Change Management and Information Technologies - Coursework Example

Change management is of paramount concern within companies, especially in the modern-day when changes occur so rapidly and with apparently increasing frequency. The effects on employees must be taken into account when considering these changes. It can be seen as a fulcrum around which many of the great advantages and yet also the challenges of IT revolve. Employees may be empowered to perform new tasks in a much easier manner, and yet may also become disillusioned as they feel they are even more simply a cog within a machine than they were before.

While the minutia of instituting change within IT often revolves around practical problems such as software implementation and training of employees, it is just as important to consider the wider implications such as the effect upon the company culture and employee morale of the new technology. These are not peripheral concerns: they are central to the performance of employees and thus the overall success of the company. 

  Context

 This analysis will consider how can a manager make sense of the numerous different models and the complexity of the changes that will occur with technological advancements. This has been a central role within business studies for a number of years. The manager needs to be able to consider ahead of time the likely consequences upon both the overall company and specifically upon employee performance before the IT change has occurred. In many ways, the culture of the company is most important. Corporate culture can be defined in a number of ways. But in general, it consists of a disparate number of forces at work within a company. These include everything from beliefs to systems to the company history to the overall attitude of employees. This might seem overly complex and amorphous for actual practical use, so various attempts have been made to systemize the analysis of corporate culture.

 One powerful method is through the cultural web. The cultural web is a means of investigating and revealing the culture of an organization. It represents how culture is expressed and how it manifests itself:

The central area of the Venn diagram that represents the cultural web is where the paradigm of change occurs. The manager must view this paradigm within the complexity of the web that has been produced by the various factors that go into the individual sectors:- such as “stories”, “power”, “symbols”, and “routines/rituals”. All of these are what make up the culture of a company, and, as can be seen from a cursory glance, they are all ‘human’ variables that will be held within the general culture of the company.

          Thus the manager needs to consider how the changes being considered will affect this culture and how, perhaps, more importantly, the culture will influence them. This can be related to Balogun's initial idea of considering the context-specific situation that occurs within a company. The change plan must be made to at least fit reasonably easily within the culture that already exists within the company rather than forcing a radical change within that culture. It is clear that sometimes a radical change in corporate culture is needed (Enron might have benefited from such a change before it went bankrupt) but in general, change should be incremental and gradual rather than revolutionary and rapid.