Organizational Change during crises. The transition to E-learning at the university of Udine during the COVID 19 emergency

Chapter 1. Organizational change 
 
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o anticipatory vs. reactive: a good firm can anticipate the market and to predict the 
future market’s status and change previously obtain a comparative advantage. 
Other firms react to the market and change only when the external case is clear; 
o major vs. minor: changes can concern major transformation, for example, 
acquisition, outsourcing, mergers. Otherwise, other changes can be minor and 
refer, for instance, to department reorganization, installation of new technologies, 
or new incentive systems;  
o tangible vs. intangible: physical transformations are more comfortable to evaluate, 
to plan, and to see the result, and for these reasons, managers prefer them. 
Immaterial changes are more complex to assess, and, for this reason, the other ones 
are preferred. An example of invisible transformation is, for example, the shift in 
organizational culture.  
Researchers are not able to say which is the best combination of change to survive and 
increment the organization because it depends on the firm and on the environment in 
which they operate. Sometimes is necessary rapid and radical changes to survive in the 
market, but other times it is better an incremental and slow transformation to reduce the 
people resistance. 
Considering potential risks when the organization has to deal with transformation, are 
mainly two: the first one is that the firm does not have a strategy to manage the change, 
and the likelihood is that the result will not be useful and risky for the firm. The second 
one is that the firm does not consider the possibility of making a change inside its 
organization. They postponed this problem in a second moment when the firm could not 
have the resource to make a significant effort to close the gap between them and the 
competitors’ firms. 
The organizational change is and should be an essential operation for the 
organizations that want to follow the environment world change. There are different 
types of change, but the final result is that the firm has to be competitive on the market 
and to do this, it must change. The firm, generally, must modify its strategy, process, 
product, or organization to be met the market need.