Change Management Essay: Effective Leadership In Abu Dhabi Government Sectors.

Describe about Change Management As The Result Of Effective Leadership for An Evaluation For Government Sectors In Abu Dhabi.

In this era of globalization, governments must acknowledge the need of change management. There could be internal or external drivers of change and it is important that the government and the organizations in the government sector should demonstrate the thought leadership to implement the change. It would be correct to say that the change management is the basis of effective planning and implementation across various regions in Abu Dhabi. Normally, the challenges of change management are tied to the current state and therefore knowledge of what is the current state is crucial (Cummings, and Worley, 2009).  In this process, there will be a collection of technologies, tools, organizational structures, job roles and responsibilities as the work is progressing.  The individuals responsible for the change planning should avoid jumping into the future state without drawing the pictures and the roadmap of how to get there and this is through change. The main aim in planning change is to ensure everyone moves to the future state for a success change implementation (Daft, 2015).

It is often said that change management would depend on the leadership skills of change agents.  Change leadership is another element for a successful change in an organization. Change normally starts from the top. It is inherently unsettling for all levels of people in the organization (Daft, 2015). When change goes on the side of the horizon, the focus moves to the leadership team for a go ahead, directions, strength and support. For a successful change implementation, from the start, the managers or leaders should develop an organizational architecture that integrates all elements of the change in the organization (Franken, Edwards, and Lambert, 2009).  

This research work would be focused around the impact of effective leadership on change management processes for the government sectors in Abu Dhabi. The two key research questions that would be addresses as part of this research are:

What is the impact of effective leadership on change management processes for various government sectors in Abu Dhabi?

What leadership skills and traits should change agent posses to implement the change successfully in the organization?

According to Schmit, d’Hoore, Lejeune, and Vas (2011), organizations can effect organizational change by changing content or by changing the organizational process. Process change in organizations involves three stages: initiation, transition, and institutionalization. In the initiation stage, the company resolves to modify its organizational practices and convinces key players that this change is necessary. The transition stage marks the shift from the current process to the new process, and the institutionalization stage involves the overall acceptance of the new process.

Literature Review

According to Carmeli and Tishler (2004) “organizational elements enhance each other in their effect on organizational performance. That is, the 'marginal productivity' of each organizational element is higher; the higher are the values of all other organizational elements” (p. 1271). For example, if management holds its employees in high regards, than any other goal or direction set is seen as favorable to subordinates. This is made so, because subordinates perceive that management is on board and so is lower level support. It all flows back to the tone is set at the top. It is assumed that Daft (2015) agrees with employees listed as a key element and states that transformational leaders understand this as well. Transformational leaders understand that when it comes to change and innovation, employees are the key to the company being able to adapt and sustain the momentum behind innovation. Both these elements relate to organizational change by creating a visual image of a ship in rough waters. Each member has a function, which helps steer the organization to calmer seas. The decision making of employees and leadership allows the organization to quickly adapt to the changing environment. The success of change is predicated by the willingness of BOTH management and employees (Daft, 2015).  

Leadership understands why the change is necessary and therefore they should have supporting data and describe the competitive advantage that the change will eventually bring (Franken et al., 2009).  Leadership will provide support and sponsorship, also talk and in harmony with the overall change initiative and activities to avoid disconnects in thee information in the efforts to change the behaviors to become supportive rather than resistant (Franken, et al., 2009).

Another element of a successful change in an organization is the change management. For any successful implementation of change in an organization, change management is a key phase of overseeing the stakeholders involved, resources and systems that the change needs to achieve its end goals (Franken, et al., 2009). During this phase, managers drive change relentlessly so as to ensure the change remains on the track and that it is successful and hence sustainable. It is in this element of change where most of the time is spent. This is due to that peoples’ side of change. During the change management, there is a lot of despair to anxiety ranging from fear to relief (Karp, 2006; Ali and Ivanov, 2015).  Here, the organization can experience a decline in productivity and therefore the employees are required to accept the new perspectives, innovations and the new ways of behaving (Karp, 2006); Ali and Ivanov, 2015). Change management can lead employees to react in unexpected ways, experience periods of resistance and a lot of questions that require answers. To effectively manage change, continual reassessments will be required and the ability of the company to adopt the new wave of transformation (Franken, Edwards, and Lambert (2009); Abouzeedan, et al., 2012; Ali and Ivanov, 2015). 

