MANAGING CHANGE IN ORGANIZATIONS

Managing Change in Organizations

Managing Change in Organizations

Organizational Change

Change is a feature of life, and in a changing world, standing still is rarely an option. An organization needs to account for changes in the environment, or face the possibility of failure to achieve objectives. It takes a lot to be a survivor in today's rapidly changing corporate environments including a solid understanding of the change process and one's role in that process; answers to questions that managers and their fellow employees have about change; and a set of tools to help a manager facilitate change and navigate to the outcome he or she wants.

Managing today means dealing with change: understanding it, leading it, integrating it, responding to it, and creating it. But most organizations are organized and staffed for current operations. They have limited resources for planning and managing change. The failure to adjust workloads or reallocate resources during change is one of the primary sources of resistance and breakdown. Major change calls for intensive and sustained effort at many levels. It may mean driving a new culture through an organization, or integrating a newly acquired business, or divesting some operations, or installing new systems and processes. It's been observed that change happens, and can't be managed. Some changes are external to the organization and can't be controlled. But the organization's response, or the initiatives it takes to prepare for change, can certainly be managed (Sopow, 2007).

Task 2

Involving Stakeholders in Change

Stakeholders should not be labelled and should not be considered rational. The goal of management in times of change is to acknowledge these facts and see them as opportunities not threats. Managers should encourage irrational thinking, thinking outside of the box. It is not an easy task considering big costs involved in introducing new products. Ways to determine whether the path taken is the correct one need to be developed. This leads us, now that we know management's ontology and epistemology, to management's methodology.

From this, we see the importance of strategy as concerned with the long-term direction of organization; achieving advantage, either in terms of market share, quality of services or value for money; the scope of activities and mode of delivery; matching activities to the environment (strategic fit); stretching or adapting existing resources and competences to create opportunities; the values and expectations of stakeholders including staff, clients and 'customers' such as government departments and agencies (Johnson and Scholes, 1997).

There needs to be a focus on the importance of a quality orientation as an organization seeks to manage change. Quality and a focus on process as well as output makes change management something which never ends, which is pro-active rather than reactive, and uses all the resources and competences which are available to us in the organizational structures and systems and in the staff.

Strategic review is a crucial final step in change management. Quite often once changes have been implemented, we forget about it, and get on with something else. This is fine if the changes work well, and ...