Organisational Change from Leadership, Governance and Management Perspective - Literature review Example

ASSESSMENT 2: LITERATURE ESSAY By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Organisational Change from Leadership, Governance and Management Perspective Introduction Change management can be defined as a set of interventions and capability, which delivers change effort in an organisation. For change management to be successful, it must target leaders and also allow employee participation, while altering the main enabling processes like management of performance. This allows workers transition into new behaviours that are crucial for sustaining the new post-transformation business benefits. The majority of business leaders have realised the significance of the people component in executing as well as embedding change. In organizational change annals, Raelin (2012, p.7) posits that there scores of techniques utilised for promoting change, and they ideologically range from pure democracy wherein change is generated by means of full participation by individuals affected by change to autocracy where change is a demanded. In this literature essay, organisational change is explained from leadership, governance and management perspective. Literature review According to Raelin (2012, p.9), a position leader when acting as a change agent may be more like a director or servant. Considering that organizations are always in a motion, there is no need for change agent to direct the organization to where he/she wants it to go; instead, the agent can act as a channel for where the organisation wants to go. Besides that, the agent or leader may act as a changeability model, a person ready to face his/her own weakness in the best interests of constructive change. Raelin (2012, p.9) asserts that this type of leader is inclined to be predisposed in generating an environment that is psychologically safe for all members of the organization. This type of a leader knows that successful change management can be achieved by work together as a group. The majority of participatory organizational change according to Raelin (2012, p.18) is directed by a common humanistic belief in allowing employees to realise their highest level of personal freedom as well as self-expression. In change management, participants take part by means of reflective practice, which enable them to witness and try-out their own collective tacit practices that are functioning. In this way, they create a participatory structure that includes their inter-subjective meanings from which they learn how to lead together. As mentioned by Middleton et al. (2015, p.155), transformational leadership is associated with developing employees’ fullest potential and motivating them toward the organisational goal. Ability of a leader to motivate and inspire employees is very helpful at the time of organizational upheaval and change. In Middleton et al. (2015, p.162) study, they observed that a number of leaders understand the significance of including staff in the change process. Employees should be involved from the start and they should be empowered so as to facilitate the implementation of change and foster employee engagement. In their study, Pieterse et al. (2012, p.798) observed that resistance to change can source from non-aligned interaction between various professional discourses. Understanding change resistance can be achieved by focussing on professional cultures differences in the project (cross-functional) teams. Therefore, Pieterse et al. (2012, p.812) suggest that professional discourse differences must be made clear by managers and should always be the main point of attention in teams. Normally, managers believe that it is not their role to interfere with the change projects details, but by observing this perspective, Pieterse et al. (2012, p.812) assert that managers may be using particular discourse as well as certain styles of negotiation that are hard to be understood by the other professional groups. Therefore, explicitly reflecting on their own style as well as the associated effects on the interaction dynamics may assist managers in developing a wider view on change implementation and any looming resistance from the employees; in so doing, generating more options for action. Ullah (2012, p.80) opines that management involves various processes such managing resources in the organisation. Basically, the organization’s success or failure relies mainly on the employee’s competence; therefore, HR Professionals are required to manage the employees effectively. According to Ullah (2012, p.82), managing workforces during organizational change is very hard, but the managers have to play an active role in management of organisational change. Imperatively, their roles should match the needs of the organisation. In today organisation, change is unavoidable, but the processes involved in organisational change are turning out to be complex; thus, creating need for new roles of managers. As maintained by Ullah (2012, p.82), managers roles are not only important in managing the organizational change, but as well in generating a change culture within the organization. Braithwaite (2010, p.650) argues that in the corporate life’s ‘business as usual’ phase, people are guided by governance while implementing the change processes. Basically, change management offers purpose and contest for why work has to be done in a particular way, and it offers the mechanisms that describes and embed looked-for behaviours. When an organisation faces a major crisis, they must be prepared to face the requisite change by practising change management based on how they conduct business. Basically, an enormous crisis may surface through change, external threat or internal failure. For example, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was considered an internal failure; therefore, inability to observe internal governance practices and failure to respond timely exhibit the risks related to poor change management. For many, governance is not considered as a role at work, but it is crucial for organisations seeking to engage their workforce working within the