Organizational Change

"I'm all for progress; it's change I don't like.''

Mark Twain

Mark Twain neatly sums up the dilemma facing organizations and their employees as we move into the twenty-first century. How they handle changes and move forward will determine either their continued success or their likely demise.

Experience has shown that the first step, the initiation of change, is the easiest one. The real challenge and the major source of difficulty is the implementation of changes, turning ideas and plans into reality. Organizational change (ОС) is about this whole process, from defining the change, through to making it happen.

Many economists define ОС as "the art, skill, process, or act of changing an organization in some planned, intentional way, with the purpose of improving its performance". A more simplistic definition is "the ability to turn ideas into reality, making things happen" One of the most simplistic definitions of ОС suggests that its purpose is to address the following questions: why do we need to change? Who is or should be involved? What needs to change, and what does it need to change to?

How are we going to change?

There are many popular methods of organizational changing, downsizing and delayering being the most frequently met. Downsizing is reduction of the size of the company by making stuff redundant. Companies in this case become lean or flat.

Though many change initiatives are either delayed or fail to achieve their expected results, however, there are huge benefits and gains for organizations that can learn to manage change effectively. ОС, therefore, is becoming one of the most important fields in management today. In spite of this, it is one of the least well-defined and understood subjects. The complicated nature of change means that it is a difficult process to manage. There are a vast number and range of influences involved in ОС, from customer needs through to employee needs and shareholder needs. Achieving a win-win situation for all the interested parties is the art of ОС.

From an alternative perspective, we could see ОС as a series of activities. Examples might be:

Finding a sponsor; conducting a change-readiness assessment; addressing the risks and issues arising from change; communicating to the main audiences; and defining a transition plan etc.

The key points are that only people can initiate change and that change can only happen through people. People are therefore at the heart of organizations, and of change. It implies focusing on the psychology of change - on the areas of knowledge, motivation, commitment, and emotions.

There are always many barriers to any change. The first is the conflict and tensions between "business as usual" and "building for tomorrow and change". All organizations face this challenge of trying to survive today at the same time as changing to meet tomorrow's needs and demands. Pressure invariably focuses on achieving today's results, with building for tomorrow coming in second. Achieving a balance between the two is never easy.

The second barrier revolves around changing the status quo. This huge consideration is usually vastly underestimated. All sorts of forces and mechanisms are at work to try to maintain the status quo. A further barrier concerns resistance to change - the reasons and causes for people's resistance are interesting and varied, such as "I'll lose my job", "I'll be worse off", "I don't agree with the solution", or "I don't know what to do now". Most of the resistance to change can be addressed, and with suitable creativity and flexibility a win-win situation can usually be found.

1.Find English equivalents from the text for the words below:

прекращение деятельности/ упрощенческий/ уменьшение размеров/ приверженность/ противоречие/ статус-кво

2 Answer the following questions:

What does the organizational change imply?

What points should be taken into consideration before starting changes?

What are the main obstacles to changes?

What are the most popular methods of organizational change?

What is a lean company?

Up to you…

BPR (Business Process Re-engineering) also involves finding more efficient working schemes. You are an HR manager for an advertising agency. People often have smoking breaks, lateness records are astonishing, but they are willing to work overtime. How can you change your working scheme to motivate staff? Make them work overtime for lateness? Let them work from home? Introduce fines? Give your reasons.

Links

This site belongs to Oxford Change Journal, where you can find loads of articles on organization changes and other business issues:

icc.oupjournals.org

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14