What Role Does Culture Play in a Change Process? Essay

Abstract

The current paper is concerned with the topic of the role that culture plays in the process of change in an organization. The objectives of this work are to scrutinize this role in more detail, to analyze some models of change implementation for an organization that have proven to be effective, and to employ the gathered knowledge in practice, proposing some recommendations that might help the company of “Yahoo” to increase their potential and once again reclaim success in the market.

An important point that is made in this paper is that culture in an organization is essential; among other things, it is crucial due to the fact that it can serve as an enabler of changes. Next, the authors adopt the point of view that change is a process rather than an event, and that this process can be broken down into three stages. These stages roughly correspond to Kurt Lewin’s three-step model of implementing change. Furthermore, the paper argues that Lewin’s model is consistent with John Kottler’s method and offers to interpret Kottler’s method as a specification of Lewin’s model. These findings allow for an integrated implementation of these two methods of change.

To implement these findings, the authors of this paper offer some recommendations to the company of “Yahoo.” It is advised that the enterprise’s leadership focuses more on the “unfreezing” stage of implementing changes, communicating the vision to the personnel, and also pays more attention to the “refreezing” stage, making the innovations a part of the company’s everyday life.

Introduction

Change is an essential part of today’s world, and it is crucial for any business that wishes to be successful to be able to implement change in order to adapt to the dynamic business environment. It is also worth pointing out that culture plays an essential role in any organization and can be the deciding factor for its success. Unfortunately, many of the contemporary enterprises often tend to ignore the importance of culture and pay too little attention to it. Therefore, it is of great significance to review and stress the role that culture plays in organizational development.

The aims of this paper are to investigate the role of culture in the process of change, to analyze some of the most famous and successful methods of implementing change in an organization (that is, Kurt Lewin’s and John Kottler’s models of change implementation) and consider how well they match and whether they can complement one another, as well as to use the gained knowledge in order to offer some recommendations to the company of “Yahoo.”

After discussing the theoretical framework for the paper and formulating the research question, we will proceed to the theoretical discussion about the culture’s importance for implementing change in an organization. After that, we will focus more on the Lewin’s and Kottler’s models of implementing changes; after discussing the situation with the company of “Yahoo,” we will propose the recommendations to this enterprise based on our analysis of Lewin’s and Kottler’s models.

Recommendations

As the model proposed by Kurt Lewin suggests, in order to implement changes in an organization, it is important to do it in three steps: to “unfreeze” the company and get it ready for the change, then to carry out the change itself, and then to “refreeze” the company in its new state, i.e., to make the new way of acting a common way of acting, a part of the routine. Importantly, the last step in implementing one “piece” of change is not the last step in implementing the change in a more global sense; as it was noted before, change is a process rather than an event, and thus successfully carrying out one “piece” of change and “freezing” it still means that we have to further “unfreeze” the company for more changes.

It is apparent that Lewin’s model is consistent with John Kottler’s eight-step method of implementing change. In fact, it might be interpreted that Kottler’s eight steps detail Lewin’s three steps. Indeed, it is possible to assume that Kottler’s 1-4 (creating a sense of urgency, building a coalition, forming a vision and communicating it) corresponds to Lewin’s “unfreezing,” steps 5-7 (removing barriers to enable action, generating short-term wins, and sustaining acceleration) correspond to implementing change, and step 8 (anchoring/institutionalizing changes) corresponds to “refreezing.” In addition, it is essential to point out that Lewin’s model also corresponds to our adopted perception of change, according to which it consists of three phases: the current state, the change, and the future state.

As is known, the company of “Yahoo” has suffered from major failures over the course of the last few years. In 2012, “Yahoo” had three different CEOs – Tim Morse, Scott Thompson, and Ross Levinsohn; the company finally settled with hiring Marissa Mayer as its CEO, and she has been occupying that position since that time (Thomas, 2015, para. 3). It is stated that Ms. Mayer’s actions have been mostly successful; she changed the organizational culture, transferring it from highly bureaucratic to a more democratic and open one (Thomas, 2015). However, she also made a number of mistakes. For instance, (Gersch 2013) mentions the situation when Ms. Mayer, in her first years as the “Yahoo’s” CEO, released an internal memorandum requesting that all the employees work on-site rather than remotely.

The aim was to transform the organizational culture and enhance internal communication among the staff and between the employees and the company’s leadership. Bur Ms. Meyer failed to put across the goal of this memorandum. This situation created a large scandal around Marissa Meyer, and many employees felt strongly unsatisfied about it. It is clear that in this case, Ms. Mayer missed an important step of “unfreezing,” according to Lewin’s method; she did not create a sense of urgency and did not communicate her vision to the employees.

It is stated that Ms. Mayer corrected her mistake later and paid more attention to communicating her vision to the company’s personnel (Gersch, 2013). And yet, it is noted that she is still taking a gamble, implementing her rather cardinal changes at the cost of the employee’s retention (O’Connor, 2013).

Therefore, taking into account Lewin’s and Kottler’s models of implementing changes, our significant recommendation to enhance the organizational development would be not to miss any important steps in introducing changes. It is of crucial importance to make sure that the enterprise’s personnel (as well as its shareholders) understand not only the urgency of changes but also comprehend the vision of the company’s future and the steps and actions that the leadership takes to reach that future. We could also propose to devote more attention to the “refreezing”/anchoring changes phase; it would make the employees of the company more comfortable with the new order, and would likely help to lower the short-term risks while retaining the long-term benefits of the change of the culture.

Conclusion

To sum up, some of the key points in this paper are that culture plays a critical role in organizational development and that it is usually of crucial importance to implement changes in order to keep up with the dynamic world of business. Culture is capable of being an enabler of changes; it is through the means of organizational culture that the leaders can communicate their vision to the enterprise’s employees, take into account the worker’s ideas, and implement innovations.

Importantly, change is not an event but a prolonged, continuous process. This process can be divided into three phases: the current phase, the phase of transition, and some future state that is the aim of change. At the same time, each “piece” of a change does not cover change as a whole; after implementing the “piece,” it is essential not to stop implementing other changes in the organization.

Both Kurt Lewin’s and John Kottler’s models take into account the fact that change is a continuous process rather than a separate, isolated event. These two models are consistent, and, in fact, Kottler’s eight-step method can be viewed as a specification of Lewin’s three-stage model.

For the “Yahoo” company to overcome their crisis and successfully develop further, it is essential to implement innovations in the culture of the enterprise. The company’s CEO, Marissa Meyer has taken a number of decisive steps to change that culture, but, apparently, she has overlooked to make some preparations for these steps, to “unfreeze” the company before altering it. It is claimed that she is taking a gamble, believing that long-term benefits exceed the short-term risks. However, we recommend that Ms. Meyer communicates her vision of the company’s future very clearly both to the personnel (in order to increase the employee retaining rates) and to the company’s shareholders, and pays more attention to “anchoring” the changes she made.

References

Gersch, K. (2013). 5 ways Mayer’s trying to kick-start the Yahoo! culture. Web.

O’Connor, C. (2013). With the decision to end the company’s work-from-home policy, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is making a calculated long-term play in the interest of developing company culture – with significant short-term risks. Web.

Thomas, G. (2015). Changing Yahoo’s culture. Web.