Model of Planned Organisational Change

These changes require that we alter what we expect from the people we work with. We have to change the values we live by. Values like awareness, teamwork, tolerance, responsibility and information are paramount – just as flexibility and change readiness.

Overview

Scholars define change management as the act of changing the current state of affairs to new ways of doing things through a series of activities including communication and education, leadership, and teamwork

When one switches from manual system to automated system we have to consider the change management because organisational changes typically involve many different types and levels of personal loss for the people in the organisation. 

For example, change always requires the effort to learn the new, which is a loss in terms of time and energy that could have been used elsewhere. Although some may welcome the learning opportunity, many of us don’t want to invest that time and energy unless we are dissatisfied with the current arrangements or see powerful advantages to the proposed change. Upgrading to new software in which the future benefits may not be seen as sufficient to outweigh the short-term investment required to learn the new programs.

Self-Confidence

Second, people want to feel good about themselves. Ideally, people are able to take pride in their work, feel responsible for a job well done, feel they are part of a high-quality enterprise, and feel that their time has some significance. In many work situations, the work itself and the organisational culture make it difficult for people to feel good about themselves. In these poorer situations, people usually invent strategies to help them feel better about themselves, and these strategies involve getting some sense of control, belongingness, and significance out of their work. 

Sometimes this involves opposition to management, on the assumption that management is always up to no good. More commonly, the worker-management relationships are not completely alienated. Still, the workers’ strategies for achieving “good” feelings are unknown to or quite misunderstood by management. Therefore, change initiatives, unknowingly and unintentionally, threaten to cause the workers serious personal loss. Not surprisingly, the workers resist and do all they can to sabotage such change initiatives.

Coping with Losses

Third, change initiatives often require large losses for middle managers. Generally, people perceive that information systems increase the ability of top executives to know more about what is going on and to exert more direct control. New systems require us to learn a new set of behaviours.

Reasons for Change

Factors may lead to a necessity for change, including to:

• Improve performance;
• Reduce waste and inefficiency;
• Empowerment of management control and satisfaction of the employees;
• Improve the quality and productivity of an organisation;
• Compete in the changing market environment;
• Achieve the desired business results as early as possible.

Model of planned organisational change

You can, ultimately, manage change. By observing external trends, patterns and needs, managers use planned change to help the organisation to adapt to external problems and opportunities. When organisations fail to anticipate or respond to new needs, management is at fault.

Four events make up the change sequence:

• Internal and external forces for change exist;
• Organisation managers monitor these forces and become aware of a need for change;
• A perception of need triggers the initiation for change;
• Which, in turn, they implement.

How one handles each of these activities depends upon the organisation and managers’ styles.

Organisational Development

Organisational development (OD) is the application of behavioural science knowledge to improve an organisation’s health and effectiveness. They achieve this through its ability to cope with environmental changes, improve internal relationships. Moreover, they increase problem-solving capabilities. Organisational development improves working relationships among employees. The following are three types of current problems that OD can help managers address.

Mergers/Acquisitions

Culture differences need evaluation during the acquisition process. Accordingly, OD experts can smooth over the integration of two firms.

Organisational Decline/Revitalisation

OD techniques can contribute greatly to cultural revitalisation by managing conflicts, fostering commitment, and facilitating communication.

Conflict Management

Conflict can occur at any time and place within a healthy organisation. Organisational development efforts can help solve these kinds of conflicts.

Organisational Development Activities and Planned Organisational Change

A number of OD activities have emerged in recent years. Some of the most popular and effective are as follows.

Team-Building Activities

Team building enhances the cohesiveness and success of organisational groups and teams.

Survey-Feedback Activities

Survey feedback begins with a questionnaire distributed to employees. Employees engage in problem solving resulting from the data they receive from the questionnaire.

Intergroup Activities

These activities include retreats and workshops to improve the effectiveness of groups or departments that must work together.

Process-Consultation Activities

Organisational development consultants help managers understand the human processes within their organisation and how to manage them.

Symbolic Leadership Activities

This approach helps managers to use the techniques for cultural change, including public statements, ceremonies, and slogans.

Forces for Change

Forces for organisational change exist both in the external environment and within the organisation.

Environmental Forces

External forces originate in all environmental sectors, including competitors, technology, economic forces,

Internal Forces

Internal forces for change arise from internal activities and decisions. Ergo: if top managers select a goal of rapid company growth, internal actions will need to change to meet that growth.

Change Process: Unfreezing: Moving: Refreezing:

• Breaking from the Instituting the reinforcing and
• old ways of doing change supporting the
• things new ways

Unfreezing stage

Management realises that its current practices are no longer appropriate and the company must break out of (unfreeze) its present pattern by doing things differently” (Bateman & Snell, 2004:559). Environmental changes or the performance gap (drivers of change) can trigger this. In this stage, people need to move toward recognising that some of the past ways of thinking, feeling and doing things are out of date. 

Bateman & Snell (2004:559) state that the most effective way to do this is to communicate to people the negative consequences of the old ways by comparing the organisation’s performance to its competitors. However, they must take care not to arouse people’s defensiveness by pinning the blame directly and entirely on them.

Moving

Institute change begins with establishing a vision of where the company is heading (Bateman & Snell, 2004:560). The organisation needs to get the vision right. You can do so by enabling the people to establish a vision and strategy. One, ideally, that allows them to focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency. It is of critical importance to inspire people to move and make objectives real and relevant. 

