Managing Organisational Change Chainging the Business World

Question: Purpose: The primary purpose of this assessment item is to help students develop skills in critical thinking in the analysis of change failure in the organisational context. The secondary purpose of this assessment task is to give students the opportunity to enhance their analysis, critical thinking and written communication skills; particularly in the areas of developing argument and essay writing. Description: Assessment task 1 requires the writing of an academic essay. This essay should be an argumentative essay, and must therefore contain an argument that is used as the structuring element of the paper. Students are expected to engage in extensive research within the academic literature relating to organisational change and evidence your argument from scholarly sources.You are to explore why change efforts fail in organisations and provide evidence from the literature including theories and models to support your argument. Identify and analyse the nature of change failures and the key causes. It would enhance your discussion to use organisational examples to further evidence your claims. Answer: Introduction In the past few years, globalisation has completely changed the face of the business world. Companies are now competing with each other on a global scale and the internal and external factors that can have an impact on the business of an organisation have also increased exponentially. Companies are experiencing technological, governmental, social, economic and many other changes at such a fast pace that the companies now have to implement changes within the organisations in real time. Change management is considered to be one of the most difficult processes for the management of an organisation. There has been a great variation in the success rates of change management programs between organisations that know what they do and those organisations that stumble around without knowing what they exactly have to do. In this assignment, we will discuss why some change efforts in organisations fail (Bain Company, 2015). Change Management Programs Change management programs have now become a necessary evil. Necessary because they help business organisations in coping up with the market trends and changing their operations and resources according to the changing environmental factors and evil because change management program is not easy as it can fail if not implemented properly and under professional guidance (Bain Company, 2015). Failure Of Change Management Programs Change management programs are considered to be nightmares by some organisations as they have experienced the negative impacts of a change management program gone wrong. As a result, companies of today are trying their best to foster a workplace culture that can easily accept changes. Let us now discuss some reasons because of which change management programs fail: Lack of communication one of the most common reasons for the failure of change management program is the lack of communication between the senior management and the employees. Failure of change management does not occurs when the management does not communicate what the change should be like but occurs when the management fails to communicate the need for bringing a change in the prevailing scenario. The top reason for the failure of change management program is when the employees are not communicated about the reasons because of which a change is being introduced. In a recent study, it was found that only 40% of the front line managers thought that they were actually aware about the reasons because of which a change was being planned while 60% of the rest had no idea about the reasons behind the change program. Therefore, it is important that the senior level managers properly communicate the change program to the employees, including the reasons behind the change and the objective s of the change program (Strauss, 2016). Kotter and Lewin, both were pioneers in organisational change management subject and have identified lack of communication an important reason behind the failure of change management programs (Harvard Business Review, 2008). Personal agendas and human nature the second most common reason for the failure of change management programs is the nature of the humans to resist changes. Humans by nature resist change. Humans have their comfort zones and they resist anything and everything that forces them to come out of their comfort zones (Organisational change management: A critical review: Journal of Change Management: Vol 5, No 4, 2016). A change in operations, strategies, routine, etc. brings the employees out of their comfort zones. As a result, they resist the change program being planned and it might fail due to the resistance being provided by the employees. Sometimes, even if the senior level management properly communicates the change program to the employees, there are many employees who resist the change as they feel that the change might hurt their ego or power in the organistaion. They do not try to understand the change program completely and they end up resisting the change program due to their self-interest and ego (Schneier, n.d.). Further, another reason for failure of change programs is when a group of employees is not made a part of it. Such employees form a group and as they feel alienated or excluded and try to resist the change and prevent it from becoming successful. Kotter Schlesinger conducted a number of studies in the field of change management. They identified four primary reasons that cause failure of change programs. Parochial self-interest was on their top list out of the four resistances identified (Study.com, 2016). Lack of leadership most organisations believe that senior level managers are the most appropriate leaders for facilitating a change in the organisation. This is one of the biggest mistakes that the management commits that leads