Organizational Change Perspectives

Question: Discuss about the Organizational Change Perspectives. Answer: Introduction The essay discusses the organizational development and change management from the organizational change perspectives. The essay discusses the organizational development, and various organizational change perspectives. Further, the essay discusses in detail about the leadership, management and governance perspective of organizational change. The essay has also discusses the processes of change diagnosis and change intervention and how it is carried in the organizational context. Organizational development It involves research, theory and practice of various concepts related to the organization in order to enhance the knowledge and effectiveness of human resource to achieve more successful organizational change and performance. Organizational development can be defined as process of continuous diagnosis, action planning, implementation and evaluation, with the objective of transferring knowledge and skills to organizations to improve their problem solving capacity and to manage future change. Todays business environment has become highly competitive and dynamic; therefore, it is crucial for business organizations to align with such complex environments. Organizational development helps in aligning the organizations with the rapidly changing business environment through organizational learning, knowledge management and passing on organization values, culture and ethics (Geparth et al. 2014). Organizational development is the use of various techniques and interventions that have been planned and implemented in order to facilitate the incorporation of certain pre-determined and consequential changes in the organizational structure, processes or human resources within the organization. Organizational change perspectives In the modern business environment, it is has become very crucial for business organizations to evolve and adapt as per the requirements of the business. To be successful in the long-run companies are required to implement certain changes that allows it to gain certain competitive advantage over the competitors. Organizational change is important for the any business organization, if it wants to stay in the business for the long term as the business environment is changing at a very rapid pace and only those businesses can survive in the market that adapts and evolves with the changing environment. Further, the change that can be brought depending on the requirement of the business (Coghlan and Shani 2013). For the purpose of this essay Leadership, governance and management; Sustainability; Innovation and entrepreneurship and Technology (disruptive) perspectives are discussed as Leadership, Governance and Management: In order to bring the desired change in the organanizattion, the role of leaders, top executives, change agents and opinion leaders becomes as they exercise greater authority and trust from the employees. A change is most likely to be imbibed in the organization culture if it has backing by the organization leadership and top executives. Moreover, it is also important to have complete governance support before, during and after the change management process so that employees can be assured of the importance of the change and can adjust to their new roles and responsibilities. Effective governance acts as a catalyst to make the change process more efficient and effective (Cummings and Worley 2014). Sustainability: Sustainability motives in the organization include ecological, economic, legal and regulatory, organizational identity and financials. It helps in developing corporate social responsibility opportunities in organizational development. In addition, it helps in identifying what roles gender, ethnicity, culture and class have in bringing and sustaining change. It also helps to identify how perceptions and beliefs inspire sustainable development (Myers et al. 2012). Innovation and entrepreneurship: Innovation and entrepreneurship helps the organization to develop new value chain improvements, new supply opportunities and new market opportunities. It can be attained through employee training, developing strategies to lower staff turnover, managing risks and incorporating due process rigor. It also includes bringing organizational change for a flexible and dynamic business. Technology (disruptive): As technology is one of the most changing and dynamic plays an important role in gaining competitive advantage. Therefore, it is important to implement new technologies in the business as well as innovate new technologies to make the business processes more efficient. Responding to new technologies that creates market opportunities helps in improving the organizations competitiveness. It also helps in eliminating process and role redundancies due to the inefficient technologies. Therefore, it becomes crucial to take advantage of new technologies as soon as possible in order to provide best products and services and thereby enhance satisfaction levels of all the stakeholders of the organization. As is clear from the above discussion that desired change in the organization can be brought about by any of the above organizational change perspectives (Myers et al. 2012).However for the purpose of this assignment, Leadership, Governance and Management is being discussed in more detail. Change Diagnosis The success of any business depends on its ability to respond to change and implementing new business strategies, processes and principles as early as the external business environment make pressure for change. Therefore, it is important for the business organizations to forecast the future market conditions by keeping an eye on the market trends and developments and initiate change processes as soon as possible. In this context, change diagnosis helps in identifying the areas that needs intervention. Change diagnosis includes following steps Most of the changes in the organization are required due to the pressure from the external forces such as invention of new technologies, policies of government, competitors strategies and the like over which the organization. Apart from that, the need for change can also arise from within the organization, if the management is of the view that changes are required in the organization to enhance and streamline internal organization capabilities. From the leadership, governance and management perspective, change is important in the event of crisis, if there is performance gap or new opportunities are identified by the business that require considerable change in the organization (Senge 2014). From the leadership, governance and management perspective, diagnosis can be undertaken by undertaking following two steps: Preparing the diagnostic analysis: It is the pre diagnostic tool that comprises activities such as identifying the study area, building a team responsible comprising of top management, leadership, change agents, opinion leaders and the like that will be responsible for making the diagnosis and selection of most appropriate methods and tools that are necessary for its accomplishment. In an organization, from the leadership perspective preparation for change diagnosis can be undertaken by studying the leadership style being followed in the organization, identifying whether the current organization structure, leadership style and overall management is in align with the organizational mission and objectives. Moreover, it is also important to analyse whether the current leadership