The Best-Laid Plans: Uncertainty, Complexity and Large-Scale Organisational Change (original) (raw)

Organisational Change: A Critical Review of the Literature

2016

This paper presents a literature review on change management. Change management has been defined as ‘the process of continually renewing an organisation’s direction, structure, and capabilities to serve the ever-changing needs of external and internal customers (Moran & Brightman 2000). Kanter (1992) contends that we live in a constantly changing world, and change has an impact on the individuals and the organisation as a whole. In this context, organisations have to look into the future to find new advantages. New technologies, new products, new competitors, new regulations, and new people with new values and experience is the order of the modern organisation. Nevertheless, theories and approaches to change management are often conflicting, lacking in empirical evidence and based on unchallenged assumptions about the nature of modern organisational change management. This paper looks at some of the main theories and approaches to organisational change management as an important fir...

Where is the Progress in Organisational Change? A Review of Developments in Change Approaches Since 2005 and Future Potential.

In this paper we build on Burnes' 2005 review and critique of organisational change approaches and explore more recent developments. Through systematic review of mainstream change and management literature it is demonstrated that the content of individual approaches and the number and scope of change approaches has increased since 2005. The contribution of this paper is to outline the spectrum of change approaches and paradigms that emerged, and to describe a revised research agenda needed to accelerate progress in understanding organisational change.

Managing change: Nine common blunders-and how to avoid them

Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 2012

Despite increased awareness of change management processes, principles, and practices, many business leaders continue to struggle with navigating their organization through a change initiative. These challenges often stem from a series of common blunders that can significantly impede progress in achieving project goals. The experiences of several executive sponsors of large-scale change, however, show that employing a holistic change management model can help highlight these potential pitfalls so that they can be proactively addressed. A methodology for avoiding these common blunders can be incorporated into any change program to shorten implementation cycle times, enhance stakeholder engagement and commitment, reduce productivity fluctuations during rollout, and, most important, capture targeted benefits.

All changes great and small; Exploring approaches to change and its leadership

2005

Although the growing need for change in organizations it is widely acknowledged it is asserted that up to 70% of change initiatives fail. While there have been attempts to understand the reasons for failure these have been seen as inconclusive, and a need for further empirical work has been identified. Within the growing literature on change leadership there are assertions that the root cause of many change problems is leadership behaviour. This article begins by exploring the change literature and, in particular the broadening of this literature with the inclusion of complexity and evolutionary theories. From the literature the authors propose a typology of change approach is proposed. In examining change the authors also examine emerging thoughts from the change leadership literature. Combining these different streams of literature leads to three core research questions, which are: (1) What approach to change management is likely to be most effective in today's business envir...

Organisational change research: challenges and assumptions. What about possibilities?

2017

As organisations have been attempting to deal with the practical difficulties that change brings, the debates and discussions seemed to have played to a number of themes and assumptions. Although the former has benefited from extensive research the latter has been neglected over the past seven decades. Whilst researchers have focused on planned and emergent change and the discourse and practice approaches, others have proposed dualism/paradox, change agency, behavioural and positioning theory as these are assumed will help management resolve challenges and achieve successful change. However, a study is yet to be carried out on what the taken-for-granted assumptions that these debates play to really are and what they could offer to an area that has been claimed to be under-theorised over decades. This lies at the crux of the paper’s aims and objectives. Through content analysis and the interpretation of the qualitative, empirical data, it has been found that employees’ preferences ha...

Guiding Large Scale Organizational Changes in Today’s Economy

ABSTRACT This paper x-rays guiding organizational changes which is basically any alterations in people, structure, or technology. Today’s change issues: changing organizationally cultures, handling employee stress, and making change successfully are critical concerns for today’s managers. This means that a contemporary or current manager must be well equipped to handle today’s dynamic and uncertain environment. The only constant thing about change is that it is constant. Managers these days don’t have the luxury of dealing with change only once in a while. No. the workplace now seems to change almost continuously. Being prepared isn’t only for the Boy Scouts alone anymore, it should also be for managers dealing with a workplace that is constantly changing. And being prepared means taking initiative ideas and being ready for the changes Key words: organizational change, internal forces, and external forces.

Leading a successful change intervention in a modern organisation: Key elements to consider

African Journal of Business Management

The reality today is that organizations and leaders are faced with unrelenting demands for change. Globalisation, competitiveness and ever changing business environments have forced organisations to constantly consider innovative changes. The challenge today is for leaders to be able to reduce the resistance to change, thus allowing for successful change navigation. It is therefore necessary to be mindful of the various approaches to change to ensure that successful change can be successfully implemented. This article will outline some of these approaches. In-depth interviews were conducted with five senior executives in the case company, and questionnaires were distributed to 301 employees at different levels within a single division in the same organisation. By following the mixed method approach in two separate phases namely the qualitative and quantitative it was possible to gather the requisite data.