to failure of the change program. It is not necessary that the senior level managers are the best leaders to lead the change. In fact, it has been notices that front line managers and union leaders can prove to be better change agents than the managers of the organisation. Front line managers or the union leaders are the ones whom the employees follow. If the company can convince them and bring them on its side by explaining them the need to implement a change, the employees would be glad to listen to their leaders and would be able to find more sense in things when their leader informs them about the change program. Further, front line managers and union leaders will also play an important role in the whole communication process if they are chosen as the cha nge agents. Therefore, lack of leadership or the lack of effective change agents can also decrease the chances of success of change implementation (Greener and Hughes, 2006). Lack of system in a system, everything is inter related. A change in one of the things will cause changes in all the other things too. Sometimes, when the organisations fail to realize the potential impact of a change program on the other parts of the system, the change management program becomes likely to fail. For example, if a company decides to make some changes by reduce the strength of its customer service department to reduce payroll and increase cash flows, it might have the right do so but it should also be prepared for collateral impacts of the change, such as market reputation, decrease in sales due to less customer service executives, etc. Therefore, to increase the chances of success of change management programs, the management should carefully assess the collateral impacts which the change would have on the other parts of the system (Acceleratedgrowth.org, 2016). Lack of planning for obstacles, setbacks and resistance the problem with most organisations is that they want to implement changes just for the sake of meeting the market trends but they are actually not prepared to facilitate a change in the company. They design a change management plan but what they fail to do is to plan for obstacles, setbacks and resistance. In fact, not everything designed in the change management program goes according to the plans whereas the company has no plans to deal with obstacles, which adds to the misery. Some of the common obstacles faced in the implementation are employee turnovers (including some key employees), change in business environment, requirement of additional time for achieving a short term goal, etc. Such obstacles are inevitable and if the management is not ready to deal with such obstacles, the possibility of failure of the change program increases exponentially (Weindling and Earley, 1986). Realignment of resources one very common mistake that organisations make while planning for a change in the company is that they forget to realign their resources according to the design of the change management program. One common example for this is that an organisation always prepares its budget in the beginning of a new financial year. During the year, if the management decides to bring a change in the organisation, they might not discuss whether they would require additional financial resources to make the change program successful. As a result, the change program might face a failure during its implementation stage due to lack of proper resources. Thus, for a change management plan to succeed, it is crucial that the management allocates proper resources from time to time so that the plan does not fail due to lack of resources (Kotter, 1996). Conclusion It has been correctly phrased that change is the only thing which remains constant i.e. change is inevitable. We live in a time where the external or internal business environment can undergo changes in real time. To survive in such an environment, it is necessary that the business organisations to change their working styles, operations, strategies, etc. from time to time so that they can remain in competition and can adjust themselves according to the latest market trends. Change management is not an easy task as it seems to be. For those organisations that do not have the required expertise for implementing a change, an unplanned change can prove to be a nightmare. Introducing changes in order to compete with the market can sometimes take away whatever advantages such organisations had earlier. Therefore, organisations of business companies should plan a change program very carefully and should definitely have a look at the above points, which can cause a change program to fail altogether. References Acceleratedgrowth.org. (2016). 7 Reasons Why Most Change Management Initiatives Fail | Accelerated Growth Consulting. [online] Available at: https://acceleratedgrowth.org/free-stuff/articles/initiatives-fail/ [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016]. Bain Company, (2015). Change Management Programs. [online] Available at: https://www.bain.com/publications/articles/management-tools-change-management-programs.aspx [Accessed 18 Aug. 2016]. Greener, T. and Hughes, M. (2006). Managing change before change management. Strat. Change, 15(4), pp.205-212. Kotter, J. (1996). Leading change. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press. Organisational change management: A critical review: Journal of Change Management: Vol 5, No 4. (2016). Journal of Change Management. [online] Available at: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14697010500359250 [Accessed 18 Aug. 2016]. Schneier, C. (n.d.). The Training and Development Sourcebook. Strauss, S. (2016). Top 7 Reasons Why Organizational Change Fails. [online] Tinypulse.com. Available at: https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/top-7-reasons-why-organizational-change-fails [Accessed 19 Aug. 2016]. Weindling, D. and Earley, P. (1986). How heads manage change. School Organisation, 6(3), pp.327-338.