Kotter's Change Model

Organizational structure. Need for expanding size of executive management team and adding new corporate layers in the corporation.

4. Reorganization at the management level in order to keep a clear focus, shorten lines of communication and build an efficient management team.

Organizations go through different life cycles similar to those of people. For example, people go through infancy, child-hood and early-teenage phases, which are characterized by rapid growth over a short period of time. Similarly, Organizations go through start-up, growth, maturity, decline, renewal and death. Employees in these phases often do whatever it takes to stay employed. (Ciavarella, 2001)

The solution adopted by many companies is to move toward greater delegation. Yet it is difficult for top managers to give up responsibility. And lower-level managers are not accustomed for making decisions for themselves. As a result many companies struggle during this revolutionary period, because many lower level employees leave the organization since they stick to centralized methods.

There is a strong relationship between structure types of an organization and its organizational life cycle. According to Friend (2016) Organizational structure is a system used to define a hierarchy within an organization; It identifies each job, its function and where it reports to within the organization and this structure is developed to establish how an organization operates and assists an organization in obtaining its goals to allow for future growth. In relations to organizational structure, we have to talk about the organizational life cycle. As Maurer (2016) states organizational life cycle (OLC) is a model that proposes that businesses, over time, progress through a fairly predictable sequence of developmental stages; this model is linked to the study of organizational growth and development and It is based on biological metaphor of living organisms,

Starting with top management since the CEO will not be involved in solving minor issues in the company. For employees that are also in Al’s position, these changes will give them more authority and control over their decisions since they will have more confidence when contributing with their opinions and points of view. This solution will give the organization the opportunity to become more united. Even though each business unit is separated by functions and have different responsibilities, they will be consolidated under a single vision and similar objectives that will make it easier for them to be

The research paper introduces the reader to the concept of change management in a corporation. Change management is an important aspect applicable to any organization. It entails the technology employed to effect change in an organization. There are many models of change management; however, this paper focuses on the Kotter’s model of change management. The Kotter’s model of change management dictates that the change leader use eight steps to effect change in the organization. The research paper seeks to broaden the reader’s perspective on the Kotter’s model by illustrating the application of the Kotter’s model in International Business Machines (IBM). IBM encountered serious financial problems in the early 1990’s and so the executives hired Louis V. Gerstner to break down the company for sale. However, Gerstner saw an opportunity to change the convert the company to its original self. The paper reviews in detail the change process and relates it to the Kotter’s model.

The development process of any project has specific phases which are known as project life cycle. Usually each project has five phases which are named as: 1- Analysis 2- Coding or Development 3- Testing or Validation 4- Deployment and Integration, 5-Maintenance.

Early theories and empirical studies have identified various organizational life cycles. Many authors who have addressed the topic of developmental phases have presented different models. As a result, when researching this topic one will find differentiations between the numbers of phases within an organization's life span. Some models identify three stages, others four or more. However, regardless of the number of life cycles, what we know is that these cycles are: "sequential in nature; occur as a hierarchical progression that is not easily reversed; and involve a broad range of organizational activities and structures" (Gupta & Chin, 1994, p. 270). The following will examine four fundamental

Model for organizational development is a continuing process of long-term organizational improvement that consists of several stages this model emphasizes on a combination of individual, team and organizational relationships. The first phase is anticipated need for change which states that before a change can be done there has to be a need. The manager of the organization must feel that there is a need to change and he must adopt new ways for a change to be productive. The second stage is developing the practitioner-client relationship which means that after the group has identified a need for change the organizational development practitioner enters the system and a relationship begins to grow between the practitioner and the client system.

Companies took production and compartmentalized the process into tasks, allowing workers to excel at a particular task of making the full product. This innovation proved to be successful and also brought new challenges to the companies that were unforeseen. Companies found they needed a managerial structure that allowed supervision of each tasks. Instead of one individual monitoring the tasks and quality of multiple workers or tasks, companies adopted a leadership structure similar to Smith’s operational design. Corporations distributed responsibilities amongst multiple supervisors and leaders to allow more quality control at the various steps along the process. As time progressed, corporations found them needing to grow in additional functions such as accounting, development, training and etc.

The course has given me a clear understanding of what organizational development and organizational change entail. Organizational development is described as an arranged or a planned process that aims at boosting the effectiveness and efficiency of organizational activities. In overall, it aims at achieving the desired goals and objectives (Pieterse & Homan, 2012, p. 799). According to Brown (2011), organizational development consists of diversified and lengthened efforts and activities that aim at improving the abilities of an organization for survival (p.4). It does this by either changing the methods used in problem-solving or renewing the processes involved in an organization’s operations. On the other hand, organizational change can be described as a transition that involves an organization shifting from its current approaches to new and more desired ones that are assumed to have better potential. It is the responsibility of the management to control the development and change in its operations.

Transformations / changes define the longest organizational life period and are required to adapt to continuous environmental change. This process is triggered immediately after the occurrence and action of "natural selection" open or block the organization 's evolutionary path.

With the advent of the changing era, the world’s business environment has become a rather dynamic and comprehensive one. Operating in today’s increasingly risky, rapidly changing and unpredictable global business environment, organizations have to constantly adjust their internal configurations – structure, work processes, technology, and culture – to cope the changing environment and to maintain efficiency (Sun, 2000), therefore, organization development, has been adopted as an effective approach to deal with this changing environment by many organizations all around the world since its core is about planning change. And according to the text above, organization development can be treated as a process through which

1) Infosys Technologies Ltd. is in the formalization stage of the organizational life cycle stage. According to Daft (2013), the characteristics of formalization stage include incentives based on the profits of the company, the use of rules, procedures and control systems and less frequent communication (p. 359). This can be widely witnessed in the working culture of Infosys. The Top management of Infosys is concerned with the issues of strategy and planning, the middle management generally is held responsible for running the operations of the company. The middle level of the management ladder witnesses much of delegation under the control of the immediate seniors, and thus there is delegation with control. Even though, few characteristics of the work culture resemble those characteristics of the elaboration life cycle stage such as multiple service lines, institutionalized R & D departments and the repeated replacements of the top management. The characteristics like goal, top management style, reward and control systems are relevant of a formalization life cycle stage.