Showing posts with label Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Change. Show all posts

Culture and Process of Change (Organizational Change)

Creating Culture for Change

According to some OB (Organization Behavior) scholars, a culture for the change should be created. Culture for the change can be created with the help of following two approaches:

1. Stimulating a Culture of Innovation 

An innovation is a new idea that applies in initiating or improving a product, process or service. Although there is no guaranteed formula, certain characteristics surface repeat when researchers study innovative organizations. These can be grouped as structural, cultural and human resources categories. Change agents should consider introducing these characteristics into their organization to create an innovative climate. 


2. Creating a Learning Organization 

Creating a learning organization is another approach that is used to facilitate or develop climate for the organizational change. Learning organization is an organization that has developed the continuous capacity to adopt the change. All organizations learn for their sustained existence in a competitive business environment. A learning organization has following characteristics on the basis in which climate for the organizational change can be created: 
  • People openly communicate with each other (across vertical and horizontal boundaries) without fear of criticism or punishment.
  • People sublimate their personal self-interest and fragmented departmental interests to work together to achieve the organization's shared vision.
  • People discard their old ways of thinking and the standard routines they use for solving problems or doing their jobs.
  • There exists a shared vision that everyone agrees on.
  • Members think of all organizational process, activities, functions and interactions with the environment as part of a system of interrelationship.

Process or Steps of Change 

Organization must maintain a viable relationship with a changing environment. To achieve long term viability, an organization must turn out good performance by managing changes in the environment intelligently. Modern organizations are learning to cope with changes. They are beginning to realize the importance of managing change in a planned way. Generally speaking, management of change involves a series of steps which is shown in the following figure.
process of change
1. Recognition of the Forces Demanding Change 

The first step in the management of change is the recognition of forces necessitating change urgently or over a period of time. Forces may be internal or external. External changes include changing technological levels, changing market situations, changing products, changing consumer tastes and preferences etc. Internal forces comprise launch of a new product mix, erection of a separate departmental unit, etc. All forces certainly do not demand change. At least some require careful attention from management. The concerned manager should find out the discrepancy between what is and what should be. He should also find out the real forces demanding change. 

2. Identifying the Need for Change 

There are many forces, many demands for change but all changes may not be important and possible. Therefore, management must try to analyze the reasons of demand for change accurately. In this connection, the help of external consultant or unconnected internal staff may be sought for objective analysis of the causes demanding change. In any way, management must come to know the need for change and its true causes. 

3. Diagnosis of the Problem 

Diagnosis leads to locating the specific problem areas and identifying of the source of problem/s. It also enables a manager to know which activities need further improvement and systematization. A manager may use various diagnostic techniques such as interviews, questionnaires, present observations, etc. Diagnosis helps the change agent to see what changes are needed in the structure, system or in people. Actually, the initial diagnostic focus of a manager is on the organizations variables rather than on the psychology of individuals. 

4. Planning the Change 

Change can be made from one of (or all of, or some of) the four ways – change in structure, change in task, change in people, change in technology. A change agent has to consider the following points during the planning phase: 
  • He should be in a position to convince the members of the benefits of payoffs from change and also alerts them to the negative consequences and adverse effects in the absence of change.
  • He should select appropriate strategy - whether to change structure or people or technology or task. Normally all the changes include the change in behavior of people.
  • He should try to involve the subordinates in decision-making.
  • He should enlighten the need for change to the organizations participants.

5. Implementation of Change

The next step in the process of change is to implement the change plan successfully. While implementing change, the change agent encounters resistance from members of organization. Research supports the view that creating and implementing change is more difficult than planning the change. In addition to the problem of resistance, manager also confronts the problem of control. Change disrupts normal course of events and during change, it is quite likely that organizations lose control and many activities easily. 

6. Feedback

To ensure smooth implementation of change in the given direction, it is necessary to make review and evaluation of progress made regarding implementation of change. Without proper feedback, management of change is rendered incomplete and useless. A manager or change agent must compare the standards present during the pre-change period with actual performance after implementing the change and ensure whether the change has been fruitful or wasteful.
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Reasons for Resistance to Change (Organizational Change)

Many people and organizations resist to change. Generally employees or individual and management or organization resist to change. Some of the possible reason for why people and organization resist change are as follows:

resistance to change

I. Resistance by the Employees or Individuals 

Individual is considered as the main source of resistance to change due to their perception, personalities and needs, because of the following reason individual resist the change. Individual employees or the trade union generally resist change for the following reason: 

1. Inconvenience or Love for Status Quo 

The introduction of a change in doing a job may disrupt the normal routine of employees. Thus, any change that interferes with the normal work routine is generally inconvenient and is resisted. 

2. Fear of Uncertainties 

Employees perform their job in a normal routine. They are aware of their duties, responsibilities and superior's behavior. Any change may create some uncertainties in the minds of the employees. Employees tend to speculate what would be their new roles and responsibilities and how their superiors will respond to them. Such uncertainties may result in some resistance to change. 

