Management Research Paper - Essay Example

Organizations are found to be successful even with large scale change initiatives and have also failed to undertake even small changes. It is the complexity of the change process which results in failures in managing the change initiatives (Yaeger, “The Complexities of Large-Scale Change”). Successful change organisations have realized the importance of inter-relationship between components and how changes in one component can impact on another. Strong rigor and methodology is identified as the prerequisite for a process which leads to well aligned decisions and possesses the required flexibility to meet the changing market needs (Yaeger, “The Complexities of Large-Scale Change”).

The last decade has demonstrated an increasing flow in the extent of research on organizational change. This essay is a search for the general commonalities and differences on change management efforts in different organizations focusing on the extent of failure of such attempts and the reasons for the same. Apart from concentrating on the different sets of changes such as barriers and common mistakes while implementing certain types of changes, the main interest of the essay is focusing on the inhibitors and enablers of change, drivers of decisions for undertaking large scale change management programs and evaluation of the same.

The study aims to find a link between the enablers and inhibitors causing the success or failures of change initiatives in organizations (CEP, “Why Change Fails or Succeeds”). The study provides a crucial literature on the subject highlighting on the arguments and views presented by researchers and authors. The analysis is done in the light of various organizational behavioural theories and their applications in real life organizational settings. Rate of failure of change in organizations As mentioned, given the numerous criteria for successful changes in organizations, all changes are not found to be successful.

The rate of failure of change programs can be very high. According to Maurer (1997), technological changes demonstrate a failure rate of 20%, while 29% of all mergers and acquisitions fail. 30% of the attempts of business process re-engineering are found to fail while 50% of the initiatives to improve quality end in failures (Cook, Macaulay & Coldicott, “The rate of failure of change”). Kotter has identified some of the pitfalls in change management, such as lack of compelling reasons or issues for the change, unclear objectives or goals for the change, inadequate planning, unrealistic time scales, inadequate participation etc.

Too much allowance for complacency, lack of short term whims, insufficient guidelines or instructions for the change have been identified as some of the other pitfalls in the management of changes in organizations (Cook, Macaulay & Coldicott, “The rate of failure of change”). Critical analysis of why some change programs are more effective than others Previous research reveals that much of the change initiatives