Organizational Change Management: Factors, Roles, Resistance And Strategies

Factors Driving Change in an Organization

There is one phrase that talks about change; it states that change is the only constant thing present in the environment. This phrase clearly explains that the organizations need to develop and change in order to grow in the target market. According to Cameron, & Green, 2015, Change is an important aspect of the business cycle as it helps the organizations to carry on their activities in long run. The purpose of this essay is to enlighten the reader about the process of organizational change management. By the way, of literature review, the essay answers five different questions about the change management process. Further, it explains the factors driving change in an organization, along with role of senior management in implementing change. It also describes the reasons of resistance to change, steps initiated by the organization to adopt change and strategies to ensure change capable culture. Further, more details about the literature review are discussed below:

There are different types of external as well as internal factors that affect the process of change management in an organization. Change management is usually implemented in an organization when the company faces some unseen liability or there is change in business requirement. These factors driving in change in an organization can be external or internal. External factors refer to those factors that are present outside the boundaries of business whereas internal factors are those factors that are present in internal space of the business. In the viewpoint of Hornstein, 2015, one such internal factor is workforce diversity, as employees’ works in the internal process of the organization they are one such internal factor present in organization that drive change. Along with advantage, diversity also provides various challenges to the business as well. It is important for the management to initiate activities that helps the organization to successfully gain benefits to diversity in business. In this case the management need to initiate training program and develop the mind-set of employee. Another such change is technological innovation present in external environment (Armstrong, & Taylor, 2014).

According to Carnall, 2018, Innovation in technology present in the external environment makes the internal technology used in business incompetent. In response to which, the management implement change management program so as to develop such technology in their business and grow. Lastly, competition is a strong external factor that drive the management to make changes in their business process. Entrance of new competitors in the target market forces the existing organization to change their process in such a way that a sustainable position for the company is maintained (Anderson, 2016).

Role of Senior Management in Implementing Change

The fact should be noted that managers and supervisors act as the kingpin in managing success of the change management program. Kaufman, 2017, said the higher authorities of the company plays a very significant role in influencing the subordinates to become a part of the change management and help the organization to change for good. The fact should be noted that change at workplace cannot effective occur without good leadership program. If the leaders of the company themselves follow the change management program and lead the path to the employees then they will follow their leaders to make changes in organization. Particularly, there are five roles that a leader play in an organization during the process of change management, these roles are communicator, advocate, coach, liaison, and resistance manager. Communicator in such a way that he communicates about the change program going to be initiated at workplace. Further Hayes, 2018 said, advocate in such a way that the leader argue and support the change at workplace; further the leader acts as a coach while engaging the team to work according to change implemented. Liaison in such a way so as to create link between the top and bottom employees and support the project team as well, lastly the leader act as a resistance manager so as to identify and manage resistance at workplace. So, in this way, it should be noted that the managers play most important role in successfully facilitating and implementing changes at workplace (Craig, Nevin, & Odum, 2014).

Change is also looked after as a problem but it is not actually a problem for business, the real problem is the resistance to change. Change is an effective process but resistance makes it difficult to adopt such process in an organization. Alvesson, & Sveningsson, 2015, said that cannot be said that resistance to change is an unreasonable claim however; it can be resolved by working on it. Many employees in an organization, even the managers also face problems due to change, resulting in which they resist towards it. The biggest reason for the resistance to change in an organization is the loss of power; the employees continuously resist towards change because they feel that the change will develop new requirement and job opportunities for the business due to which the company will take way the power given to existing employees in an organization. Further, another cause can be poor leadership and communication in organization, as it is known that communication is cure for all the ills present in an organization. As discussed above that good leadership skill can easily implement the change management program in an organization. Thus, communication and leadership acts as reason for resistance of change. Poor leadership is further extended to lack of trust of employees on the leaders in an organization. Resistance to change occurs when the employees do not adequately trust on the instincts of the leaders. Lack of trust can be acted as one of the biggest cause of resistance to change in an organization as employees will never agree to initiate change when they do not trust the vision of their leaders (Georgalis, Samaratunge, Kimberley, & Lu, 2015).