practices as well as values, which have been developed to ensure success. For successful organisational change, the organization’s management and governance structures as suggested by Mader et al. (2013, p.271) must establish a senior coordination and leadership team that ensures consistent cross-departmental relations as well as collaboration. Imperatively, the organisation n must establish a nested leadership system that mirrors the accountabilities and focus of the leader towards organisational change. Change Diagnostic The change agent must start collecting information to find out what precisely ails the organization. The change diagnostic tool discussed here is the 7-S model that was created by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman in the late 1970s. The diagnostic tool according to Janićijević (2010, p.89) it was developed to exhibit the need of treating the organization as a complex system that consists of informal, formal, soft or hard elements. As stated by Bohlander and Snell (2010, p.76), the organizational components that must be included during the diagnosis while organizational change happens are: Strategy; Structure; Systems; Staff; Style; Shared Values; as well as Skills. With regard to strategy, the change agents must ensure that the organisational strategy and governance are compatible with the change processes. Strategy is the company’s integrated vision as well as direction and the way in which it implements and communicates its vision and direction. This diagnostic model is crucial because it help guide managers and leaders thinking concerning organisational effectiveness. The model is a crucial tool that can be used by both managers and leaders to judge the ability of the organization to implement a certain strategy. To succeed, the leader must ensure their organization have a high level of internal alignment amongst the abovementioned seven Ss. The organisational governance must be in in line with every ‘S’. The leaders can change a number of factors like strategy, staff, systems and structure after a short-term, while the remaining Ss (shared values, skills and style) can only be changed after a long term. According to the model, skills are both soft and hard; therefore, managers should know that sustainable competitive advantages are sourced from soft factors. Through cross analysis, the change agents can use this model to assess the impact of strategic change. Change Intervention Change interventions are the methods and techniques developed with the goal of moving the organization from its present position to a new position. The best intervention that can be used by leaders and managers is team building intervention, which can be used to improve team efforts and activities so as to achieve the organisational targets/goals according to the envisaged strategy and vision of the organization. Besides that, the interventions enable the change agents to change the organizational culture. Team building interventions focus on a number of substantive areas such as organization processes, diagnosis, team relationships as well as task accomplishments. It is the role of the manager to foster teamwork by creating a work culture, where collaboration is valued, and where employees believe that success can be achieved by working together. Therefore creation teamwork culture depends on the ability of the manager and leaders to communicate clearly about the teamwork expectation (Fapohunda, 2013, p.2). For a leader to understand team leadership processes, he/she must first understand team functioning nature. It is from this understanding that they can recognise the leadership role in promoting team effectiveness during organisational change. Leaders should monitor output of the team while making progress toward the organisational goals. According to Morgeson et al. (2010, p.7), leaders should monitor systems outside and inside the team like changing conditions, people, key stakeholders as well as resources. Conclusion In conclusion, the literature essay has explained organisational change from leadership, governance and management perspective. As mentioned in the literature, change is inevitable in the today’s business environment. Effective leadership, management, and governance as argued in the paper are crucial in helping the organisation to improve their overall capability transformation, increase change implementation speed as well as improve success probability. References Bohlander, G.W. & Snell, S., 2010. Managing Human Resources. New York: Cengage Learning. Braithwaite, P., 2010. Change management in a governance and risk management framework. Keeping good companies, vol. 62, no. 11, pp.648-53. Fapohunda, T.M., 2013. Towards Effective Team Building in the Workplace. International Journal of Education and Research, vol. 1, no. 4, pp.1-12. Janićijević, N., 2010. Business processes in organizational diagnosis. Management, vol. 15, no. 2, pp.85-106. Mader, C., Scott, G. & Razak, D.A., 2013. Effective change management, governance and policy for sustainability transformation in higher education. Sustainability Accounting, Management and Policy Journal, vol. 4, no. 3, pp.264-84. Middleton, J., Harvey, S. & Esaki, N., 2015. Transformational Leadership and Organizational Change: How Do Leaders Approach Trauma-Informed Organizational Change…Twice? Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, vol. 96, no. 3, pp.155 –163. Morgeson, F.P., DeRue, D.S. & Karam, E.P., 2010. Leadership in Teams: A Functional Approach to Understanding Leadership Structures and Processes. Journal of Management, vol. 36, no. 1, pp.5-39. Pieterse, J.H., Caniels, M.C.J. & Homan, T., 2012. Professional discourses and resistance to change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol. 25, no. 6, pp.798-818. Raelin, J.A., 2012. Dialogue and deliberation as expressions of democratic leadership in participatory organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol. 25, no. 1, pp.7-23. Ullah, M., 2012. The Emerging Roles Of HR Professionals In Driving Organizational Change. Journal of Knowledge Management, Economics and Information Technology, vol. 1, no. 3, pp.80-90. Read More