Perceived Need For Change Within The Organization example essay topic

In today's highly complex world, organizations need to continuously adapt to new situations if they are to survive and prosper. The current trend is toward the learning organization, which is the epitome of continuous change and growth. The learning organization engages everyone in problem solving and continuous improvement based on the lessons experience. Managers facilitate two change requirements: initiation and implementation. The learning organization simultaneously embraces two types of planned change: operational change, based on organizational efforts to improve basic work and organizational processes in different areas of the business, and transformational change, which involves redesign and renewal of the total organization. Changed can be managed.

By observing external trends, patterns, and needs, managers use planned change to help the organization adapt to external problems and opportunities. When organizations are caught flat-footed, failing to anticipate or respond to new needs, managers is at fault. Four events make up the change sequence: 1) internal and external forces for change exist 2) organization managers monitor these forces and become aware of a need for change and 3) the perceived need triggers the initiation of change, which 4) is then implemented. How each of these activities is handled depends on the organization and styles of managers. Forces for organizational change exist both in the external environment and within the organization. Internal forces for change arise from internal activities and decisions.

If top managers select a goal of rapid company growth, internal actions will have to be changed to meet that growth, internal actions will have to be changed to meet that growth. The need for change external and internal forces translate into a perceived need for change within the organization. Managers sense a need for change when there is a performance gap a disparity between existing and desired performance levels. Managers try to establish a sense of urgency so that others will understand the need change.

Management's responsibility is to monitor threats and opportunities in the external environment as well as strengths and weakness within the organization to determine whether a need for change exists. After the need of change has been perceived and communicated, the next part of the change, a truly critical aspect of change management. This is where the ideas that solve perceived needs are developed. Responses that an organization can make are to search for or create a change to adopt. Search is the process of learning about current developments inside or outside the organization that can be used to meet the perceived need for change.

Search typically uncovers existing knowledge that can be applied or adopted within the organization. Managers do this by talking to friends and colleagues, read professional reports, or hire consultants to learn about ideas used elsewhere. Initiating a new response means that managers must design the organization so as to facilitate creativity of both individuals and departments, encourage innovative people to initiate new ideas, or create new-venture departments. Creativity involves generating novel ideas that have the potential to meet perceived needs or respond to opportunities.

Creativity is the essential first step in innovation, which is vital to long- term organizational success. Everyone has the capacity to be creative. Creative people often are known for originality, open mildness, curiosity, a focused approach to problem solving, persistence, a relaxed and playful attitude, and receptivity to new ideas. Companies or departments within companies can be organized specifically for generating creative ideas initiating changes. Most companies want highly creative employees and often seek to hire them. Another responsibility of managers is to create a work environment that allows creativity to flourish.

Creative organizations are loosely structured. People find themselves is a situation of ambiguity, assignments, are vague, territories overlap [, tasks are abstractly defined, and much work is done through teams. Open channels of communication, overlapping jobs, discretionary resources, decentralization, and freedom of the employees to choose problems and make mistakes can generate unexpected benefits for companies. If creative conditions are successful, new ideas will be generated that must be carried forward for acceptance and implementation. This is where an idea champion comes in.

An idea champion is a person who sees the need for and champions productive change within the organization. Change does not occur by itself. Personal energy and effort are required to successfully promote a new idea. Champions are passionately committed to a new product or idea despite its potential for rejection by others, including management. Championing an idea successfully requires four roles within the organization.

The inventor develops a new idea and understands its technical value but has neither the ability nor the interest to promote it for acceptance within the organization. The champion believes in the idea, confronts the organizational realities of costs and benefits, and gains the political and financial support needed to bring it to reality. The sponsor is a high level manager who approves the idea, protects it, and removes major organizational barriers to acceptance. The critic counterbalances the zeal of the champion by challenging the concept and providing reality checks with hard nosed criteria. The critic prevents people in the other roles from adopting a bad idea. Managers can directly influence whether champions will flourish.

Creative culture, idea champions, and new venture teams are ways to facilitate the initiation of new ideas. The other step to be managed in the change process is implementation. One frustration for managers is that employees often seem to resist change for no apparent reason. To effectively manage implementation process, managers should be aware of the reasons for employee resistance and be prepared to use techniques for obtaining employee cooperation. Major cooperate wide changes can be particularly difficult, as seen in focus on collaboration.

Idea champions often discover that other employees are unenthusiastic about their new ideas. Members of the new venture group may be surprised when managers in the regular organization do not support or approve their innovations. Managers and employees not involved in an innovation often seem to prefer status quo. Employees appear to resist change for several reasons and understanding them helps managers implement change more effectively. Employees typically resist a change they believe will take away something of value. A proposed change in job design, structure or technology may lead to a perceived loss of power, prestige, pay, or company benefits.

The fear of personal loss is perhaps the biggest obstacle to organizational change. Employees often do not understand the intended purpose of a change. Sometimes they distrust the intentions or perceived intentions behind it. Uncertainty occurs when there is lack of information about future events. It represents fear of the unknown. They do not know how change will affect them and worry about whether they will be able to meet the demands of a new procedure or technology.

Many fail because they do not understand what it takes to be an entrepreneur. There's many reasons for resistance to change like different assessments and goals. Communication and education are used when solid information about the change is needed by users and others who may resist implementation. Education is especially important when the change involves new technical knowledge or users are unfamiliar with the idea. Participation involves users and potential resisters in designing the change.

