If an organization has remained relatively dormant for several years, then change may be recommended, though it will often be more difficult to achieve than when an organization has created a precedent for change. A significant paradox is revealed in this recommendation, for it is precisely under conditions when change seems easiest to initiate that stabilization is most appropriate, and vice versa. A corporation running a fast-food chain that has been very successful for the past five years may be very resistant to any institutional soul-searching, even though everyone knows that success in this business is short-lived, if one doesn’t keep pace with the competition. Similarly, the director of a social service agency who has brought in a new business officer every year for the past three years may find it quite easy to gain board approval for appointment of yet another new business manager. Such a decision, however, may be much less appropriate than the stabilization-oriented decision to retain the current manager and look elsewhere or more deeply into the source of the problem.
When change initiatives are under way, it is recommended to utilize new personnel who are hired with unique skills as change agents. A Manager of Training and Development is hired, for instance, who possesses exceptional group dynamics skills. A new Director of Information Technology is brought in who also has significant organization development experience. Frequently, these skills are forgotten, misunderstood, lost, or devalued if the new change agent is not allowed to use these skills soon after he or she begins to working in the organization. When the change agent first arrives, he or she has a fresh perspective and minimal interpersonal or organizational entanglements. After a short period of time (usually six months to one year) these initial advantages tend to disappear. The change agent becomes a “prophet in his own land,” and thus is often ignored or held in low esteem. If the change agent’s credibility is established early in his or her residency, then he or she is more likely to sustain this credibility after the initial glow has worn off.
Stabilization seems to be particularly appropriate when the organization is in an ambiguous situation with reference to mission, key roles, institutional information or consumer needs. It is often better to do nothing rather than something, if we do not know what the systemic impact of that “something” will be. A change program will rarely clarify or synthesize a confusing or polarized condition. Time might better be spent in the collection of further information, in building consensus regarding a particular organizational goal, or in establishing a firm organizational basis for the program by means of a team building effort. These stabilization processes can, in turn, create the necessary conditions for a subsequent change effort.
