Aspects of Organizational Change and Change Management
Introduction
Change management is the process, plans and strategies that management adapt in order to do things in a different way. The intention of change management is to make companies and organization adapt easily to the constant changing business environment, further, the change increases the competitiveness of organization and therefore increases profits. Organizational change are the specific procedures in which firmsaddress emerging issue, examples are, changing of supply system, changing the volumes of production and inventory (Brisson-Banks 2010). The aim and intention is to establish an acceptable formal strategy that ensures that the negative effects of the changes taken are minimized.For effective implementation of these changes, stakeholders require to analyze the aim and objective of the intended change and the effect that arise due to the change. This enables the management and policy makers to effectively prepare in order to mitigate against the negative effects and promote the positive impacts.
Furthermore, investigating the impacts of the changes enables the policy makers and management to determine the best way in which to approve the intended changes, implement the changes and procedures to monitor the impacts of the changes. Different leadership style affects the ease and success of implementation of the strategies. Poor leadership that in not workers centered increases the difficulty of implementation of the change and creates difficulty in monitoring the impacts of the change.This ensures that the change brings a desired change. This paper seeks to investigate the aspects of organization change that are of importance to an organization. Further, the paper identifies and narrates how various leadership affects implementation and monitoring of change management.
Aspects of Organizational Change
Organizations need to adapt and change their systems of operation so that they can remain competitive and ensure that they maintain the quality of services and good the produce (Brisson-Banks 2010). Further, the invention of new technology of constant changing customer need makes change inevitable. Organizationalchange occurs in different aspects all with an intention to create something different.The aspects include strategic, structural, process and people centered changes.
First, strategic change involves the changes in the mode of doing the activities that the organization is involved in; this aspect does not lead to a change in the production but only changes the way the production is done. Further this process is intended to realign the organization to it goals, mission and objective and design a new way of achieving these goals. Example, in sales department the system may be changed from doing mass consumer education through mass and print media to the use of sales person to achieve the desired volume of sale. Secondly, structural change involves reorganization of different department in order to ensure effective and efficient flow of activities. This change is intended to ensure good coordination between departments and easy flow of activities that are coordinated by different departments.Example of the changes includes merging of various departments, establishing of new department and forming of small groups within an existing structure to promote specific goals (Brisson-Banks 2010). Process oriented changes on the other hand involve the adopting of a different production procedure or an improvement of the existing one. Companies adopt models that promote change of processes in order to incorporate new technology and customer need. Finally, people oriented changes involved the hiring, promoting, retrenching and reorganizing of the human workforce within the organization. This ensures that human labor is fully utilized to improve production.
Leadership Styles and Organizational Change
Different leadership styles have different impacts on organizational change. The leadership style will affect the way in which people within the organization adopt to the change. The different leadership styles include; autocratic, bureaucratic, democratic, Charismatic, situational, transformational and transitional.
Autocraticleadership is a classic way of leadership that is translated to a dictatorial form of leadership, the leader decides what is to be done and give strict instructions that must be followed. This system of leadership has a huge likelihood of causing damage to the organization since the workers do not understand the motive behind the change that they are required to initiate (Kavanagh & Ashkanasy 2006). Bureaucratic leadership rely on policies to govern the organization, therefore for the change to be effected policies must be established in order to allow the managers to implement the change (Kavanagh & Ashkanasy 2006). Organizational changes in this kind of leadership require a long time to implement.
On the other hand, democratic leadership involve the process in which a group of people leads itself, this leadership is effective in implementing the change since all stakeholders are involved. However, due to the large number of individuals involved, decision-making is difficult to achieve. Finally, charismatic leadership is the style of leadership in which organizational changes are easy to implement. This is because the leaders have a vision and they walk the talk. Theylead by example;therefore, their followers respect and follow their decisions (Kavanagh & Ashkanasy 2006).
Role of Leaders in Organizational Management
The management and the executive analyze change; they are also responsible in makingfollow-up to determine the effect of the change. The major role of leaders is to determine the need and intention to effect the change,further they are responsible indetermining the system of implementing the change and the process to be followed in monitoring the change. Leaders are also responsible in facilitating the change and ensuring that other staff members understand it(Kavanagh & Ashkanasy 2006).
Conclusion
Change management is an important process in any organization in ensuring that it remains competitive. The change must be analyzed critically by the management to ensure that it is within the objectives of the organization, further, it important to determine the system that is used in implementing the change so that negative impacts of the change are minimized.
References
Brisson-Banks, C. (2010). Managing change and transitions: A comparison of different models and their commonalities. Library Management, 31(4), 241-252. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/01435121011046317
Kavanagh, M. H., & Ashkanasy, N. M. (2006). The impact of leadership and change management strategy on organizational culture and individual acceptance of change during a merger. British Journal of Management, 17(S1), S81-S103.