Managing Radical Changes in an Organization - Assignment Example

? Managing Radical Changes in an Organization Number: Due: Introduction Organizations in the present day cannot cope without having to experience any form of changes in their structure and functioning. This is because they are receiving much competition from their competitors and therefore some might opt to merge with other companies to survive in the competitive environment. The introduction of mobile Banking has been one of the radical changes in the banking industry. This service has affected the way business is being conducted especially in Kenya where it has mostly been successful. Therefore the success of this service needed careful planning, and implementation, more time devotion, and the need to incorporate all the staff members and other employees to accept this kind of change (Isern & Pung 2007). The use of organizational teams by most organizations to implement radical changes has been a core recommendation by most scholars however, the requirements for these teams to be successful in the change implementation are not clear. However, the composition of the change teams and how they are selected, their motivation and influence of engaging with the employees on the need to make changing to the company, are critical to the success of the change implementation. In this study several theories are put in place to identify the strategies that any team carrying out change must observe for it to be successful. Nevertheless, the adoption-innovation theory, and the ability based theory of emotional intelligence proposes that the teams that observe the views of the employees, the team that uses the cognitive style will no fact be successful in the implementation of any form of change. Moreover, the leader of the team has a direct effect on the success of radical change implementation (Antonakis 2009). Discussion The need and the consequences accrued to radical changes in an organization should be considered by the organizational leaders before making a decision. Such was the case in the Banking industry and has been successful in the implementation of this service. Despite the benefits that might be expected out of any changes to an organization, several researches have shown that not all the radical changes that have taken place in most of the companies have achieved their intended purpose. While there might be several factors behind these failures, there is the underestimation of the quantity of time and the energy required that would create a new organizational culture so that the employees might be accepted and feel this change in the organization. Without employee engaging in any type of change, there is little realization of the profits or the required results. The organizational change is therefore a slow and dynamic process that needs careful planning. The external forces in the present economic and social environment have made many organizations to seek the best ways in which to adapt and implement the changes they need in the organization. Nevertheless, the need to maintain the legitimacy of the company and the need to maintain the viability of the resources (Armenakis 1999). Thus therefore, there is a need to focus on radical change initiatives for the organizations to benefit from any form of change they are about to implement. The radical changes in the mobile banking industry are often associated with some form of risk and difficult to implement. Change Process Models According to Baron (1997), change is a slow and dynamic process in an organization. It consists of several phases that need to be successive. These he referred successive phases as “unfreezing, moving, and refreezing” (Barbuto 2006). Several other recent studies have based their ideas on this phase model and come up with related models that aim to show the practical aspect of the implementation of the radical changes by an organization. Baron (1997) asserts that the implementation of the radical changes in an organization is a daunting task and therefore throughout the transition period there challenges that will be faced. These challenges in addition, need to be managed through in a thorough manner. The mobile banking needs to be managed in stages. Therefore making the stakeholders see the immediate future of this kind of change was important to the implementation of the mobile banking service. He also recommends the use of several “leverage” points in all the transition levels; this might be informally or through the formal ways so that considerable behavior might be realized in an organization. These recommendations were referred to as “organizational arrangements” by Baron. Several other scholars such as Barrick and Mount (1998) have come up with the “tools” necessary for a successive change. These transition devices include the commitment of the management and the transition team need to be composed of the people who really think that there is a need for any form of transition in the organization and therefore the change outcome affects them. They farther assert that the management should not look down on the quantity of time needed to bring about changes and energy are needed to achieve this change. Nevertheless, there should be expect how this should be done through clear levels of performance, measurement, benchmarks, and the ways in which the management will receive the feedback. This is helpful so that the management is able to put together all the important components that start change and enable the organization to meet their goal (Barry & Stewart 1997). However, the introduction of the mobile banking service to the banking industry was never a walk in the park as it involves a number of issues discussed below: Dealing with the Psychological Aspect in Mobile Banking Managers and the management team in the banking industry often have to deal with the resistors who do not want the changes. Some employees such as the cashiers might fear for loss of jobs since there would be no people coming to bank and others for example might just want to oppose the changes because of ego. Therefore there are psychological aspects that come into place in the