Managing Organizational Change In External Environment

Key Aspects of Organizational Change

Discuss about the Manage Organisational Change for Externa Environment.

It is observed that change management is a crucial part of organizations. Today, organizations have to operate in tough economic and externa environment. It is critical that change should not be considered as an overhead in the organization. It is particularly important that change agents should take all the internal and external stakeholders together towards the change. The organizations would particularly have more need of change in the growing or elaboration stage.  In the elaboration stage a business is forced to be innovative and make changes; stagnation will eventually lead to the demise of the organization (Lozano, Ceulemans, & Seatter, 2015).  By returning to “entrepreneurial roots” the company is analysing ways of making the necessary changes to survive and flourish. By giving some divisions of the company the freedom to make decisions and move in directions that are not necessarily typical of the organization at large, innovation can happen. The objective of this essay is to discuss three key aspects of organizational change. These three aspects are content of change, context of change and process of change.[1]

The initial research suggests that all these three elements are required so that organizations can attain the path of sustainable development. In this era of globalization, organizations can achieve its CSR and sustainability objectives only when they are open to change. With the change in market dynamics and change in external environment, organizations are expected to drive the change internally frequently. Therefore, organizations must have an open and flexible culture.[2] 

During any organizational change, human resource management function has a key role to play. In typical scenario, HR managers act as a bridge between the business decision and employees of the organization. Pilbeam & Cobridge (2010) argued that “HR practices help in developing human resources as a source of sustained competitive advantage by creating and developing a pool of high quality human capital” (Pilbeam and Corbridge, 2010 pp 52). [3]Therefore, HR strategist has to be visionaries and innovative to assist the organization to adapt to internal and external changes. The three aspects of change management for organizations in the contemporary business environment can be discussed as:

Content of change: Content of change means the actual change that is happening in the organization. For example, if a large organization want to move to cloud as a part of IT strategy then the content of change would be cloud computing. It is expected that all the employees would not support the idea of cloud computing because the existing employees would be comfortable in the current position (Voet, 2014). Therefore, it is important that the reasons or the drivers of the change should be communicated to all the stakeholders before initiating any change.

Analysis

Context of change: The context of change refers to the environment or the drivers for which change is happening. The organization would want to move to cloud computing to increase its operational efficiency and to save its cost (Ocasio, Loewenstein & Nigam, 2015).[4] The context for change management would generally means that the output that organizations want to achieve.

Process of change: The change process refers to the various stages in the change management process. One of the most commonly used model or theory of change management is Lewin change management model. The Lewin change management model can be discussed as:

The above model highlights that unfreeze is the first stage of change management. In this phase, the change leaders or leaders of the organization must ensure that organization is ready for change. The second stage of change management is ‘change’ This is the phase of change management in which actual change happens in the organization. The last phase of change management is refreeze (Voet, 2014). This is the phase of change management where the organization accept the change and the change is imbibed as organizational culture. [5]

Dell Inc. is a multinational computer company that is privately owned; it sells computers, data storage devices, software’s, printers, cameras, computer peripherals among other things. Dell is a company that was doing so well till it had to change trajectory due to change in the market. As desktops and towers slowly fell out of fashion and the use of laptops became more and more popular, Dell’s model of business in some ways became obsolete. Their innovation systems changed and they started manufacturing laptops, they also ventured into printers and digital music playing systems and other products (Daft,2015). Daft, (2015) suggest this places Dell in the elaboration stage where leadership attempts to prevent further bureaucracy.  This change however came late and they have been struggling for a long time. Dell is however making efforts to improve the appearance of their products to compete with other brands (Daft, 2015).  They have also made alliances with other industry partners to make more impact and recently they have decided to return to the company’s “entrepreneurial roots” by affording divisions a level of autonomy similar to start-up companies thus putting Dell in the elaboration stage.

The Dell, Inc. scenario states that the company sought to return to its “entrepreneurial roots”.  The way that Dell approached this was by allowing divisions within the company grater control /autonomy to increase creativity and innovation.  This is the same approach that is implemented within most start-up companies.  It allows for ideas and information to be shared openly for continued process improvement. This could definitely help increase morale, production, and profits. Daft (2015) outlines the idea that this approach allows those divisions to act as standalones without influence from other outside divisions.

Change Management: An example

It would be correct to say that organizational leader faces certain challenges while implementing the change in the organization. One of the key challenge for change management is communication challenge  (Voet, 2014). There are times when the driver of change are not communicated effectively to different stakeholders in the organization. [6]

The change agent and change leaders have a critical role to play during any change management implementation. It is important that the change agents must use effective communication platform to interact with various stakeholders involved in the change management process. This helps followers to be less resistant and more open to change or contributing to the task and goals of the organization.  Leaders also foster innovation in groups.  This allows followers and organizations to achieve the strategic vision.[7]

Simoes & Esposito (2014) argued that change is difficult for a lot of people. It is important that leaders and change agents should teach everyone to accept that change is not a bad thing.  Lots of people are afraid of the unknown and that make it hard for them to want to learn to do something different.  As people are exposed to new things and shown they can be successful it becomes easier.  Therefore, communication is such a big factor in strategic planning.  Organizational leaders need to meet people where they are at and show them how to implement the change.  When they get discouraged we inspire them.  Change agents should talk to them and find out where the barriers are and show them what the benefits will be. The recommended change management approach can be shown as:

Conclusion

With the above discussion, it can be said that change is essential to longevity of an organization. Innovators should be consistently bringing new ideas to the table, often innovators ideas are not considered part of the company’s vision, but the vision is not written in stone as times change so should the vision (Cummings, Bridgman & Brown, 2016). [8]As leaders look to fill positions it is important to find candidates that are real leaders and can articulate their calling to leadership and commitment to learn to be effective managers.

All the three aspects of change (content, context and process) are interlinked. Any single aspect cannot work better without the support of other aspects. In most of the change management scenario, content could be internal in nature and context could be external in nature. The process refers to the overall process of change management. The focus on sustainable development demands that organizations must have a strong understanding of its internal and [9]external environment. The integrated and collaborative approach of all these three aspects of change management helps organizations to have a good understanding of internal and external environment. Therefore, it can be said that and integrated approach towards all the three aspects of change management would help organizations to continue on the path of sustainable development. 

Reference

CUMMINGS, S., BRIDGMAN, T., & BROWN, K. G. Unfreezing change as three steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s legacy for change management. (Human relations, 69(1), 33-60, 2016)

LOZANO, R., CEULEMANS, K., & SEATTER, C. S. Teaching organisational change management for sustainability: designing and delivering a course at the University of Leeds to better prepare future sustainability change agents. (Journal of Cleaner Production, 106, 205-215, 2015)

MATOS MARQUES SIMOES, P., & ESPOSITO, M. Improving change management: How communication nature influences resistance to change. (Journal of Management Development, 33(4), 324-341, 2014)

OCASIO, W., LOEWENSTEIN, J., & NIGAM, A. How streams of communication reproduce and change institutional logics: The role of categories. (Academy of Management Review, 40(1), 28-48, 2015)

PILBEAM, S. & CORBRIDGE, M. People resourcing and talent planning: (HRM in practice. 4th ed. London: Prentice Hall International, 2010)

VAN DER VOET, J. The effectiveness and specificity of change management in a public organization: Transformational leadership and a bureaucratic organizational structure. (European Management Journal, 32(3), 373-382, 2014)