Introduction
The concept of management of change or change management as s structured approach to individual team, organization and society transitions that move the target from a current state to a desired state. Change management as I see it, gives particular focus on the people side of change. It aims to integrate and adapt new business model into an organization to transform the organizational relationships with all its constituents. Managing change is fundamentally a people issue. It is bout motivation and influencing behavior, about breaking old habits and attitudes and about creating an environment that is conducive to embracing the new (Harvard Business School Press 2005b).
Literature Review
Jick (1993) defines change as a planned or unplanned response to pressures and forces. Change is inevitable and organizations undergo change. Technological, economic, social, regulatory, political and competitive forces push organizations to change. Because of the ever changing business and industry situation and environment, change has become a requirement for organizations to remain strong and to succeed. Globalization has also made the pressures more intense.
The Harvard Business School Press (2005a) identified the different forces of change that compel organizations to undergo change and to introduce innovations internally. These are:
1. A company’s success or failure – whether the organization enjoys spectacular growth and profitability or suffers difficulty or even failure, change will often result. In the case of business success, a company’s leaders may decide to invest profits in new product development or marketing efforts. In the case of business difficulty or failure, leaders may streamline processes or launch other efforts to turn the business around.
2. Environmental factors – macro-environmental factors such as regulatory changes, economic changes and technological changes affect a company’s strategy and force the management to come up with ways to cope up.
3. Business Trends – one such trend is globalization 9the spreading of commercial activity internationally. Because of globalization, competition between firms becomes more stiffer and companies are forced to change in order to successfully enter new markets.
4. Stakeholder expectations – one of important stakeholder group is the employees. Over the years, there have been changes in the demands of the employees. Employees expect that the company can offer them challenging, rewarding work. Consumer demands are also changing, prompting organizations to change their operations, products or services.
5. Demographic shifts – most industrialized countries are facing demographic issues such as aging of their populations. Demographic shifts may also take form of increasing ethnic diversity and a greater variety in family structure. With these kind of changes, companies must pay special attention to matters of discrimination, civil rights and employment laws.
Levels of Organizational Change
Organization Level
Theories based at the level of the organization see change as a product of: interactions between the subsystems of which they are composed and interactions; and interactions and changes across their boundary with an external environment. Change analysis and intervention tends to be holistic in nature (Stickland 1998).
Group Level
Another strand of organization change theory focuses on group and team behaviour. At the group level, the change dynamics are viewed in terms of group values, norms and roles and if effective change in to be achieves then these group characteristics should be identified and understood prior to attempting planned change. Organizational change is seen in terms of interactions, conflicts and relationships between groups, with particular functional or task groups exhibiting cohesive resistance to change (Stickland 1998).
Individual Level
The last area of organizational change theory is centered upon individual behaviour. At the individual level, emphasize is given to individual needs and motivations in order to counter resistance to change. The individual perspective argues that individuals are best able to cope with and facilitate change if they are involved and empowered to design and initiate it (Kanter 1984 cited in Stickland 1998, p. 44).
Change and Organization Dynamics
It has been argued that when an organization is facing a planned change, the biggest challenge is to manage the dynamics not the pieces. The biggest challenge in every change effort is the management of the dynamics or the subtleties. One of important factors that must be considered and must be emphasized in the organizational culture. Included in the dynamics, are the prevailing beliefs, behaviors and assumptions that each member acquire over time. Culture according to Kotter (1996) refers to norms of behavior and shared values among a group of people. Norms are common or pervasive ways of acting that are found in a group and that persist because group members tend to behave in ways that teach these practices to new members, rewarding those who fit in and giving sanctions to those who do not. Shared values are important concerns and goals shared by most of the people in a group that tend to shape group behavior and that often persist over time, even when group membership changes. Culture is shared, providing cohesiveness among people throughout an organization, and developed over time. An organization’s existing culture is the product of beliefs, behaviors, and assumptions that have in the past contributed to success. Conner (1992) defines organizational culture as the interrelationship of shared beliefs, behaviors, and assumptions that are acquired over time by members of an organization (cited in Gilley and Maycunich 2000, p. 284). The prevailing beliefs, behaviors and assumptions of an organization guide what are considered appropriate or inappropriate actions in which individuals and groups engage. An organization’s collective beliefs, behaviors and assumptions affect daily business decisions, actions and operations on two levels, overt and covert. The overt level represents observable, intentional, and direct influences on operations. The covert level is characterized by obscure, unintentional, and indirect influences on operations. These latter influences are difficult to change because employees are often unaware of them. On the overt level, an organization operates on beliefs and observable behaviors. At the covert level, the organization is influenced by employees’ collective assumptions. These combine to influence oral and written communications, organizational structure, power and status, policies and procedures, compensation and reward systems, and the design and use of physical facilities (Gilley and Maycunich 2000).
