Kurt Lewin and the Planned Approach to Change Essay

Kurt Lewin and the Planned Approach to Change - Essay Example Several of those that are arriving late for their shifts are attending college courses and use this as an excuse to be late. While there may be some merit to this reasoning, the aftereffects on the rest of the staff are detrimental to moral. The group as a whole must then be looked at to see how it behaves and functions. This is a term that Lewin referred to as â€Å"Group Dynamics.† Lewin breaks this down into the following six categories: (1) Group productivity: why was it that groups are so ineffective in getting things done? (2) Communication: how influence is spread throughout a group. (3) Social perception: how a person group affected the way they perceived social events. (4) Intergroup relations. (5) Group membership: how individuals adjust to these conditions. (6) Training leaders: improving the functioning of groups (T-groups). (Greathouse, 1997) Using this as a guideline and framing out the power struggles in the force field above, in order to create change the restraining factors must be reduced and the Driving forces must be increased. In order to begin to improve the functioning of this group, the power base must be altered so that the tardy nurses who have received no sanctions to date, begin to understand that their behavior is no longer tolerated by the leaders in the group. This would be done by increasing the enforcement of a policy which would reduce the tolerance by management and increase sanction (decrease no sanctions) for the late nurses. This also alleviates the on-time nurses’ feeling that the late nurses’ are tolerated and special. And the relief shift would be more assertive and alert. The new graph would look like this: This will create the necessary energy to unfreeze the situation, create the momentum for change and then refreeze the situation with the new parameters in place (Burnes, 2004).