Middle Managers Resist and Support Change - Assignment Example

Organizational Management Contents Contents 2 Question 3 Middle managers resist and support change 3 Question 2 8 Planned change not bring culturalchange 8 Question 3 11 Leadership Behaviours 11 References 14 Question 1 Middle managers resist and support change Change is considered to be a priority for organizations. Environmental, financial and technological environment have influenced firms to transform and adapt wide set of activities. Successful change is dependent on co-operation from team members. Any form of resistance from employees can adversely affect change initiative. Organizational reforms taking place across the globe have increased pressure on middle managers. This pressure is understood in the form of threat of redundancy, increased working hours, intense competition in workplace for promotion and increasing responsibility levels. Since 1980s workplace scenarios of private and public sectors belonging to advanced economies have changed significantly (Melanie and Stensaker, 2011). Knowledge-intensive economy has facilitated adoption of new technologies within organizational system. Middle managers possess a grasp over strategic aid implementation and various concepts. Communication in organization is closely knitted with the concept of uncertainty management. Communication aspect is a crucial element in terms of achieving organizational change. Middle managers are actively indulged in communicating information across different organizational levels. Middle managers are solely responsible for facilitating or interpreting vision of upper management to employees. Support from senior management is required while communicating vision or strategic change to employees (McCann, Morris and Hassard, 2008). They are involved in appraising mechanism or eliminating any form of uncertainties from the system. Greater support exhibited by top management ensures commitment from middle managers. Three forms of support are appraisal, instrumental and informational support. Instrumental support is all about providing needed resources to individuals. Informational support is related to giving necessary advice or information. On the other hand, appraisal support is collecting evaluative feedback and then passing such information to other team members. Middle managers at times are observed to support strategic change but in many scenarios they resist such changes due to excessive work pressure. Middle managers fail to understand their role of understanding change and assisting team members to follow change process (Pardo Del Val and Martines Fuentes, 2003). Uncertainty of middle management is usually identified at the pre-implementation stage. This uncertainty is observed during strategic change concept. Uncertainty can tend to become a psychological state which would motivate individuals to decrease stress level. Middle managers, who are actively involved in decision making process, are expected to benefit from certain uncertainty level, which might be essential to achieve adaptability and innovation. Uncertainty level influences middle managers to resist any form of strategic change. Conceptualized understanding towards any form of change can be acquired by middle managers when they have lower levels of uncertainty (Conway and Monks, 2011). This in turn facilitates better communication to employees regarding need for change and process involved in organizational change. Uncertainty or resistance of middle managers is decreased when they get involved in change process or gain required support from senior management. When there is absence of two-way communication amongst managerial levels it results into confusion amongst team members. Need for change is an essential element that should be communicated across employees. Uncertainty management is strongly associated with role conflict. This indicates conflict in communication between employees and senior managers. Facilitators and barriers to change have been represented in figure 1. Figure 1: Barriers and facilitators to change (Source: Sharyn, Herzig and Jimmieson, 2006) As per figure 1, main facilitator of organizational change is effective communication between middle management, senior management and employees. Middle managers resist organizational change simply because they are unable to communicate need for change or convince team members to be a part of such change. Work pressure considerably increases with degree of change and this prevents middle managers from undertaking any form of strategic change. Managers are viewed as designers or creators of strategic change design. Middle managers extend support towards any organizational change because they are considered as change intermediaries. The major role of middle managers is to organize, plan, control, direct, punish and reward employees. Organizational change usually encompasses acquiring set of competencies or skills. It can be stated that these skills enable middle managers to be promoted to next hierarchical level. The new role of middle managers after strategic change requires new set of competencies. These competencies at times influence middle managers to support strategic change in order to gain promotion. On the contrary, it can even de-motivate middle managers from exhibiting support since it requires additional skills and knowledge. There are four key roles adopted by middle managers for organizational change process. These roles are highly dependent on orientation and nature of activity as elaborated in figure 1. Figure 2: Roles of Middle Managers (Source: Piderit, 2000) On basis of figure 2 it can be stated that all four categories indicate managerial contribution towards change process. It is responsibility of middle managers to develop an effective team who are able to accomplish set goals or objectives. Strategic change is beneficial because it aligns team members with new corporate objectives. Change at times is also linked with innovative measures incorporated in organizational system. These measures enable team members to become more creative in workplace (Pugh, 2003). Middle managers extend support through implementing required changes in respective organizational units. They are even focused on initiating change management process as and when required. Management and co-ordination are key elements represented by middle managers. On the other hand, middle managers support such changes through communicating well with team members. It is essential that all employees should be aware about need for change and its associated benefits. To be more precise collaborative