The last element for a successful change in an organization is the change maintenance (Ali and Ivanov, 2015).  This element of change ensures that the change is kept a priority. This is done hrough reinforcements.  Maintenance of change has to be measure so as to be determined, declared successful, transferred and then embedded. Once the change is declared implemented as planned, maintenance gets in. the lessons learned to analyze what might be done on future initiatives of change. When the initiatives are successful, people will always adopt easily in future since they gain confidence in the changes developed in the organization.

Swartout, Boykin, Dixon, and Ivanov (2015) study indicates that employees perceive management as not being faithful and or dependent. When change does arise employees already has preconceived notions that the change will happen either with or without them, or it will fade with the passage of time. In order to mitigate these types of resistance to change, employees should be included in the process from start to finish as change agents.

According to Daft (2016) the most significant elements that ensure successful change are ideas, need, decision to adopt change, implementation of change, and resources to support change. Additionally, (Ng & Yazdanifard, 2015) stressed the need for organizational leaders to understand the culture in which the organization is embedded in to identify if individualist or collectivist approaches to change would best meet the needs of the organization. Initially, change will be spurred by an identified need or by an idea (Daft, 2016). Ideas and needs can begin the change process interchangeably and will require the members of the organization to make decisions on whether to adopt the change or not (Daft, 2016). Organizations are inanimate and cannot run themselves (Yoder, 1999). They need people to make decisions to move the organization along the life cycle. The adoption and implementation stages of change are the points when organizational leaders have to determine if an individualist approach will work best or a collectivist approach will work best (Ng & Yazdanifard, 2015). Taking an individualist approach does not mean that all employees will only think about themselves, it means that the individual benefits of change will be highlighted more than the collectivist benefits and vice versa for the collectivist approach.

During the implementation phase employees actually have to implement the changes set forth by the organization (Daft, 2016). In my experience, this is the most difficult phase to manage because employees can be resistant to change and because they can give up on change too easily. Since it takes time to see the benefits of implementing new products and strategies, people tend to get impatient and stop the process. I find that one way to get around this hiccup is to adequately prepare people by explaining the change in detail from the beginning and following up on implementation regularly. Finally, change requires resources from the organization. Resources can be in the form of materials and supplies, cash, time, or freedom to name a few (Daft, 2016). Providing resources is a risk for the organization, but it is necessary to see the benefits of a properly implemented change process.

Regardless of the relative size of organizations, organizational leaders find themselves in a quickly changing and ever evolving environment, which requires change and adaptation (Marcu, Ciuhureanu, & Baltes, 2011).   Organizational innovation denotes adoption of new ideas reflective of major changes in an organization’s contextual environment (Glor, 2015).  Adopting change within an organization is often met with resistance, both internal and external, and requires organizational leaders to effectuate a specific methodology whereby change is supported through specific elements or stages including adopting an new idea premised upon an organizational need (Daft, 2015).  Additionally, organizational leaders must foster adoption by promoting management and personnel buy-in, and supply sufficient resources to effectuate the change (Daft, 2015). 