3. Fear of Economic Loss

These include the fear of technological unemployment, fear of reduced work hours and consequently less pay after change, fear of demotion and low wages, obsolesce of skills, etc. Whenever people sense that new machinery pass a threatening challenge for their existence, they resist change. For example, many managers in today’s industries are resisting the introduction of computers. Further, when people perceive any psychological degradation of the job that they are performing, they simply try to maintain status quo and resist change. 

Any change that creates a feeling of fear of economic loss among employees is likely to generate resistance to change. Change may create fear of economic loss due to the following reasons. 
  • Fear of lay-off or retrenchment or termination from the job.
  • Fear of reduced job opportunities due to change in technology.
  • Fear of wage cuts or reduced incentives.
  • Fear of demotion and consequently low monetary benefits and status.
  • Fear of more work-load due to automation and reduced monetary benefits.
  • For all or some of the reasons of fear, employees resist change. 

4. Social Displacement

Change often results in disturbance of the existing social relationships. People in work organizations develop some sort of information relationships and any change breaking these relationships will be strongly resisted. Group pressure also brings about resistance to change in individuals. 

By working with each other employees develop certain patterns of social relations. They feel comfortable in communication and interaction with certain persons. This comfort makes work more enjoyable and helps to develop friendships. Any change in structure, technology or personnel may disrupt these social relations. Hence employees resist change. 

5. Fear of Obsolescence of Skills 

The knowledge is exploding at a fast rate. As a result, knowledge is any field that may become obsolete. When employees feel that the introduction of new technology in place of old one poses a threat of replacing them, they resist such change quickly and violently. For instance, when employees have fear of being phased out of their job by automation, or computerization they resist such change. In cases, when job security is at stake, even a minor change in policy and procedure may evoke resistance to change. 

6. Habits

Once we become habituated on anything, it will be difficult to change that habit. As human beings, we are creatures of habit. Changes in old work habits create resistance. Employees tend to respond in accustomed work. 

Every human being has his own habits. Habits are hard to break. They are sometimes serious constraints to change. Learning a new method of performing a job becomes difficult due to the habits. Hence, most employees do resist change due to their habits that have been developed over the years. 

7. Fear of Loss of Power

Employees may fear loss of job security, reduction in pay and increase in workloads. The cost of change may be higher than benefits of change. Sometimes, change may erode the power of the employees. They may lose some power and influence. Apart from it, the change may force to accept new power position. To enjoy new power position, they may be required to establish new relationship which may be in the time being difficult. Hence, employees resist change. 

8. Lack of Understanding / Clarification 

Some people resist change because they do not understand the nature of the change. It happens due to the lack of clarification or gap of communication. Hence, every person takes or understands the change in his own way. Some persons take the change as an indication of their poor performance on the job while some others may assume that their position would soon be abolished. Some others may take it as a measure of punishment for some personal reasons. Thus, lack of clarifications about the nature of change invites resistance from the employees. 

II. Resistance by the Management or Organization 

Organization itself is another source for resistance to change. Many times, the resistance to change is initiated by the organization as a whole or by the top management. Following are the main reasons for organizational resistance.

1. Resource Transfer or Reallocation

Organizational change usually invoices a huge expenditure and sufficiency of resource usually in a major constraint. In such a situation, change is resisted by the departmental heads and employees. This is true, when government forces the organizations to introduce certain technological, organizational or social changes but does not provide adequate human and physical resources, the organizations oppose such changes. Similarly when trade unions pressurize management to introduce certain changes for the safety, welfare and comforts of the employees, the management put resistance to such changes for lack of availability of funds. 

Sometimes, a change requires transfer of resources from one department to anther department. In other words, resources are reallocated to departments for implementing the change. Any department getting lesser or reduced allocation of resources than in the past would resist the change. 

2. Organization Structure

Some organizational structure has built in mechanism for resistance to change. For instance, in a typical bureaucratic structures when chain of command is clearly spelled out, authority, responsibilities and duties are clearly defined, flow of information is stressed through proper, channel and the entire pattern is highly mechanistic and rigid, and any changes in the organization structure or pattern would either be possible or strongly reputed. 

Some organizational structure has built-in mechanism for resistance to change. For instance, in a typical bureaucratic structure, where chain of command is clearly spelled out, authority, responsibilities and duties are clearly defined, flow of information is stressed through proper channel and the entire pattern is highly mechanistic and rigid and any change in the organizational structure or pattern would either be impossible or strongly refuted.

3. Non-cooperation or Threat by Experts 

Sometimes, a change results in the transfer of responsibility to perform a specialized task to a new individual or group of experts. The expert person or group loosing the responsibility for performance may resist the proposed change. Moreover, if the change is to be affected through the cooperation of those loosing experts, it would even be more difficult to affect the change successfully. 

4. Fear of Increase in Responsibility 

Sometimes, a change may result in increase in responsibility of managers. In such a situation, managers may oppose the change. 

