Leading and Managing Change - Literature review Example

Introduction

For the long-term success and sustainability, the organizations need to take some practical steps such as accepting, adopting and implementing changes in their business models. It is the great role of leadership in managing people and making their efforts to be at their best in favor of change implementation. At the same time, to lead and manage organizational change, there is a need to understand how change impacts the different levels of organization, individuals and teams. Such understanding will help in leading people both individuals and teams. This reflective journal represents what we have examined in leadership and it connection to strategic decision making and principles of change management. The knowledge obtained helped to understand why and how organizational change happens and steps that can be done to make the process of change more acceptable. This reflective paper integrates theory and practice, explaining the main theoretical perspectives of the topic of change management and leadership, evaluates the effectiveness of practical knowledge and considers how the information obtained can be applied in the future.

Leading change at different levels

We have started to learn about leading an organizational change with understanding of how change occurs at different levels, in particular, we examined how individuals and teams learn and how they respond to change. Because organizations are composed of individuals, the need exists in developing numerous strategies which would emphasize employees’ participation in organizational change. Nordin (2014), states that individuals’ perception of the overall organizational culture influence willingness to engage in the organizational change.

The importance that many individuals attach to their identities directly impact organizational change and leadership ability to execute this change. Those individuals, who do not believe that the change process does not satisfy their paradigms, are not likely to exhibit change behaviors. I think that given the improvements of communication and information sharing technologies will give organizations the ability to better implement change. The attention should also be given to organizational leaders in creating predispositions for successful change implementation and sharing of experiences during the process with individuals.

I have referred to considerations of Liu (2009), where Peter’s analysis model of successful change implementation was associated with focusing on several important characteristics. Here, the importance of the people resource and not just the abstract resource but as individuals should be respected. The importance of such information is that organizations should not only make tough demands on individuals but also treat them appropriately, in particular, to provide training, develop and give new and interesting challenges in order to prepare them to organizational change. There were also other models which we looked at in order to understand how individuals respond to organizational change. Here, I have to mention the teleological motor theory of change, which described change as the result of purposeful social construction by individuals of the particular organization. The theory relates to individuals in terms of their perception of the current actions that should be changed to enable them to attain new goals.

In addition, I have found important information in the article of Borman, Ilgen and Klomoski (2004), where researchers focused on individual’s role in combining innovation with environmental characteristics that enabled people to generate organizational change.

Moving from the individual, we have also examined teams and how organizational change impacts teams. According to Chen, Hou and Fan (2009), when an organization sets its direction on change, which includes restructuring or downsizing, it can cause such feelings of employees as anxiety, fear and insecurity, impacting productivity as individuals as whole teams. One reason for that is that when change is about to implement, the members of different teams should cooperate in such implementation. This includes cooperation of people from different professional background and those who view differently certain mental models. I think that to accomplish organizational tasks in response to changes, there is a need to structure work, manage it through leadership abilities. I agree with the fact that work groups can be designed to enable teams with diverse skills and backgrounds to communicate effectively and interact constructively for organizational needs and in particular, for managing change.

Developing leadership skills

The next step in examining organizational change and leadership was associated with leadership skills and characteristics needed to be an effective leader. First we have explored the nature of leadership. Here, I should mention that according to Barker (2001), leadership is one of many forms of social organization distinguished from other human behavior phenomena.

The concept of leadership provides certain social defense with the central purpose to repress uncomfortable needs and emotions when individuals try to work together. Building upon this foundation, we have looked at different theories of leadership. However, we have paid more attention to the contingency theories of leadership. For years, researchers and scholars have developed or propounded different perspectives and approaches of leadership. Thus, contingency theories of leadership take a broader view of situational factors about the skills and capabilities of leader. For example, I find it useful to mention about Fiedler’s contingency theory of leadership effectiveness which argues that leader effectiveness is dependent on the interaction of style of a leader with the characteristics of the situation. Thus, the leader can be involved in the leader-member relations, task-structure and leader-position power. According to Peretomode (2012), Fiedler has recognized task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership styles which are relatively inflexible and none is good for every situation.

