Accepted wisdom today s that there is sufficient difference between leadership and management, between leader and a manager, that the two concepts or forms of influence should not be used interchangeably . In times of significant organizational change, both leadership and management are required.
This paper is going to focus more on the role leader’s role for initiating, implementing, and sustaining organizational change.Organizations progress through developmental stages. As organizations age, structures increase to provide greater control and coordination .
The young organization is characterized by high energy, movement, and virtually constant change and adaptation. Aged organizations have established “turf boundaries,” function in an orderly and predictable fashion, and are focused on rules and regulations. In essence, change is limited. However, it is clear that organizations must find a balance between stagnation and chaos, between birth and death.
In the process of maturing, workers within the organization can become prisoners of procedures, forget their original purposes, and allow means to become ends. Without change, the organization may stagnate and die. Organizations need to keep foremost what they are going to do not what they have done. This is what informs the role of organizational change.
It should be clear that leadership and management skills are necessary for successful planned change to occur. The manager must understand the planning process and planning standards and be able to apply both to the work situation.
The manager is also cognizant of the specific driving and restraining forces within a particular environment for change and is able to provide the tools or resources necessary to implement that change. The manager, then, is the mechanic who implements the planned change.
The leader however is the inventor or creator. Leaders today are forced to plan in a chaotic health care system that is changing at a frenetic pace. Out of this chaos, leaders must identify trends and changes that may affect their organizations and units and proactively prepare for these changes. Thus, the leader must retain a big picture focus while dealing with each part of the system.
In the inventor or creator role the leader displays such traits as flexibility, confidence, tenacity, and the ability to articulate vision through insights and versatile thinking. The leader also must constantly look for and attempt to adapt to the changing and unpredictable interactions between agents and environmental factors outlined by the complexity science theorists.
It should be clear that leadership and management skills are necessary for successful planned change to occur. The manager must understand the planning process and planning standards and be able to apply both to the work situation.
The leader and the manager is also cognizant of the specific driving and restraining forces within a particular environment for change and is able to provide the tools necessary to implement that change. The leader and the manager, then, are the mechanics who implement the planned changes.
The term ‘leadership’ often implies in its historic connotation someone who shows the way and guides the right direction. The modern understanding conveys a sense of a leader and his ability to know what is best or desirable in most situations, influence his subordinates, direct the effort, control the situation and take full responsibility.
It is commonplace observation that leadership plays an important role in the creation, survival, growth ad decay of organizations. Most of the leadership research to date has been conducted with the implicit assumption that leadership does make a difference in terms of organizational performance. This is the basically the question of the ability of human agency to for example bring about change in complex social systems.
Change is currently seen as a highly relevant phenomenon, which engages many people. Most writers and scientists seem to agree that the pace of the development of society is the fastest the human race has ever seen. This development appears to be accelerating and have a stronger thrust than ever before.
Essentially change can be defined as a deliberate effort which is characterized by changes which may seem physical to the operations of an organization which are geared towards a given end. It is marked by the loss of the familiar as the organization tries to accept the unfamiliar. However, it is worth noting that change often resistant.
Much of the literature on organizational management emphasizes the role of institutional leaders in organizational change and development, as well as the formulation and implementation of corporate policies and strategies.
Some scholars hold the view that within the organization, institutional leadership is critical in creating a cultural context that fosters innovation, and in establishing organizational strategy, structure and systems that facilitate innovation. It is apparent that process innovations and organizational changes can be implemented effectively when they are institutionalized and integrated into the current organizational practice.
These changes which are brought about by innovations must not only adapt to the existing organizational and structural environments, but they must also transform the structure and practices of these environments. The strategic problem that exists for institutional leaders is one of creating an infrastructure and a plat form which is conducive for this form of change.
The leadership patterns displayed by managers is said to determine the accomplishment of corporate goals and objectives. Leadership behaviours plays a central role in the cultural and political transformation processes of a firm by continuously changing the core values of employees, organizational structures, and contextual variables and the contents f the business strategies followed by the firm.
Values aspirations and preferences of top management are important factors that influence the choice of strategy that brings about change. in this case, process innovation as a strategic decision will be affected by the personal values of the leader as well as the organizational political process that shape the power exercised by the leader.
