HRT6560 Organizational Culture : Open Decision Making

Questions:

After you watch these videos, address the following questions and prompts in your journal entry based on your experience with organizational culture and change. Consider what you watched in the videos as well as what you have learned in the course up to this point.

1. How does organizational culture impact the change process?

2. Reflect on your experience dealing with change. Explain whether you are naturally open to change or whether you resist change.

3. Based on your experience with change, explain how management helped or hindered the change process.

Answers:

1.Organization has the potential to promote collective and open decision making, which can inform people beforehand regarding any oncoming change. Organizational culture can facilitate the process of knowing about the reasons and comprehend the significance behind it. A certain level of resistance is unavoidable. If the people inside the organization are made responsible and allowed to drive the change then the process would be hugely successful. For that it is necessary they feel the positive effects of the change on them and the organization too. Proper training to the staff can help them cope up with any changes (Burke, 2017).

2.I have experienced my fair share of change in my life till date. From what I have gathered from my experiences, I can vouch for a fact - change is not the problem, resistance to it is. I support change and I believe that a culture of trust, involved and engaged employees, transparent communication and positive interpersonal relationships within an organization would help smoothen the implementation and execution process. Lots of discussion and involvement of the employees can help minimize the resistance to change. A wide spread belief that change is needed would further minimize resistance to change.

3.In an organization everything depends on the management department. They are in charge of organizational culture that can either bring shortcuts to change or be a roadblock. Organizational structure can have an impact on change, such as in questions like centralisation or decentralisation, what to emphasize on - process or function, or how organizational teams affect change while implementation. Management has a hold on the support they provide to change initiatives, being either supportive or resistive. Management however cannot control the positive or negative impact external stakeholders might have on the change process (Burke & Noumair, 2015).

References

Burke, W. W. (2017). Organization change: Theory and practice. Sage publications.

Burke, W. W., & Noumair, D. A. (2015). Organization development: A process of learning and changing. FT Press.