Organizational Change and Stress

Senior and Fleming (2006 ) noted that organizational change may affect the general operations of the company as well as business functions.

Organizational change is often used to improve all or part of an organization, such as a process. Organizational change may occur as the organization changes its strategy for success or when there were decisions made to change the entire environment that the organization is currently functioning under (Cawsey, Deszca, & Ingols, 2011). Change can also occur as the organization evolves while moving through life cycles. In order for organizations to grow and develop, there must be change at various stages of this process.

Organizational change encompasses many challenges to both the individual, and the organization. An organization is a living system, as Flower (2002) states “living systems cannot survive without change, challenge, variety, and surprise” (Flower, 2002, p. 16). An organization requires the ability to adapt in to survive as Darwin states in The Origin of Man, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” (Read Me First, 2013, p. 1). It must adapt to the changing market, global economic pressures, stakeholder demands, and the diverse needs

According to Cummings and Worley (1997) there is a five-phase process for managing change, including: motivating change, creating vision, developing political support, managing the transition, and sustaining momentum. Motivating change involves creating a work environment that embraces change and developing approaches to overcome any resistance to change. The general guidelines include: enlightening members of the organization about the need for change, expressing the current status of the organization and where it should be in the future, and developing realistic approaches to change.

Encyclopedia of Business, 2nd ed. (2003). Managing Organizational Change. Encyclopedia of Business, 2nd ed., 1-6.

Also, they don’t prioritize the necessary modifications causing confusion and negative reactions of employees. Some leaders don’t realize how it will affect their employees and begin to lose them. According to Jacobsen, merging companies can influence the companies due to different cultures and not adapting to the changes, In summary, Implementing changes take time to make all the following steps and providing the necessary training.

Structural change within an organization might stem from both internal or external factors. Efficient and effective change management requires the ability to identify what causes structural change within an organization. David et al. (2013) found the ability to identify the signs of change within the macroeconomic environment often facilitate organizational growth. Successful leaders are able to leverage internal strengths in taking advantage of external opportunities.

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.

Introducing organisational change is often hard, the main reasons for that can be variation in perceptions of the employees, fear of disruption or failure and underlining the right approach to apply change. Then even if the change in a specific organisation is projected successfully there is still lot to be done to manage it in an appropriate way (Oakland, 2007).

First let’s look at defining change and the complexities that exist associated with it. As defined by Small Business Chron, “organization change is about

Change is going in the organization. With the help of theories I can easily visualize

A matrix structure will not be successful if an organization’s employees are not trained with the ability and skills necessary to operate within the structure. Employees must have the right mindset and behaviors in order to operate in an environment that is constantly conflicted with multiple bosses and simultaneously pursuing multiple aims (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1990; Ford and Randolph, 1992). The employees need to have the same goals within the organization so there is less competition among them. For example take two teams one is in marketing and one is in development if both of them have different goals to achieve this leads to conflict among both teams creating a dysfunctional workplace. These same employees also need to know exactly what their job requires them to do. The matrix structure adds flexibility to the organization but the company needs to make sure that the responsibilities of the top executives are not the only known responsibilities, those job indicators need to be exchanged between all levels of the workforce. The flexibility the structure provides can lead to untimely decisions. This is created by the fact that the matrix structure requires input and collaboration among its staff. The employees may have trouble deciding whose’ input is needed because the interpersonal skills of the employees is lacking leading to untimely decisions that could result in a loss of quality. Or the employees may just become divisionally focused and not see the organization

For the purpose of this paper organizational change is defined as a company or organization going through a transformation. Organization change occurs when business strategies or major sections of an organization are altered and or involves reorganization, restructuring and turnaround (Business Dictionary). Organizational change is about reviewing and transforming management structures and business processes. To stay ahead of our competition the Charter School System it is imperative that our organization look for ways to do things more efficiently and economically. There is no reason that we should fear change. We should embrace change as a means of setting the foundation for continuing success (Basu, C., 2014).

The matrix structure integrates two structures together, often geographical and multi product structures. For example, a company may have a department for a product A in Europe and for Product A in Asia. One of the advantages of the Matrix structure is the convenience of experts simplifying the sharing of knowledge between the goods. Another advantage of the matrix structure is intra-team communication, this allows ease of communication between the different functional product groups within the same organisation, and similarly there is less pressure on managers, quality monitoring is easier and skills are interchanged within departments of the same function thus improving efficiency.