As the next step in the look at leadership, my attention is given to development of leadership skills. A successful leader should now know what one is expected and execute it accordingly. For the global leader, one should show expected competence in cross-cultural awareness and practice, should build interpersonal skills to deal with conflicts. According to Prewitt, Weil and McClure (2011), the leadership is expected to communicate, collaborate and to establish the course for the whole organization. For that purpose, a leader should use collaboration and communication skills and abilities that will help to gain trust of people and gain influence. In addition, it is the task of an organization to provide training for leaders in the global leadership competencies in order to utilize them as a generalized model of global leadership.

Thus, by addressing cultural component of leadership, leaders will be able to apply difference culturally. I would like to mention the importance of Katz’s three-skill approach in determining effective leadership, which is highlighted in the article of Moore and Rudd (2005). Thus, the effective leader should have technical, human and conceptual skills based on the specific knowledge, skills which are proficiency in working with people and skills that allow a good leader to think through and work with ideas. I think that the significance of the approach is in realizing leader as administrator, the one who directs the activities of other individuals and is capable of undertaking the responsibility for achieving organizational objectives through efforts of all involved. I should also point that technical, human and conceptual skills, being not interrelated, but all constitute the personality of effective leader.

Leading and managing organizational change

To effectively manage change, it is essential that a leader understood organizational design as one of the context of where change takes place. Here, I referred to journal article of Dannar (2014), where the role of organizational design is explained as the way to facilitate the implementation of strategy designed to cope with the current operational dilemmas. While leaders pay less attention to understanding organizational design as it is critical success factor, however, the fact that design of an organization can enable the focus and creative energies of leaders to be released on the work is obvious. It is the role of organizational design in helping to choose market strategies and understand the resources needed to pursue objectives.

The other context where change takes place is organizational transformation. In my opinion, regardless the strategies of an organization, change involves identifying and formulating of answers to different social, economic and technological dynamics, where the process of transformation is a complex one with many factors influencing it. Thus, to manage change, an organization and its leadership should understand behavioral changes and transformations as the components of equilibrium of habits and norms of the participants of the process. The more valued the latter are, the greater change is required. Codreanu (2010), states that Lewin’s solution to change group norms in the organization can be through creation of disequilibrium. The stage will put people in the uncomfortable position but will help in further stages of moving to changes and creation of new organizational equilibrium.

Understanding change

We further explored theories of planned and emergent change taking precise look at change and paying more attention to the forces of change. Thus, I have referred to the article of Liebhart and Lorenzo (2010), which states that many factors contribute toward the traditional planned change management strategies to be altered on new organizational and individual strategies. Here, the authors have also discusses Lewin’s planned change concept, however, due to economic instability, his ideas became also not always relevant in change management. Emergent change has appeared as unpredictable and unintentional phenomena, which involved informal self-organizing and where the actors were given structures to the new conditions simultaneously. It is probably the challenge for the organization to experience emergent change, however, in the modern dynamic business environment, there is a need to calculate such risk and take it into account when developing strategies.

Managing resistance to change

The final step of analyzing change and leading organizational change is about resistance. There is no point to say that change is always welcomed and that participants of organizational process are always glad to change the way they did things. At the same time, literature indicated a high proportion of change initiatives which are successful as well as those initiatives which are unsuccessful. Wittig (2012), considers that many factors impact employees’ negative reaction on organizational change. These factors are associated with inability of a leader to have appropriate level of emotional intelligence. Lack of communication and social accounting become barriers to change understanding. I think that one of the most important is employees’ participation in the decision making process. At the same time, open communication, expressing of new idea and shared vision as well as bigger collaboration of leader with employees will help to overcome resistance to change.

Conclusion

I find the topic of leadership and change management very important to me as I understand that it is the prerequisite of modern organizations to remain competitive. Thus, successful implementation of change initiatives is essential for business. At the same time, change agents should realize the great role of employees and that their reactions are valuable in shaping change initiatives. The change agents should understand that good communication and active participation of employees in the decision making processes will help to implement change without conflicts.