the decision had already made by senior management, all department heads have to follow and react this change to the result.
During the change of technological innovations, I would like to point out that there are difference adopter categories in my organization. As my organization is the traditional Chinese company, only top or senior management can be innovators. Even though the junior staff or people in middle management have tried to make some change, they would not make them successfully because of lack of authority. Therefore, if people from senior management have no intention to make any innovative change, I believe that it is hard to make any change in traditional Chinese company. Also, the pattern of adoption is not at normal distribution. The percentage of late majority and laggards are almost over 60% or even higher. This phenomenon is not strange in Chinese companies in China, especially in traditional or government sectors.
Last, even though the innovators in my organization may not know about DOI model when they implement any change in technological innovation projects, they can still success in the change process. Actually, the technological innovative plans are changed from time to time in my organization. Ready-to-adopt the change is one of the company policies as well as the requirement of staff performance for their promotion and salary adjustment. Therefore, people in organizations are ready-to-change but just the old staff need more time to make the change. Anyway, I still think that DOI model is a good tool for guidance as how to increase the rate of adoption in the organizations. I believe that it can be used in my organization. This may speed up the process of adoption in many technological innovative projects.
This model designed by Moore tell us that maintaining the innovation effort can help the slower accumulation of word of mouth information reaching the critical mass of self-sustainability. In such a case, avoiding a false negative error by not giving up too soon could therefore prove tremendously successful. On the other hand, overconfidence during the initial phase of adoption could lead to overinvestment and put the firm in a difficult situation during the crossing of the chasm. Failure to achieve take off in the main market could also occur because of the classical mistake of concentrating the innovative efforts on pure technological performance while mainstream adopters require reduced perceived risk and references that establish credibility.
ReplyDeleteSince I’m working as IT specialist in my bureau, I intend to focus on technological innovations and dynamics of social factors in my organization. There is a need for a more complete framework that is grounded in the principle of social heterogeneity. Meanwhile, linking personal constructs to attitudes towards risk provides a useful structure for the adopters categories identified by research on the diffusion of innovation. The underlying assumption of diffusion research is that a radical technology is absorbed into a population in stages, corresponding to the psychological and social profiles of various segments within that population. There are three types of heterogeneity in a organization: personal constructs, different organization segments which value different functionalities, and also the adoption decision criteria for different adopters categories. Obviously those are interrelated. We discuss how a shifting focus from technological considerations to the perceived risk of adoption and the need for credible references makes it difficult for a change agent to “cross the chasm,” i.e., to move from a few lead users to the mainstream.