Organizational change, particularly changes in organizational culture is very challenging and problematic. Organizational culture is difficult to change because it is deeply embedded in the shared behaviors of organization members and working relationships, which have developed over time. The culture of the organization defines appropriate behaviour, bonds and motivates individuals and asserts solutions where there is uncertainty. Organizational culture functions at all levels from subconscious to visible.
Change and Communication
Effective communication is important in managing change. Effective communication is a key tool for managers seeking to drive successful change. Organizations that can communicate effectively about change increase the odds that changes they undertake will be successful, and that the environmental changes they encounter will be understood. Organizations that mismanage communication about change or simply ignore the need for it when change is necessary, help guarantee their own struggles and failure to change (Axley 1996, p. 194; Kotter 1995).
The Role of Leadership in Change Management
Roles and Responsibilities of a Change Leader
The success of an organizational change rests in the hands of the change leader. People in the organization looks up at the change leader and expects him to plan, to communicate, to implement and to guide in order for the change initiative to be successful. There are different roles and responsibilities that the leader must take (Gilley 2005).
Visionary
Leaders create and share visions. They make their visions the visions of the people that they lead. One responsibility of a leader is the challenge the status quo. Leaders look of opportunities and for challenges. They actively search for ways to change. The status quo represents complacency, mediocrity, and eventual decline – conditions that are unacceptable to most leaders. Leaders as visionaries imagine the future. Leaders have the ability to craft a mental picture of a state that does not exist yet. A vision of change portrays a vivid picture of the future. Leaders also develop a stewardship philosophy within the organization. True leaders put the welfare of their organizations and their members above their own. Lastly, as visionaries, leaders align the change with organizational vision, mission, strategy, and individual goals. Organizational vision should drive mission, which should drive strategy, which should drive division and individual goals. Thus, the appropriate change initiatives support goals, strategy, mission and vision (Gilley 2005). Leadership during change also entails that the leader identify innovative and creative ideas from the people in the organization. An effective leaders always finds a way to change how things are done or develop the organization’s products and services (Adair 2004).
Inspirer
One of the most commonly cited traits of leaders is their ability to inspire others. Change leaders motivate and energize their constituents by meeting their needs – making the change personally beneficial in some meaningful way. Leaders sell change. Actively selling change involves identifying specific benefits valuable to each employee while concurrently minimizing potential losses or risks. Leaders also involve others in the change process. Involving employees at all levels of the organization proves powerfully motivating. Joint diagnosis of problems, potential solutions, and opportunities enables individuals to feel ownership of the change along with feeling like worthy contributors to an important effort. Successful leaders live and model the change – they not only talk about the change, they can enact it. They are the first to modify their behaviors, practice new ways, and advocate the benefits of change (Gilley 2005).
Supporter
Enabling change involves communicating often, providing adequate resources and training, anticipating a learning curve, allowing for mistakes, rewarding individual and group change efforts, continually monitoring the process and its progress, making adjustments to the change effort as necessary, and celebrating milestones. Change leaders create a culture of change. Organizational culture reflects the shared beliefs, assumptions, and behaviors acquired over time by members of the firm. Involving others – treating them like partners – conveys the sense that ‘our success depends on this change’. Change leaders understand that individuals support what they help create. Since change involves engaging in something new, encouraging entrepreneurship, creativity, and innovation proves logical. In the supporter role, change leaders perfect the art of communication by interacting with employees at all levels and meeting their information and feedback needs (Williams 2005).
