Managing Change in Organizations

Managing Change in Organizations



Managing Change in Organizations

Introduction

Change in organizations can be in response to external forces, such as market shifts, competitive pressures, and technological innovations, or it can be internally motivated, such as by managers trying to improve existing methods and practices. Regardless of its origins, change does affect people and their relationships in organizations. Organisational change can be introduced through a number of approaches, used singly or in combination. Some of these approaches emphasize the content of what is to be changed; others stress the process of how change is to be accomplished.

Ansoff delineates three approaches to organization change: "structure, technology, and people." (Ansoff, 2007) However, organisation change is far more complex than the particular approach used to implement change. Anyhow, to implement change in any organisation, people, structure and culture all need to be pay attention. Among those three components, people are likely to be the most promising target for any change programme.

People, Structure and Culture in Organisation Change

By using Kurt Lewin famous 'unfreeze--change--freeze' model, the organisational change can be described as the following steps. The first step of any change process is to unfreeze the present pattern of behaviour as a way of managing resistance to change. The second step, movement, involves making the actual changes that will move the organisation to another level of response. The final stage of the change process, refreezing, involves stabilizing or institutionalizing these changes by establishing systems that make these behavioural patterns relatively secure against change.

Ansoff suggest that organisational change can occur at three levels, which involve:

Changing the individuals who work in the organisation -that is, their skills, values, attitudes, and eventually behaviour- but making sure that such individual behavioural change is always regarded as instrumental to organisational change. (Ansoff, 2007)

Changing various organisational structures and systems- reward systems, reporting relationships, work design, and so on.

Directly changing the organisational climate or interpersonal style -how open people are with each other, how conflict is managed, how decisions are made, and so on.

Eoyang, (2001) points out that the first step to achieving lasting organisational change is to deal with resistance to change. Since the patterns of resistance to change are different for each change levels, different change strategies and techniques are required. However, whatever the level involved, each of these interventions is intended to make organisational members address that level's need for change, heighten their awareness of their own behavioural patterns, and make them more open to the change process. Therefore, Change is fundamentally about people. (Eoyang, 2001, 116)

People Are the Spirit of the Change

Recipes for transforming companies are numerous, but most fail. Why? This is usually due to human and organisational factors rather than to lack of technical skill. Many organisations assume that if the change is logical, people will implement it. This is far from true. To deliver and sustain change, people need to change the way they think and act in relation to the business. Therefore, any approach to change need care about people and believe that ...