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Organisations exist in a constantly evolving environment, warranting change. Organisational change occurs as a result of factors such as industry and market shifts, technological advances, socioeconomic changes, as well as political and regulatory shifts (Hayes, 2014). Adapting to change is a crucial ingredient of success in today’s world. Indeed, examples of previously powerful organisations that have declined or even collapsed due to failure to adapt to change are not uncommon. Nokia, BlackBerry, Motorola, Kodak, Sears, U.S. Postal Service, Blockbuster, Yahoo, and Xerox are ideal examples. These organisations failed to innovate and embrace change, leading to either acquisition by other companies or collapse. In an ever changing world, organisations must remain innovative – they must embrace change by introducing new products, services, processes, and/or structures (Euchner, 2013). This paper critically evaluates research on change management. Following a comprehensive definition of the field of change management, attention is specifically paid to innovation in change management as well as the future direction of change management research.
Defining Change Management
Change management within the context of organisations essentially denotes the process of initiating, implementing, and monitoring change (Hayes, 2014). It is the processing of managing the redirection or redefinition of organisational resources, processes, or other aspects that substantially change how an organisation processes. Change management is further defined as the management of transition from one state to another (Cummings & Worley, 2013). The process is anchored on diverse disciplines, including behavioural science, sociology, psychology, and information technology (Cameron & Green, 2012). Tremendous scholarly advancements have been made in the field of change management since the 1980s, and the field is now a major subject in organisational behaviour. Scholarly work has focused on issues such as reasons for change, change implementation, change evaluation, antecedents of successful change management, and change management challenges.
Change may involve introducing new products or services, terminating new products or services, pursuing new markets, withdrawing from some markets, reorganising business divisions, adopting a new organisational structure, introducing new processes, and so forth. These changes may be a driven by technological, economic, political, industry, and socio-cultural factors (Cameron & Green, 2012; Cristina, 2013). For instance, technological advancements have caused organisations in diverse sectors and industries to integrate social media into customer relationship building processes such as marketing. Equally, improved economic growth in developing countries has presented multinational organisations with significant market expansion opportunities. Irrespective of the reason, organisational change is mainly intended for enhancing internal efficiency, increasing competitive advantage, as well as improving bottom line performance (Hayes, 2014).
Scholarly work has also produced a range of change...
Popular change management models include Kotter’s 8-step model, Kurt Lewin’s unfreeze and freeze model, McKinsey’s 7-S model, and Deming’s plan-do-check-act (PDCA) model (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2008; Hayes, 2014). Though every model is unique in its own way, there are considerable similarities. The models depict change management as a systematic process that generally involves preparing for change, mapping the future desired state, addressing obstacles that may hinder change, executing change, monitoring change, and making change part of the organisation’s culture. Even so, change management remains a difficult undertaking for many organisations. At times, change may not bring about the anticipated outcomes, and at other times it may be abandoned before completion, leading to wastage of time, effort, and resources (Cameron & Green, 2012). All in all, if effectively managed, change can be beneficial to an organisation.
Innovation in Change Management
An important aspect of change management relates to innovation. Change in most part encompasses changing how things are done in an organisation or introducing better products and processes. This is the core of innovation. Simply, innovation is a key driver of organisational change (Euchner, 2013; Chen & Adamson, 2015). Organisations cannot survive in a constantly changing world unless they innovate (McKinley, Latham & Braun, 2014). They must pursue new business models, eliminate wasteful processes, adopt technology, make their products or services better, and so forth. Indeed, innovation is about taking advantage of internal and external factors to become more competitive in an ever changing environment. For instance, if a mobile phone manufacturer makes its handsets more physically appealing, it takes advantages of shifts in consumer preferences to gain competitive advantage in the fiercely competitive mobile phone industry. Equally, a financial firm that introduces online banking takes advantage of technological advancements to improve the customer service experience. These are just a few examples of how change and innovation are heavily interconnected.
The topic of innovation and change management is premised on a number of theories in addition to the previously mentioned theories. An important theory is the organisation learning theory. The theory views organisations as learning entities – they keep on acquiring knowledge (Cummings & Worley, 2013). Knowledge acquired at present and in the past helps an organisation navigate an increasingly uncertain future. Based on organisational learning theory, adapting to change requires learning. An organisation that successfully implements change is one that learns continuously. Internal and external triggers motivate organisations to invest in new learning required for innovation (McKinley, Latham & Braun, 2014; Hsu, 2015). External triggers may include customer needs, competition, new technology, demographic shifts, economic factors, industry changes, environmental concerns, and regulatory shifts. Internal triggers on the other hand may…
References
Betz, F. (2003). Managing technological innovation: Competitive advantage from change. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons.
Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2012). Making sense of change management: a complete guide to models, tools and techniques of organisational change. London: Kogan Page.
Chen, J., & Adamson, C. (2015). Innovation: Integration of random variation and creative synthesis. Academy of Management Review, 40(3), 461-464. doi:10.5465/amr.2014.0438
Cristina, V. (2013). The importance of an innovative leader in the organization. Annals of the University of Oradea, Economic Science Series, 22(2), 703-709.
Cummings, T., & Worley, C. (2013). Organization development and change. 10th ed. Boston: Cengage Learning.
Euchner, J. (2013). Innovation is change management. Research-Technology Management, 56(4), 10-11. doi:10.5437/08956308x5604002
Hayes, J. (2014). The theory and practice of change management. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hsu, Y. (2015). Organizational innovation strategies: The value cocreation strategy (VCS) model. International Journal of Organizational Innovation, 8(2), 6–20.
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