Organizational change and development on DSST Organizational Behavior: the psychology of why people resist change and how OD interventions work | Flying Prep
Organizational change and development on DSST Organizational Behavior: the psychology of why people resist change and how OD interventions work
Organizational change and development (Lewin's three-stage model, Kotter's eight steps, action research, OD interventions, the psychology of resistance) are part of the ~25 percent remainder of the exam. This guide drills the change models plus the psychological-mechanism layer (Schein's three forces at unfreezing, learning-vs-survival anxiety, Maslach burnout) that distinguishes the OB framing from the management-application angle on CLEP Principles of Management.
By Alex Stone·14 min read·Last fact-checked October 2026
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Organizational change and development on DSST Organizational Behavior (Lewin's model, Kotter's eight steps, action research, OD interventions, the psychology of resistance) are part of the roughly 25 percent "remainder" of the exam after the three main content buckets. This guide drills the change models and the psychological-mechanism layer that distinguishes the OB framing from the CLEP Management management-application angle.
I took DSST Organizational Behavior for my degree at Thomas Edison State University, where it filled the PSY 361 slot. That slotting tells you the framing the exam expects on the change block: not "how should a manager run a change program," but "what psychological mechanism explains why a workforce responds to change the way it does." CLEP Management asks which managerial step or strategy fits a decision. DSST OB asks which psychological mechanism accounts for an employee's internal response or a workforce pattern.
Why people resist change: the individual-level psychology
Resistance is a predictable psychological response, not a personality defect. The OB literature treats it as a rational reaction to a real threat: loss of habits, security, status, or control. The DSST tests recognition of which named source a scenario describes.
Source
Psychological mechanism
Scenario example
Habit
Routines are cognitively cheap; change forces effortful re-learning
A senior accountant resists a new ledger system because the existing workflow has been automatic for years
A long-tenured employee withdraws after a reorganization announcement
Frequently asked questions
How does this differ from the CLEP Principles of Management organizational-change-and-ethics sibling?+
The named theorists overlap heavily: Lewin, Kotter, action research, Kotter and Schlesinger, and Senge appear on both. The framing differs. CLEP Management asks the management-application question (which step or strategy fits a manager's decision?). DSST OB asks the psychology-foundation question (which mechanism explains an employee or workforce response?). Schein's three forces at unfreezing, the learning-vs-survival-anxiety contrast, the change curve, and the stress and burnout content are DSST-specific. Drill the shared frameworks once and add the psychology layer for DSST OB.
Which change model gets the most exam weight: Lewin or Kotter?+
Both appear. Lewin shows up more often at recognition (name the three stages, match a scenario to a stage). Kotter shows up more often in scenario form (match a described action to a step, identify a missing step, identify the failure mode at step 6). Drill Kotter's eight steps in order with the failure mode attached; that single block carries more questions than any other change item on a typical form.
Is force field analysis tested separately or only as part of Lewin?+
Both. It can be tested as a named tool ("which Lewin construct describes the balance of driving and restraining forces?") or as a strategic prescription ("which approach is more effective: strengthening drivers or weakening restrainers?"). The textbook answer to the second is weakening restraining forces, because strengthening drivers activates compensating restrainers and the equilibrium settles back.
Alex Stone founded Flying Prep after earning her bachelor's degree from Thomas Edison State University using 27 CLEP and DSST exams to test out of 99 credits. She built Flying Prep to help working adults and returning students take the same path.
Status quo bias on income; loss aversion outweighs equivalent expected gains
A sales team resists a new commission plan that pays the same in expectation but shifts variance
Fear of the unknown
Ambiguity is aversive; absent information triggers anxiety on its own
A team becomes anxious when a merger is announced but details are withheld for months
Selective information processing
Cognitive-dissonance avoidance; people filter information that contradicts the preferred view
A department head dismisses survey data showing the team is underperforming
Social ties and identity
Change can sever workgroup attachments and threaten who one is at work
Employees resist a reorganization that breaks up a long-standing team even when individual roles and pay are preserved
The selective-information-processing source is the same mechanism as Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory from the individual-processes block. When new information conflicts with an attitude bound up with professional identity, people filter the information rather than update the attitude. Habit and security needs are the two most frequently tested sources.
Why organizations resist change: the structural sources
Organizational resistance is the system-level analogue of individual resistance. The OB literature names six structural sources, tested at recognition.
