Student Name Company
The working environment in the organization hugely affects its functioning and overall performance. When a forced organizational change occurs, it always brings a certain degree of stress on the employees and the working conditions. These shifts do not always bring positive change, so it is crucial to evaluate the driving and restraining forces as well as the influence they may have before implementation. Such a situation occurred with Student Name when a drastic organizational change occurred in the company when the SEO decided to withdraw from a franchise to set up a separate company.
It is essential to evaluate the organizational culture profile (OCP) to properly assess the degree it was affected by the forced change. OCP is an instrument for assessing the organizational culture (Baird et al., 2018). The evaluation is needed to identify, measure, and manage company culture more effectively, which corresponds with organizational performance. Seven distinct values typically represent OCP: innovative, aggressive, outcome-oriented, stable, people-oriented, team-oriented, and detail-oriented (Baird et al., 2018). All these features define the company and the working climate that determined the organizational culture.
As for the company where the change occurred, the culture profile was relatively stable and people-oriented. As part of a franchise, the company preserved the brand’s trademark and a stable business system, which balanced the working process. The company had established case studies and learning materials to prevent stressful or unclear organizational situations. The rules and predictable outcomes allowed the company to provide constant and stable output levels (Baird et al., 2018). The focus of the company was always the people- its customers. The whole organizational system was targeted to benefit the clients, provide support, and respect individual rights. The stable and people-oriented features combined allowed the company to have a low turnover rate with a stable and predictable future. However, the company transformed significantly after leaving the franchise. The aggressive sales strategy that focused on battling the business opponents with its team-oriented strategies dissolved the friendly surrounding the company had before. The competitive organization focused on outperforming others and increasing its revenue only destroyed the ambitious work team and led to a higher turnover rate.
Change Driving forces
The change in an organization occurs for several different reasons called driving forces. It is crucial to identify them to embrace, manage, and lead the change successfully. The primary driving forces of change can be external or internal (Tang, 2019). External forces are not chosen by the organization but occur because of outside effects of developing technology, customer preferences, or competitors (Tang, 2019). The change in my organization was not primarily affected by external forces because of its relative stability in the industry. On the other hand, internal forces allow for more control since it is the company itself that transforms the working processes and systems (Tang, 2019). My organization faced quite a large amount of internal changes starting from introducing new work policies and changing daily routines to updating the whole brand design.
Change Restaining forces
Restraining forces act as a counterweight for driving forces. They disrupt the possible change and make it more challenging to implement. The main restraining forces for implementing a change may be a lack of training or incentives, necessary capital investments, or just fear of change (Tang, 2019). The change occurs only if the driving forces prevail over the restraining ones; otherwise, there is no change. My company considered leaving the franchise and changing the brand for a long time, so the necessary investments were collected. The expectancy of increased efficiency and higher revenue overcame the fear of possible lawsuits and lack of training for executives.
Influence tactics
The successful enforcement of a forced change without great losses requires significant and thoughtful influence tactics usage. To achieve the goal, especially such extensive as changing the brand altogether, one needs to be an effective leader. A range of influence tactics that a leader may employ include pressure, assertiveness, legitimizing, coalition, exchange, upward appeals, ingratiating, rational persuasion, personal appeals, and consultation (Rangus & Černe, 2019). In the case of my company, there were no attempts at rational persuasion or ingratiating. Instead, a forced organizational change was not discussed with the employees and employed with legitimating the situation, pressure, and assertiveness to complete the required changes.
Consequences of stress caused by the forced change
The forced organizational change of such degree was not taken well by the executives or clients. The brand change was very sudden and was not supported by clear rationales besides earning income money without the burden of paying a franchise fee. The driving force of increasing effectiveness overrode the restraining force of keeping the team’s integrity and morale. The implementation itself was great stress since the expectancy to follow completely new and more challenging requests assertively with fees for disobedience undermined the employees’ trust. Such tactics were not very successful because most employees left the company since their opinions on the issue were never considered, nor the rationale and attitude towards the change implementation were plausible.
All businesses are prone to change over time due to various external and internal driving forces. The company’s goal becomes to preserve the integrity of the team to improve its performance instead of eradicating it. The organizational culture profile, driving, restraining forces, and tactics need to be carefully evaluated before enforcing a change. Moreover, to successfully weather the storm of a new stressful situation, the leadership must be considerate of the employees’ needs as well.
References
Baird, K., Su, S., & Tung, A. (2018). Organizational culture and environmental activity management. Business Strategy and the Environment, 27(3), 403-414.
Rangus, K., & Černe, M. (2019). The impact of leadership influence tactics and employee openness toward others on innovation performance. R&D Management, 49(2), 168-179.
Tang, K. N. (2019). Change management. In Leadership and Change Management (pp. 47-55). Springer, Singapore.