There are various methods and ways to complete the research. For this research work, the researcher would use mix methods of research. It means that the researcher would use both primary research methods and secondary research methods. The way the researcher would use primary and secondary research methods can be discussed as:

The objective of primary research methods would be to collect the first hand data for this research. This data would be collected through online survey (Hair, 2007). The researcher would create an online survey of 10 to 20 questions. This online survey would be mailed to various employees of government departments in Abu Dhabi. The researcher would use a systematic sampling approach to select a sample of 100 people. The questions in the survey would be close-ended questions with some exception of open ended. The use of close-ended questions would ensure that chances of biasness are less and respondents are able to answer the questions without any problem (Pickard, 2013). Couple of sample questions can be discussed as:

On a scale of 1 to 7 (1 being worst and 7 being best, how do you rate the quality of leaders in Abu Dhabi government sector to manage the change?

On a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being never and 5 being always) rate the involvement of employees’ involvement in the change management process in your department/ organization?

The secondary research methods would have the objective to use the existing data and information to shape the research (Zikmund, 2012). The objective of the researcher is to complete the literature review of more than 20 sources. The 20 sources would be a combination of books, journals and online sources.

For primary research, the data collated would be mainly quantitative in nature and for the secondary research; the data collected would be mainly qualitative in nature. To analyze the data, researcher would use the tools like Microsoft Excel, SPSS, etc. The data collected through online survey would be fed into the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (Robson, 2011). The Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool that could be used to analyze the data and make useful inferences.

The expected outcome of this research work is that the researcher would be able to answer the research question in the context of Abu Dhabi government. It is expected that the researcher would be able to establish a relationship between change management and leadership attributes. It is expected that the findings of this research project would be useful for various officials in Abu Dhabi to manage the change effectively.

The researcher plans to complete the research work in a time window of 12 to 18 weeks. This timelines can change as the research progress. The expected timeline for this research work can be shown as:

There could be some deviation on the above-mentioned timelines. However, the different phases of the research would have somewhat similar break up only. The findings of the research would be shared with the larger audience once the research is completed.

References

Abouzeedan, A., & Hedner, T. (2012). Organization structure theories and open innovation paradigm. World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, 9(1), 6-27.

Ali, A., & Ivanov, S. (2015). Change management issues in a large multinational corporation: A study of people and systems. International Journal of Organizational Innovation, 8(1), 24-30.

Cummings, T. G. & Worley, C. G. (2009). Organizational Development & Change. Mason , OH

Carmeli, A., & Tishler, A. (2004). The relationships between intangible organizational elements and organizational performance. Strategic Management Journal, 25(13), 1257-1278. doi:10.1002/smj.428

Daft, R. L. (2015).  Organization theory and design (12th ed.) Mason, OH: South-Western, Cengage Learning.

Franken, A., Edwards, C., & Lambert, R. (2009). Executing strategic change: Understanding the critical management elements that lead to success. California Management Review 51(3) 49-75.

Glor, E. D. (2015). Building theory of organizational Innovation, change, fitness and survival. Innovation Journal, 20(2), pp. 1-168

Hair, J. F. (2007). Research methods for business.

Karp, T. (2006).  Transforming organisations for organic growth: The DNA of change leadership.  Journal of Change Management, 6(1), 3-20.

Marcu, L., Ciuhureanu, A., & Baltes, N. (2011). Marketing management as a key element for implementing change within organizations. Annals Of The University Of Petrosani Economics, 11(4), 167-174.

Ng, C. T., & Yazdanifard, R. (2015). Managing organizational change and resistance from an individualist vs. collectivist perspective. International Journal of Management, Accounting & Economics, 2(9), 1065-1074

Pickard, A. J. (2013). Research methods in information. Facet Publ.

Robson, C. (2011). Real world research: a resource for users of social research methods in applied settings. Chichester: Wiley.

Swartout, S., Boykin, S., Dixon, M., & Ivanov, S., PhD. (2015). Low morale in organizations: A symptom of deadly management diseases? International Journal of Organizational Innovation (Online), 8(1), 17-23

Yoder, D. E. (1999). A contingency framework for environmental decision-making: Linking decisions, problems, and processes.Policy Studies Review, 16(3), 11-35.

Zikmund, W., Babin, B., Carr, J., & Griffin, M. (2012). Business research methods. Cengage Learning.