Comparative Study: Change Management Theories And Models - An Essay.

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Assessment Type:

Purpose: This assessment is designed to allow students to demonstrate their ability to research current theory on change management and compare, contrast and evaluate the suitability of different models for various scenarios.

Current Change Management Theory

Task Details: Students need to research current change management theory to:

• research a range of current academic journal articles related to change management,
• explain clearly what current research literature is saying about change management,
• clearly interpret it to demonstrate understanding and be able to explain what it means in terms of today’s organisations,
• draw supported conclusions as to the validity of current change models.

Different change management theories

Change is regarded as a reality in the life and it can be ob served not in the cases of personal affairs but also in the professional life. At the same time by taking into consideration the change, it is important to know the ways in which the changes can be dealt (Burke, 2017; Langley et al., 2013). The time taken to accept change, it is important to utilize the sufficient energy, efforts and also the trainings are needed which would also help the other learned individuals to come up with innovative and properly structured models in order to deal with the change management (Shin, Taylor  and Sio, 2012).

Thus, change is the vital form of life and it comes with the growth of situation and unusual circumstances. The aim of the topic is to discuss how the business models helped the employees and the employers to get suited with the change of environment taking place in an organization (Cameron and Green, 2015; Merrell and Watson, 2012; Been, Dunphy and Griffths, 2014). These models also at the same time with an objective dealt with the transition and changes arose out of any types of situations. Change management is a term which is used in order to determine the change of groups, companies or the projects from one step to another. It is used to steer up the business and gives a structure to the framework of the business. The name of the models are Lewi’s model, Mckinsey 7s model, Kotter’s change theory, Nudge theory, ADKAR model, Transition model of Bridges and Five Stage model of Kubler-Ross (Hayes, 2014; Alexander, 2013).

Culture is often considered as a focus of concentration during the changes of organizational behavior when the merges of the companies happen and at the same time the clashes of the culture takes place. In the static environments, the issues based on culture can be responsible behind the presence of low morality and also absenteeism which results out of the staff turnover in a majority ways. Cultural web can also influence the culture of the corporate. This is the reason; researches are being conducted to determine what affects the culture of the corporate world and how this transition in the culture is not working properly (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015).

 The cultural web seeks to identify six important elements that describe the framework of the model of the working environment. The cultural web is designed by Gerry Jackson in the year 1992 and it looks forward to see the changes in the organization.

Stories: The people of the company tend to talk about the external and internal environment of the company which includes what stories do people are telling about organization? To take into consideration of the history of the organization, what do the employers think? (Saunders, 2012).

Rituals and Routines: The daily actions of the people signal the acceptance of the behavior. This determines what the expectation in the prevailing situation is. This includes what the customers expect? What is the expectation of the employees? What would become observant if the change happens? What are the cores beliefs that the rituals tend to reflect?

Cultural web

Symbols: The symbols represent the logos, the formal and the informal dress codes. In includes, are any status symbols used? What are the images linked with the organization? (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015).

Structure of the organization: This includes the structure of the organization defined in the chart and the influences which indicate that the contributions are being valued. It includes are there any lines based on informal? Is the structural is vulnerable to changes?

Control systems: It is the way which suggests that how the organization is being taken into control. This incorporates the financial systems and the rewards. It includes whether the company is losing or being tightly controlled? What process or the procedures are having the strongest controls?

Power Structures: This includes two or more than senior executives or a whole group of executives or also including the department. This describes that people are having a good amount of influence on the strategic decision and also the operations. Who is having the real power of the organization? Is later on the power of the organization is about to change? How the change in decision making would take place if so happens? (Alvesson and Sveningsson, 2015).

Kotter suggested that change is a successful happening. More than 70% of the company’s management needs to incorporate them into the changes. The change management theory of the kotter is being divided into eight steps where the steps are linked with the responses of the people in regard to the changes (Applebaum et al., 2012).

 Enhancing urgency: This step incorporates the necessary need of urgency among the people to motivate them.

