| Course | EDO 816 Leading in Highly Uncertain and Rapidly Changing Environments |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 2 |
| Paper type | Doctoral critique of change models |
| Length | About 1,065 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Aspen University |
| Program | Doctor of Education |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for EDO 816 Module 2
Unfreeze, Change, Stall: What a Failed Curriculum Restructuring Reveals About the Limits of Planned Change
Student Name
Doctor of Education Program, Aspen University
EDO 816: Leading in Highly Uncertain and Rapidly Changing Environments
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Unfreeze, Change, Stall: What a Failed Curriculum Restructuring Reveals About the Limits of Planned Change
In the fall of 2022, Halden College's board approved a plan to reorganize its eleven academic departments into four schools, intended to cut administrative costs, encourage interdisciplinary programs and make the college easier for prospective students to understand. A consultant led the effort using an eight-step plan: the consultant's slides labeled them urgency, coalition, vision, communication, empowerment, early wins, consolidation and culture. By the spring of 2024 the plan had stalled at step five. The faculty senate voted against the proposed school boundaries, two respected department chairs resigned their chairships and the provost who sponsored the effort left for another position. This paper uses the restructuring to critique planned change models and to draw lessons for the next attempt. Halden and its restructuring are invented.
Planned Change in Its Original Form
Planned change is usually traced to Kurt Lewin and summarized as three steps: unfreeze, change and refreeze. Burnes (2004) argued that this summary misrepresents Lewin. Lewin's planned approach, he showed, consisted of four interlocking elements: field theory, which analyzed the forces holding a group's behavior in place; group dynamics, which focused on the group rather than the individual as the unit of change; action research, an iterative cycle of diagnosis, action and evaluation carried out with the people affected; and the three-step model. Taken together, these made planned change participative, iterative and grounded in learning, not a sequence imposed from above. Burnes argued that critics who called Lewin's approach simplistic and top-down had attacked a caricature, though he acknowledged that it was designed for groups and was less suited to rapid, organization-wide transformation.
Episodic and Continuous Change
Weick and Quinn (1999) reviewed research on organizational change and organized it by tempo. Episodic change is infrequent, discontinuous and intentional, occurring when organizations drift away from their environments and must be jolted back. It fits Lewin's sequence, with the leader as a prime mover who creates change. Continuous change is ongoing, evolving and cumulative, made up of small adjustments that add up over time as people improvise and learn in their daily work. For continuous change, Weick and Quinn suggested reversing the sequence: freeze, to make the current pattern visible; rebalance, to reinterpret and redirect it; and unfreeze, to let improvisation resume in the new direction. The leader's role shifts from creating change to redirecting change that is already happening.
A Popular Claim, Checked
The consultant's first presentation to Halden's faculty stated that 70% of organizational change efforts fail, to argue that the college must commit fully to the plan. Hughes (2011) traced this widely repeated figure to its sources and found that none provided valid empirical evidence for it. The claim appeared in practitioner books and articles, often without citation or with citation to sources that did not measure failure rates. Hughes concluded that the statistic should not be used, and that the very idea of a single failure rate for change efforts is doubtful given how differently change and failure are defined. Using the number to create urgency, as the consultant did, rested on no foundation.
Rereading the Restructuring
The reading through continuous change explains what the planned reading cannot. Halden was not frozen in 2022. Faculty had already merged two languages programs, created an environmental studies major across three departments and shared staff between the arts departments. These small, continuous changes were moving the college toward fewer, more interdisciplinary units, the restructuring's own goal. The consultant's plan, built for episodic change, began by unfreezing an organization that was already moving, and its guiding coalition excluded the faculty who had been leading that movement. In Weick and Quinn's terms, the right role was to freeze, making the existing mergers visible; rebalance, steering them toward a coherent structure; and unfreeze, letting faculty continue. Lewin's participative approach, as Burnes describes it, would also have pointed toward working with those groups.
| Date | Event | Read as episodic, planned change | Read as continuous change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 2022 | Urgency created with enrollment data and the 70% claim | Step one completed | Ignored three years of faculty-led program mergers already under way |
| Winter 2023 | Guiding coalition of six administrators and two faculty | Step two completed | Excluded the faculty who had been making change happen |
| Spring 2023 | Four-school vision announced | Steps three and four | Replaced an emerging pattern with a designed one |
| Fall 2023 | Department boundaries drawn by the coalition | Step five begun | Reorganization fought the informal networks that made programs work |
| Spring 2024 | Senate vote against; chairs resign; provost leaves | Plan stalls | Continuous change resumes, now in resistance |
When Planned Change Fits
The critique does not mean planned change is useless. Some changes at Halden are episodic by nature: a decision to close a residence hall or to adopt a new student information system has a clear start and finish, and a structured plan helps. The mistake was applying an episodic model to change that was already continuous and depended on faculty judgment.
