Abstract
Numerous businesses are not coming to terms with the fact that change is absolutely necessary; therefore, they may be unable to continue to compete with other businesses. Consequently, it does not make a difference if the company is a professional organization or a small family owned business, the old ways of doing business is all but obsolete. Every business or organization is constantly changing products and leadership. Although businesses are undergoing daily changes everywhere in the country, change is still very difficult for some people to handle.
Consequently, change is needed in order to be successful in a future that is different than what has been experienced in the past.
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Nevertheless, individuals are afraid of change because they do not know that to expect. When a particular practice has been in place for a long period of time and people have been doing the same thing to get the same results, it’s sometimes hard for individuals to believe that anything else would work for them. Many external factors affecting an organization can be controlled. The following are a few internal factors that might contribute to change within an organization: Managing structure, staff, and the inside décor. External factors may be government regulations, and new innovations. In a world where business is ever changing, people are still resisting change in some aspects.
Kotter (1996) identified eight errors common to organizational change efforts and stated that making any of them can have serious consequences. According to Kotter, with awareness and skills, errors like these can be avoided or greatly mitigated. The key is to understand why organizations resist need change, what is the multistage process that can overcome inertia and how leadership should be used. Employees resist change for a variety of reasons. Among the most common rationales are the following:
• Lack of understanding – People believe that they will lose something of value as a result.
• Lack of trust in management – People don’t understand the implications of change and perceive that it might cost them more than they will gain. • Differing assessments of the
As a result, Zwick (2002, p. 542) has noted that implementing change programmes in organisations that realise positive outcomes remain problematic for many organisations in the 21st century. Ayodeji & Oyesola (2011, p. 235) have postulated that organisational change is a dynamic process, which when taken poorly contribute to employee resistance to it, and eventually leads to failure of the whole process. 3|Page Organisation Behaviour; MGTS 1601; Individual Essay; Employee resistance to change Yuanli Zhang 43401163 Employees resist changes when they occur in the organisations for several reasons. Many organisations when they introduce changes are likely to stick to the ‘top-down organisational change’ process (Awasthy, Chandrasekaran & Gupta, 2011, pp.
Businesses are facing a dichotomy between wanting to chalk out an all-time structure and strategy for their organization, and recognizing that their world is in a constant state of flux [3]. For most of the 20th century they were largely focused on the static elements of this dichotomy. However, in the last decade changes have become more frequent and more dramatic, so much so that a whole branch of management is now devoted to the subject of change itself.
Many people may resist change because they fear they will lose their jobs, status or position. It may be because they do not fully understand the purpose of change, or they may have a different perspective on the change than their management. “Individuals, groups, and organizations must be motivated to change. But if people perceive no performance gap or if they consider the gap unimportant, they will not have this motivation. Moreover, they will resist changes that others try to introduce,” Bateman and Zeithaml explained. Many times change for people at work
The more active the participants are in the planning, the less resistance there will be later (Sullivan & Decker). If staff does not trust leadership, does not share the organization's vision, does not buy into the reason for change, and aren't included in the planning, there will be no successful change, regardless of how brilliant the strategy (Goman, 2000). How people react to change is important to understand. Change takes an emotional toll on people, some more than others. It is important not to underestimate that toll and understand who will have a harder time adapting to change. Fear of change has many roots. Those roots can be a lack of trust, fear of failure, fear of loss of income or a belief that the change is unnecessary (Sullivan & Decker). By understanding the reason for the resistance a manager can help the employee overcome his or her fear and become a supporter of the change. The last two steps are to provide feedback mechanisms to keep everyone informed of the progress of change and evaluate the effectiveness of change (Sullivan & Decker). People need to be kept informed of the change process to minimize anxiety. Sometimes there are unexpected consequences to the change, and it is important to have a system in place for those consequences to be discussed and if needed more changes made in order to accommodate those consequences.
Change is difficult because all organizations cultures, structures, mission, and values are unique. As a result, there is not a “blueprint” that leaders can follow to ensure change initiative success. However, understanding the conditions that promote successful change processes is critically important for leaders. If employees do not support
Businesses have to adapt to the ever-changing economy. It is not much of a choice for business leaders to change elements of their organization to stay in competition with their peers. The hardest part, most of the time, is changing the people in the organization to develop the necessary outcome or goal. As a business leader getting rid of people or changing their job specifics is one of the many responsibilities they have to be comfortable performing. Organizations have to take into consideration their competitors, customers, shareholders, employees, and the community to make decisions. Change is an aspect that many people are afraid of. In the new millennium, organizational leaders have to embrace
Leading and managing change require a solid theoretical foundation. This assignment will research the theoretical elements of change and change management. Addressed will be the following: Organic Evolution of Change, Formulating Strategic Development Approaches, Leadership and Management Skills and Gathering and Analyze Data. As societies continue to evolve and changing demand creates the need for new products and services, businesses often are forced to make changes to stay competitive. The businesses that continue to survive and even thrive are usually the ones that most readily adapt to change. A variety of factors can cause a business to reevaluate its methods of operation. According to literature from the past two
Week 3, the lecture on Managing Change describes organizational changes that occur when a company makes a shift from its current state to some preferred future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to decrease employee resistance and cost to the organization while concurrently expanding the effectiveness of the change effort. Today's business environment requires companies to undergo changes almost constantly if they are to remain competitive. Students of organizational change identify areas of change in order to analyze them. A manager trying to implement a change, no matter how small, should expect to encounter some resistance from within the organization.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss organizational change and the management of that change. I will talk about the different drivers of change, the factors a leader needs to weigh to implement change effectively, the various resistances a leader may encounter while trying to implement change, and how various leadership styles will effect the realization of change. I will also discuss the knowledge I have gained through the completion of this assignment and how I think it might affect the way I manage change in my workplace.
Employees who feel pushed out of their comfort zone may also resist change, due to the unfamiliarity of new implications or managers. The fear of uncertainties due to the lack of communication can also lead to resistance to change on an individual level. If employees are not informed of the needs of the change then the fear of the unknown can cause resistance.
From the issues raised in the section above, it can be seen that change is complex and there is not a single solution. However, a number of key areas of focus emerge.
Individuals when faced with any major change will be inevitably resistant and will want to preserve the status quo, especially if they think their status or security within the organization is in danger (Bolognese, 2010). Folger and Skarlicki believe that organizational change produces skepticism in employees which make it problematic and possibly even impossible to contrive improvements within the organization (as cited in Bolognese, 2010) Therefore, management must understand, accept and make an effort to work with resistance, since it can undermine even the most well-conceived change efforts (Bolognese, 2010). Furthermore, Coetsee states for organizations to achieve the maximum benefits from change they must effectively create and
However, people will not get out of their “comfort zone” without being motivated. This leads to the second error by leaders, which is not creating a powerful enough guiding coalition. Regardless of the size of the organization, the change effort should continually grow to include more and more people who believe that the changes are necessary (Kotter).
To identify the key elements of the resistanceto change described in this situation, one may make use of the six Change Approaches of Kotter and Schlesinger.[1]The model prevents, minimizes or descreases resistance to change in organizations. According to Kotter and Schlesinger (1979), there are four reasons that why people resist change, three of which are applicable to this case:
Resistance to change is one of the biggest barriers that organizations face in their efforts to implement organizational change. This greatly hampers the uptake of new technologies, new ways of doing work and even progress of organizations. Reviewing on this, the British Journal of