MANAGEMENT

Managing Change and Stress in Organizations

Managing Change and Stress in Organizations

Organizational Change& its Characteristics

Today's rapid technological changes and the effects of globalization are inevitable and will be faced by all organizations with respect to increasing demands of consumer. The management of the organization has to adapt the dynamic needs and hence resulting in a change in working environment. Such work changes in the first place, should be directed towards development and maintaining organizational flexibility and adaptability of the staff (Armenakis, 1999). This task is carried out by encouraging the employees to be open and be willing to accept changes and maintain the openness in order to accumulate experience and further boost their work quality. Prior to facing new challenges an organization should have the competency to do so and the competency can be induced via promotion, training and development of new knowledge and skills at a wider scale. It is obvious that not all employees are willing to change his mode of working in this direction that is desired by the organization initially and it is common for the organization to experience a resistance to change (Jimmieson, 2004).

The fact is that in modern organizations seeking to change and development will have staff that will go through daily stress and routine work which the leadership, unfortunately, does not notice and does not keep track off. Stress could be associated with changes in technology, work practices and the processes of restructuring and reengineering. Staff of such organizations is under chronic pressure to adapt to the demands that are constantly changing. The response to such pressure is acute or chronic stress and reduced efficiency. In this regard, in terms of management practices, it is important to look at the nature and content of what is stressful for the staff and their ability to adapt to small, private, and specific organizational requirements (Judge, 1999).

The practice of organizational change has shown that resistance to change in an organization is not simply the resistance of staff, but rather the inability of people to adapt to the cumulative impact of small, numerous and constant changes in the organizational environment. And the potential stressor is bound to undergo multiplicity and is a synchronous event, which creates the overall cumulative effect. Thus, the inability to adapt psychologically to such "multiple changes" is a factor behind the resistance of staff. The problem is that such a psychological inability to continue to be transformed becomes an organizational inability to cope up with the dynamic market. It can also lead to organization collapse. In this case, the leadership of the organization needs to deal with resistance of staff, and eliminate the cause that is via enhancing the adaptability of the individual at an organizational level. Building skills to adapt to potential changes will eventually result in reduced stress levels.

Any change in the organization will inherently lead to induced stress level for personnel; the process of adapting to such changes can be compared with the principles of "general adaptation syndrome” ...