Organizational change may be defined as the adoption of a new idea or a behaviour by an organization. It is a way of altering an existing organization to increase organizational effectiveness for achieving its objectives. Organizational change is primarily structural in character and it is designed to bring about alterations in organizational structure, methods and processes.
Successful organizational change must continually focus on making organizations responsive to major developments like changing customer preferences, regulatory norms, economic shocks and technological innovations. Only those organizations those are able to undertake suitable change programs, can sustain and survive in a changing and demanding economic order in their bid to remain ahead of others in the race.
Many factors give rise to change processes in organizations. Organizations seek to be innovative; give in to pressures to follow the pack or an industry or sector leader; or are coerced by forces of public opinion, regulatory force, or marketplace mechanisms to attempt change.
The success of change in organizations can be measured by a variety of perspectives – those who seek the change; those who are asked to alter their practice; those whose stakes are most impacted by old and new ways of doing; and bystanders of the process among others. However we come to those assessments, the process of implementing change – of putting ideas into practice – is a major determinant of outcomes.
Organizational changes do not take place in a vacuum. These changes are usually based on a theoretical framework . Relating to the nature of the change process, most of the change theories could be grouped into four broad categories: evolutionary change, dialectics, life cycle and teleological theories.
The four are distinguished from each other either on the basis of unit of change or mode of change. The unit of change is either the single individual entity, interactions among people or relationships between organizations. The mode of change is either prescribed or constructive.
Evolutionary change is a continuous cycle of variation, retention and selection among several units regardless of the rate of change. Naturally, the outcome can be radical or gradual depending on the timely distribution of the variation, retention and selection of events throughout the organization.
The dialectic theory of change talks about the organizational existence in a pluralistic world of ambiguous and contradictory forces and values that compete with one another to get control over the others. When the status quo is confronted by the opposing force, which is with sufficient power, change takes place.
Life cycle theory proposes change process as a linear irreversible sequence of prescribed stages which facilitates organizations to move from the point of departure towards an end which is prefigured in the present state.
Teleological theory talks about the organization’s interaction with the external and internal construct and its effort to reach to the defined goals. This is a deliberate process of reaching t the predetermined goal as the ultimate objective.
Essentially, effective management of these changes requires the leader to be able to manage the following key phases; that is being aware of the requirements of change, generating willingness for participation and supporting the change initiatives, gathering information and knowledge about the method and process of change, ability to implement the change on a regular basis and reinforcement to keep the change process.
All these factors and phases are best delivered and managed by the leader whose role is to ensure that the organization achieves its core objectives in light of the prevailing circumstances. In conclusion, nothing is more prevalent in industry today than change. Some of these change initiatives happen as organizations evolve, and often require little intervention. Others are far more reaching.
They involve efforts specifically designed to improve organizational functions. Thus a leader should be aware of one’s role in the organization in ensuring that the stipulated objectives are realized. As an organization works towards realizing the role of change, the leader should take the lead role in ensuring that the subordinates understand the direction which the organization is taking.
In this case the role of the leader is to ensure that the organization works as a team and the challenges which are brought to the fore through these changes are dealt with. Finally, as the saying goes, there is nothing as constant as change. However, we need to realize that change cannot manage itself, it needs the coordinated efforts of all the stakeholders who are involved.
References
Bjønness, S. (2007). The notion of change in leadership cultures. Basel: Haupt Verlag AG.
Chowdhury, S. (2003). Organization 21C: someday all organizations will lead this way. New York: FT Press.
Ingols, C., Cawsey, T. F., & Deszca, G. (2011). Organizational Change: An Action-Oriented Toolkit. California: SAGE.
Lewis, L. K. (2011). Organizational Change: Creating Change Through Strategic Communication. West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons.
Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2008). Leadership roles and management functions in nursing: theory and application. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Rothwell, W. J. (2001 ). The manager and the change leader. New York: American Society for Training and Development.
Sengupta, N., & Bhattacharya, M. S. (2006). Managing Change In Organizations. New Delhi: PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.
Sisaye, S. (2001). Organizational change and development in management control systems: process innovation for internal auditing and management accounting. Oxford: Emerald Group Publishing.
Thomas, S. J. (2001). Successfully managing change in organizations: a user’s guide. New York: Industrial Press Inc.