Reasons of Resistance to Change

In the perspective of Petrou, Demerouti, & Schaufeli, 2018, it is important for the business to implement various steps that can help the management in effectively reducing the effect of resistance to change and initiating change at workplace. The first step that the organization should implement is development of vision that aligns the interest of employees by initiating change. The change program should benefit the employees in one way or other, then only the employees will co-operate in the organization. A clearly vision will also help the employees to concentrate on the objectives and move towards the right direction of change without getting distracted. Further, Kanaane, Akabane, Peterossi, & Endler, 2015 wrote that communication strategy should also be implemented at workplace; this strategy will help the senior management to effectively communicate their reason to implement changes at workplace. Good communication will also help the employees to ask their queries from the management and resolve it at the same time without getting dissatisfied. Lastly, the company should also aim to provide effective training to the employees of the company so that they can implement changes at workplace. Suppose, the organization want to initiate diversity at workplace in response to which the management should provide effective cross-cultural training to the employees. Apart from this, the management should also aim to provide adequate resources to the employees so that they can make use of it and help the company to attain its objectives as well (Al-Haddad, & Kotnour, 2015).

Despite of changing the organization according to the requirements, it is important for the organization to be change capable. A change capable organization is an organization that wants to achieve effective change by initiating effective solutions and significant cultural shifts as well. Further, coming up to the aspect of culture, it should be noted that change capable culture refers to the workplace culture under which the employees positively adopt the changes implemented by the top authority of the organization. If the change capable culture is adopted at workplace then no company would face the problem or resistance to change in their organization. If an organization adopts the change capable culture then they need not to tackle the problem of conflicts at workplace.

Hickman, & Silva, 2018 said that, there are ways in which an organization can successfully adopt change capable culture at workplace. The first strategy is communication as it is the key feature that help in implementing changes. This aspect helps the management to convince the employees to look for changes with a positive approach and adopt them effectively. Further, flexibility at workplace is another strategy with the help of which change capable culture can be developed; and lastly employee collaboration in the business drive a cultural change in organization.  If the employees will contribute in the change provide then it will directly motivate them to apply other changes at workplace that can help the business to succeed (Benn, Edwards, & Williams, 2014).

Thus, in the limelight of above-mentioned events, the fact should be noted that change is an important part for business that helps it in becoming competent in the target market. The above-mentioned essay explained the factors initiated change process in an organization along with the role of authorities in implementing changes. The essay also summarises the causes of resistance along with the strategies to effectively implement and facilitate changes at workplace.

References

Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: a model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 234-262.

Alvesson, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2015). Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. UK: Routledge.

Anderson, D. L. (2016). Organization development: The process of leading organizational change. Sage Publications.

Armstrong, M., & Taylor, S. (2014). Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management practice. UK: Kogan Page Publishers.

Benn, S., Edwards, M., & Williams, T. (2014). Organizational change for corporate sustainability. UK: Routledge.

Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2015). Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. UK: Kogan Page Publishers.

Carnall, C. (2018). Managing change. UK: Routledge.

Craig, A. R., Nevin, J. A., & Odum, A. L. (2014). Resistance to Change. The Wiley Blackwell handbook of operant and classical conditioning, 249.

Georgalis, J., Samaratunge, R., Kimberley, N., & Lu, Y. (2015). Change process characteristics and resistance to organisational change: The role of employee perceptions of justice. Australian Journal of Management, 40(1), 89-113.

Hayes, J. (2018). The theory and practice of change management. UK: Palgrave macmillan.

Hickman, C. R., & Silva, M. A. (2018). Creating excellence: Managing corporate culture, strategy, and change in the new age. UK: Routledge.

Hornstein, H. A. (2015). The integration of project management and organizational change management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), 291-298.

Kanaane, R., Akabane, G., Peterossi, H., & Endler, D. C. N. (2015). Organizational change management in a strategic perspective. American Journal of Management, 15(2), 88.

Kaufman, H. (2017). The limits of organizational change. UK: Routledge.

Petrou, P., Demerouti, E., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2018). Crafting the change: The role of employee job crafting behaviors for successful organizational change. Journal of Management, 44(5), 1766-1792.