What the Plan Got Right
The consultant's plan was not without merit. Its emphasis on communicating a clear picture of the future answered a real complaint among staff, who said for years that no one could explain where the college was going. Its guiding coalition, though too narrow, did bring the finance and admissions offices into academic planning for the first time. And its insistence on short-term wins produced one lasting result: a shared advising center for first-year students that every school now uses. A fair critique keeps these gains while rejecting the assumption that Halden had to be jolted out of stillness.
Principles for the Next Effort
First, map the change already under way before announcing any plan. Second, include the people leading existing changes in setting direction. Third, use evidence, not borrowed statistics, to explain the need for change; Halden's own enrollment and cost data are persuasive enough. Fourth, choose the model to fit the change: episodic methods for discrete decisions and continuous methods for academic structure.
Conclusion
Halden's restructuring failed not because planning is wrong but because an episodic plan was imposed on an organization already changing continuously. Weick and Quinn explain the mismatch, Burnes shows that Lewin's own approach was more participative than the plan the college used, and Hughes warns against the statistic used to launch it. The next effort should begin by seeing the change that is already happening.
References
Burnes, B. (2004). Kurt Lewin and the planned approach to change: A re-appraisal. Journal of Management Studies, 41(6), 977-1002. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.2004.00463.x
Hughes, M. (2011). Do 70 per cent of all organizational change initiatives really fail? Journal of Change Management, 11(4), 451-464. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2011.630506
Weick, K. E., & Quinn, R. E. (1999). Organizational change and development. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 361-386. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.50.1.361
Reading the EDO 816 Module 2 assignment instructions
Planned change models and their limits are the theme of EDO 816's second module, and students are usually asked to critique planned change approaches, often by applying them to a real change effort. Defer to your own classroom's Module 2 prompt; the college and its restructuring are invented. Present at least one planned change model accurately, from its sources. Review the major critiques and any alternatives. Apply both the model and its alternatives to a real change effort, ideally one you saw from the inside. Draw conclusions about when planned change works and when other approaches fit better, citing journal scholarship in APA 7 style.
Inside the EDO 816 Module 2 example
In 2022 Halden hired a consultant who led a restructuring of its eleven academic departments into four schools, following an eight-step change plan that began with a sense of urgency and ended with anchoring the change in culture. The plan reached step five, empowering action, before faculty votes, two department chairs' resignations and a change in provost stopped it. Weick and Quinn (Annual Review of Psychology) explain why an episodic intervention misfired in an organization whose real change had been continuous. Burnes (Journal of Management Studies) shows that Lewin's own approach, built on group participation and action research, was closer to what Halden needed than the consultant's top-down version. Hughes (Journal of Change Management) cautions against citing a 70% failure rate to justify urgency. A timeline places each event on both models, and four principles follow for the next effort.
Reading the EDO 816 Module 2 grading rubric
Critiques of change models earn credit when the model is presented fairly, critiques are drawn from scholarship and the application yields lessons that go beyond the obvious. This example presents planned change in Lewin's original sense through Burnes before criticizing popular versions, uses Weick and Quinn to offer a real alternative and checks a common claim with Hughes. Reading one failed effort through both episodic and continuous lenses shows exactly where the plan fought the organization's actual pattern of change. The principles at the end follow from the analysis and are specific to Halden, which shows the writer can turn critique into guidance.
EDO 816 Module 2 help: mistakes that cost marks
Papers critiquing planned change often attack a cartoon of Lewin or Kotter without reading the sources. Present the model fairly first. Another common weakness is citing the claim that most change efforts fail as fact; Hughes found no valid evidence for it. Include an alternative to planned change, such as continuous or emergent change, so the critique leads somewhere. Apply both views to one real effort in enough detail to show where the plan helped and where it hurt. Finally, avoid concluding that planning is useless; say when it fits. A strong paper also names what the writer would do differently, in order, so the critique ends in a usable plan rather than a verdict on someone else's failure.
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EDO 816 Module 2 questions, answered
What does EDO 816 Module 2 usually ask for?
Aspen's EDO 816 covers planned change models and their limits in this module, so critiquing planned change approaches, often through a real change effort, is typical. Check your Module 2 prompt.
What is the difference between episodic and continuous change?
Weick and Quinn described episodic change as rare, intentional breaks and continuous change as ongoing small adjustments that leaders redirect.
Was Lewin's model really top-down?
Burnes argued no: Lewin's planned approach combined field theory, group dynamics, action research and the three steps, with participation at its core.
Where can I find a free EDO 816 Module 2 sample paper?
Here, for free: a doctoral critique of planned change models built around an invented college's failed curriculum restructuring.
Do 70% of organizational changes fail?
Hughes reviewed the sources behind that claim and found no valid empirical evidence supporting it.