Strategy and Change
Effective management of organisational change requires embracement of requisite change strategies. Effective change strategy requires managers to establish various mechanisms for managing organisational scope in the context of organisational culture. For example, in this process, Graetz et al. (2001) recommend the necessity for an organisation to deploy balanced scorecards to track the process of implementation of strategies that seek to enhance organisational capabilities in dealing with organisations’ operation dynamics. According to Graetz et al. (2001), one of the ways of defining plans for change strategies encompasses the rational approach. The approach requires enumeration of various objectives of an organisation, which are consistent with the aims, mission, and goals of the organisation. SWOT analysis for the organisations’ internal and external environment in the effort to establish the weakness and threats, which may impede the success of the developed strategies in the attainment of the desired outcomes then follows. Iteration for various change strategies is conducted to determine the most effective strategy that would yield optimal success for an organisational change.
Deployment of strategic management to enhance organisational change exposes an organisation to different challenges. For example, change strategies are influenced by the availability of resources, environmental forces, and beliefs and values possessed by key stakeholders. To deal proactively with these challenges, organisational changes require cute management strategies in an incremental way that utilises various concepts of an effective strategy-making process, for example, building learning organisations or seeking the stakeholder’s organisational partnership. This entails the process of synthesis and analysis of various possible alternatives through scenario planning. The process is principally critical in the event an organisation anticipates experiencing a paramount change in the future (Graetz et al. 2001). In the last phase of development of organisational strategy and change, review of the ability of the selected strategies to determine their effectiveness in enhancing the desired change is incredibly significant.
Change Tools
There are several theories put forward to explain the process of organisational change. Lewin postulated one of such theories in 1940 (Graetz et al. 2001). Lewin suggested the existence of particular psychological and social forces, which ensure that groups within an organisation gain stability. In such situations, vital change tools include mechanisms of unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. The unfreezing tool entails the breakdown of field forces such as social attachments coupled with psychological attachments. The moving tool embraces the process of introducing the desired behaviour and beliefs. Refreezing involves strengthening of social attachments and psychological attachments to enhance the fusion of the introduced new behaviour.
Without looking for strategies of enhancing group fusion, people cannot be oriented to subscribe to common norms and values, which form the basis of organizational culture. Indeed, one of the organisational changes embraces the alteration of organisational culture to meet the emerging need in the market place. Various philosophies for enhancing the process of organisational change such as lean production, Kanban, Kaisen, just-in-time production, business re-engineering, total quality improvements, and learning organisation are ingrained within the needs of creating an effective organisational culture to enhance the efficiency of an organisation as one of the essential facets of change. TQM is concerned with the techniques for ensuring that workgroups problems are resolved to enhance the continuity of the quality of employee output.
Leadership for Change
Organisational change occurs in a continuous process. In this process, leadership helps in setting the desired direction. For example, it provides a mechanism of alignment of people, inspiration, and motivation to enhance change. This makes the management of change different from the leadership of change. The goal of leadership is not to enhance compliance, order, and predictability through control and monitoring structures, but to influence people.
It is crucial to note that the attainment of success in leading organisational change requires a leader who has some leadership skills and traits such as self-awareness, sincerity, uprightness steadiness, aptitude and honour, understanding, appeal, interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, and efficient direction of emotions (Graetz et al. 2001). Leadership also enhances change continuity, consistency between long-term and short-term goals. This task requires the balancing of flexibility and the planning process, and freedom and the willingness to take accountability for decisions made during the organisational change process. Graetz et al. (2001) propose that the effectiveness of leadership during the change process is dependent on the ability of the leadership strategies to reflect the big picture of the change process. This picture involves people in the decision-making and planning phases. Indeed, this encourages knowledge sharing in different facets of an organisation. Leaders also have the capacity to establish appropriate mix and relationships between various forms of change such as transitions that are task-focused and developmental transitions, which often challenge the status quo in the effort to prepare to embrace change.
HRM Organisational Change
HRM is an important aspect of organisational change. It is responsible for establishing policies, systems, and practices, which aid in influencing the attitude of employees and their behaviour in an organisation. The goal of HRM is to deploy people as the mechanism of effecting organisational change. This goal can be achieved through job design to suit the talents and abilities of employees, seeking strategies for enhancing job satisfaction, providing opportunities for career growth, and aligning employees with the organisational culture and their engagement.
While driving change, recruitment, selection training, and the development of the desired change are necessary. HRM ensures that an organisation attracts the best-qualified personnel and/or ensuring their retention. HRM helps to establish a sound work-employee fit through the resolution of employees’ conflicts. It is also responsible for setting performance appraisals and systems for performance rewarding. During the process of organisational change, rewarding strategies are influenced by factors such as the mission, values, organisational culture, and power coalitions that are established to ensure that the desired change is achieved (Graetz et al. 2001). This suggests through evaluation of HR tasks; organisations derive ways of judging performance outcomes. The HR measures the progress of programs for a strategic change besides planning for the anticipated future changes involving the use of employees to drive the success of an organisation. For example, HR plays significant roles in the creation of organisations that are driven by innovation and creativity through cute management of employees’ talents.
Measurement of performance during organisational change is important. HRM performance measures during organisational change include absenteeism, labour turnover, grievances, engagement levels, organisational commitment levels, job satisfaction levels, and the number of incidences of resignation. For the organisational stakeholders, these performance outputs are significant since correlation exists between them and market share, quality of products and services, labour productivity, profits, and returns on investments (Graetz et al. 2001). During organisational change such as merging, organisations downsize their workforce. Hence, HRM is important to help in deriving the appropriate strategies for downsizing in the effort to retain and enhance staff morale, job satisfaction, and the reduction of resistance to embrace the change.
Reference
Graetz, F, Rimmer, M, Lawrence, A, & Smith, A 2001, Managing Organisational Change, Milton, Queensland.