Problem Solver
Effective change leaders analyze the situation and identify the problems. They also create creative solutions for those problems. Change leaders rely on their own investigation as well as their network of connected organizational members for data, insights, and feedback regarding the state of the environment surrounding the change (Williams 2005).
Change Manager
Change management, by virtue of its complex nature, must be carefully monitored, lest the initiative get out of control. The traditional definition of management is planning, directing, organizing and controlling (Gilley 2005).
As change take place in the organization the leader according to Williams (1998) must have the ability to create and sustain excellence. He must posses proactivity and a capacity for anticipatory thinking, envisioning and action. They must recognize the importance of innovation and must have the skill to tap into all available sources of creativity. Lastly, leaders must integrate competence and the ability to co-ordinate the constituent parts and strengths of an organization into cohesive and effective production and delivery.
Leadership and the Change Process
Leadership is one of the most important facets of any change initiative. It is leadership that will determine how the goals and objectives of the change initiative will be achieved and how people will be managed in order to integrate their efforts. The change process focuses on how leadership will affect the change process. Each phase of the process requires the leader to effectively to visualize, plan, share, communicate, implement and manage. The change process is discussed below.
1. Analyze the Organization and its Need for Change
The manager of change must first have a clear idea of the organization’s current situation. The manager must conduct any one of the following:
- A full financial audit of the organization
- A structural survey in which different departments and their staff are identified
- A skills audit of the organization’s personnel
- A marketing analysis of the business within the industry
The organization’s operations including the way it functions in its environment, its strengths and weaknesses must be studied before planning for change.
2. Create a Shared Vision and Common Direction
It is important to engage every member of the organization to make the planned change successful. According to Jick and Peiperl (2003), uniting the entire organization behind a central vision is important to the success of the planned change. The vision should reflect the philosophy and values of the organization and should help it to articulate what it hopes to become. A successful vision aims to guide behavior and to aid an organization to achieve goals (cited in Randall 2004, p. 138).
3. Create a Sense of Urgency
The manager must create a sense of urgency and appeal to employees’ self-interests by clearly explaining that their future well-being is at stake.
4. Support a Strong Leader Role
The transformational leader must turn employee compliance to commitment.
5. Craft an Implementation Plan
For change to become successful, the manager must embark on a programme of involvement precisely at the point where decisions are to be made about what is to happen and how it is to take place.
6. Communicate and Involve People
Real Communication requires a dialogue among the different change roles. By listening and responding to concerns, resistance and feedback from all levels, implementers gain a broader understanding of what the change means to different parts of the organization and how it will affect them.
7. Reinforce and Institutionalize Change
Throughout the pursuit of change, managers and leaders should make it a top priority to prove their commitment to the transformation process, to reward risk taking and to incorporate new behaviours into the day-to-day operations of the organization. By reinforcing the new culture, they affirm its importance and hasten its acceptance.
In every stage in the change process, the leader is the single most important figure. He is the one who plans, communicates and implements the strategies with the cooperation of the people in the organization.
Discussion
In order to change, an organization requires an appraisal of its internal and external environment. Analyzing threats and opportunities, strength and weaknesses, and resources is the cornerstone of strategic management. One of the core concepts of managing change is the identification of change need. I learned that in order for the organization to facilitate change and to be successful in implementing change, identification of the change need must first be accomplished. In managing change, it is also important to deal with the factors that cause resistance to change. This entails the management of the people side of change. People resist change because of different reasons but it all boils down to the fear of the unknown. People resist change because they are uncertain about the impact of the change. They resist change because they are not well informed and educated.
Conclusion
I learned that change is a process that requires a deep understanding of the organization and its components. Change can be caused by different environmental factors. For example, many organizations are introducing flexible working arrangements and family-friendly policies. This change in the aspect of work can be caused by the changes in the demography of the labor force. This can also be caused by the desire of the organization to attract and retain its employees and to improve its production. Whatever may be the reason behind a change, the change agent and the management must have a proper understanding of the organization.
References
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