Management of Change - Essay Example

Management of Change Author’s name Institutional affiliation Date Introduction In recent times, many countries worldwide are experiencing a major shift in the way the public sectors are run. This represents a paradigm shift which is referred to as the new public management (NPM).The NPM finds its basis on two basic principles. The basic principles of the new public management are the economic rationalism and managerialism. Different technologies are being developed with the aim of promoting the new philosophy. Among the new concepts which are developing include: performance agreements, structural redesign, contracting out various services, and corporatisation. Other changes evolving are commercialisation and privatization of most areas of the public sector. In Australia, major reforms are also being experienced with the aim of making sure that services rendered to the public are marked by efficiency, effectiveness, and that the value for money is realized (Senior & Fleming, 2006, p.39). State authorities have come to realize that public services should employ an approach which is market-oriented. Hence policies which affect the public and methods for delivering such services should as much as possible be aimed at ensuring that the aforementioned goals are achieved. This study chose the Queensland Electricity Supply Industry (QESI) as the object of study. The study was geared towards coming to an understanding of how the organization has changed as result of the introduction of reforms. QESI formed a perfect example for the study due to its radical changes in the not too far future in addition to it being an organisation which serves the public. The task of the researchers entailed coming to an understanding of the kind of change that the organisation has gone through. The research was also aimed at understanding the leadership style that was employed in bringing about the drastic change in the organisation. Queensland has the second highest consumption rate of power in Australia. With the kind of demand for power, it became necessary for the corporation to undergo changes in order to be competitive and provide services which were similar to those offered by the private sector. Change was necessitated by the existence of bureaucracy and ineffiency. The only option that public organisations have is to either shape up or follow the current practices or they would find themselves uncompetitive and out of touch with the current trends. In the state of Queensland, large parts of the public sector are being opened up to market mechanisms and competition. The organizations face unending pressure so that they can change their focus and the way they conduct their practices of management. The proponents of change find themselves up against organisations which have political protection or organisations which are reluctant to embrace change (Jick & Peiperl, 2003, p.51). Leaders who are progress are looking for ways through which they can make adjustments which are informed by changes which are the constant phenomena. The question that arises is how a person could come up with new ideas for an organisation which is not amenable to change. The other question is how such the new ideas could be sold to organisation which enjoys political patronage to embrace the new ideas. Leadership should therefore be seen in the context of guidance which is aimed at bringing about the occurrence of something. A leader is concerned with coming up with a vision and maintaining the same. The support of the many that have an interest in the outcome is necessary both within and without the organisation (Senior & Fleming, 2006, p.42). Background In the year 1992, Australia experienced NCP as an important issue. The then Prime Minister of Australia, Keating argued that free and open competition is the engine which drives efficiency. During Keating's era, there was comprehensive address of the inefficiencies marked government enterprises. The government of Keating appointed a Committee known as the Hilmer Committee which was tasked with reviewing the import of Trade Practices Act, 1974. The term of reference of the committee was to advise the government on what the relevant changes to the legislation would be. The recommendations would be used in coming up with proposals for a national policy which could ensure that efficiency was increased and forces of competition were not impeded (Stace & Dunphy, 2001, p.70). According to Bolman and Deal (2008, p.62) the reforms of the NCP were aimed at developing a domestic market both for goods and services which was open and did not have barriers which were not essential and which impeded competition and trade. Another aim was to reduce procedures and administrative processes that were duplicated and complicated. Government enterprises were reformed by the way of separating the regulation function from commercial activities. Natural monopolies were also separated from activities that were intended to become competitive. Corporatisation approach was adopted by the government and it was meant to ensure public sector organizations reflected the practices in the private sector save for ownership (O'Donnell, O'Brien & Junor, 2009, p.2371). For the last ten years or so, the government of Queensland has tried hard to ensure that enterprises owned by the government operate more economically and hold themselves to account as noted by Stace and Dunphy (2001, p.39). This has been achieved through bringing in of major reforms in the financial and administrative sectors. Corporatisation and NCP have been the major drivers behind the reforms. The reforms are aimed at increasing efficiency and effectiveness of enterprises by way of ensuring that there are disciplines at the markets. The reforms which have been implemented are aimed at bringing about a separation of elements of the industry which are naturally monopolistic with those which have the potential of being competitive (Goldfinch & Wallis, 2009, p.41). Those activities which are competitive have been subjected to many