5. Threat to Power and Influence

Managers occupying top, key and prestigious positions resist change when they perceive that the change may thereafter affect their position, power or influence. Introduction of new technology, reshuffling in organizations structure (levels, departments, authority or responsibility) or reallocation of resources may disrupt the existing power relationship and may adversely affect some of the top executives. They initiate resistance in order to safeguard their interest by maintaining status quo. 

6. Fear of Loss of Investment

In case when organizations have invested a huge capital in their permanent assets and training of employees, they are afraid of their capital being sunk, if they introduce a new technology. 

7. Group Inertia 

Sometimes, long standing group norms or group inertia may resist the change. In such a situation, an attempt to change the job of one individual is opposed by all group members. 

8. Chain of Effects

Sometimes, one change may lead to a series of changes. For instance, change in the data processing technique in accounting department may require change in data processing technique in all the departments. If the other departments are not willing to change, change in accounting department cannot be implemented.

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Significant of Learning in Organization

Learning is any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience. We can say that the changes in the behavior indicate that learning has taken place and that learning is a change in behavior. The definition of learning highlights few characteristics of learning:
  1. Learning involves change: This may be good or bad from an organizational point of view. People can learn unfavorable behaviors as well as favorable behaviors. 
  2. The change must be relatively permanent: Temporary changes may be only reflexive and fail to represent any learning.
  3. Leaning takes place when there is change in actions: A change in an individual's thought processes or attitudes, if accompanies by no change in behaviors and would not be learning.
  4. Some form of experience is necessary for learning: This may be required directly through observation or practice or if may result from indirect experience such as that acquired through reading.
  5. Predict behavior of people at work: OB is concerned with understanding, managing and predicting behavior of people at work. The understanding of learning concept offers significant insight to managers for managing employee behavior. the managerial skills such as technical, human and conceptual are learnt, which helps to predict behavior at work.
  6. Human resource development: Learning serves as a key factor for HRD as it enhances skills, competencies and potentials of employee of an organization. Employee learns to face challenges, work on pressure, manage productivity and enhance efficiency through their training and development programmes. Learning fosters desirable behavior and eliminates undesirable behaviors.
  7. Technical adaptation: Technology refers to mechanical and intellectual process used to transfer input to desired outputs. The technology is rapidly changing the use of technology requires skills which employee can adopt through learning. The rapid change in technology has generated new forms of employment relationship such as flexible work hours, virtual offices, contingent work force etc. which can only be coped through the process of learning.
  8. Total quality management (TQM): Learning is significant to enhance TQM philosophy. To implement the TQM, the leader involves employees and enhances their sense of ownership and commitment at work. It directs for the management of people so that quality is involved as the central part of the job. The process requires learning in the organization.
  9. Facilitate organization change and development: The dynamic forces of external environment involves change in organization, it can be terms of globalization, technology, increasing work force diversity etc. A manager and other employee should learn to reconfigure organizations to adapt to such situations. The learning helps to minimize the resistance to change. On the contrary, OB seeks to make system wide intervention with the help of change agents to cope with the changing environment. The success of OB largely depends upon parallel learning structure.
All organization behavior is affected by learning. It plays a vital role on training is organizational setting. It is directly related to their death and survival. The significance of learning is, obviously, for people and organizations. For people, it changes the behavior orientations such as knowledge, skills, values, personality and competency and so on that are essential for achieving organizational goals. In organizational setting, learning is significant for the following reasons:
  1. For effective Human Resource Development: Learning is the key to developing skills and potential of employees. Training in organizations aims at learning. Managers can foster desirable behavior and check undesirable behaviors through training. Learning also helps managers developed effective training programmes.
  2. To Understand and predict behavior of the people at work: One of the objectives in the field of organizational behavior is to understand and predict behaviors of people at work, different rules and skills of managers are acquired through learning. If managers need to be effective, they should play roles and have skills. Without learning experience, it is difficult to manage and people in organization.
  3. To facilitate organizational change and development: Leaning facilitates organizational change and development. There are different forces in the external environment for change in the organizations. Some of these forces are globalization, technology and demographics. Such changes force managers and workers to learn to reconfigure organizations to adapt to such situations.
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Project Progress Control, Financial Management, Change and Conflict Management, Output Delivery

Project Progress Control

Control is monitoring and correction of performance to achieve project objectives. It consists of :
  • Tracking actual progress of the project.
  • Comparing actual progress with the targets.
  • Analyzing deviations between actual and targeted progress.
  • Corrective actions to address deviations. Problems are dealt with.
  • Informing stakeholders about the project progress.

Financial Management


The project manager is responsible for efficient and effective use of financial resources. Budgetary control and cost control techniques are used for making effective use of resources. Waste is eliminated.

Change and Conflict Management


Project implies change. The project manager is responsible for managing change. He should also identify and manage risks in the project. Conflict is inevitable in project. The project manager should communicate and negotiate with all the parties involved  in the conflicts. He should avoid management by crisis.

Project Output Delivery

The project manager is responsible to deliver the project deliverable to the customer.

Project Termination Management

The project manager is also responsible for handover of the project after its termination.
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