HRMT20028 | Literature Review on Organisational Change
Undertake review of literature about organisational change. Organisations experience change due to many internal and external pressures. You are required to undertake review of literature using five guided questions below. It is important that you do not copy and paste text from various sources. You need to read various sources and write the assessment using your own words.
Address of the five discussion questions below. Students are asked to have separate headings on each of the discussion questions. The use of 20 academic papers will be cited in this section of the essay.
Use headings to analyse and discuss the five questions below:
- What internal and external factors play an important role in driving organisational change?
- What role does senior management and line managers play in facilitating and implementing change?
- What are some of the common causes of resistance to change?
- What steps should organisations implement to ensure effective change process?
- What strategies could organisations implement to ensure a change capable culture?
Answer:
Introduction
It can be illustrated that changes in an organization are key in order to cope up with the present situation of the highly competitive and evolving markets. Different ideologies towards change have been fronted by practitioners and academicians. However recently only one study (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015) suggests that these ideological approaches are usually contradictory since they lack the necessary empirical evidence and the hypothesis supporting the theories are unchallenged regarding the true nature of contemporary changes that occur in the management of organizations. The sole intent of this paper is to analytically focus on the approaches
Organizational change refers to the transformation of an organization’s strategies, plans and culture and the impact of the effect of these changes on the organization. This is vital in order to serve the always evolving needs of internal and external customers as illustrated by (Hon, Bloom & Crant, 2014). Changes through the organizational levels take the form in either strategic way or the operational way of organizations’ layout. These changes are always current to the structure of organizations. The managerial skills of change are highly demanded because of the specialty of organizational change, this was clarified by (Clegg & Matos, 2017). Despite the current circumstances of deregulation, enhanced globalization, and increased technological know-how, the main task of management currently is the sense of leadership of organizational change. A critical study (Rothwell Stavros & Sullivan, 2015) illustrates that change is unpredictable, it is usually triggered by the circumstance of the organizational crisis hence it becoming more discontinuous and reactive.
This literature review tends to focus on the internal and external factors that play a vital role in organizational change, the roles played by the senior management and line managers in the facilitation and implementation of change, the common causes of resistance to change, the steps that organizations implement to ensure effective change processes and the strategies by organizations in ensuring a change-capable culture (Carnall, 2018).
This study thus extends the advanced organization research by aiding organizations to recognize more about the change processes and effectively implementing the change in their organizational structures. This it is vital to conduct studies and research which will enhance the information and knowledge on how best to implement and adapt to the organizational change as illustrated by (Goetsch & Davis, 2014).
Review of the Literature
Internal and external factors that play an important role in driving organizational change
To many, internal and external factors take a back seat to general factors. It is overlooked and viewed as less important. However, this is an aspect of internal and external environments speaks volumes as outlined by (Burke, 2017). The internal factors involve people, systems, conditions, and control of the organization. The culture in the organization, the mission statement and leadership style are related to the internal factors for driving change. With regards to this, the internal factors tend to affect attitudes, the employee behavior, decisions and all activities of the organization. The external factors usually come from outside the structure of the organization and result in changes in the organizational activities and sustainability. (Stouten Rousseau & Cremer, 2018) conducted a study to identify the external factors including competition, the current economy, advancements in technology and consumers. Thus it is indispensable for managers to monitor and be flexible to both the internal and external factors that drive change in organizations as changes in the organizations being initiated into the organization tend to improve the culture in the organization. Recently a study by (Powell et al., 2015) found that many organizations are successful due to the embracing of change management
Roles played by senior management and line managers in facilitating and implementing change
Senior managers play a crucial role in this by sponsoring the change at the organization level, the senior managers also take accountability t those people involved in the change. This is a sense of fairness by the leaders. Senior managers being the voice of the organization are key in the sharing and communication concerning the change in the organization. A key study by (Uhl & Gollenia, 2016), concluded that Line managers make up of 50-60% of the manager in the organization. Thus due to this, they their influence on the failure or success of the change strategy is crucial. They execute different duties for the employees responsible to bring in the change required in the organization (Ambroiso, 2016). The line managers perceive the organization hence understand what the organization specific needs. They also create the framework for a wider overview of their team performance in the organizational structure as outlined by (Hayes, 2018).
Common causes of resistance to change
Organizations realize that the implementation and accomplishing of change is faced with many hurdles. Credible sources indicate that various change programs actually don’t meet their goals. Studies show that 70% of the programs don’t achieve their change objectives as investigated by (Cummings & Worley, 2014) in their first study. This is due to resistance to change in the organization. When evaluating the implementation of these changes, the management should note the causes of resistance to change such as poor communication and sharing of information in the organizational structure, poor timing of the managers in facilitating change, employees also resist change in an organization due to the loss of jobs in their workplace as investigated by (Jeston, 2014) in his study. Economic variables especially on the employees’ side regarding their salary decreasing will make employees resist change and the fear of unknown where the uncertainties in the organization make the management to resist the change process (Turner, 2014).
