When Cultures Clash:

Leading Organizational Change across Cultural Borders

By

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Background1

Research Questions3

SECTION 2: LITERATURE REVIEW5

Organizational Change5

Culture6

SECTION 3: METHODOLOGY11

Research Method11

Data Collection12

REFERENCES13

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Background

Organizations are open social systems that constantly change due to complex internal and external factors. The rapid pace of technological innovation, the emergence of a global society, instability in the U.S., as well as the global economy, are critical factors driving the phenomenal amount of change in modem organizations. Research has documented that ambiguity and uncertainty are key concerns in organizations (Kotter, 1996), because they often lead to confusion, chaos and disconnection in the workplace.

Radical organizational change that breaks prolonged period of stability and inertia in organizations is more conspicuous but on closer inspection it may be realized that change is an ongoing adaptation and adjustment process that is taking place continuously. Concurrently, change is a nonlinear and an open ended phenomenon, which requires understanding the needs and demands of various constituencies, and this includes a focus on social and psychological processes (Kennedy, 2002). Additionally, organizational change is undertaken with the hope that it will enhance organizational effectiveness and efficiency, but the complexity of implementation does not allow a simple and straightforward solution; it is rather a real challenging task (Kennedy, 2002). As noted above, failure of a sizable number of change attempts forces scholars to analyze issues afresh every time a new failure occurs. For these reasons scholars have paid much attention to various control systems to steer change at the desired pace and in the predetermined direction (Kennedy, 2002).

Scholars and practitioners consensually hold that there are both internal and external forces that drive organizational change. Successful leaders base their decisions not only on current business expediencies but they also envision and anticipate future changes in the market and other institutional dynamics (Bezzubetz, 2009). Deplorably, the majority of managers conveniently ignore their internal intangible contextual realities resulting in unforeseen fiascos for their change efforts. Thus, any organizational change needs to be a coordinated and controlled effort in order to achieve the desired ends; conversely, an uncontrolled organizational change effort may astray and lead to chaos and anarchy (Bezzubetz, 2009). Among the contextual factors, the culture of any organization is very important, if not the most, important factor. We have adequate evidence that supports the view that culture controls the behavior of employees and is also instrumental in achieving greater performance objectives (Bezzubetz, 2009).

The next important thing to be understood is the creation of the right type of culture that will facilitate a change initiative. Although cultures are difficult to change but, knowing that culture itself is an organic reality, it is important that the change sponsors have adequate understanding of the existing cultures of their organizations and whether or not such cultures will support the change (Bommer, Rich & Rubin, 2005). They should strive to create right type of culture before they undertake any change initiative. Thus, culture is a system that plays an important role in controlling the behaviors of employees and is found to be ...