ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd Edition

A CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR MANAGED CULTURE CHANGE 329constructs and standards of evaluation, we need to encourage scanningand trial-and-error learning from the outset. As we will seebelow, that outcome is best achieved when the learner is activelyinvolved in the design of the learning process.Survival Anxiety Versus Learning AnxietyIf the disconfirming data “get through” the learners’ denial anddefensiveness, they will feel either survival anxiety or guilt. Theywill recognize the need to change, to give up some old habits andways of thinking, and to learn some new habits and ways of thinking.But the minute the learners accept the need to change theywill also begin to experience learning anxiety. It is the interactionof these two anxieties that creates the complex dynamics of change.The easiest way to illustrate this dynamic is in terms of learninga new stroke in tennis or golf. The process starts with disconfirmation—youare not beating some of the people you are used to beating,or your aspirations for a better score or a better-looking gameare not met, so you feel the need to improve your game. But as youcontemplate the actual process of unlearning your old stroke anddeveloping a new stroke, you realize that you may not be able to doit or you may be temporarily incompetent during the learningprocess. These feelings are learning anxiety. Similar feelings arisein the cultural area when the new learning involves becoming computercompetent, changing one’s supervisory style, transformingcompetitive relationships into teamwork and collaboration, changingfrom high-quality, high-cost strategy to becoming the low-costproducer, moving from engineering domination and product orientationto a marketing and customer orientation, learning to work innonhierarchical diffuse networks, and so on.Sociopsychological Bases of Learning Anxiety. Learning anxietyis a combination of several specific fears, all of which may be activeat any given time as one contemplates having to unlearn somethingand learn something new.