work style is encouraged by middle managers in context of organizational change. Middle managers usually resist change because of job security. These kinds of changes are closely knitted with high performance standards. Managers if not able to achieve required performance standards can have questions raised on their job position (Sharyn, Herzig and Jimmieson, 2006). Rewards are associated with organizational practices. When management decides on implementing change, such reward system needs to be altered. It is tedious job for middle managers and is often avoided. Fear of unknown is another factor which restricts middle managers from implementing strategic change. It eventually requires further competency level and effort towards acquiring knowledge base. Peer pressure is a vital reason for managers to prevent any form of change. Stakeholders like middle managers resist change because they are focused on sustaining interests of overall team members. Climate of mistrust is likely to develop if proper communication channels are not established between managers and employees. Trust is having faith on behaviours or intentions of other team members. Mistrust is the main reason behind failure of change initiatives. Middle manager’s resistance towards change occurs only to eradicate this kind of mistrust from the system (Senior and Swailes, 2010). They are witnessed to identify various loopholes present within change strategy. Organizational politics is a common tactics adopted by middle management in order to prevent strategic change implementation. Middle managers might collaboratively work with employees so as to prove decision of formulating any change initiative to be wrong. Employees or even middle managers resist such organizational change because they are not competitive enough to adapt to new workplace environment. Question 2 Planned change not bring cultural change Change is all about feelings possessed by individuals. Any organizational change can be successful only when management is able to connect with values of employees. On the other hand, organizational culture can be defined as set of values, norms, beliefs, structures, assumptions, artefacts, customs and traditions. Culture reflects a shared meaning approach but is often not shared amongst organizational members. Sub-cultures do exist in every organizational system and it results into workplace conflict. Organizational culture is closely related with organizational change. Organizational culture is supposedly constructed by various managerial entities. Culture is developed over a longer period of time since it is behaviours or values learned by team members over an extended period of time. This form of learning is influenced by external environment and can be denoted as emotional, cognitive or behavioural process. Organizational change is also constructed socially (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002). Resistance taking place in context of organizational change can be viewed as culturally negotiable or acceptable. The emotions of people attached with change are observed in terms of social relationship either outside or inside of an organization. The relationship existing between organization and employees are unconscious, deeply rooted and connected with emotional content and identity development. Organizational change usually dislodges this form of identity and ultimately leads to grievance and anxiety. There are instances of planned change where merger and acquisition of two firms was not able to alter existing values of employees. It resulted into tension amongst team members and decreased organizational productivity. There was structural changes taking place in GE since eight years but it never resulted into cultural change. On the contrary, management and employees were not able to align their values with new changes taking place. Practitioners and theorists agree with the fact that change has become a more rapidly occurring phenomenon in current scenario. Planned change concept was firstly derived by many theorists. Change management is inclined towards selecting a change initiative and adopting best approaches which can lead to successful change implementation (Kan and Ken, 2004). During the time period of 1950s to 1980s, organizational change field was greatly dominated by different planned change models. Kurt Lewin model initiated the approach of planned change. The three-step model of Kurt Lewin encompasses three aspects such as unfreezing, moving and refreezing. Lewin assumed that human behaviour stability is based on restraining and driving forces. As per this step, equilibrium should be destabilized in order to influence individuals to adopt new behaviour. After unfreezing stage, employees need to be motivated so that they learn new set of values or behaviour. The final stage is about stabilizing a new equilibrium. This is done to ensure that a group’s new behaviour is safe from any kind of regression. However such planned change models does not ensure cultural change in workplace. Lewin’s model was a group based model and it attracted a lot of criticism in later period. Cultural excellence could not be achieved through planned changed models. Western organizations mainly were slow to change, bureaucratic and inflexible (Burnes, 2004). Planned change is related to setting forth a strategy for overall benefit of a group. Cultural change requires flexibility which was not promoted by planned change models. These models aimed at altering a business situation that can initiate high revenue margins. Cultural change is possible only when there is greater scope of entrepreneurship and promotion in organizational system. Flexibility brings forth continuous incorporation of change initiatives. Change program outcomes are dependent on power struggles rather than on rational decision making or consensus building. Organizational culture as stated by theorists cannot be easily controlled. This cultural aspect can be manipulated in due course of time. Planned change can broadly be classified into two types like complete and incremental change. On basis of planned change one can identify outcomes and even formulate prior steps for any failure. In such pre-planned process it is difficult to change cultural domain of group members. Planned change frameworks reflect upon enhancing current position of an organization (Smollan and Sayers, 2009). Adaptability towards external environment can be an area of concern for these models but cultural aspect is not a major area of concern. Organizational culture is formed over a long period of time and requires sufficient