Change can be seen as a threatening and traumatic process for organisational members. What are the chief means that managers have for encouraging the positive acceptance of change?
To fully examine this question, it would be important to first look at what forms change can take within an organisation and to establish why an organisation sets out to make these changes. The process of change can be threatening and traumatic for both individuals and groups within a company. In my opinion, managers need to encompass certain specific leadership qualities in order to reduce resistance to change, in order to encourage their employees to see change as an opportunity. Change can also be implemented through organisational strategy. A learning organisation uses the concept of change as a fundamental principle for the growth of the organisation. Within the current fast-paced, globally competitive market, the learning organisation is proving to be very successful. Organisations such as Yahoo!, a major Internet search engine, which is creative, innovative and easily adaptable. These are essential elements needed to remain competitive within the ever-changing Internet industry.
Change can affect different parts of an organisation in various ways. To describe the various areas of an organisation that could be subjected to change, Rosenfeld and Wilson suggest (90:247), ‘a power shift between management and employees, a change in organisational structure, or a change in management and leadership styles.’ The balance of power can change depending on whether the political differences between workers, groups and managers begin to cause conflict. This can happen because the level of power awarded to each of these groups is not appropriate according to their influence within the organisation as a whole. The structure of the organisation may need to change in order to survive and maintain a competitive advantage within the outside market environment.
Change is a crucial capacity in this current climate of global competition. One of the main factors for achieving a competitive advantage in the global market economy is to see workers as the most important asset, Wray-Bliss (2001). If workers are essential to change then the process of change must be examined in greater detail. However, the top-down view change as explained in Hellriegel, Jackson and Slocum (1999), suggests that change is a planned set of stages imposed on employees. In this way, change could be seen to be described as being like an ‘event’ which happens to an organisation. But a crucial part of organisational change lies in the need for individuals to react and adapt to new situations that occur as a result of change. As humans are involved, change could actually be seen as a process, one that is interactive, complex and uncertain.
According to Hellriegel, Jackson and Slocum, (99:438), the process of organisational change is explained thus,
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