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?
is necessary for an organisation, the internal and external environments must both be assessed. If it is decided that the organisation could perform to a higher standard in either of these environments, then the organisation management must decide how to implement the necessary changes. Before this can occur however, the possible sources of resistance to change must be ascertained. These sources may be individuals or whole groups of workers within the organisation. So, in turn, the management must seek to understand the causes of resistance in order to reduce the threat of change posed to employees using various strategic methods. After the organisational changes have been implemented, management must follow up the change. This is done in order to ensure that the organisation has benefited in terms of performance from the organisational changes and can make relevant changes to their goal plan accordingly.
As mentioned earlier, one of the main barriers for successfully carrying out change within the workplace is resistance to change. Many workers may feel that change is threatening or traumatic for different reasons. Rosenfeld and Wilson, (90:247), give some of these reasons for individuals to feel threatened by change to include: ‘a fear of failure, loss of status, fear of the unknown, inertia and a loss of friends.’ For organisations, R&W (90:247), change may be seen as a threat to ‘the strength of the company culture, the ridgity of the organisation structure or the strongly held beliefs of the management’. Sometimes individual workers of an organisation have a low tolerance to change because there is a lack of communication and trust between management and the workers. This lack of interaction can lead to wrong interpretations of what the change will involve for them. If the workers do not feel as though they have the necessary skills to cope with organisational change then this could result in workers losing interest in the organisation and their work. It could also mean that workers could lose job satisfaction because they do not have the necessary skills required of their new role. As a result of this, workers may be resistant to change because they want to remain secure in their existing jobs and not risk taking on new roles when the do not possess the adequate skills needed to do the job properly.
With this in mind, it would be important to elaborate on the different methods used by managers to ensure change is a success and also why change can be a great opportunity for an organisation. To do so, management must reduce resistance to change from the organisation’s individuals and groups. The management of the British Airways airline has effectively reduced the threat of change for their employees, Hellriegel and Slocum (1999). The employees saw very little reason to change their manner of working and felt secure within the government-subsidised airline, but the management of British Airways wanted the company to become the one of the best [next page]