Management Of Change example essay topic

Change: introduction 'Thirty years ago most people thought that change would mean more of the same, only better. That was incremental change and to be welcomed. Today we know that in many areas of life we cannot guarantee more of the same... [we] cannot even predict with confidence what will be happening in our own lives. ' (Handy, 1991) He differentiates between incremental and 'discontinuous' change, suggesting that the combination of economics and technology form a potent blend in this. We can see that Higher Education (HE) Library and Information Services (LIS), are part of an environment which is subject to both incremental and discontinuous change: Political - increased control from central government Sociological - the information age Educational - the mass HE system Technological - networking, computing and telecommunications Organisational - new structures Economic - increased demand for value for money Cultural - changed norms and values In LIS the move from holdings of information sources in-house to electronic access to remote sources, along with the pressure to provide more services with fewer human and financial resources brings its own kind of change: New structures such as team-working Collaboration with a range of different groups and individuals Additional skills for staff and users Increased management and decision-making Heavier workloads LIS managers and their staff need to adopt positive strategies to cope with these changes: 'Library administrators must become facilitators.

They must understand how the world is changing and how the library must change. And they must also learn to be masters at persuasion, since wherever there is change there will be resistance. ' (Moore, 1995) Coping with change rests on two struts: understanding change and managing change. Coping with change: understanding Practical steps can be taken to increase knowledge and understanding: SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis TQM (Total Quality Management) exercises Group planning exercises Programmes of visiting speakers Training needs analysis Environmental scanning Electronic discussion lists User surveys Internal staff surveys Away days External seminars, conferences and workshops Shared experience sessions Understanding uncertainty 'Information technology is very destabilizing of structures of authority because I don't think there has ever been a period in my professional life when I felt so un confident about my grasp of some of the most essential technologies that are driving the future of the operation I manage.

' (University Librarian) Greater understanding helps reduce uncertainty which inevitably accompanies change. For LIS, uncertainty tends to centre particularly on: Strategic direction for HE itself and how far it can and should become technology-dependent Role changes, particularly in relation to user support Organisational restructuring and altered work patterns Technology itself - feelings of inadequacy and inability to keep up Corrall (1995 a) suggests that: 'Current thinking, informed by chaos theory, prefers a 'radical / dynamic ' view, as opposed to the 'mechanistic model previously espoused. This interpretation rejects the notion of managing change as an incremental, evolutionary, linear and orderly process, and instead sees the process as one of creating change, viewing it as inherently transformational, revolutionary, circular / spiral, and essentially chaotic - but ultimately productive and beneficial. ' This approach will also assist in coping with the sense of loss of control induced by increased end use, the complexity of electronic systems, the rate at which they change and in acknowledging that some aspects of the new electronic environment are paradoxical: Promise of extended access yet problems of reliability, copyright, cost and complexity Promise of new ways of learning yet staff and user skills are inadequate Opportunities for new collaborations threatened by non-collaborative cultures Wider opportunities for information workers yet their role threatened by financial circumstances Increased centrality of IT and information impeded by outmoded institutional structures Understanding is the basis for the intuitive approach, which has much to offer to decision-making processes in times of rapid change (Agor, 1991).

Intuitive judgement's, however, are impaired when egos are bound up in decision making. Good intuitive decisions are based on facts and experiences gained over a period of years. Once the root causes and effects of change are recognised, steps can be taken to manage it and even benefit from it. Managing Change 'There's a whole range of issues here. It is very wide to say 'management of change'. You have different types of change.

You have a little one-off change... if you can see the process of change and then see the end to the change it is very different to it being an ongoing sort of change and of course the two always interlink because inevitably the whole organic structure is a dynamic, ongoing change, so you are always part of the wider aspect of it. ' (Assistant Librarian) Change needs to be managed in order to derive maximum benefit from new opportunities and to avoid reactive situations. The faster the speed of change the more difficult and stressful it is to manage. The skills and style of managers become increasingly important: 'The challenge for managers is judging the pace of change, striking the right balance and the inherent tension between tradition and transformation. ' (Corrall, 1995) '... one of the problems of managing change is that we " re very much more as managers into counselling and we " re not trained counsellors. ' (Deputy Librarian) An atmosphere of openness, good communications, clear vision, leadership and training engenders good change management and this involves the issue of management style.

