REFRAMING THE ORGANIZATION - WHY IMPLEMENTING TOTAL QUALITY IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE

This article presents a cognitive theory of why planned organizational change efforts, such as total quality initiatives, often fail. The theory suggests that employees resist total quality because their beliefs about the organization's identity constrain understanding and create cognitive opposition to radical change. We propose a dynamic model in which successful implementation of fundamental organizational transformation is partly dependent on management's ability to reframe the change over time. Implementation may best be accomplished through a series of middle-range changes that are large enough to overcome cognitive inertia and relieve organizational stress, but not so large that members believe the proposed change is unobtainable or undesirable.