Organizations are currently affected by many issues that have rendered them less effective and efficient to cope with today’s market demand. It has been pointed out that the nature of operations entirely contributed to that. Beitler points out that âtop management creates anxiety among their juniors with unplanned changes” (56).
First, the growth in technology has improved the qualitiy of goods and services in terms of relevancy, cost effectiveness and satisfaction of societal needs. However, the cost of installation, maintenance and operational limits the use of technology among various competitors. As a result, technological innovation and creativity are not realized.
In todayâs market taking into account varied taste, preference and demand, organizations are striving to capture a fair share of it. Various market researches have been carried out to outline need of the consumers and their preferences. Fashion and lifestyles are some of the factors that keep changing with time. The generation gap has made it difficult to predict consumer behavior in an era of technological diversity, especially the y-generation’s one (Burke 87).
Economic instability has derailed the running of the organization. Most countries are experiencing a poor exchange rate in the world market and unfavorable balance of payment. In addition, political instability has negatively influenced international relations causing import and export oriented organizations alarm. Today, most organizations are affected by the global economic breakdown, and this has consequently resulted in laying off of many workers (Kotter and Dan 57).
Many organizations have condemned theft, fraud and errors within the company amongst its employees during normal business operations. With increased cartels and formal agreements among business organizations, cases of fraudulent behavior have evidently been pointed out strongly as the ones affecting the organizational policies.
Therefore, it has resulted in leakage of important and confidential information to non-authorized people. There is a need to improve the security of operating systems. This has led to the development of stringent procedures underlying recruitment, handling of tender supply as well as access and leakage of internal information.
According to Lewis, âdifferent cultures among organizations may cause conflictsâ (77). For example, there are poor corporationâs concerns, uncertainty and complexity of various agreements and lack of participation in decision making among the employees. Sometimes, employees may not realize the changes brought by organizational culture. In addition, cultural diversity and integration may create negative expectations. This limits their levels of commitment to the organizations.
Every organization tries to satisfy the welfare of its employees offering good remunerations and creating a clear promotional prospects. Employees sometimes express their dissatisfaction through strikes and anxiety. This may be caused by poor communication between the top management and junior staff. Sometimes, agreements on the workload and labor hours are looked down. The expression of these work-related stress coupled with domestic disturbances may make an employee turn into unlawful acts (Quinn 105).
Employees have varied attitudes and behavior towards the agreements between their organization and others which may be superior. The environment that might be created by the top agreement greatly influence self motivation of the workers. If an employee loses confidence in the organization, this may lead to a job tenure and fear to be compromised. Morale set by the workers may initiate the voluntary turnover and encourage working relations among the employees.
Democracy and equal participation of the staff in the decision making processes can encourage their motivation and high level of productivity. Satisfied employee will work despite the harsh working environment. Managers are expected to show some little concerns about the employees and contribute much to their welfare.
High level of performance, that is the main objective of organizations to achieve, can only be realized when employees’ commitment is well-monitored and encouraged. Therefore, organization should be flexible to adapt to changes brought about by the demand of its employees (Salerno and Lillie 37).
The world market has experienced fluctuations in terms of education, commitments and attitudes of the labor market forces. People with higher qualifications enter the frictional job market with an intention to move to another level of employment if the opportunity arises. Thus, unemployment does little to fresh graduates.
Managers evaluate the level of productivity of each employee and assess if there is a need to train his/her employees to informational change to keep up with the demand in the market. Immobility of labor supply has affected various organizations which want to keep up with the global changes and ensure that they are able to compete with the competitorsâ strategies.
Beitler further points out that âduring the periods of inflation, the country faces a general rise in price level of goods and services. As a result, the organizations do face challenges in price stabilityâ (108). On the other hand, employees express their negative attitude toward the perceived little pay that cannot support their lives. These challenges often lead to organization losing market share to the competitive company which may have in place a strong strategy to provide for the changes in the market.
Administrative processes are part and parcel of the resistance to change within an organization. Managers are required to define a clear channel of communication from top management level to a lower one. Any misunderstandings about who is to report to ideal issue may cause uncertainty in the leadership. Inadequate communication and poor quality decision making may hinder control and coordination of duties.
In addition, staff motivation, if not well handled, may lower the productivity level, and this may foster quicker change to be observed. Staff may also be demotivated if the change touches power, salary and any work benefits. Members of the organization are likely to face change limits with respect to access to current information, job traditions and fading authority to make the right decisions (Lewis 130).
Dependency is experienced among various organizations, especially those that are engaged in the international trade. Organizations may not run well without access to the adequate capital. They borrow domestically and from regional blocks. Sometimes, governmental policy restricts the level of both internal and external borrowings.
Therefore, companies are restrained and forced to change their plans and strategies. Dependency may be bad due to its high cost and involvement and sometimes encourage resistance to change within organizations. The organizations, therefore, consider adopting any new strategies leaving struggling behind with huge debts.
Many corporations will work hard to ensure that their brand is protected and accorded necessary recognition. Though competition may unveil its bad impact on the organization, it is the duty of the management to introduce possible strategies to outshine their competitors.
Without competition, the quality of the products may not be improved, and the demand in the market might not be fully fulfilled. Therefore, strong marketing strategy comes in as a way of developing and improving the corporate identity. It involves a deep market research and data analysis of the competitors’ quantity and price setting (Quinn 127).