Team building: It is important to get the right people in the team on the basis of knowledge and the commitment (Applebaum et al., 2012).

Correctness of the vision: the strategy is necessary to take into consideration the knowledge, commitment and the skills.

Communication: This includes a proper communication is needed to be maintained in order to update the people about the change.

Get the things moving: In order to continue with the things in the action of moving, one needs support and possibly removing the obstacles.

Concentrating on the short term goals: The short term goals must be achieved by the organization by following strategies  (Applebaum et al., 2012).

Not giving up: Persistency is the goal to success. It is important not to give up hope and get used to the changes gradually.

Incorporating changes: It is also important to manage the change in an effective manner and make it an important workplace by incorporating the workplace culture (Applebaum et al., 2012; Webster, 2012).

The model is easier to follow, how the stages involved in this model is quite time consuming.

Change Management Model of Lewin: It is considered to be one of the effective models that also help the people to understand the structural changes of the organization. The model was prepared by Kurt Lewin in the year 1950 and its application is still important in today’s world (Shinrey, 2013).  Lewin’s model consists of three important stages and they are: unfreeze, freeze and change.

Kotter’s theory

Unfreeze: According to Lewin’s method incorporates the preparation for the transition, which states that the organization must start getting ready for the changes (Shinrey, 2013; Hayes, 2014). This explains how the ways are needed to be changed and how this change must is going to bring profits.

Change: This is the stage where the real change is taking place. This process might take time to take place as people are usually utilize time to accept the new incidents, changes or developments (Shinrey, 2013; Hayes, 2014). At this particular stage, the guidance of the god leadership is needed to encourage the staff members.

Refreeze: When the change is accepted, the organization is becoming stable again. This is considered to be the time, where the staffs are seeking back to their initial places. Feeling the sense of stability, the employers started building confident in them (Shinrey, 2013).

Later on Lewin worked on the theory and included duration, commitment, integrity and efforts

Duration talks about the period of time until the program is changing only if it is happening in a short span of time

Under the integrity, it focuses on the performances of the team in order to complete on time. It also depends on the skills of the members and also to the requirements of the projects.

 Commitment means how the top management and the employees are affected by the changes in the organization.

 Effort means the effort given on the work just to bring changes in the demands of the employees (Hayes, 2014).

The concept of learning organization is framed out by Peter Senge. It is basically suggests the meaning of the learning organization which is keep on increasing its capacity and also its future. For the learning organization, the process of adaptive learning is necessary linked with the generative learning (Dar el., 2013).

The Company followed the change management process and the incorporation of the Kotter’s change management theory can be applied here. Ericsson is regarded as a famous global company and t has its location in different countries. The main service of the company is to deliver and operate telecommunications. Ericsson followed the transformation of changing from 3g systems to 4g systems (Ericsson.com, 2017; Applebaum et al., 2012).

Ericsson felt the urgent need to change from 3g to 4g and the reason behind this action is that due to the increase of the competitors, Ericsson in order to keep their mark et share, the company developed the organization based on learning to keep in progress its development. Also at the same time, the change must respond to the demand of the market, growth of the economy and opportunities. To achieve this success, the organization followed a proper team building and the workers were informed in the beforehand. The project coordinators and managers while working on this particular project handled the entire business well  (Ericsson.com., 2017; Applebaum et al., 2012). The company set its clear vision of incorporating 4g as a new form of capability which is needed to be built while promoting services and operating them. This leads to the contribution of the general vision of the company. The company also had many short term wins in order to enhance the motivation for the employers. The company set its vision straight despite facing problems with its budget allocations. According to the company, vision is the significant term which gave energy to the goals of the project and showed directions to the project. (Ericsson.com, 2017; Applebaum et al., 2012).

Change Management Model of Lewin

After the long success of the Window Operating System, Microsoft got involved into another phase of competition. The company was in the state of stagnation. As the world was looking to move forward, Google became dominant and Apple which owed the market position for the mobile products, Microsoft was struggling to keep up with the competition (Microsoft.com, 2017;  Shinrey, 2013).

