Strategies for the Management of Change - Essay Example

Examine and critically evaluate strategies for the management of change. Empirical-Rational the people within the organization are rational, once they are presented with information that contains details that are of their interests, they will accept the change as means of achieving that interest. Here it is not necessary that organizations go according to what the competitors are doing. With empirical rational there are certain issues to arise. If the organization goes according to the interest of the concerned individuals, not every individual would be satisfied. There may be an increase in turn over as uninterested employees may leave. The goals would be looked from the eyes of the person whose interest lies in the implied strategy. There may arise some biasness in terms of tasks being done. The information here needs to be gathered by the expert professionals to ensure that it is accurate and according to the modern technologies. Once the information is gathered it is normally communicated through a one-way process, either through senior or expert representatives to the recipients. Communication is done on the basis of understanding and not redefining of what the experts had gathered. The actual gatherings of data must be discussed thoroughly to avoid the self-interests of some of the employees. Normative-Reeducative in this kind of a change people are more focused on things that satisfies and fulfill their needs. Over here the issue is not to find the right information but to find an effective relationship between the values of the employees and the organization on whole. In this the organization tries to involve as many employees as they can to get an overall picture of the needs and values that the employees crave for. Intense interactions between the employees are required. For the change strategy to be successful the organization has to take into consideration the surrounding culture like broader system, habits and values of the employees that dominate. The organization does not accept what comes, but takes action to move ahead towards the goals. Here the organization is guided by social and institutional norms. There is a lot of personal exploration required by the employees, which results in personal and organizational clarification through discussions and interactions. This process takes a longer period of time as compared to empirical rational. In such a change if the organization goes by the values and culture of a specific culture then they may find difficult competing with the international world if the global culture does not contain the same values and needs. Power-Coercive in this kind of a change those who possess knowledge hold the power. This approach focuses more on the use of political and economic sanctions as the main strategy to bring about change. Political power normally involves policies, laws and other agreements, and economic on the other hand is the logical extension of political power. Here the issues focus on jail and other personal liberty sanctions. Some of the specific strategies that come under this approach may include over throw of political regimes or changing of organizational management through stakeholder pressure and so on. This kind of a strategy maybe de-motivating for some employees to work. Today employees want empowerment and job rotation in order to increase the interest in their work schedules, but working under such authoritative strategy may affect their output. The authority imposing employees may show biasness to some of the other employees causing differences. Environmental-Adaptive People are not happy with the disruptions that occur within the organization but they do adapt to new circumstances as required. It is more like building a new organization and gradually transferring people from the old one to the new one. Not all organizations are willing to change when the need arises. They are more scared of what if the changes do not suit the organization over all, and therefore they continue with the orthodox ways of achieving goals where as the competitors go way ahead. Environment adaptive also gives an organization a chance to learn by adapting new changes after the occurrence of disruptions. Some organizations also gain competitive advantage after acquiring new possibilities that turn out to be in favor of the organization. Here creativity and innovation also comes in as the organization adapt changes according to the needs of that particular organization. In what ways can organisational structure be considered a strategic management tool Organization structure can be defined as a pattern of interaction and coordination designed by management to link the tasks of individuals and groups in achieving organization goals. Organization structure is used as an instrument to achieve strategies that come under strategic management where the mission, vision, values, goals, objectives, roles and responsibilities, timelines and so on are determined. There are six key elements of organization structure, which help in strategic management and they are: Work Specialization This is the breaking down of organizational goals into various jobs. This helps as a management tool because it gives the lists of tasks that each job has to cover. Once the management knows that which task comes under which job and which individual is responsible to that job, then half the management job is done. This makes communication of details to the required individual effectively and makes it easy to approach that individual in times of need. Departmentalization Departmentalization is like grouping of individuals into units and units into departments. This works strategically because during meetings and discussions there is no need to involve the whole organization in a particular task. For instance there is no need to include the finance director in the recruitment of a lower level human resource employee. This would waste the finance director's time as well affect the organization. Formation of departments makes it easy to convey the strategic issues to the required particular employees. Chain of Command This is the linking of individuals to the top management line. This link helps the top management know who comes under