Source
What it claims
Scenario example
Structural inertia
Selection, training, and formalization reinforce stability; the same mechanisms resist change
A firm that hires for cultural fit drifts back to the old way after a change effort
Limited focus of change
Changing one subsystem without changing the interconnected subsystems produces snap-back
A new performance management system fails because compensation and promotion still reward the old behavior
Group inertia
Even when individuals would change, group norms hold them in the old pattern
An employee committed to the new process reverts under team norms that still reward solo work
Threat to expertise
Change devalues specialized knowledge
Senior technical staff resist a new system that automates skills they spent years developing
Threat to power relationships
Change reallocates decision rights, budgets, and reporting lines
A division head resists a restructuring that moves three teams out of her reporting line
Threat to established resource allocations
Groups that benefit from the current allocation resist redistribution
A department resists a portfolio shift that reduces its budget share
Structural inertia is the most-tested of the six because it captures the broader insight that the forces producing reliable execution under normal conditions (selection, training, formalization, culture) are the same forces that resist change.
The change curve: Kübler-Ross applied to organizations
The change curve maps the psychological response to change onto Kübler-Ross's five-stage grief model. The original 1969 Kübler-Ross model described the response to terminal diagnosis: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. The OB literature borrowed the sequence as a metaphor for organizational change.
The five stages applied to a workforce:
Denial. Information is filtered out; planning continues as if the change is not real.
Anger. Affect is directed at leaders or peers. Productivity drops.
Bargaining. People try to negotiate the change down without rejecting it outright.
Depression. Withdrawal, lowered engagement, mourning the loss of the old state.
Acceptance. The new state is integrated; people operate within it rather than against it.
The DSST does not test the original grief context; it tests recognition that the five-stage sequence is the OB change-curve framing and tests matching a described behavior to its stage.
Unfreeze, change, refreeze. Eight steps. Six resistance strategies. The psychology of how organizations actually move.
Lewin's three-stage model: the psychology of unfreezing
Lewin's three-stage model is the highest-yield change model on the exam. The CLEP Management change-and-ethics sibling covers Lewin from the management-application angle: what does the manager do at each stage. This guide goes deeper on the psychological mechanism at each stage, which is the DSST OB angle.
Stage
Psychological mechanism
Leader role
Unfreezing
Create the dissonance, psychological safety, and survival anxiety needed to loosen attachment to the status quo
Surface the data that makes the current state untenable; protect the workforce from the social cost of trying the new way
Changing (movement)
Develop new behaviors, attitudes, and identifications through role modeling, scanning, or trial
Provide models to identify with; create space to experiment without penalty
Refreezing
Stabilize the new pattern through reinforcement, structural support, and cultural alignment
Update policies, reward systems, and rituals to lock the new behavior in
The unfreezing-stage psychology is what distinguishes the OB framing from the management framing. Edgar Schein, expanding Lewin, names three forces at unfreezing: disconfirmation (information that the current state is producing bad outcomes), survival anxiety (recognition that not changing has costs), and psychological safety (trying the new way will not produce humiliation if the attempt fails).
Schein's tension: survival anxiety alone produces defensiveness and resistance. Survival anxiety paired with psychological safety produces motivation to learn. Learning anxiety is the fourth force: people resist because the new way is hard and they may fail at it. The leader's job is to make survival anxiety greater than learning anxiety, and Schein argues lowering learning anxiety (training, support, permission to fail) is almost always better than raising survival anxiety further. The DSST tests this by naming Schein and asking what he added to Lewin, or by describing a failed change where survival anxiety was high but psychological safety was absent.
The changing stage is the behavioral and attitudinal shift, driven by identification (taking on a role model's attitudes) or scanning. The refreezing stage is institutionalization: reinforcement schedules from operant conditioning (covered in the individual-processes block) apply directly, since reinforced behaviors are sustained and unreinforced behaviors extinguish.
Force field analysis
Force field analysis is Lewin's diagnostic tool for change situations. Any given organizational state is held in place by two opposing sets of forces: driving forces push toward change, restraining forces push back toward the status quo. The current state is the equilibrium.
Lewin's counter-intuitive prescription: weakening restraining forces is almost always more effective than strengthening driving forces. Strengthening drivers activates compensating restrainers; the equilibrium moves a little, then settles back. Weakening restrainers lets the equilibrium shift with less resistance. The DSST tests recognition of the tool, the driving-vs-restraining distinction, and the better strategic move (weaken restrainers).
Kotter's eight-step model is the action-oriented expansion of Lewin. The CLEP Management sibling covers Kotter in the management context; this guide covers the psychological purpose and failure mode of each step.
