Organizational Change Effectiveness

[Name of the institute]Investigate the effectiveness of an organizational change program on the performance of a contracting company operating in Middle East.

Introduction

This research is based on assessing the effectiveness of an organizational change program conducted at GENCON, a general contracting company active in Saudi Arabia.  The 18-month change program was initiated to reinvigorate the company's performance, and assist the transformation from a family-type business into a corporate structure.  In order to develop a clear understanding of the impact of the program, the research will focus on the approach followed in the change program, and will derive lessons learned. The specific questions that the researcher is interested in include:

Main Question:

What were the expectations from the organizational change program? What it did achieve and what it did not achieve?

Sub Questions:

What obstacles we encountered and how were they handled? (What factors enabled the change, and what constrained the change).

How did employees from different demographics / generations react to change?

This research will investigate how carefully the senior management designed and articulated the plan and how well it was communicated to employees for understanding their roles and be aware about the opportunities presented by change and take ownership of its implementation. The research will also cover the current progress achieved on the change program within GENCON.

Relation to previous research (Theoretical Framework)

Lewin's Three-Step Model:

The most influential approaches to change are Lewin's model of change that was presented back in 1947. Lewin's model consists of three main stages: 1) “unfreezing”, which requires dismantling the existing “mind set”; 2) the change itself which involves devising new ways to deliver objectives, and analyzing and overcoming resistance to change; 3) “freezing”, the new approach, once the organization is feeling comfortable to operate in the changed mode. (Arminakes.1999)

From the onset of the program at GENCON, it was clear that “unfreezing” the way people worked for the last 20 years would require tremendous efforts to plan, organize, and start making the actual first steps in change. Resistance to change was apparent from the very start, but careful planning, commitment from the owners, and the involvement of an external change catalyst helped minimizing it. While the management have come to understand that change is a continuous process, it is safe to say that GENCON has reached stage 3, whereby it is in the process of “freezing” its new operating modes and getting its staff to feel comfortable with them.

Shield's Model

As described in (Smith & Graetz, 2011, pp.156) Shield's model explains that when change fails, it is because of the lack of attention from management to the human and cultural aspects of business. She further explains that if one component doesn't align correctly with another component, this will lead to dysfunctional processes. According to (Pryor et al., 2008), Shield's Model focus on the human resources management policies and their alignment with the strategic objectives of an organisation, therefore organisational leaders should have a clear vision of strategies that need to be changed, and define clear success factors ...