them and whom to assign the tasks and duties. Span of Control Span of control, which is the number of subordinates who report directly to a specific manager, also helps as a management tool. This leads to interaction and supervision with the subordinates, managers do not get overloaded, makes coordinating activities easier and also helps in gaining control of what is occurring in the work units. Centralization/Decentralization Centralization is when every thing is under one power and decentralization on the other hand is distribution of power. Centralization assists strategic management in such a way that with power at the top level it is easy to distribute duties. With decentralization and division of power the top management are spared from heavy work loads and are not the only ones to be blamed in the end. Formalization Formalization, which is the degree to which the jobs are standardized, also helps in strategic management. It helps in knowing the expected behavior in advance. Thus recollecting all the assistance that we achieve through the above-mentioned organization elements, we can say that organization structure indeed is a strategic management tool. 'What is an organization that it can learn' Critically evaluate this quote. Organization can be defined as as a formal group of people with one or more shared goals. When we talk of it as "that it can learn" we mean to say that if an organization is something which can learn. Ofcourse organization is something that can learn, but the question that arises is how The process of organizational learning and individual learning is mostly the same. In order to make things easy lets see how we as an individual learn from our actions and experiences. We act upon something, We react on the result of our action Our reaction helps us in our next action, and then we again react on that, and so on. These are the steps in our own learning's but when we talk of organization, all these steps take place at the same time in groups. Therefore we call it organizational learning. As the organization consists of groups of individuals which act as agents for them. These activities are facilitated by an ecological system of learning also known as organizational learning system. Those organizations that are flexible, adaptive and productive when it comes to the requirement of change, they tend to have more probability of excelling. Organizations should keep a habit of learning at all levels where required. Organizations seem to reflect in two ways. Firstly by protecting the organization's time through commitment and secondly through reacting on particular actions. These reaction help the organizations in planning their next steps more effectively. It is said that you can never learn without an action. But when it comes to organizations it is said that reacting on certain actions may turn out to be bad for the organization if the reaction goes in the wrong direction. This reason demotivates an organization in certain ways. But then again once a reaction does not take place an organization can never learn and therefore organizational learning would never occur. Organizational learning is very important for any organization. This helps in coming up with new ideas, competing well with the competitors and even helps in gaining a competitive advantage. It is skilled at two things firstly it is good at creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring and retaining knowledge and secondly its good at modifying its behavior to reflect the new knowledge and insights. Creating knowledge is what research does all the time, a number of things can be done to make the individuals within job more creative. Acquiring knowledge is what individuals do when they license from other organizations. Then comes interpreting where you have to make sense out of it all, then comes knowledge management which is very important because there is a big difference between having an organization that learns and having individuals that learn. Like if an individual leaves after learning it means you have had an individual who has learned and is knowledgeable but you don't have it embedded in the organization fabric. There are three types of organizational learning. First is the Single-loop learning (SLL): where an organization learns only after the detection and correction of errors. Second is the Double-loop learning (DLL): DLL occurs when, in addition to detection and correction of errors, the organization gets itself involved in the questioning and modification of existing norms, procedures, policies, and objectives. Third Deutero-learning (DL): Deutero-learning occurs when organizations learns how to carry out single-loop and double-loop learning. The first two forms of learning will not occur if the organizations are not aware that learning must occur. Awareness of ignorance motivates learning. This means identifying the learning orientations or styles, and the processes and structures required to promote learning. Double-loop and deutero learning are concerned with the why and how to change the organization while single-loop learning is concerned with accepting change without questioning underlying assumptions and core beliefs. References 1. Organization Structure; www.exsci.rutgers.edu/courses/330/330orgstructure.htm; Accessed on 11th May 2006 2. Management 326; www.cbpa.ewu.edu/pnemetzmills/326CH7.html; Accessed on 11th May 2006 3. Foundations Of Organization Structure; www.csus.edu/indiv/s/sablynskic/ch15.htm; Accessed on 11th May 2006 4. Learning Organizations; home.nycap.rr.com/klarsen/learnorg/; Accessed on 11th May 2006 5. Organization Learning and Learning Organization; www.brint.com/papers/orglrng.htm; Accessed on 11th May 2006 6. Characteristics of the Learning Organization(2004); www.breakoutofthebox.com/learning.htm; Accessed on 11th May 2006 7. Learning Organization; www.albany.edu/sph/Hoff_learning/hpm_tim_learnorg.htm; Accessed on 11th May 2006 8. Change Management(2004); home.att.net/nickols/change.htm; Accessed on 11th May 2006 9. Practical Change Management Strategies; www.csulb.edu/dkumrow/powerpt/integration/sld024.htm; Accessed on 11th May 2006 10. Management Of Change Strategies and Processes; www.sussex.ac.uk/education/991X3.html; Accessed on 11th May 2006 Read More