INNOVATION AND CHANGE

INNOVATION AND CHANGE

Innovation And Change

Introduction

Innovations have become major drivers not only of economic change, but also of societal change more broadly. Innovations are often misunderstood as being a predominantly technological phenomenon. A social science notion of innovation, on the other hand, relates to both technological and social aspects of how human actors pursue material, social and temporal tasks—that is, in particular, of how they approach improving the realization of such tasks. While “innovation” generally evokes positive connotations, questions about what in fact are the innovative aspects of innovations—and from whose perspective—become at times intensely discussed. Such debates may be particularly critical for innovations in emerging fields whose future is still inherently uncertain (Cole, 2002, 21).

Changes in engineering and the construction companies can be conceptualized in terms of both process and content. Process of the change refers to how the change has occurred. Content explains that what changes has taken place in the organization. Theories of organizational culture tell that why the change was needed and what are the possible consequences of the change. Changes primarily occur due to changes in environment, technology or changes in customer requirements. Organizational change is a transformation in an organization to fulfill any requirement which caused any change in the organization. The Organizational analysts in engineering companies have observed that such changes often take unexpected turns and lead to transformation other than those required. Researchers have also concluded that when any action or decision is taken in the organization, it often bring the change as a by-product which are known as unintentional changes (Callahan 2002: 4-21)

Discussion

Organizations have faced significant changes in the environment of the business with the changes in information technology, highly competitive firms in the industry and more focus on quality and customer services. It has been observed that change will remain a dilemma in how to cope with challenges that are often mutually exclusive: a challenge to assure high organizational change performance and a challenge to sustain organizational social integrity. But, in order to minimize the consequences, some approaches should be adopted to survive in the world of business (Dunphy 2003: 5-10).

Approaches to change ABC engineering and XYZ constructions' organizational life

Many researchers have concluded that in order to understand the content and process of organizational change. For instance, analyses of costs and benefits of a firm's potential market positions are included in the game theory of modern industrial organization economics. In addition to that, theories of management lay out communication system and possible political frameworks for the execution of change in organizations but ignore the fact that the different kind of changes should be adopted with different approaches (Dunphy 2003: 5-10).

Figure 1: components necessary to bring a change in the organization



Readiness to Change

In order to bring a successful change in the organization, it is important to understand the components necessary to bring change. Three factors are taken into considerations, which are attitudes of employees towards change, culture of the organizational and organizational learning (Dunphy ...