planning for altering cultural factors. Kurt Lewin’s model of planned change also does not focus on organizational culture. It mainly states group behaviour and ways in which stabilized human behaviour can be changed. Emergent change concept is able to bring forth cultural change since it follows a continuous change process. Culture can be restructured only with active participation of team members. Organization as a whole needs to decide on benefits of change and ways to successfully implement change. A planned structure is just a set of guidelines to be followed by team members since it outlines long-term organizational benefits. This structure is not capable enough to change mindset of employees or disrupt their values. Question 3 Leadership Behaviours Change efforts are only successful when proper leadership attitude or skills are adopted. These efforts are related to appropriate planning, control and monitoring of activities. Leadership behaviours need to focus on objectives and step-by-step planning to accomplish goals. The entire change management process can fail if leaders are not able to undertake corrective action or monitor overall progress. The key for successful implementation of change is leadership. This aspect in turn is followed by communication and corporate values. Change can be stated as a process that helps an organization to overcome all possible barriers and move towards a bright future. This change factor is also closely knitted with leadership simply because it is about managing the process to incorporate change. Leadership view is utilizing personal power so as to guide employees towards a common goal (Zaltman and Duncan, 2007). Leaders are solely responsible for crafting strategy or vision in order to energize individuals to perform well and be aligned with same organizational goals. Emotional alignment can be addressed only with the support of leaders. They are the ones who motivate employees to accept change and raise their performance standards. There are different dimensions of leadership behaviours through which employee commitment is either positively or negatively impacted. Cognitive dimension of leadership indicates strategic failure results due to rapid organizational change. Leadership thinking might not encompass change perception and this negatively affects employee commitment. Perception about a change plays a key role as it guides overall behaviour of employees. If leader possesses wrong perception then it shall negatively affect team members. Communication factor greatly depends on this form of perception. It is essential for leaders to analyze need for change and process to be undertaken to implement such change initiatives (Gill, 2003). Leaders can only communicate change strategies or benefits when they have a grasp over the process. This kind of negative perception results into lack of commitment amongst team members. Effective leadership style basically requires cognitive abilities in order to understand and perceive all set of information. Shared values and mission can be developed by leaders only when they possess cognitive abilities. Leadership behaviours comprising of cognitive abilities is able to create long term positive impact on employees. When leaders are highly convinced with change initiatives then they can easily communicate it to other team members and gain their commitment. Emotional dimension is another aspect which positively affects level of employee commitment. This aspect is related to emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is about understanding other individuals as well as oneself (Postmes, Tanis and de Wit, 2001). Leaders who are emotionally intelligent utilize positional power along with personal power to exercise control over team members. These leaders are able to win hearts of employees quickly. This denotes more of participative leadership approach where employees are given equal opportunity to put across their opinion. Participative leadership style creates a positive impact on employees since they feel a sense of ownership in organizational system. On the contrary, lack of emotional intelligence negatively affects commitment level of employees. This is because employees’ ideas or opinions would not be valued by team leaders. Leaders would not be able to gain employee commitment due to emotional distance (Whetten and Cameron, 2004). It would result into an autocratic behaviour where team members are forced to accept any change. Lack of commitment shall decrease employee productivity level. There are three common factors which are adopted by all those leaders who believe in collaborative working. These three components are empowerment, inspiration and motivation. Leaders often try to motivate employees during any kind of organizational change process. Employees are motivated through offering incentives, giving promotions, organizing meetings and providing additional benefits. Motivated employees are more productive by nature and accept change strategies rapidly. On the other hand, leaders who does not believe in motivating employees are likely to face challenges while convincing employees. Organizational change can be successful only if all team members are convinced and aligned with new vision. Leaders play a strategic role in organizational change process. They are the ones who establish a link amongst all stakeholders. Team spirit is initiated by strategic leaders. Leadership skills are directly linked with success or failure of any change initiative. Leaders creating positive impact encompasses wide array of competencies (Lundy and Morin, 2013). These competencies revolve around problem solving techniques, planning skills, effective management, communication, decision making approach and cultural skills. There are three different dimensions through which leaders gain commitment from employees. Goal oriented concept is a way where leaders engage with employees to deliver appropriate results. This approach at times also results into failure of change initiatives. As per this concept leaders are just goal oriented and focus less on employee engagement. Engaging leadership dimension is another innovative way in context of achieving employee commitment. It is a transformational leadership concept where involvement and empowerment of employees are key areas of concern (Thomas and Hardy, 2011). This form of leadership style is inclined towards radical change based on commitment and engagement. Involving dimension is closely knitted with participative style and is implemented in transitional organizations. 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