As Thijs had just explained the concept of revolutionary change, I am going to

explain the opposite of that organizational change, the evolutionary change. Even
though revolutionary change and evolutionary change differs with just one letter,
however they are very different from each other. The organizational theory book
states that evolutionary change describes ongoing minor changes that are
incorporated in the existing organizational structure. So, what are the minor
changes? Minor changes could be adapting to a new computer program, moving
to team rather than individual responsibility, introducing new time-keeping
system or improving the existing products.
As you can see on the screen, this is a diagram taken from the book, these are
the contrast between evolutionary and revolutionary organisational change. In
this diagram, we are going to focus particularly on improving existing products.
Ladies and gentleman, what would be the first thing that pops into your head
when I mention the company apple to you 10 or 20 years ago? Ipods and
computers. This is a diagram of apples products timeline from 1976 to 2007. As
you can see, the products of apple stayed on the same category from 1976 until
2001 when the first ipod was launched. During this period of time, apple kept on
having evolutionary changes. From computer build in a wooden box, to computer
with screens, and to that, to computer with mouse and so on. When the first ipod
was launched, it wasnt very special since there are already several companies
producing mp3 players, however, in 2007, that is when apple revolutionized. The
first iphone, which completely changed apple, from the organisational structure
of apple to the brand image of apple. Even after that, apple continue to have
evolutionary change, from iphone 3g to 3gs to 4 and so on.
So what you can understand from this is that evolutionary change, is a step by
step change that takes place slowly to improve the organization.
Moving on, as I have mentioned earlier, one of the examples of evolutionary
changes is adapting to new computer program. Microsoft is a very successful
companies that produced the operating systems that are used by the majority of
companies. The most famous example is windows XP and windows 7, windows xp
is known as the best operating system before windows 7 came along, so even
though windows vista was launched, many companies still continue using
windows xp even when windows 7 was launched. However, as the support of
windows xp was terminated by Microsoft, the companies gradually upgraded their
operating systems to windows 7. Even though a lot of office workers refused to
change from windows xp from windows 7 at first, as time passed on, the workers
are convinced that windows 7 was better and as a result, efficiencies are
improved as the workers are able to work faster due to the new features of
windows 7 which was not in windows xp.