After a new CEO joined in the month of February of the year 2014, Satya Nadale took care of the major reshaping of the company, which is a massive in size to compete with the destructive competition both internal and external. It has been taken into consideration that both platforms and products are no longer being treated as the separate groups. However, the employees of the Microsoft would focus on the limited goals which are common. The goals are

• Reinventing the process of productivity
• Intelligent cloud platform needs to be built
• More personal computing needs to be incorporated (Microsoft.com, 2017;  Shinrey, 2013).

Nadella reframed things again by merging Microsoft with the other groups such as Cortana, Bing, and Platform group in order to build a research group. In the beginning, the employers after hearing the change in the company of Microsoft, the employers were lacking the sense of positivity, which resulted to the growth of low morality in the employers which would weaken the engagement of the employee. Lewin’s model can be taken into account here on the purpose of unfreeze, change and Freeze. In the beginning the employers were not ready for the changes that the CEO was looking forward (Microsoft.com, 2017;  Shinrey, 2013). Secondly, the new Chief Executive Officer made them understand the importance of the change, the implementation of the success in the change management was beautifully shaped by the collective work efforts of the employers who are working in the organization for a longer period of time. The CEO was successful in implementing the mantras to the employers, which gave them a boost to take up challenges more in the further work life (Microsoft.com, 2017;  Shinrey, 2013).

The following recommendations are needed to be taken into account for the future implementation for the change management that the managers of the organization must maintain a cordial relations with the employers with whom the organization is relied. With the coming of the change atmosphere, the organization must let the employers to know beforehand about the vision and statement of the company. The organization needs to be aware of the changes and accordingly must meet the objectives to bring sustainability in the organizational environment. The behavior and attitude of the managers are needed to be supportive and must manage the team building accordingly to meet the necessary changes (Dunphy and Griffths, 2014).

Conclusion 

Hereby to conclude that the organizations must follow the change management system properly and the management must be aligned with the objectives of the organization. The change is a necessary element and the objectives of the change need to be fulfilled accordingly to meet the demands and goals of the companies. The theories are there to guide the organizations and the guidelines of the theories must be followed accordingly.

References 

Alexander, K. ed., 2013. Facilities management: theory and practice. Routledge.

Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S., 2015. Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. Routledge.

Appelbaum, S.H., Habashy, S., Malo, J.L. and Shafiq, H., 2012. Back to the future: revisiting Kotter's 1996 change model. Journal of Management Development, 31(8), pp.764-782.

Benn, S., Dunphy, D. and Griffiths, A., 2014. Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge.

Burke, W.W., 2017. Organization change: Theory and practice. Sage Publications.

Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2015. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.

Dar-El, E.M., 2013. Human learning: From learning curves to learning organizations (Vol. 29). Springer Science & Business Media.

Ericsson.com. (2017). About Ericsson - Corporate Information. [online] Available at: https://www.ericsson.com/en/about-us [Accessed 4 Aug. 2017].

Hayes, J., 2014. The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave Macmillan.

Langley, A., Smallman, C., Tsoukas, H. and Van de Ven, A.H., 2013. Process studies of change in organization and management: Unveiling temporality, activity, and flow. Academy of Management Journal, 56(1), pp.1-13.

Merrell, P. and Watson, T., 2012. Effective change management: The simple truth. Management Services, 56(2), pp.20-23.

Microsoft.com. (2017). Company Profile | Microsoft. [online] Available at: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/about/company [Accessed 4 Aug. 2017].

Saunders, M.N., 2012. Organizational trust: A cultural perspective. Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, 26(2).

Shin, J., Taylor, M.S. and Seo, M.G., 2012. Resources for change: The relationships of organizational inducements and psychological resilience to employees' attitudes and behaviors toward organizational change. Academy of Management Journal, 55(3), pp.727-748.

Shirey, M.R., 2013. Lewin’s theory of planned change as a strategic resource. Journal of Nursing Administration, 43(2), pp.69-72.

Webster, M., 2012. Successful change management—Kotter’s 8-step change model. Leadership Thoughts.