process of this form of change implementation and this need to be dealt with. The psychological process involves “letting go” stage, management of the period between the original and the new change, and starting a new beginning (Basinger & Peterson 2008). The letting go stage identifies who loses what, and as the management they need to acknowledge this to all the employees and the shareholders, and have to know that the past culture is still important. This stage should not be overlooked by the organizations, and it leads to the results that the organization is wanting. Moreover, there is a need to manage the stage between the old reality and the new change as in this period most people lose the moral and motivation to work and therefore use of systems such as the transitions streams is important to enable people to move to the new organizational change. Managing the new mobile industry is moreover vital. People need to think that the old system is not efficient and how this stage is handled is an indicator of the radical change success. Other models that try to explain about the radical change process exist. However, scholars argue that the process of management of the radical changes will still be difficult and challenging and thus no stage should be underestimated. Use of Teams in Mobile Banking and the Adaption Innovation Theory The use of teams is important in any change implementation as there is a need to maintain the organizational culture and to get the views of the employees. Management of the radical change process need the creation of a group of people that shall coordinate and support the change process. Thus the accomplishment of the radical change the need coupled goals to have people who are committed top planning and implementing the radical change proposals. Scholars believe that the involvement of the transition team would create a forum where there would be the sharing of ideas from the employees and all the company stakeholders. Therefore the team approach is vital to building a lasting relationship with the employees and to get full support and the protection of the company culture. A research indicated that most companies have varied views on how performance is achieved in their industries but however in the appendix below there is a general view on how the companies view their performance and it is important for the mobile industry to observe all the factors in the successful implementation of their changes as shown in appendix B. The team needs to be ready to work and thus the Kirton Adaption theory (Bass 1985) is important in understanding the company culture in the process of change implementation and what might be effective in the radical change process. This theory talk about the “cognitive” style of individual in the transition team, the manner of organizing information regarding changes and decision making, and how to solve problems that might arise in the process of implementing change in an organization (Bass & Avolio 1990). Mobile banking implementation and management require sensitive decisions as they have an immediate effect to an organization and all the employees. Rushing decisions might not be ideal as it would not lead to the required results. Most of the organizations that effect changes in their organizations do not often follow the right procedure and underestimate the use of the transition team in the process. Getting to make people think that the changes are necessary through the transition team rather than convincing them is vital to the success of the process. Thus this approach shows how a problem needs to be approached in the change process and how the change is managed. In the process of management of the mobile banking service, several problems arise such as the need to involve all the members of staff and maintaining the company culture into the new system. The careful planning of this and many other issues call for analytical decisions from the management. Individuals in the banking industry might differ in terms of their personality and how they view change, all the adaptive to the innovative form. Adaptors and the innovators are all creative people and are considered as problem solvers and can make changes successful in an organization, but the innovators are more talented and work outside the present system and would identify the loopholes in any proposed form of change. All these people need to feel the changes as they are part of the organization. Both of these people have different ways of doing things. Dealing with Emotions The understanding of emotional intelligence in the banking industry is important as it enables the mobile banking team to predict the behavior of the workers. This concept moreover, addresses the issues such as the self-awareness, getting to understand others more and the need to develop and sustain the relationship of various company workers. All these are important for the success of any change team. The companies that have failed to realize the goals out of the change process do not well apply this concept that needs to be taken into much consideration in any organization. Nevertheless, emotional intelligence has been likened to the leadership roles and through leading others, leaders evoke emotional responses and therefore the leader who can be in a position to manage his emotions and those of other office workers would be more effective in management. Thus a company that wants successfully to implement changes must be aware of the need of emotional intelligence more specific to the management and the transition team. The management of changes is coupled with a lot of decision making by the leaders of an organization and therefore this cannot be successful without having the knowledge of emotional intelligence as the decision will affect everybody in the workplace. There need to capture the attention of the workers through well planned decisions and thus the emotional intelligence has been argued as being vital in leadership and affects the decision making process. From the above issues in the mobile banking industry shows that there is a relationship among the following: The cognitive style of the transition