Change is inevitable in today’s business environment. Changes in an organization take place whenever a company tries to reach its desired state somewhere in the future and to achieve it, goes through considerable transitions (Hayes 2014). These changes can be organized and managed by the simple processes of planning and bringing about the changes in the organization such that the employee resistance could be minimized keeping the cost estimation balance of the organization and increasing the effectiveness of the changes implemented in the organization (Benn, Dunphy and Griffiths 2014). Almost every existing company needs to undergo constant changes if they have to survive in the contemporary business world as it is growing in competitiveness every passing day (Bradley 2016). The following report includes a detailed analysis of a change situation in the organization Midshires College where it attempts to merger a set of five colleges of the same industry to form the of Midwifery and Nursing. To analyse the situation of change in the organization, the report would further analyse in details about the genuine need of the change in the organization, the target that the organization intents to achieve with the merger, and the assessment of the organization’s readiness for the merger (Matos Marques Simoes and Esposito 2014). The change analysis would require the leadership and communication that is required for the merger along with the handling of the resistances that were imposed upon during the merger. The analysis would include the type of change and the cultural implications that come along with it and to what extent the changes have been successfully implemented in the company.
The change situation that has been described in the case study provided includes the attempt to merge five colleges of midwifery and nursing to form the Midshires College of Midwifery and Nursing. The colleges that have been included in the merger served for the hospitals in ten different Health Authorities, which in fact had appointed a Steering Group to supervise the amalgamation of the five colleges. The Steering Group included the General Manager from different NHS hospital trusts that comprised of the Health Authorities. The total number of representatives included 24 members in the Regional Health Authority. Case study shows that in previous times these mergers would not interfere with the jobs of the preceding employees, as a minimum with the managers keeping their posts, and were more or less straightforward in their approach in comparison. However, in the contemporary times, there were three indentified issues in the merger. These issues included threat to jobs, the ambiguous position of the colleges in their objectives and the passing on of these objectives, and the thought of merging higher education with the qualification gain (Gollenia 2016). It was thus a challenge to bring about the changes in the organizational structure as well as eradicate the issues that the merger was facing as a result.
The deliverables of the Steering Group was more or less straightforward in approach. All it wanted to was to supervise the merger of the five medical colleges in a single one and create the Midshires College of Midwifery and Nursing. In the previous era, there were nurses in the hospitals having immense skills but no educational support for their required skills (Kim, McCunn and Lew 2017). This would often create problems in the establishment of a successful and trustworthy workforce in the hospitals of United Kingdom. This is why, with advancement of time, there have been establishments of nursing and midwifery colleges to educate the people of the respective country about nursing and midwifery without having to depend on their skills alone. However, there have been situations where an institution could not include too many students all at once for the required concentration (Aziz and Curlee 2017). In some cases, it has also been found that in previous times it was part of the NHS policy that the colleges would have a tie up with the hospitals with a specific college for nursing and midwifery. This policy was irreversible and the colleges and the hospitals were to abide by the policy even if they had disagreement with it (Turner 2016). It would go to an extent of tendering colleges outside the country in order to abide by the policy and there have been evidences for the same as well. Again, there had been incidences where the nurses in need for post-experience courses would look for alternative suppliers in the short terms.
Therefore, there was indeed a requirement for the changes in the industry to maintain the balance of the universities and the nursing and midwifery courses with the number of colleges and universities within the country. This is because, the inference of the jobs with 30 percent of the on hand staff amongst the five colleges could be fused together (Kuipers et al. 2014).
As per the strategy of the Steering Group employed to supervise the merger of the five colleges, it was evident that the merger would be carried out in a mechanical and uncomplicated process. The target was to achieve the merger in a period of 24 months. To achieve the merger, the Steering group had appointed a Project Leader, who was the principal of one of the colleges that were to be merged (Pugh 2016). There was, however, no report of proposed budget provided to the Project Leader, only the person could decide on the resources required to merge the five colleges into one. The Project Leader formed the bridge in the gaps between the Project Board and the Steering Group. The Project Leader thus appointed was enthusiastic, had already contacted the principals of the colleges to be merged, and had formed the Project Board along with the memberships. The Project Lead was a retiring principal of one of the five colleges that were to be merged; therefore, ideally, he should not have been selected as the Project Lead (Kash et al. 2014). However, by the first Board meeting, he had fashioned an administrative process and the centralisation plan for student requirement even without a secretary.
Therefore, it could be said that to achieve the target, the Steering Group had implemented the ideal person for supervising the planning to complete the merger within the next 24 months since the implementation of the plan.
After the appointment of the Project Leader, who was one of the principals of the colleges to be merged, the planning for the projects started on a high note. The Project Leader had already contacted all the respective principals of the remaining colleges and explained their roles that would be implemented in the project. The project planning was ready during the course of time and the Project Leader had implemented and disbanded the Project Board at the same time during this. A short-term Management Committee was also put into action during this time.
The Project Lead also involved the other four principals as part of the Management Committee with specific responsibilities leaving their posts to new head of the sites. Including the proposed sub-projects and project planning, the Project Leader was confident to introduce the fully functional setup for the new college by the 12th month of the merger calendar.
In spite of the successful planning of the structural and functional setup, one aspect of the entire arrangement was overlooked. The inflow of the new students was not considered while planning. If the offering post-registration course or moving into higher education of the courses were not taken into consideration, there would be no inflow of new students in the merged college (Cummings and Worley 2014). Therefore, despite the growth in the project planning, the merger was still not ready to be carried out.