Steps organizations take to ensure effective change process
A change management ensures smooth transformation and the guidance of employees on the change journey. This was clearly outline by (Carnall, 2018). Surveys show that 70% of initiatives for change fail and only 30% of them tend to succeed. The use of appropriate steps in the implementation of change is key for an effective change process as illustrated by a recent study (Ackroyd et al., 2016). The key steps are clearly defining the change and relating it to the goals of the organization and this step is key in the determination of change value and specify the input to put in the change, the determination of effects and those impacted by the change at various levels of the organization, developing a communication strategy involving a timeline for the process of change to be communicated, the main messages and communication mediums for use, provision of effective and professional training is also a key step by offering both structural and informal training required for the rolling out of the change. However as pointed out by (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015), another crucial step is the implementation of the support structure which prepares employees practically and psychologically to be flexible with the change. Throughout the change procedures, a specific structure should be enhanced to measure effects of change on the organization thus the need for measuring the change process step as investigated by a recent study on organizational change (Hornstein, 2015).
Strategies by the organization to ensure a change-capable culture
After a critical analysis of the organizational change management or recent years now, many organizations maintain nimbleness whereby the hold the responsiveness to the evolving market forces so as to advance necessarily. A key study that outlines the strategies was conducted (Ambroiso, 2016). He listed the strategies below:
- Equipping the leaders with the required change sills whereby the skills are embedded in professional training,
- Training people in the organization structure to consider when being resistant to the change process thus educating them and enable them to be self-correct
- Communicating vividly how the employees make effort into the strategic goals and enable them to know that their efforts are key
- Work change principles and ideologies into the employee objective set up and consider the change – ready behavior.
- Work change principles into particular task descriptions and the employment guidelines to utilize the change capable staff into the organization as confirmed by (Church, Shull & Burke, 2015).
Conclusion
It is vividly clear from the paper that organizational change is an evolving effect that is key in most organizations. It is undoubtedly true that the rate of change has never been so massive than in this 21st century where business environments evolve every now and then. An investigation by (Stark, 2015) illustrates that organizational change is a topic that has been critically studied. Internal and external factors are key in the driving of change process in an organization as they affect the organizational activities and decision making as investigated by (Cameron & Green, 2015) in their recent study. Roles played by the manages are detrimental in ensuring that changes are easily implemented regardless of the causes resulting to resistance of changes such as the fear of the unknown, the loss of jobs and poor timing and the steps implemented such as provision of training, the defining of the objective of change and coming up with the appropriate strategies to ensure an utmost change capable culture.
References
Ackroyd, S., Crowdy, P. A., Adler, P., Alvesson, M., Alvesson, M., Alvesson, M., ... & Sköldberg, K. (2016). Concerning the Rose: Interests and definitions as components of the culture in organizations. In Changing Organizational Culture: Cultural change work in progress (Vol. 19, No. 5, pp. viii-viii). Berlin: Jossey-Bass.
Alvesson, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2015). Ensuring cultures of organizations change: Cultural change work in progress. Routledge.
Ambrosio, T. (2016). Authoritarian backlash: Russian resistance to democratization in the former Soviet Union. Routledge.
Burke, W. W. (2017). Organization change: Theory and practice. Sage Publications.
Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2015). Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools, and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Carnall, C. (2018). Managing change. Routledge.
Church, A. H. Shull, A. C., & Burke, W. W. (2015). The traits of organizational functioning and t transformations: Leading transformation and change, 419-428.
Clegg, S., & Matos, J. A. (Eds.). (2017). Sustainability and organizational change management. Routledge.
Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2014). Organization development and change. Cengage Learning.
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Hayes, J. (2018). The fundamentals of change management
Hon, A. H., Bloom, M., & Crant, J. M. (2014). Countering resistance to the process of change and enabling results. Journal of Management, 40(3), 919-941.
Hornstein, H. A. (2015). The summing of managerial changes is a requirement. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), 291-298.
Jeston, J. (2014). Organizational change processes. Routledge.
Powell, B. J., Waltz, T. J., Chinman, M. J., Damschroder, L. J., Smith, J. L., Matthieu, M. M., ... & Kirchner, J. E. (2015). An organized report on the fulfillment of strategies laid out: Implementation Science, 10(1), 21.
Rothwell, W. J., Stavros, J. M., & Sullivan, R. L. (Eds.). (2015). Organizational practice on development: Leading transformation and change. John Wiley & Sons.
Stark, J. (2015). Managerial change processes. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 1) (pp. 1-29). Springer, Cham.
Stouten, J., Rousseau, D. M., & Cremer, D. (2018). Changes in an organization: Upholding different contents: Academy of Management Annals, 12(2), 752-788.
Turner, J. R. (2014). Handbook of project-based management (Vol. 92). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Uhl, A., & Gollenia, L. A. (Eds.). (2016). Business change in organizations. Routledge.
