ORGANISATION CULTURE AND CHANGE

Organisation Culture and Change

Table of Content

Introduction1

Discussion2

Organisational Culture4

Ling Laboratories' Dysfunctional Organisational Culture5

Organisational Performance6

Changing Organisational Culture9

Change10

Managing Change in an Organisation11

Types of Organisational Change11

Cultural Change in Ling Laboratories13

Unfreeze14

Change14

Re-freeze14

Conclusion15

References17

Organisation Culture and Change

Introduction

The word change has become familiar in the most diverse organisations and has become a protagonist of business activity. Today, the paradigm seems to be “who does not adapt to change will die in the way.” There is a consensus that change is a reality that affects strongly, in fact, the only thing solid to hold which is possible, it is certain that whatever happens today, has already changed the next day (Chehade, Mendes and Mitchell 2006, 11). The general atmosphere that surrounds the organisation is in continuous movement and is dynamic, requiring a high capacity to adapt to survive. It must deal with an unpredictable environment of constant change. Thus, to survive and compete organisations have to adapt to change quickly and effectively. The changes you make will affect to some extent the relations of power, stability, and satisfaction of individual roles within the organisation.

The story of Ling Laboratories makes for grand theatre. Through the leadership and vision of a Chinese immigrant named Wa Ling, Ling Laboratories rose to $3 billion in sales before it went through bankruptcy proceedings in the early 1990s. The crash of the once high-flying computer company left unresolved many of the questions surrounding publicly held companies, which were run as family businesses, and the obligations that managing families had to employees, customers and shareholders.

According to the analysts, the reason for Ling Laboratories' failure was the anti-change culture, which was built by Wa Ling, a Ph.D. from Harvard. After the death of Ling in 1990, the company went through numerous changes, but it was difficult to implement those changes due to the rigid organisational culture and the Chinese tradition of keeping the business, regardless of its size, in the family. However, all these efforts proved to be useless as it was too late for Ling Laboratories to bounce back from bankruptcy.

Discussion

Today organisational change is the cornerstone of continuous improvement of organisations. The change is the phenomenon by which the future invades our lives and should be monitored carefully from the vantage point of individuals who live, breathe, and experience. People spend their lives waiting for things to change, to the people around them change as everything fits your way of being and thinking (Chehade, Mendes and Mitchell 2006, 11). But employees can take a leadership role in a process of change and create a shared vision that will mobilize the organisation and its human resources in the process of change. The mission of generating capacity for change is a part of the car continuing education, to learn and unlearn and to help others learn. Learning is change and the starting points are education. Knowledge is the key to being competitive. Today more than ever, organisations need to develop learning skills that enable them to capitalize on ...