Although, the governmental role and the responsibilities of the institution leader, in this case, the principals of the colleges, are highly addressed whilst the planning for the merger goes on, there is very less focus given to the cultural implications that could become an issue while merging two or more higher education institutions. One of the major cultural allegations that could occur while merging the institutions is maintaining the balance of the hospital and educational environments (Doppelt 2017). The primary perception differences and similarities in the cultural differences performing the merger of the five colleges serving under the hospitals of NHS trusts should be implemented in the project planning (Hornstein 2015). In comparison to any other organization, cultural implications affect the academic environment the most. A merger seems to be more effective where there exists a greater possibility of integration and articulation of commonality between the goals and visions of the institution in question, helping in the characterization of the institutions where culture and missions are complimentary. Cross-sectoral or vertical mergers between these five colleges are more likely to be successful if when the merger and post-merger phases are managed with effectiveness (Moran, Abramson and Moran 2014). There is another cultural implication in merging these five colleges into one. This would be the managing of the absorption of the diversified campus cultures into one consistent educational community. The merged and unified culture would represent the higher level of cultural amalgamation in the unified institution, and not just the amalgamation of the management.
The cultural differences may also imply to the variations in concentration of the colleges (Hughes and Wearing 2016). It may occur that one college provides detailed professional training in one concentration whereas another offers training in some other. Merging all the colleges into one would imply that there would be no solo focus on the subject but diversified. Although, this only provides professional expertise, the adaptation of these colleges from one subject to four varied subjects would require adaptation into a different culture.
Since these cultural differences prevail for the merger of the five colleges into one midwife and nursing institute, building an integrated and coherent educational community during and after the merger has occurred, is not an easy task to highlight the leadership and management to concentrate on consolidation after the merger and building a community.
The Steering Group had selected a Project Leader for the amalgamation of the colleges. This Project Leader is one of the principals of the colleges that are to be merged. When he was given a timeline of 24 months, he enthusiastically started to plan for the project. Initially, being the principal of his previous college, the Project Leader had only two years of service left. He had not given a fixed budget or any subordinate, but a 24 months’ time to accomplish his goal.
This was a fault by the Steering Group as there had been no management structure. Ideally, it would have been more convenient if the Project Lead would have been provided with few subordinates or colleagues to have several brains forming the management structure. Since there have been only one Project Lead, the working mind focused on just one aspect of managing the structural workforce for the merger (Goleman 2017). During the course of time, the hurriedness of the Project Lead left the other staff in confusion about their posts and deliverables. The project also lacked in mission and vision, which is the responsibility of the Project Lead to provide. The accounting of the new students in the now-diversified scheme of the new college was also not taken into consideration by the Project Lead. The staffs were confused about the services to be provided and the structural anatomy of their services. Even after the staff conference, when the Project Leader had called for another Project Board meeting, it was found that rather than examining the situations and discussing the probable actions to be taken, the conference only presented the ideas that the members had no other option but to accept leaving the work done so far turn meaningless.
Therefore, when all these are taken into consideration, it is seen that the merger team lacked in leadership and communication (Certo 2015). This affected the change management procedure to the core such that meeting the target seemed far reach.
The only resistance that the entire project had was in the mismanagement of the selection of an influential project lead. Since the inception of the project, the only progress that it had made was the assignment of posts to the respective people. However, the assigned post-holders had no idea about their specific tasks. Moreover, the Project Leader was deflected from his usual course of action, focusing on completing the task as soon as possible, even if it was before the proposed calendar. This resulted in faulty project planning and restricted course of work where the people had no other option than abiding the orders of the Project Lead. This formed a huge resistance in the project marking the slow progress of the merger such that after a considerable amount of time it was seen that the project was not implemented practically but was only executed on papers.
To consolidate the harms that have been done to the merger, during the 9th month of the merger calendar, a new Chair was appointed by the Steering Group with the condition that any hindrance in the task would require a takeover by the Trust fund.
The changes had only been successful in implementing the tasks and carrying it out fast after it was found that the previous selection for implementing a project leader had failed miserably (Cameron and Green 2015). That was the point when the Steering Group incorporated the new Chair on the 9th month of the project timeline. Otherwise, there have only been sites where the change management had fallen flat on the face trying to merge the five midwives and nursing colleges into one united Midshires College of Midwife and Nursing. A successful change management implementation depends on the following factors (Burke 2017):
From the analysis done above, it is clear that the change management had failed to execute in this case for uniting the nursing and midwifery colleges into one. It lacked in all the factors that makes a successful change situation in an organization.
Conclusion
Hence, from the above analysis, it could be concluded that the change situation that was implemented for the betterment of all the five nursing and midwifery colleges by unifying into one diversified college with the name Midshires College of Midwifery and Nursing, was failing due to lack of planning. In the existing business era, only change is constant. The only way a business could achieve success and thrive with the contemporary times is by keeping on changing their management plans. The same idea was implemented and a change was brought about in the five colleges of United Kingdom to form a single college. However, the group, which was given the responsibility of supervising the entire change, has made mistakes in the initiation. The principal who was chosen to lead the project did not possess a leadership quality and more or less had a dictatorship going on in planning the merger. The plans were not discussed and the Project Meetings did not suffice the progress reports. There had been complete mismanagement until the 9th month of the project calendar, when it was decided that a new Chair of the Steering Group would be appointed. Any redundancies that occurred in the process would by then be taken care of by the Trust of Regional Health Authority. This makes it evident that although change is needed and inevitable to survive, it comes along with many factors to implement a successful change in the business. If an organization fails in implementing any of these factors, bringing a change management would not be triumphant.
Reference
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