Change Management - Research Paper Example

Change Management The world is changing rapidly and organizations are faced with newer challenges to adapt to the new situations. When organizationalvalues or culture dominate the decision-making, the change is difficult to occur. Organizations need to create a climate that makes learning possible. The concepts of the learning organization encourage people to learn and refresh their skills to enable them to face everyday complexities. The paper attempts to explore how change management approaches focus and support on learning organization philosophy.

Learning is regarded as detecting and correcting errors (Senge, 2003). Unless an individual admits he or she has made mistake, it cannot be corrected and the individuals risk their credibility in accepting the mistake because most organizations view mistakes as personal failures. Thus, organization culture plays a key role in developing learning organization. A change management is needed to bring about the change in organization culture. Graetz et al. (2002) argue that skills and knowledge are critical resources to ascertain organizational success and it can be achieved by aiming at learning processes.

It is the participative management style that creates learning organization. This is a basic model to begin with. Total quality management (TQM) and lean production are the concepts that are employed to achieve nil waste, nil defects and nil inventories by total integration of all systems. TQM too aims at cultural change processes in the organization to become truly a learning organization. Schein (1993) argues that learning at organizational level is not a matter of choice but a necessity. According to him, learning is a concept that involves three distinct kinds of processes applied at three different stages: (1) knowledge formation (2) skill and habit learning and (3) emotional conditioning and learned anxiety.

Knowledge Attainment and Insight Most organization focuses on this kind of learning -- knowledge attainment and insight. They believe that the attainment of knowledge and information will lead them to learning. But the issue is that insight and knowledge cannot automatically change behavior and without changing behavior, it is difficult to establish the validity of new learning (Schein 1993). Skill and Habit Learning This kind of learning rests on skills and behavior habits. This depends upon more on providing incentives and rewarding for the correct behavior.

Mistakes or errors are not punished but ignored so that learners do not go astray and continue to improve on correct behavior. This kind of learning is slow-paced but more reliable if the issue of incompetence is overcome. The difficult aspect is overcoming old habits and cultural orientation. Skill and habit learning asks for tolerance toward ones errors and readiness to embrace them (Schein 1993). Emotional Conditioning and Learned anxiety Schein (2003) emphasizes that learning based on emotional conditioning is the most powerful of all.

It begins with unfreezing process as described by Kurt Lewin in his pioneering work as one of the important step towards change management. The organizational members need to know that their current ways are not effective and the organization is indeed in trouble; however, this may not make them to change. Organization needs to create a new realm of anxiety among employees that if they do not change their existence in the organization will be in jeopardy. This will make them seriously think about the change and its necessity.

Thus, it is quite clear that the change processes as undertaken by the change managers focus on developing learning organizations through some practical means so that they can survive in the complex world. References Schein, E (1993), How Can Organizations learn Faster? The Challenge of Entering the Green Room. Sloan Management Review, also available online, retrieved April 19, 2012 from http://www.areteadventures.com/articles/the_challenge_of_entering_the_green_room.pdf Senge, P. (2003), Taking personal change seriously: The impact of organizational learning on management practice.

Academy of Management Executive, 17(2), 47–50. Graetz, F., Rimmer, M., Lawrence, A. & Smith, A. (2002), Managing organizational change, John Wiley & Sons (Australia), Milton