CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Change Management

Change Management

The modern competitive, rapidly changing and highly complex business environment characterized by diminishing customer loyalty, the need to be market-focused and customer-centric is more critical than any other time in the past. It is highly imperative for every organization to retain and use valuable information about their customers to enhance their business strategies and product and service offerings.

Gather information, change and innovation are most important assets of an organization. Consequently, change strategically must be a priority for any organization that wants to compete and win in the marketplace. Change begins with developing a strategic plan, implementing the strategy and assessing its effectiveness in the real world environment. According to the work of, Blair and Hitchcock.

Most organisations experience change as a pattern of punctuated equilibrium. This pattern involves relatively long periods of equilibrium, during which an organisation may engage only in incremental change, punctuated with short episodes of discontinuity during which an organisation's survival may depend on its ability to transform itself.

According to the punctuated equilibrium paradigm,

Periods when the industry is in equilibrium

Focus for change is 'doing things better'

Through the process of tinkering, adapting and modification.

Tinkering - fiddling with the nuts and bolts of what we already have to create inspired solutions to contemporary problems, rather than create something new from scratch

Kludging - tinkering on a larger scale, perhaps by creating new divisions or businesses

According to (Dailey 1999 34-36)

Incremental change not necessarily small changes

It builds on what has already been accomplished

It has the flavour of continuous improvement

According to the punctuated equilibrium paradigm,

Transformational change occurs during periods of disequilibrium

(Breslin 2000 238) refers;

This kind of change as revolutionary

But most writers- for (Heft and Pestello 1999 89-98) use the term transformational change as;

a break with the past, a step function change rather than an extrapolation of past patterns of change and development

new relationships and dynamics within the industry

undermine core competencies, and question the very purpose of the enterprise

The diversity of practical advice for managing change can be organized into five major activities as shown in figure in- 1.1. The activities contribute to effective change management and are listed in roughly the order in which they are typically performed.

The first activity involves motivating change and includes creating a readiness for change among organizational members and helping them to overcome resistance to change. This involves creating an environment whereby people accept the need for change and commit physical and psychological energy to it. Motivation is a critical issue in starting change, and ample evidence indicates that people and organization seek to preserve the status quo and willing to change when there are compelling reasons to do so.

The second activity is concern with creating a vision for a desired future state of the organization. The vision provides a direction for change and serves as a bench mark for assessing progress.

The third activity involves developing political support for change. Organizations are composed of powerful individuals and groups who can either block or promote change and change agents need to gain their ...