Participation also helps managers determine potential problems and understand the differences in perceptions of change among employees. Negotiation is a more formal means of achieving cooperation. Negotiation uses formal bargaining to win acceptance and approval of a desired change. Coercion is the exertion of formal power in order to force employees to change. Resisters are told to accept the change or loose rewards or even their jobs. In most cases, this approach is ineffective because employees will feel like victims, grow angry toward the managers and the proposed changes, and may even sabotage the changes.

Coercion may be necessary in crisis situations when a rapid response is urgent. The visible support of top management also helps overcome resistance to change. Top management support symbolizes to all employees that the change is important for the organization. Top management support is especially important when a change involves multiple departments or when resources are being reallocated among departments. When top managers fail to support a project, they can inadvertently undercut it by issuing contradictory orders. Now that we have seeing how the initiation and implementation of change can be carried out now we can look at the different types of change that can occur in the organization.

The parts of the organization that can be changed and how managers can apply initiation and implementation ideas to each type of change. Organizations may innovate in one or more areas, depending on internal and external forces for change. There's the technology change which is related to the organization's production process. Technology changes are designed to make the production more efficient. The new product change in the organization's product or output.

New products innovations have major implications for an organization, because they often are an outcome of a new strategy and my be define a new market. Structural change involve the hierarchy of authority, goals, structural characteristics, administrative procedures and management systems. Cultural people change refers to a change in values, norms, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of employees. 'Moving organizations from current to future changed states is not easy and requires skills and knowledge some managers do not possess. The desperate call-to-arms, Change or Die- which can be heard echoing down the corridors of businesses everywhere - is evidence that leaders have recognized the need to change. Managers know that companies must be fast, flexible, responsive, resilient, and creative to survive.

Most also know that current mind-sets, techniques, and tools are ineffective for creating such an organization. These people are displaying the talents required to successfully negotiate change. They are aware of the limitations around or within themselves and are willing to learn the necessary skills required to succeed as change managers. Change is the process of moving from one state to another.

Just as moving house requires the massive packing of furniture and other items, change requires just as much preparations to be successful. Most people do not like change, they like things to remain the same. Changes require more effort to adapt. It threatens stability and security and people fear that they will not be able to cope. Resistance is the natural defense to such perceived threats. A good manager has to be able to work with and overcome resistance he / she must be able to control the whole process of change.

With this in mind, I have considered the role of the manager, what his / her function is and what skills are required to enable him / her to be a successful change manager. ' Each of the functions can be seen as essential to managing emergent or planned change, however it is the balance of skills and knowledge combined that produces a successful change manager. With these points in mind we then consider organizations and their nature. Organizations - their nature and culture. Organizations are living social organisms, each with its own culture, character, nature, and identity. Every organization has its own history of success, which reinforces and strengthens the organization's way of doing things.

The older and more successful the organization, the stronger its culture, its nature, its identity becomes. The basic nature of a living social organism is naturally more fundamental, deeper in the hierarchy, and therefore much more powerful than business work processes, financial systems, business strategy, vision, supply chains, information technology, lean manufacturing, marketing plans, team behavior, corporate governance. All of these phenomena are important. But they are less fundamentally important than the basic nature of organizations as living social organisms. This critically important reality must be where any intervention starts. When this occurs, the intervention has a chance of working.

To enable these managers must be able to combine their knowledge of the above systems with response ability. Determining where an organization has been, where it is currently, and where it is primarily poised to go next is critically important before any change is attempted. Indeed, what managers must do is discover the unique patterns and processes - and then work to influence them in a manner that helps the organization to help itself function more efficiently and effectively. The pattern of dynamic relationships at the organization level is culture, which explains why organizational culture is so powerful. It has everything to do with implementation and how success is actually achieved.

No management idea, no matter how good, will work in practice or implementation if it does not fit the culture. Therefore managers have to consider how they can make the culture fit the plan. They do this by acknowledging which type of culture they are in, and then choosing which skills and knowledge they require to 'fit' the circumstances. For instance unpalatable truths such as redundancy, loss of power, will be presented to others in the most favorable light to them and their mind set, alternatively they may be eliminated from all information, with only points that are perceived as good being presented to those involved. The ethical considerations of this must then arise. Managers should be trained in sensitivity to enable them to relate to the workforce and understand them, in order to allay their fears effectively.

There is also the consideration that if communication is not open or truthful that in future change proceedings there will be greater resistance and a lack of trust to overcome. Stretching any managers's kill to the limit. Dawson (1994) discusses the idea of communication and employee involvement being central to the process of change as a crucial consideration in overcoming the natural resistance that most employees feel. Communication and the mediums used must be must be considered carefully by management. It should be noted that the most popular management styles of the past twenty years or so have been imported from the Japanese, whose management styles reflect that communication with employees is vital to the success of the organization whether there is change occurring or not. Summary There will always be resistance to change, it is the nature of people that they like things to remain the same.

A good manager has to be able to work with and overcome this resistance, he / she must be able to control the whole process of change. In order to do this they have to utilize and balance all of their knowledge and skills, whether they are traditional, modern, or most likely a mixture of the two. The different cultures that comprise organizations mean that there is no one prescriptive approach for successful change management, rather managers have to be aware of the present situation and have the ability to see the transition to the future proposed state. Therefore it is most likely for an 'all rounder' to precipitate successful change. This will be someone who has the ability to perform all of the key management functions as listed earlier as well as being able to diagnose, adapt and communicate..