Step
Purpose
Common failure mode
1. Create a sense of urgency
Generate survival anxiety; make the cost of the status quo psychologically real
Soft urgency; data is shared but treated as background noise
2. Form a powerful coalition
Build a guiding team with authority and credibility
Single executive sponsor instead of a coalition; read as one person's initiative
3. Create a vision and strategy
Clear, communicable picture of the future state to guide local decisions
Vision too abstract, too long, or jargon-laden to be remembered
4. Communicate the vision
Saturate channels; align leader behavior with the message
Under-communication by an order of magnitude
5. Remove obstacles to action
Strip out structural, procedural, and personnel barriers
Leaving incentive systems in place that punish the new behavior
6. Create short-term wins
Visible, unambiguous successes that build credibility and momentum
No wins inside 6 to 18 months; effort loses energy
7. Build on the change (consolidate gains)
Use credibility from short-term wins to drive deeper change
Declaring victory at step 6 and stopping; change unwinds
8. Anchor in the culture
Encode new behavior in norms, rituals, selection, reinforcement
New hires never learn the changed pattern
Three points distinguish Kotter from Lewin: more action-oriented (Kotter prescribes specific managerial actions per step, where Lewin gives a phase model); explicit on coalition-building (step 2 is a distinct requirement); and heavy emphasis on communication (Kotter's case research argues leaders systematically under-communicate the vision by a factor of ten). The DSST tests Kotter three ways: match an action to its step, identify the missing step from a list of seven, and identify the failure mode (almost always premature victory at step 6 skipping 7 and 8).
Action research: the cyclical data-driven model
The action research model is the third change framework worth recognizing, with Lewin and OD heritage. Change is iterative and data-driven; each cycle informs the next intervention. The five stages: diagnosis (data on the current state), analysis (patterns and root causes identified), feedback (findings shared back; the session is itself an intervention), action (intervention designed and implemented), and evaluation (outcomes measured; new data gathered; the cycle repeats).
Action research underpins most OD interventions. The DSST tests it at recognition: a scenario describes consultants surveying a workforce, sharing results back, intervening, and re-surveying, and asks which model fits.
OD interventions: the toolkit and the psychological mechanism
Organizational development interventions are tested at recognition level. The exam names an intervention and asks which is being described, or describes an intervention and asks what it is called.
Intervention
Psychological mechanism
When to use
Sensitivity training (T-groups)
Small-group experiential learning; feedback in unstructured sessions increases self-awareness of interpersonal style
Individual interpersonal effectiveness is the bottleneck; less common now due to emotional risk
Survey feedback
Survey data shared back legitimizes the diagnostic conversation
Issues are systemic and recognition of the pattern is the first step
Process consultation
The consultant helps the client see process patterns (communication, decision flow) rather than supplying answers
Client has substantive expertise but is blind to the process patterns blocking the work
Team-building
Improves group effectiveness through trust, role clarity, communication, joint problem-solving
A specific team is the unit and internal dynamics are the bottleneck
Intergroup development
Surfaces each group's perception of the other, then works them on shared problems
Two or more groups must collaborate but are stuck in adversarial patterns
Appreciative inquiry
Positive-psychology applied to change; 4-D cycle (Discovery, Dream, Design, Destiny) focuses on what is working
Workforce is fatigued by deficit-framed change efforts
Large-group interventions
Future search, open space technology; brings broad stakeholder groups into one room to design change
Change requires buy-in from broad stakeholders and distributed input
Sensitivity training was the original OD intervention developed at the National Training Laboratories in the 1940s; its DSST relevance is historical and recognition-only.
Survey feedback and process consultation are the two most commonly tested in scenario form. Appreciative inquiry's 4-D cycle is the testable detail: Discovery (what is working), Dream (what could be), Design (how would it look), Destiny (how do we sustain it). David Cooperrider is the named originator.
Strategies for overcoming resistance: Kotter and Schlesinger
The six-strategy framework from Kotter and Schlesinger is also covered on the CLEP Management sibling. The DSST tests the same six strategies, but the question framing shifts toward the psychological mechanism behind each.
Strategy
Psychological mechanism
When to use
Education and communication
Update beliefs through information; assumes resisters are rational
Resistance stems from lack of information or inaccurate information
Participation and involvement
Reduce resistance through psychological ownership; people support what they helped create
Initiators lack information; resisters have power to thwart
Facilitation and support
Reduce learning anxiety so survival anxiety produces action rather than paralysis
Adjustment problems (skill gaps, emotional difficulty) are the obstacle
Negotiation and agreement
Trade concrete concessions for compliance
A powerful group will lose under the change; incentives can secure compliance
Manipulation and co-optation
Shape information or assign resistance leaders to symbolic roles; covert influence
Other tactics will not work or are too expensive
Explicit and implicit coercion
Apply or threaten penalties; bypass consent
Speed is essential and initiators hold considerable power
The DSST tests recognition of which strategy fits which situation, keying on three variables: severity of resistance, time available, and power held by the change agent. Sequencing heuristic the exam probes indirectly: education, participation, and facilitation are the lower-cost, lower-risk strategies and should be tried first; negotiation, manipulation, and coercion are higher-cost or higher-risk and become reasonable only when the lower-cost strategies will not work. The CLEP Management sibling covers the same six strategies; drill the framework once and it serves both exams.