reforms so that the economy can gain from competition and efficiency. The structural reforms were as a result of the presence of GOCs that had amongst them three retailers that were owned publicly. The retailers which were publicly owned enjoyed a monopoly of supplying the geographical regions in which they operated. The government removed these monopolies so that consumers could be given more choices to determine who supplied them with electricity. The Queensland State owned electricity sector was restructured in the year 1999. The outcome was the merging of six companies which were the distributors in the regions making them to become one corporation (Aghdam, 2011, p.3283). The organization which was the subject of the study happens to be Queensland Electricity Corporation. This corporation has the mandate of distributing products and services relating to electricity in the whole of Australia. In addition, the company does export services in energy management to countries found in the Asia-Pacific region. The company is engaged in a number of areas which are: network maintenance, retailing of electricity, technical services and asset management (Abbott & Cohen, 2011, p.4958). The research conducted with regard to this corporation was through a survey. A survey happens to be the approach which is mostly used by social scientist to conduct empirical studies which are meant to indicate the interrelations and characteristics of psychological and sociological variables. A survey is utilized so that respondents are able to make their responses anonymously since the survey could touch on issues which are sensitive. Anonymous responses tend to be more genuine and it is easy to deal with a large group of people. In the current study, the researchers drew their respondents from among managers who were middle level. The reason for making this choice is that departmental managers would definitely have a greater understanding concerning the changes that have taken place since they are at the operational level. The means of distributing the survey was by the use of the internal mailing system and emphasis was laid on the fact that anonymity would be safeguarded and participation in the survey was voluntary. The survey tried to capture a number of areas some of which was with regard to the age, gender and for how long the manager had been employed at the organization. The survey in addition sought to know what the managers perceived of the change in the organisation and the kind of leadership. The instruments of measurement of the organisational change and style of leadership were got from literature on organisational change and literature. These instruments were modified so as to fit the organisation's environment. The questions for the survey had been administered on a pilot basis to executive managers of the second level the purpose being to have them approved before they could be administered to departmental managers. The data collected from the survey was analysed using a statistical analysis programme known as the SPSS. Tests conducted on the data did not note any abnormal distributions. In addition, no significance differences were noted to suggest bias between those respondents who were early and those who responded late. The instrument which was employed traces its roots to Stace and Dunphy (2001, p.41) and it was previously used in structured interviews. The instrument was modified so as to take into account the classification of change in the organisation as perceived by the managers of the various departments. Dunphy and Stace had assessed the responses that they had received from managers of more than ten organisations in Australia. The responses the researchers received could be summarized into four processes of change as perceived by the researchers. In the research, the researcher made use of an instrument capable of measuring the style of leadership in a distributed survey. The instrument applied is the same one developed from the one originally by Stace and Dunphy (2001, p.41) with regard to classifying the style of leadership during the time of the changes in an organisation. The study required the respondents to rate the type of leadership and had a scale ranging from 1 to 4. The researcher made a clear description of the scales but avoided putting any information which would make the respondents to get biased when providing their responses. Discussion QESI's corporatisation was in two stages. The first stage involved the establishment of QESI which was done under the provisions of the Government Owned Corporations Act 1993. This first step was completed on January 1 1995. The second stage involved QESI's registration under the Corporations Law. The second event took place on the 1st of July 1997 (Wendy, 2009, p.368). The study was carried out so as to find out the leadership style which was employed in bringing about this change as well as the extent to which the organisation changed. The researcher put forward the proposition that as a result of the changes to the QESI then the corporate change as put forward by Stace and Dunphy would be evident in QESI. The survey's results confirmed that in fact that it was corporate transformation. The respondents' views were that major restructuring took place with changes taking place at the departmental and divisional levels. Changes were also experienced in the top administrative positions of the organisation. The purpose of effecting the changes was to bring the organisation to be in line with the new goals and mission that had been set by the organisation. This necessitated restructuring which resulted in a change in the way power was distributed in addition to new procedures and systems in the organisation. Another outcome of the new structure the channels of communication also changed. This development was found to result in reduction of the flow of communication. Change was effected by bringing in into managerial positions people who had been in the private sector and who would be tasked with helping the organisation changed to reflect the values