Consultation, communications, transparency and informality minimise fear and suspicion; staff resent the sense that changes are imposed on them and that they are powerless - they need to be involved. They need to understand the rationale behind decisions which are being made, even if they do not agree with them: 'It was the director's group who decided on this [decision] and they were going to bulldoze it through without any alteration whatsoever. They were going to go for the textbook view of it regardless of local circumstance and that's what they did and it's not working. ' (Information Specialist) The adoption of authoritarian attitudes in order to gain greater control is considered counter-productive: 'Management will become much more concerned with empowerment than with close supervision and control. ' (Morgan, 1991) Those in positions of leadership need to be firm yet flexible. They need to listen to their colleagues and be consistent in their approach.

Their support of staff should be ongoing: '... the whole personal problem of people's attitudes to change, the environment, such a big change as that, making sure that you listen to people, making sure that you gather people's opinions, which is very basic but is very easily overlooked in these sorts of situations. ' (Assistant Librarian) '... the library assistants feel that senior management don't care about them. I don't think that's the case but the fact that they feel it is unfortunate. ' (Services Manager) Creativity, intuition and innovation 'Empowered's taff are in the best position to develop creativity, intuition and innovation which represent positive ways of responding to change.

(Walton & Edwards, 1997). Organisations which demonstrate these features have greater strength and flexibility in their response to change. Majaro (1988) lists three characteristics of creative organisations: A climate conducive to creative thinking An effective system for communication ideas Procedures for managing innovation Flatter organisational structures are more conducive to innovation than are rigid hierarchies. Groups of people working together in teams and on projects can generate ideas and test them out. Even within hierarchical structures, underlying matrices can bring about greater flexibility, by enabling cross-divisional working. The structures and strategies adopted by LIS should create an environment where individuals can develop.

Promising ideas should be encouraged and nurtured. Structures, strategies, supportive management style and training are the fundamental keys to the high levels of personal confidence required to cope with change. Confident people develop their own coping strategies, more able to take initiatives and manage the changes which surround them: 'Training is one approach... the other is self-management. I think people need to get a level of very basic confidence-building and assertiveness, and general self-management. ' (User Services Manager) Systematic training programmes which address the changing needs of individuals, whether through appraisal or training databases will reap rewards.

Strong management information systems, effective communications channels and good internal cooperation should be part of the infrastructure. Basic techniques such as the use of checklists, careful planning and systematic procedures for the introduction of new resources are at the core of operational aspects of change. These support the sense of professionalism among staff who feel inadequate in the eyes of users when new services appear to be run chaotically. The Learning Organisation The concept of the 'Learning Organisation' also plays a part in coping with change. Garvin (1994) describes learning organisations as being skilled in five main activities: Systematic problem solving Experimentation with new approaches Learning from their own experience and past history Learning from the experiences and best practices of others Transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organisation The potential for LIS of such an approach is immediately evident, as others have identified: 'The learning organisation offers a splendid forum for the entire library to engage in self-examination.

What can it stop doing? What must it maintain? How can it innovate by substitution? These are examples of questions that the learning organization should pose and answer.

' (Riggs, 1997) For HE institutions, which are large organisations with many autonomous parts, becoming a learning organisation would involve a considerable mind-shift. An incongruity has been pointed out: 'This is an organisation of learning, but is it a learning organisation?' (University Staff Development Officer) LIS, as smaller components of larger units, could more easily make this mind shift. Understanding, managing and coping with change clearly involves more than minor procedural adjustments in the workplace. It is to do with issues of structure, strategy and personality and above all, organisational culture: 'This is a great opportunity to sit back for a minute and say, this is rather a big institution now... we have got a tremendous lot of people needing different types of information at different times. What sort of systems, both IT based and personality and people based have to be in place to make those information flow work for the benefit of the whole institution? So you are finding establishing the philosophy is much more important initially than looking at the IT issues or looking at the individual information needs of certain sections.

' (University Librarian)

Bibliography

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In: Henry, J (ed). Creative Management. London, Sage, 163-77. Corrall, S. (1995 a) An evolving service: managing change.
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New Library World, 96 (1120), 35-42. Garvin, D.A. (1994) Building a learning organisation.
Business Credit New York, 96 (1), 19. Handy, C. (1991) The Age of Unreason.
In: Henry, Jane (ed) Creative Management. Sage Publications, 269-282. Majaro, S. (1988) The Creative Gap.
London, Longman. Moore, M. (1995) Impact of the changing environment on academic library administration: conflicts, incongruities, contradictions and dichotomies.
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In: Henry, Jane (ed). Creative Management. Sage Publications, 283-293. Riggs, D. (1997) What's in store for academic libraries? Leadership and management issues.
The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 23 (1). 3-8. Walton, G. and Edwards, C. (1997) Strategic management of the electronic library in the UK higher education sector: implications of e Lib's IMPEL 2 project at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle.