Leadership and Change - Essay Example

?Leadership and change Restructuring accompanied by workforce reductions often has an adverse impact on employee diversity. Why does diversity suffer when organizations downsize and what should a health care organization do to maintain its diversity? Downsizing tends to have an adverse impact on employees since it leads to deskill the workforce, negatively affect the collective corporate knowledge, reduce the leaders / mentors, and cause a general disruption in the organizational structure as well as the organization-employee relationship. It leads to distrust among employees, affect their morale and demoralize them (Di Frances, 2002). Organizational restructuring by workforce reductions is known to adversely affect employee diversity. This is particularly true in case of seniority-based downsizing which disproportionately affects women and minorities who are rarely found in higher level jobs (Sims, 2007). Furthermore the rising trend of organizational restructuring through downsizing is increasingly targeting minorities and people of color unintentionally. Most profitable companies today are increasingly hiring contingent employees i.e. employees hired to carry out part-time, or contract based jobs. Studies have indicated that a majority of employees hired for such part-time/ contract based jobs comprise of new immigrants, who are willing to work for low wages/ pay. Downsizing hence is more likely to affect such employees disproportionately, leading to a negative impact on employee diversity in the process (Shepard, 2009; Baumaol, Blinder, and Wolff, 2005). Healthcare organizations must ensure that effective diversity policies are developed and implemented across all levels in the organization followed by effective leadership and corporate training support services. Plans must be made to ensure integration of a diverse workforce, through training and management programs in order to foster good leadership that values and sustains organizational diversity. Cultural competencies in healthcare organizations are identified at the interview stage. Hence the process of hiring, interviewing, and selection must take into consideration the impact and implications of discrimination and cultural competence and completely do away with blatant discrimination (Lim, Winter, and Chan, 2006; Maxwell, 2005; Thomas, 1991). 2. Why do people tend to give leaders too much credit when the outcome of an organizational change goes well or blame them when it doesn't? The key reason behind such behavior by individuals can be explained by attribution theory. This theory of leadership is basically used to explain the reasons behind individual opinions and their tendency to attribute success of failure of an event to a particular person / leader. It argues that individuals often tend to use various methods to associate the results of an event by collecting information related to it and attributing the same to a person / leader which helps them in understanding / explaining the causes behind such incident. Moreover the leaders are often characterized by individuals with certain traits - either positive or negative such as personality, understanding, intelligence, aggressiveness, perseverance, etc. In an organizational environment the attribution theory helps in explaining the manner and process by which individuals /employees attribute either extremely negative or extremely positive outcomes of an organizational project to its leadership (Rumsey, 2012; Winkler, 2009). 3. Some people suggest that the most effective organizations have the strongest cultures. What do we mean by the strength of organizational culture, and what possible problems are there with a strong organizational culture? An effective organizational culture entails an environment which tends to foster employee growth by building on their individual strengths, utilizing greater positive reinforcement techniques as opposed to negative ones and encouraging vitality and growth across all levels in the organization. According to Cameron and Freeman (1991) congruence of fit within organizational culture is the key strength of an organizational culture. The term congruence is defined as "consistency among organizational systems and components. It is congruence within a culture, rather than homogeneity among organizational subcultures or agreement among organizational respondents" (p. 28) Sathe (1935) suggests that a strong organizational culture is composed of three key elements i.e. pervasiveness, direction, and clarity / transparency. Pervasiveness refers to the manner and extent to which the organizational culture is shared, spread, and adopted by employees within the organizations. It is described as either thick or thin, whereby a thick culture refers to organizational values, systems, and processes which are firmly integrated / incorporated within the organization as opposed to a thin culture which does not incorporate or adhere to the core values of the business and has a very weak influence over the strategic processes within organizations. Direction refers