and management style would be sufficient to meet the challenges of the future. In order to achieve this, a team comprising of top management, organizational leaders and change agents are required to take a preliminary investigation. It helps the management to identify what changes are required to be made and how it is going to affect the organization in long run. The leadership, governance and management related changes are most difficult as human factors are involved and it requires constant reinforcement to prepare human resources for the desired change (Ford and Foster 2012). Investigation and analysis: Tthis stage is further sub-divided into the following stages: Collecting and organizing data: It is important to collect data in order to validate the importance of change as well as ascertain how the change would enable the organization achieve competitive advantage. Therefore, data concerning one or more fields are collected. Further, according the type of change and its magnitude, change program is formulated. The methods of data collection can be in the form of questionnaire, interview, survey or observation. In addition, it is crucial to analyse both internal and external environment to completely understand the change objectives (Benn et al. 2014). Moreover, from the leadership, management and governance perspectives, it is important to collect data regarding the effectiveness of the leadership and management style in the organization. Data concerning employees confidence in the leadership, capability of management in taking crucial decisions, efficacy of corporate governance, as well as data from the peer organizations about the leadership and management style are collected. This helps the organization to identify pitfalls in the current management styles with concrete evidences. Identifying significant problems: Once the organization has the relevant data about the field that needs change, it is important to list various symptoms that indicate the need for change. With the help of identified symptoms, the management can understand the gap between the expected results and the actual performance that can be analysed using qualitative and quantitative methods. The data collected about the leadership and management perspectives helps in identifying the gap between the expected outcomes from the management versus the actual results. Further, with the help of available data, it has been identified that the current leadership and management style is too bureaucratic with unnecessary control and one way communication method. Thus, it has been identified that the employees are not able to work with their full potential and as a result, the productivity and morale of the employees are negatively affected (Ford and Foster 2012). Analysing pros and cons: It is important to analyse the current management and organizational governance style and identify the pros and cons of it. Further, it is also important to understand the causes or situations that demands change and what elements of the current management style are beneficial for the organization. This helps in developing a connection between the identified symptoms and the primary causes (Benn et al. 2014). By analysing the weak and strong points, together with the causes would help the change agent to identify the loopholes of current leadership style and governance practise and ways to avoid such incidences in the future. Generating recommendations: This stage includes generating recommendations in order to eliminate the drawbacks of previous management and developing ways to exploit the opportunities present in the market. One the issues in the organizational leadership, management style and governance is identified. It is important to identify and develop alternatives that can be incorporated in the organization. This steps marks the precursor of intervention stage of change management with clear specifications to the competences, responsibilities, and the application deadlines (Burke 2013). Change Interventions Interventions can be defined as a set of structured and planned activities in which certain organizational perspectives are engaged in order to fulfil certain objectives regarding systematic improvements and organizational development. The intervention stage of organizational development consist of following steps: Creating a plan for implementing the intervention: This stage involves formulation of detailed intervention strategies for every aspect concerning the organization change. This stage aims at providing solution regarding what the organization wants to achieve, how it can be achieved and understanding the learning from the diagnosis about the barriers to change and what sources can bring the desired change (Anderson 2013). Structuring the activities that need to be implemented: In this step, the various activities that are identified for bringing the desired change in the organization are structured in the order of execution. Moreover, in this step, people such as leadership, top executives and change agents are identified. In addition, various parties to the organization that will be affected by the change are identified and their needs (e.g. training programs) are taken care of (Burke and Noumair 2015). Proper selection and initiation of interventions: In this step maximum use of diagnostic data are employed and the effectiveness of intervention activities are arranged in such a manner that subsequent steps becomes more effective and efficient. It also helps in saving time, energy and organizational recourses. In addition, with proper selection and speedy initiation of intervention activities, not only organization improvement is ensured but also helps in minimizing the psychological and organizational strain (Anderson 2013). Communicating the interventions implemented: Once, the relevant intervention activities are implemented, it is important for the top leaders, executives and change agents to communicate the change initiatives to all the stakeholders of the organization that would be affected by the change programme. The new roles and responsibilities of employees and other affected parties should be clearly communicated to enhance the effectiveness of change intervention and to minimize the resistance from the employees (Burke and Noumair 2015). Feedback and evaluation: The last step in the intervention process is getting feedback from the parties affected by the change and undertaking a thorough evaluation of intervention programme. Depending on the feedback received and the evaluation, some changes or adjustments may be necessary (Anderson 2013). Conclusion From the above discussion, it can be concluded that organizational development can be achieved more effectively by identifying the organizational change perspectives. There are many ways through which change can be implemented in an organization, however, to achieve the desired change identification of appropriate change perspective is crucial. Moreover, it is also important to diagnose the change and implement relevant and adequate interventions. References Anderson, D.L., 2013.Organization development: The process of leading organizational change. Sage Publications. Benn, S., Dunphy, D. and Griffiths, A., 2014.Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge. Burke, W.W. and Noumair, D.A., 2015.Organization development: A process of learning and changing. FT Press. Burke, W.W., 2013.Organization change: Theory and practice. Sage Publications. 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Crown Business.