Effective Change Management in the Modern Organization

Effective change management can greatly benefit an organization in various aspects in relation to growth and competitive advantages. Although change seems great. there are many factors that impact upon effective change management. These include the contextual, complexity and ambiguity of change. This essay will cover topics of the forces of change upon an organization. What causes the resistance of change for both individuals and from an organizational perspective, and how it should be dealt With upon to succeed in effective change management? After reading this essay, there should be a further understanding upon change management.

Effective change management is what all organizations want, which is, being able to change without much doubt, Without it being too complex, and without it being too unclear. Although this is what all organizations strive for, it is not always so simple to plan change without these feelings of doubt.

Change is inevitably introduced into our society, and without change, one’s self will not be able to carry onto the next step upon their quest of survival.

As a real-life view, change is everywhere and change is unavoidable. Robbins and Barnwell describe change as an overworked cliché. and it seems impossible to write any management textbook without change in it. So it comes to the question, why is it a necessity for organizations to change? And what affects effective change management Robbins et aI discuss that change is driven by five main points: the nature of the workforce technology, competition, social trends and world politics.

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The nature of the workforce affects change due to the diversity of the organization itself. As the organization grows in size, it is common for the organization itself to gain a wider range of different cultures.

Technology is no doubt one of the leading drivers upon change management stoner et al, argue that although changes in technology affect the operations, products and services of the organization, technological breakthroughs can lead to new competitive positions in different industries. Technology is rapidly changing our society positively, as well as being negatively at the same time. An example of this statement is With the use of cell phones although cell phones are in no doubt a breakthrough towards communication, many sides affects such as brain tumors and cancer arise. So it is common sense to plan before implementing any change in regards With technology. Competition affects change towards ones organization greatly in various situations. It is important that organizations keep close relations With their competition, in order to consistently maintain a competitive advantage.

Von Stamm points out that all organizations should adapt innovative creativity within their organizations in remaining at the forefront of business development. An example of this situation is within the pizza industry. The leading competitors Within today’s pizza industry are Pizza hut, pizza haven and Domino’s, Each one of this pizza industries all serve the same menu but is categorized differently upon the name of the food. When pizza hut implemented the new ‘cheesy crust’ pizzas, it wasn‘t long after that the other competitors benchmarked their idea to stay in the competition. So through this example. it is important to gain a broad knowledge of competitors. Social Trends attribute to organizational change with great impact without knowledge of What today‘s social trend is, an organization can lose a great amount of customers if the organisation does not adapt to somal trends. Mark Teale et al Justify that the theory of psychological trend addresses the ways in which individuals come to make sense of themselves and their surroundings as social beings.

This means that individuals associate themselves to ‘what is popular’ in today’s market. It is important for organizations to gain good feedback from customers regularly in order to gain knowledge of ‘what’s hot’, or ‘what‘s not‘. This is important because customers are the key elements of an organisation’s cash flow, and without customers being satisfied. With their purchase it is certain that an organization Will collapse world politics in relation to change affect any organization greatly. Examples of world politics are the increased market globally which can lead to extra competition, or the War in Iraq which affects today’s oil prices, or even the recent terrorist attacks happening worldwide. Robbins et ai discusses how factors such as terrorism affect organisations in different ways such as security or backup of information. In contrast to a time Without war or a time without so much insecurity, most companies Will have no need for much security.

Although this may seem desirable, the reality is that society today involves war and conflict in regards to politics. Now that the forces of change topics have been covered there are still many impacts of organizational change. Towards change as an individual. it seems possible to notice that human beings are set to a routine in a daily basis of what they do. For example, the routine to travel to university consists of the same roads and same highways in order to get to the destination, but what if maintenance is needed on one of the roads? An individual Will find trouble of taking alternative routes, sometimes even taking much longer to arrive at the same destination According to Robbins et al, this trouble is considered to be one of the many resistances to change towards an individual since it‘s breaking the individuals habit. Within an organization, a number of individuals will gain resistance to change if the change affects their ‘comfort Zone‘. Robbins et al states that there are five factors that may affect an individual to be resistant towards change.

These include; habit, where individuals Will be hesitant to find alternative methods in order to complete something they already gained a habit to: security where individuals may fear their life being. In danger or their jobs at risk; economic factors, individuals may fear that change may affect their current income: fear of the unknown. some individuals will face a totally different system and hold dislike for uncertainty: selective information processing, when individuals select what they want to do, or a hear what they want to hear (Example, employees may ignore certain a criteria which the manager set). Although change from an individual pomt of view maybe a complex and ambiguous step, in relation to the Forces of Change, it is a necessity for ones self to continuously change and constantly learn the new changes of life in order to improve ones self to the next step.

An example of a change which results in a complex and ambiguous manner is the transference of a student from high school to university. Although it is not necessary to go to university a student whom wants to complete a university degree will have to change from a known environment to a different environment even if he/she feels uncomfortable, The resistance of change is what impacts upon effective change towards an individual. To gain effective change management. a manager must not only be able to effectively control individual change. but they must also be able to overcome organizational resistance. According to Robbins, there are six main factors in organizational resistance to change. These include; structural inertia, where the employees and the staff are trained to behave in certain ways, a change in the organization Will affect their structure thus creating a counterbalance to sustain stability Limited focus of change, where organizations are made up of a number of interdependent sub-systems.

Limited changes in subsystems tend to get nullified by the larger system; group inertia, even though an individual might accept certain change, it is not always the case. Where his/her group will accept it; threat to expertise, this is when specialized groups in organizations fear for their position, for example, factory workers are threatened by new technology which may take over their job; threat to establish power relationships, such factors as self-managing teams can be threatening to supervisors and middle managers: Threat to established resource allocations, where certain groups or departments, fear change if it affects their budget towards their resources. This ‘ resistance to change’ are known as the impact upon effective change management. In order for an organization to change effectively, organizations Will need to implement the use of change agents. Stoner et al describes a change agent as “The individual leading or guiding the process of change in an organization.”

A change agents role is to analyse the organization itself and take the best method of change for implementation. A change agent must resolve all resistance towards change, in order to take the organizational level to a next step. To overcome some of the resistance to change, Robbins justifies that a change agent) implement the six following tactics: education and communication, where indivrduals and groups are informed about the change; participation, gathering individuals or groups to play their role in the change; facilitation and support, offer help for those individuals that need it; negotiation, where there may be an exchange of something valuable to overcome the resistance to change, an example would be a pay rise, manipulation and cooptation. Where change agents tWIsi facts trying to make them more attractive, which may also hold undesirable information; coermon, the last method of implementing change, but when change is needed, change agents or managers could implement force or threats to gain successful change.

In conclusion, resistance to change holds a great impact towards effective change management, The five forces of change drive organizations to manage change effectively. For an organization to gain effective change management and to overcome the complexity and ambiguity towards change management, an excellent strategy is with the use of change agents. Change agents Will implement different strategies overcoming an individual and the organization itself resistances thus gaining effective change management. It is In no doubt that if organizations to not change and implements behavior such as ‘It‘s worked for me, and it will continue to work for me‘, there is no hope in successful growth of the organization. This IS why it is WISe for organisation to take precautions when dealing with change management.