Change Management

Change Management

Introduction

Change is a constant and continuous process as external environment and market condition are continuously evolving and changing due to advancement in technology or for other reasons such as changing government regulations, laws, globalization or competition. Organizations must respond to these changes in a timely manner in order to survive and remain competitive. This is where change management comes in the picture and requires well organized planning and people who can initiate and implement the change process in a an effective manner. change may be incremental and small or traformational and large scales depending upon the requirement and need of time. Small scales changes may require small improvement in the current way of doing things while large scales changes may call for drastic transformation and management of employee resistance. Large scales changes are the type of changes that most of the authors and researchers are interested in as such a change gives rise to situations that are unfamiliar and uncertain and result in employee resistance, feelings of distrust and other negative emotions on the part of employees. therefore there is a serious need for an effective change manager with effective leadership skills and strategy to implement the change process successfully.

Discussion

Change is inevitable and organization that are complacent and stable points towards stagnancy, lacking innovation and competitiveness. Ten years back stability and sameness in organization was the evidence of organization's success but today such organization are marked as being failure or unable to keep up with the external requirements of the market and customers. Field theory is an important approach for change management used as a tool for understanding the elements in the surrounding. It basically aims at developing a better understanding of behavior of people working in a certain group and also mapping the complete picture and complexities that are involved in the field in which the change and behavioral transformations take place (Back, 1992, pp. 51). Lewin is of the view point that if one wants to understand any given situation or the status quo, it is extremely important to enhance and improve the understanding of that present situation in the context of the surrounding forces or conditions that are responsible or working behind the scenes (Lewin, 1943a, p. 172). Lewin has given a lot of importance to group dynamics and suggests that group behaviors is the result of shared values and beliefs that drives certain symbolic interactions affecting the group structures as well as behavior of group members at an individual level. In other words the behavior of individuals is the result and function of group environment that he has referred to as field. Therefore any type of changes that is brought in the behavior of individuals originates from the forces present in the field. Field has been defined as an addition of the coexisting facts that are mutually interdependent. He further suggested that field is prone to change and adapt continuously and same goes for group dynamics and behaviors that are always changing and the ...