of an organisation which is commercially oriented. The findings offer confirmation to the fact that major changes in the industry have made it necessary for organisations to change to retain their relevance. When surveyed, managers tended to point out the fact that greater communication and also awareness ought to be encouraged within the members of the organisation. This would make sure that change took place smoothly and chaos does not arise. The responses received proved that many departments within the organisation were more concerned about their survival rather than on how the whole organisation would fare (Aghdam, 2011, p.3286). A second proposition had as its concern the leadership style employed when the organisation was in the process of changing. Dunphy and Stace (1990, p.21) tend to believe that during a corporate change is coercive. The survey found that the style employed was in fact consultative. Dunphy and Stace had found that managing rapid change would be best done through a coercive manner due to the delays that would be experienced in using participatory approach (1990, p.27). After ten years though, the coercive method of effecting change was largely unacceptable and participative method had greater support. This method took into account communication and consultation. However, the research concluded that there was support for both types of leadership. It is the view of some researchers that creating the right attitude and communicating would assure one of having a smooth transition. This would be achieved by the manager being a good example while at the same time seeking the input of employees. When employees embrace the change envisaged it would be instructive for the management to recognise their contribution (Dunphy& Stace, 1990, p.28). Results of the research point to the fact that it would be better for the public sector to make use of the directive leadership instead collaborative style. The study of leadership in the public sector might be the reason why the style which prevailed was that common with the public sector. In the western world there are a lot of uncertainties in the face of the many changes taking place in the public sector (Senior & Fleming, 2006, p.113). Among the issues which have received divided response is the need to do away with bureaucracies which are outdated and thus ensure that there is flexibility and ensure that high standards and procedures necessary for quality public service remain (Jick & Peiperl, 2003, p.48). There is a dilemma as to which position should be adopted. In relation to the type of leadership style that should be adopted, the respondents were in agreement that they were in support of members of staff playing a more prominent role in the process of effecting change. There were a number of limitations on the study, some being measuring the extent of how the organization and leadership style had changed. The instrument as used originally was in structured interviews. Despite the fact that measures were put in place to avoid a situation where different respondents made different interpretations of the questions, this could be sited as a limitation to the effectiveness of the study in achieving the proper response. The existing cultures in an organization were not taken into account by the instrument. This could have had a bearing on whether resistance to change did occur and whether there was a nexus between the two. Limiting the study to a single organisation and generalising the report limits the effectiveness of the study (Dunphy& Stace, 1990, p.29). Conclusion There are other organisations that could be subject of study in addition to QESI. Further research project could find these organisations invaluable in getting to understanding other dimensions of change and thus enabling researcher to have a clearer view of the subject of change. Further areas of study could include companies whose object is electricity distribution whether the organisation is limited to a single state, a number of states or has operations in the whole country. Since distribution is just but a single facet of the whole business of electricity, it is instructive that research be conducted also on companies which specialize in electricity production. Information gathered from such investigations would come in handy developing the best strategies that managers could employ while undertaking changes in their respective organisations. The end result would be that we would be in a position to understand which methods are popular and actually work and which ones would be disastrous. In the ordinary happening of things, change ought to be planned. However, there are many situations where change just takes place spontaneously. Where the initiatives for implementing change are not effective, then such plans are bound to fail. Even where there is meticulous planning, a lot of resistance is usually experienced due to the simple fact that people naturally do not readily accept change. In other instances, managers do not have a inkling on what the end result shall be meaning they could do what could figuratively be referred to as setting sail into uncharted waters. A likely scenario is stiff resistance and a lot of resistance to those who feel that the status quo should be maintained. A greater involvement of members of the organisation in the implementation of change is the surest way of guaranteeing success of the process. References Abbott, M. & Cohen, B. (2011). Utility regulation—the scope and structure of electrical safety regulation. Energy Policy, 39(9): 4956–4961. Aghdam, R. (2011). Dynamics of productivity change in the Australian electricity industry: Assessing the impacts of electricity reform. Energy Policy, 39(6): 3281–3295. Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2008). 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Rationality, institutionalism and accounting change: Understanding a performance management system within an Australian public sector entity. Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, 5(3): 362 – 389. Read More