team, the managements' emotional intelligence and the implementation and management of the mobile banking service (Isern & Pung 2007). Nevertheless, the effect of the management's emotional intelligence in the performance of the transition team, there is also the effect on the change outcome from the members' similarity or differences with respect to think and solving problems alongside emotional intelligence of the team leader. Clearly, the transition team has several challenges and therefore its composition can have a high impact on the outcomes of the mobile banking service. Nevertheless, the team composition needs to be selected to represent the entire gender groups, ethnic, race, and culture as this will determine the level of outcome of the proposed changes. In addition the differences in the personality of the transition team, the attitudes of the employees towards the change determine the outcome in the radical changes. Therefore, since most of the companies use the teams to accomplish their change implementation, there is a need to define the relationship between the diversity in the personality of the teams and their performance outcomes in order for the changes to be successful. Certain personality characteristics such as the “cognitive style” are known to affect the results of any change. Therefore in the implementation of the mobile service in the banking industry, it is important to know how to handle the cognitive style amongst the transition team and the problem-solving approach need to be redefined by the organization. Baron (1997) asserts that the adoption-innovation strategy to deal with problems during the management of the changes is essential to its success. Therefore leadership is essential with the required skills to lead the transition team to successful look at the current organizational structure and implement the new changes. Teams that do not have the problem solving leader most often need the intervention of a leader who can spearhead their actions to bring about the required change to the organization. The organizational leaders are required to use, coordinate, and look at the current work behavior of other workers to manage the radical changes. At this stage the sociability of a leader might prove effective. Conclusion The issue of managing radical changes in an organization is never an easy task. It is one of the important organizational changes that include the change of the personality of each organizational member, style, beliefs, and the culture. When a company practice change, it forgets the old norms and tries to use the new practices in the name of change. This change calls for the use of a significant amount of time, and energy in order to create a new culture in the company. Nevertheless in the process of creating a new culture there is loss experienced from the old culture (Baron 1997). The organizational researchers view the radical changes as one of the challenging tasks in an organization and calls for full commitment in order to realize the goals of the organization. All the organizational members must be willing to join the forces aimed at bringing this change. The management of the organization must be focused on the fiscal, operational, and staffing issues as the way forward to the implementation of the changes in the organization. However, there is more to implementation of the radical changes than the solving of internal and external issues in order to bring out the changes successfully. There is need to do away with the already existing structures of the organization and coming up with the new “organizational entity” (Isern & Pung 2007). It also calls for the psychological treatment of the stakeholders that have been affected by this change, working on the new strategy and structure, the organization’s culture, attitudes, satisfaction, and the commitment of working with the new entity. Therefore radical changes call for the whole of the organization in order to be effective and the organization to realize its vision. Therefore effective management and implementation is however vital to its success. References Antonakis, J 2009 Does leadership need emotional intelligence? The Leadership Quarterly, 20, 247-261. Armenakis, A 1999, Organizational change: A review of theory and research in the 1990s. Journal of Management, 25, 292-315. Baron, R 1997, The Emotional Intelligence Inventory (EQ-I): Technical Manual. Toronto: Multi-Health Systems. Barbuto, J 2006, The emotional intelligence of transformational leaders: A field study of elected officials. The Journal of Social Psychology, 146(1), 51-64. Barrick, M & Mount, M 1998, Relating member ability and personality to work-team processes and team effectiveness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83(3), 377-391. Barry, B & Stewart, G 1997, Composition, process, and performance in self-managed groups: The role of personality. Journal of Applied Psychology, 82(1), 62-78. Basinger, W & Peterson, J 2008, Where you stand depends on where you sit: Participation and reactions to change. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 19(2), 243- 257. Bass, B 1985, Leadership and performance beyond expectations. New York: Free Press. 147 Bass, B & Avolio, B 1990, Developing transformational leadership: 1992 and beyond. Journal of European Industrial Training, 14, 21-27. Isern, J & Pung C 2007, Driving Radical Changes. Online Journal, 1, 21-23 Appendix A: Force-field analysis Showing the Challemges of Change Exist (Bass & Avolio 1990) This analysis shows that in any change implementation there are constraints to it as shown by the chart above. The management of the mobile banking service has challenges mainly the cashiers who would not want the changes implemented for fear of losing their jobs. Appendix B: Organizational view of performance (Antonakis 2009) Thus most companies have failed in the management of these changes because they do not use the right transition team and do not properly observe the above factors in the appendix. The implementation of the mobile banking service has been successful because it has taken care of the factors more so the view of the banking culture. Read More