In addition, it’s imperative to build a team with the right people in place with the right emotional commitment. Moreover, team members require the right mix of skills and levels. Van der Linde (2002:47) compliments this in his highlight of the importance of visionary leadership in instituting change. In fact, Van der Linde (2002:47) contends that you can engage visionary leadership through the following Cs:

• clarity;
• commitment;
• communication;
• capabilities;
• organisation culture;
• configuration and;
• continuous learning.

Refreezing

Refers to the enhancement of the new behaviours that support the change The changes are spread and stabilised throughout the organisation in order for people to identify and behave accordingly. During this stage, control measures, corrective and rewarding measures that support the change are implemented to change behaviours. 

Bateman & Snell (2004:560) highlight the importance of guarding against refreezing rigid behaviours that might be problematic in future. Bateman & Snell (2004:560) contend that the behaviours that should be refrozen are those that promote continued adaptability, flexibility, experimentation, assessment of results and continuous improvement.

Implementing Change

Creative culture, idea champions and new-venture teams are ways to facilitate the initiation of new ideas. The other step to be managed in the change process is implementation. A new idea will not benefit the organisation until it is in place and being fully utilised. One frustration for managers is that employees often seem to resist change for no apparent reason. To effectively manage the implementation process, managers should be aware of the reason for employee resistance and be prepared to use it. Techniques for obtaining employee cooperation are:

Why Do Employees Resist Change

Idea champions often discover that other employees are unenthusiastic about their new idea. Members of a new-venture group may be surprised when managers in the regular organisation do not support or approve their innovations. Several reasons for employee resistance are:

Self-Interest

Employees typically resist a change they believe will take away something of value. A proposed change in job design, structure, or technology may lead to a perceived loss of power, prestige, pay, or many company benefits. The fear of personal loss is perhaps the biggest obstacle to organisational change.

Lack Of Understanding And Trust

Employees often do not understand the intended purpose of a change or distrust the intentions behind it. If the previous working relationships with an idea champion have been negative, resistance may occur.

Uncertainty

Uncertainty is the lack of information about future events. It represents a fear of the unknown. Uncertainty is especially threatening for employees who have a low tolerance for a change and fear the novel and unusual.

Different Assessment and Goals

Another reason for resistance to change is that people who will be affected by innovation may assess the situation differently from an idea champion or new-venture group. Managers in different departments pursue different goals and an innovation may detract from performance and goal achievement for some departments.

The reasons for resistance are legitimate in the eyes of employees affected by the changes. The best procedure for managers is not to ignore resistance but to diagnose the reasons and design strategies to gain acceptance by users.

The strategies for overcoming resistance to change typically involve two approaches: the analysis of resistance through the force field technique and the use of selective implementation tactics to overcome resistance.

Force Field Analysis

It’s the process of determining which forces drive and which resist a proposed change. To implement a change, management should analyze the change forces. By selectively removing forces that restrain change, the driving forces will be strong enough to enable implementation. As restraining forces are reduced or removed, behaviour will shift to incorporate the desired changes.

Overcoming Resistance to Change

The other approach to managing implementation is to adopt specific tactics to overcome employee resistance. The following five tactics have proven successful:

Communication and Education

Communication and education are used when solid information about the change is needed by users and others who may resist implementation. Education is especially important when the change involves new technical knowledge or users are unfamiliar with the idea.

Participation

Participation involves users and potential resistors in designing the change. This approach is time consuming, but it pays off because users understand and become committed to the change.

Negotiation

Negotiation is a more formal means of achieving cooperation. In essence, negotiation uses formal bargaining to win acceptance and approval of a desired change.

Coercion

In essence, Coercion means that managers use formal power to force employees to change. Resistors are told to accept the change or lose rewards or even their jobs. Coercion is necessary in crisis situations when a rapid response is urgent.

Top Management Support

The visible support of top management also helps overcome resistance to change. Top management support symbolises to all employees that the change is important for the organisation.

Benefits and significance of change management

Some of the unique benefits of change management from organisational perspective are given below:

Understanding environment (society, government, and customers)

It is important for an organisation to understand, assess and gauge the dynamics in its external environment in order to envisage and establish an appropriate relationship with various actors like government, customers and society. Therefore managers by knowing the subject of change management can better be prepared to understand whatever is going on in the environment.

Objectives, strategy formulation & implementation (to develop competitive advantage)

The second is the consequence of knowing the impact of change at an extraneous level on its own internal dynamics, and the foremost is objective setting and seeking competitive advantage.

Employees (trained, high performing work practices, reliable organisation)

The employees are the recipients of the change plan. One such perpetual concern of senior managers is to make the organisation highly reliable. Therefore employees ought to be trained and high performing in today’s hyper competitive world.

Technology Issues

Technology is considered the engine of growth in today’s world. Perhaps the greatest challenge for contemporary organisations is the acquisition and integration of technology in its strategy, structure and process.

Conclusion: Planned Organisational Change

Change management and its impact during the implementation of a new business model including a shared service. The implementation of shared services requires a significant integration and coordination, including human resources, to ensure success. To be a partner to the business, the shared services unit and its employees must understand profoundly what capabilities drive successful implementation and how the nature of work affects those capabilities.