to the process by which organizations pursue the accomplishment of goals. The element of sharing is also critical element that ascertains the strengths or weaknesses of an organizational culture. Sharing refers to the sharing of values, and assumptions throughout the organizations. Clarity refers to the rules - mostly informal and the adherence to the same by the employees, which tends to eliminate uncertainty and drives the organization towards the successful achievement of its goals (El Hag, 2009; Hernandez, 2009). The problems likely to be encountered by organizations with a strong culture include compliance issues faced in high power-distance cultures. The leaders may find it difficult to enforce compliance in such cultures where overt compliance is highly likely to be superficial rather than sincere and the leader may face difficulties in influencing the attitudes and behavior of employees (Ashkanasy et al., 2000). 4. It is a sad truth that many health care managers are not very skilled at leading organizational change. In fact, their actions increase resistance against, and decrease the probability of, successful change. Identify three errors that change leaders often make that undermines an effective change program. The three key errors that change leaders often make which tend to undermine an effective change program include: Lack of perseverance: Most of the times the leaders initiate a change but leave them halfway. Such attitudes cause the change programs to fail or encounter various obstacles. Leaders often make half-hearted efforts towards completing the series of changes initiated causing confusion, lack of focus among employees eventually resulting in derailment of the program. An effective change program requires persistent and ongoing leadership (Hesselbein and Shrader, 2008). Complacency error: This is one of the most common errors made by change leaders. According to Kotter (1996 qtd. in Remme et al., 2008) the greatest mistake of change leaders while implementing the change process is rush through the entire process without providing proper and adequate guidance to the subordinates. This misguided urgency on the part of the leaders causing confusion among the employees who fail to understand the significance and implications of the process, leading to failure on their part to achieve the desired objectives. It also significantly increases ambiguity and loss of morale due to failure to achieve the desired goals (Remme et al., 2008). Lack of effective communication: Any change process is likely to fail in case of absence of an effective communication process across all sections of the organization. The lack of establishment of an effective communication channel on the part of the leader particularly while communicating the urgency and significance of a change process often leads to failure and prevents the transformation. Lack of communication misguides the employees regarding the urgency of the process, and causes instability within the organization (Remme et al., 2008). References: Ashkanasy, N. M., Celeste, P. M., Wilderom, P. M., Peterson, M. F., (2000). Handbook of organizational culture and climate. SAGE Publication, p. 406-407 Baumol, W. J., Blinder, A. S., Wolff, E. N., (2005). Downsizing in America: Reality, causes, and consequences. Russell Sage Foundation, p. 231-233. Cameron, K. S., Frreeman, S. J., (1991). Cultural congruence, Strength and Type: Relationships to effectiveness. In Research in Organizational Change and Development, vol. 5 Eds. Greenwich, CA: JAI Publication. Di Frances, J., (2002). Ten reasons why your company shouldn't downsize. Successful Meetings, vol. 51 (9): p. 49-51. El Hag, F. L., (2009). Impact of organizational culture on success of mergers and acquisitions: An analytical study. ProQuest Publication, p. 43-44. Hernandez, S. R., (2009). Strategic human resources management in health services organization. Thousand Oaks, CA: Cengage Learning Publication, p. 104-105. Hesselbein, F., Shrader, A., (2008). Leader to leader: Enduring insights on leadership from the leader to leader. John Wiley & Sons Publication, p. 263-264 Lim, C., Winter, R., Chan, C., (2006). Cross-cultural interviewing in the hiring process: Challenges and strategies. Career Development Quarterly, vol. 54 (3): p. 265-268. Maxwell, M., (2005). The capability approach and disability. Journal of Disability and Policy Studies, vol. 16 (4): p. 236-247. Remme, J., De Bono, S., Van Der Heijden, B., Jones, S., (2008). Leadership, change, and responsibility. Meyer & Meyer Publication, p. 135-137 Rumsey, M. G., (2012). The Oxford handbook of leadership. Oxford University Press, p. 368-369. Shepard, J. M., (2009). Sociology. Cengage Learning Publication, p. 397-398. Sims, R. R., (2007). Human resource management: Contemporary issues, challenges, and opportunities. IAP Publication, p. 64-66. Thomas, R. R., (1991). Beyond race and gender: Unleashing the power of your total workforce by managing diversity. New York: AMACOM Publication. Winkler, I., (2009). Contemporary leadership theories. Springer Publication, p. 9-10 Read More