Innovation and the learning organization
Innovation, ambidexterity, and the learning organization are tested at recognition. The block expands beyond crisis-response change to ongoing adaptive capacity.
Senge's five disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking (the named integrator). Covered in more depth on the organizational processes satellite.
Organizational ambidexterity: the capacity to balance exploitation (refining existing capabilities for efficiency) and exploration (searching for novel capabilities for innovation). Over-investing in exploitation loses adaptive capacity; over-investing in exploration fails to capture current-strength returns.
Diffusion of innovations (Rogers): five segments. Innovators (2.5 percent), early adopters (13.5 percent), early majority (34 percent), late majority (34 percent), laggards (16 percent). Recognition of the segments and Rogers by name.
Stress, well-being, and burnout
Stress and well-being content appears on this block on most forms. The DSST tests named stressors, response components, Type A vs B, burnout, and coping.
Stressors group into four categories: task demands (workload, role complexity), role demands (ambiguity, conflict, overload), interpersonal demands (conflict, harassment, lack of social support), and organizational-structure stressors (excessive rules, low autonomy, unclear reporting).
The stress response has three components: physiological (cortisol, cardiovascular activation, immune suppression), psychological (anxiety, frustration, reduced cognition), and behavioral (turnover, absenteeism, substance use).
Type A vs Type B personality was introduced by Friedman and Rosenman in the cardiology literature. Type A is competitive, time-urgent, hostile under frustration, prone to cardiovascular disease. Type B is relaxed and less reactive. The DSST tests the contrast and the cardiovascular-risk implication.
Burnout, formalized by Christina Maslach, has three components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization (cynicism toward the work and the people), and reduced personal accomplishment. The DSST tests recognition of all three and the distinction from acute stress.
Coping strategies from Lazarus and Folkman split two ways. Problem-focused coping addresses the stressor itself (planning, removing the stressor). Emotion-focused coping addresses the affective response (reframing, social support, relaxation). Problem-focused works when the stressor is controllable; emotion-focused works when it is not.
Organizational interventions tested at recognition: EAPs, wellness programs, workplace flexibility (flextime, remote work, compressed schedules), and job redesign.
Memorization sequence for the change-and-development block
A 60-minute drill across three to four sessions, spread over one to two weeks. Each session is recall from a blank prompt, not re-reading.
Block 1 (15 minutes): resistance sources. From blank, write the six individual sources (habit, security needs, economic factors, fear of the unknown, selective information processing, social ties) and the six organizational sources (structural inertia, limited focus of change, group inertia, threat to expertise, threat to power, threat to resource allocations). Add the change curve in order: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.
Block 2 (15 minutes): Lewin and Schein. Lewin's three stages (unfreezing, changing, refreezing). Schein's three forces at unfreezing (disconfirmation, survival anxiety, psychological safety). The survival-anxiety-vs-learning-anxiety contrast with the better route (lower learning anxiety). Force field analysis (driving vs restraining; weaken restrainers).
Block 3 (15 minutes): Kotter and action research. Kotter's eight steps in order: create urgency, form a coalition, create a vision, communicate the vision, remove obstacles, create short-term wins, build on the change, anchor in culture. Failure mode: premature victory at step 6. Action research (diagnosis, analysis, feedback, action, evaluation).
Block 4 (15 minutes): OD interventions plus Kotter and Schlesinger. Seven OD interventions with the mechanism for each. Six resistance strategies with the trigger phrase. Stress content if time: four stressor categories, three response components, three Maslach burnout components, problem-focused vs emotion-focused coping.
The drill is recall, not recognition. Durable recognition is built by retrieval from blank prompts.
How is the change curve tested if it is a borrowed metaphor from Kübler-Ross?+
At recognition only. The exam describes a workforce behavior (denial, anger at leadership, bargaining for exceptions, withdrawal, acceptance) and asks which stage it represents, or names the five-stage sequence and asks for attribution. The DSST does not test the original grief context.
What is the difference between sensitivity training, process consultation, and team-building?+
Different units of analysis and mechanisms. Sensitivity training (T-groups) targets individual interpersonal effectiveness through unstructured small-group feedback sessions. Process consultation targets a team or organization but the consultant helps the client see process patterns rather than supplying substantive answers. Team-building targets a specific team and works on trust, role clarity, and joint problem-solving.
How are stress and burnout actually tested on this exam?+
At recognition. Four stressor categories (task, role, interpersonal, organizational structure). Three stress response components (physiological, psychological, behavioral). Type A vs B with the cardiovascular-risk implication. Maslach's three burnout components (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, reduced personal accomplishment). Problem-focused vs emotion-focused coping (Lazarus and Folkman). Recognition of EAPs and wellness programs.
