Making Sense of Change Management - Assignment Example

Human Resource Analysis Name Date Question 1 (Change) Organisations have clearly defined vision and mission statements that concur with internal and external requirements of the stakeholders. An organization may decide to change the way that it does day-to-day activities and the way the internal goals can be fulfilled. Usually, numerous reasons are in place that make organisation to change the way that they approach their duties and its culture. A common reason that can make an organisation to change is the government legislative and directives. Thus, this means that an organisation will change so that it fulfils the regulations and directives, and to improve on organisational market share. Changes within the market share may be attributed to numerous internal and external conditions that will result in embracing change to ensure for it sustainability and thus profitability. Usually, the process of change requires different strategies to ensure that the operations and functions within the organisation are not negated. This means that there are different ways that an organisation may choose to accomplish the fundamentals of change. Some of the strategies that can be used for change process are organisation wide vs. specific sector, planned vs. unplanned and incremental vs. transformational. These strategies come with different benefits and complications that will require understanding the extent of change. However, in most instances, for a change to succeed, it should be planned and systematic, and some phases that can be included are clarification of the expectations and change process roles, formulation of change process, its implementation and evaluation of entire change process. Following these phases will ensure effective and efficient accomplishment of change process (Cameron, and Green, 2004). The change process brings into consideration resources within an organisation to ensure that they fulfil the requirements of change. It is important for the individuals within the change process to understand that there are different ways to ensure that the organisation embrace change, since different styles are required for different resources and this is true to human resource. Human resources constitute management (executive) and employees (i.e. secretary and sales person) this means that the strategy that will be used on executive should be different to that of employees. If the management accepts the change process, it will be easier to translate it to employees, but the other way round in somehow difficult. Moreover, the approach and strategies that will be used to encourage change will determine the ability of human resource to appreciate the change else dissatisfied (Schyns and Meindl, 2006). Change, depending on the underlying requirements of change will determine the success of the process or its failure. Change is inherent in any organisation but appropriate means and strategies should be in place to ensure that the entire organisation appreciates change and the reasons behind the change process. In doing so, it is important for the changers to understand and define the appropriate strategy that will be used in the change process that may include models and theories. Some common model of changes is action research, strategic management, plan do check act, Mckinsey 7s model and Lewin’s Freeze models (Hussey, 2000). For example, strategic management model requires an organisation to embrace change through strategic planning bringing into consideration a change that is systematic, explicit and cyclical. These five models come with different rules and approaches that fulfil their respective goals. Moreover, the approach or model that will be used will be determined by the factors of change. In this case, the factors of change may be either internal or external. The internal factors may include re-organisation, structural change, process and culture of the entire organisation. This is the simpler part of change since it can be anticipated and its implementation process may clearly be defined in advance. On the other hand, the external factors are numerous in number and are usually not anticipated. Some of the external factors that can sanction change are political, economical and social in nature. Political may be due to legislations, rules, and political stability; economic factors may be because of competition, market share and economic restriction while social factors may include demographic trend changes. At other times, the internal and external factors may entangle and require the change process to be done hastily. In the case of the external factors, change is not anticipated and the change process may partially be planned and implemented. Formulation and implementation of change process has resulted in the development of new techniques and tools that helps in accomplishment of change process. An example of such tool is the change matrix. The change matrix presents a means of ensuring that connections between different practices are correlated. It accomplishes its duties through reinforcing and interfering organisation process in a graphical manner. This tool provides a means of outlining new system and approaches that will be used in the transition process and thus the entire process can be decentralised for implementation locally and thus its optimisation. Change matrix has four functions that helps in change process that are outlining change process, highlights interactions, possible transition and encourages stakeholders participation, and means and method of change including evaluation. Even though change may be viewed in positive manner, sometimes change can be negative. For example, change can mean increase in employee’s benefits and at the same time, it can be retrenchment. The fundamentals and requirements of change can determine whether individuals appreciate change or not. Most individuals do not appreciate change because they may lose some benefits that were associated with initial requirements (Goethals and Sorenson, 2006). Thus, an employee may negatively be affected by the change process and will resist the change process. These changes may result in losing certain benefits or position and/ or may afflict internal morale of individuals or personality. Generally, if the employees have no proper knowledge regarding the change process the will likely feel that it’s against their freedom and flexibility of accomplishing duties plus their own outcome of status quo, and thus they will resist change. Question 2 (Management and Leadership) Organisations should be managed effectively and efficiently to ensure that it fulfils its goals and objectives. Within an organisation, many individuals, functions and processes are involved to accomplish available tasks. This process brings managers and leaders in fulfilling their duties. Management and leaders are different but are related in the way that duties and obligations are accomplished. Leaders are the people who provide direction and guidelines in fulfilling the requirements of the organisation while management brings together all leaders into determining the future of the organisation. Thus, leaders implement while managements formulates strategies (Burke, 2002). Leadership is an important aspect, and there are different leaders within an organisation. To prevent conflicts between the leaders, it is important to lay a structure that gives each a leader the role and extent of their participation within the organisation. Division of leadership ensures that intra and inter conflicts are prevented and the leaders can effectively and efficiently accomplish their duties. For example, in an organisation, there are the directors and supervisors and both are leaders, but division of leadership requires that directors played clearly defined roles while the same is true for the supervisors. This can be understood further if theories of leadership are understood. Individuals and researchers try to link change with management/ leadership. An example of a leader that has discussed extensively change and leadership in organisation is John Kotter. John Kotter presents eight steps that are fundamental in ensuring successful change. Kotter eight steps are develop vision and strategy, create a powerful and guiding coalition, celebrate short-term wins, have a sense of urgency, communicate the change vision, anchor change to corporate structure, and continuous re-invigoration. On the other hand, Dearlove and Crainer view that management are leadership are two important factors that cannot easily be differentiated and thus are usually entangled. Dearlove and Crainer state that it is important to formulate appropriate strategies and these strategies should carefully be implemented resulting in successful change at the end. The aim of most theories and models is to try to explain the rapidly changing environments of organisations. In any science or human discipline, theories and models tries to provide means in which individual can accomplish different tasks. In the case of management theories and models, the most common are contingency, systems and chaos theory (Miner, 2005). Chaos theory view that organisations are entities that cannot be controlled, while contingency view that appropriate measures should be taken depending on situations. In the case of leadership theories, the major common theories are transactional, transformation and situation theories. Transactional leadership theory contents that status quo should be preserved but transformation leaders encourages changes in structured manner while situation states that decisions and leadership strategies should concur with factors and conditions that are in place at that time. References Burke, W., 2002. Organisation Change: Theory and Practice. New York Sage Publishers. Cameron, E., and Green, M. 2004. Making Sense of Change Management: a Complete Guide to Models and Tools. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Goethals, G. and Sorenson, G., 2006. The Quest for a General Theory of Leadership. New York: Edward Elgar Publishers. Hussey, D., 2000. How to Manage Organisational Change. London: Kogan Page Publishers. Miner, J. 2005, Organisational Behaviour I, New York: M.E. Sharpe Publishers. Schyns, B. and Meindl, J., 2006. Implicit Leadership Theories, London: IAP Read More