We will look at a case study of an International Airline and British Airways. They have been in the forefront of creating the cultural diversity. Various people came together and exchanged their views about their companies and cultures, especially in television advertisements.
Many great sights have been aired, for example, Times Square. They used a widely coordinated by many satellites system that covered hundreds of miles across the globe. Thereafter, they needed a business identity that would unveil their global image of harmony, care, cosmopolitan and pride.
Many organizations cause culture change by diversifying their products and organizational strategies. They succumb many obstacles, and their managers try to create successful organizational culture. The culture change purports a direct link between culture and performance; this is rather a hypothesis than an established fact.
Cultural audit is necessary for organizational growth since diversity in culture signifies the true reflection of societal demand. It requires individual analysis of every organization based on employeesâ performance. Every employee is expected to keep to organizational ethics and norms. For example, employees are not expected to divulge and spread internal information.
Every organization should be guided and driven by their goals and objectives. This is the foundation of their success. When an organization is focused on achieving its objectives, its staff is expected to make some sacrifice and abate egos so that they attain their organizational goals.
The cultural changes caused by external factors should never be allowed to derail the organization productivity level unless the change will be positive enough to affect motivation of the workers. Employees are, therefore, expected to voice their expectations and carry out the initial discussion with the management on the issues of their welfare and equal participation in decision making. Management based on democratic leadership is expected to succeed and never be susceptible to any change in the society (Salerno and Lillie 115).
Series of briefing and implementation of action plan call for frequent sessions and seminars for management training. In these training sessions, it is vital to introduce key changes in the management levels. Other issues that should be discussed include explanations on various cultural changes, the importance of empathy and participation.
Management should begin with explaining the goals and objectives to its employees and be ready to be open for any discussion. Building expectations for success, utilizing methods, such as presentations or seminars, workshops for team and skill building, and training or retraining programs.
Carrying out such job training analysis needs technical considerations and continuation of modelling of the change by senior or middle management. Professional ethics should form the guidelines for the conducts of every employee, and management should respond positively by rewarding efforts of every worker.
It is a dream of every employee to have his or her remuneration reconsidered. Staff presentations concerning progress and feedback with the change program should be used for judging the workers’ performance. Labor mobility is only experienced in situations with a low productivity. It is likely that some employees will prefer to work in areas where they are paid a high amount of salary even if the conditions of work are not good (Burke 127).
Lack of role models at the workplaces contributes to creating a positive environment in a way as it may give freedom to employees to act according to their own interest. Observational learning plays an important role in how people view things. If you feel that you are a change agent, you should get some people on board so that you model the organizational behavior. People tend to believe when there is less rhetoric and more demonstrations. Some people believe in something only if they see it.
Fear may cause resistance to change especially if the employees are less competent. Change is inevitable regardless of skills to be employed which necessitate appropriate training. There should be a frequent motivator to eliminate this fear on them. This should be done through the introduction of effective new training programs on informational change, a rationale and a master plan for change. The right schedule should appropriately be in place for training programs and moderate mode of evaluation.
Fatigue can demotivate people especially when they feel pressure due to changes made. People also feel fatigued when there are a lot of changes that have been introduced.
In some cases when an organization does less with the use of the hand and turn to the monitoring of automated machines, this may result in loss of craftsmanship, consequently making the employee lose the sense of his/her identity. Introduction of certain forms of rewards may motivate the staff to take up the new challenge. Management, therefore, must address these issues regarding identity, and skills of teh workers.
Managers are better positioned to solve differences and resistance among employees ensuring that adequate incentives and motivational talks are rightly provided to employees. With certain concessions provided to employees concerning an agreement that they are willing to support the new program, it is more likely that teh last will successfully be implemented.
More unions and bonuses can also be provided for certain level of performances. Managers are, therefore, required at all the time to recognize their ability and use praise and symbols to show concern and support.
These training sessions typically comprise explanation of the process of cultural change; emphasis on the importance of empathy, communication and participation by workers; explanation of proposed goals and aims to be achieved through change, and how these will impact on the organization and, ultimately, on organizational performance that is a translation of a âsoftâ process into âhardâ financial results (Kotter and Dan 122)
In order to prepare the organization for a change, management using the change agent should ensure that company is aware of the measures to be taken and focused on the possible threats in case of faliure to introduce some innovation, encourage the workers to believe that change is possible and desirable, and develop participation of staff, especially influential supervisory one (Lewis137).
Management with support of the change agent should implement the innovation making the company’s goals and objectives clear to the staff, expressing openness for suggestions, and contributing to the employees’ faith in success. To ensure the success of the change process, it is better to use varios methods to introduce the innovations. These could be made in form of presentations, seminars, and workshops to improve the staff’s skills and readiness to change.
Works Cited
Beitler , Michael. Strategic Organizational Change. 2nd ed. Greensboro, U.S.A: Practitioner Press International, 2006. Print.
Burke, Warner. Organization Change: Theory and Practice (Foundations for Organizational Science Series). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2010. Print.
Kotter, John, and C. Dan. The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations. Harvard: Harvard Business Review Press, 2002. Print
Lewis, Laurie. Organizational Change: Creating Change Through Strategic Communication.1st ed. San Francisco, CA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. Print.
Quinn, Robert. Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within (The Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series). 1st ed. Hoboken: Jossey-Bass, 1996. Print.
Salerno , Ann, and B. Lillie. The Change Cycle: How People Can Survive and Thrive in Organizational Change. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008. Print.