ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Organizational Change Management

Organizational Change Management

Introduction

The central importance of interpersonal trust for sustaining team and organisational effectiveness is increasingly being recognised (Dirks and Ferrin, 2001). Employees' trust in their leaders has been related to a range of productivity-related processes and outcomes, such as the quality of communication and problem-solving, discretionary effort, organisational citizenship behaviour, organisational commitment and the rate of employee turnover (Dirks and Ferrin, 2002). Trust towards leaders has also been directly related to team performance (Dirks, 1999, 2000), as well as bottom line indicators of organisational performance, such as sales levels and net profits (Davis et al., 2000; Rich, 1997). Trust is also a major contributor to organisational competitiveness because it cannot be easily imitated or replicated (Jones and George, 1998). Fairholm (1994) succinctly summarises the importance of trust in leaders, stating “… no organisation can take place without interpersonal trust, and no organisational leader can ignore the powerful element of trust” (p. 98).

Leaders are believed to play the primary role in establishing and developing trust in teams and organisations (Creed and Miles, 1996; Fairholm, 1994; McAllister, 1995; Shaw, 1997). Trust in leaders is particularly important for effective functioning in teams and organizations where tasks are complex and unstructured, and require high levels of interdependence, cooperation and information sharing (Creed and Miles, 1996; Zand, 1972). These features are typical of research and development (R&D) teams. R&D work involves considerable interdependence between team members who bring diverse and highly specialised knowledge and skills to the team. The success of these teams requires high levels of cooperation and collaboration between team members and with the leader. Team members often have more up-to-date knowledge than their leaders, and the teams rely on members to share novel scientific ideas openly and provide honest feedback on each other's work to produce innovative products and processes. The team leader typically plays a vital role in managing the team and project, negotiating adequate resources and sponsorship for the team, and representing its work to higher levels of the organisation.

It appears that through most of the twentieth century authors and researchers used the concepts of management and leadership virtually interchangeably (see Kent, 1999).

More recently, though, clarity has evolved and authors have converged on the notion that management has to do with creating organization, order and stability while leadership has to do with creating energy, thrust, alignment, focus, and commitment (Kotter, 1990; Kouzes and Posner, 1995; Van Eron, 1995). Tracey and Hinkin (1998) reported on a set of behaviors which are differentiated from managerial practices and which account for much of the variance in ratings of leader effectiveness. It seems that the idea that management and leadership are different dynamics may be confirmed by these authors' findings. Still, as Kent and others have stated (Kent, 1999; Kent et al., 1996), the need for a clear and differentiating definition of leadership remains. As we shall see, while there has been a convergence of ideas regarding the dynamic of leadership since the mid-1980s, much room remains for clarity ...