How to Positively Impact Change in Organizations

Organizational Development and Change

With so much competition in the modern day business, every company or institution has to invest in some elaborate adaptation plan if it is to stay afloat. With changes and evolution becoming mandatory, executives are under increased pressure to initiate and manage changes that will make their companies stronger and more competitive. Consequently, any analysis related to organizational changes has now taken precedence in organizational research. Nonetheless, the market still suffers from little or no research on the impact of organizational change on its growth and performance.

At present, organizational change research is inconclusive as most studies have established that very few organizational change programs lead to anticipated results. These studies have shown that organizational change programs generally do not lead to any short-term growth or boost in firm's performance. Even though there are a number of papers published to address and conceptualize organizational change models, very few studies actually address the impact of different change processes to both organizations size and overall performance (Shirokova, Berezinets & Shatalov, 2014).

Any change that will have a significant impact on a company's success and productivity will definitely be expensive and time consuming. Due to their demanding nature, more than half of such changes will always fail. Despite this, organizations have no option but to keep trying or come up with an elaborate plan that will guarantee a successful change program. This is because change is inevitable and those who fail to change with the market will soon loose hold on their market share (Cabrey and Haughey, 2014).

According to the PMI, change management is a necessary and mandatory ability that spawns a company's portfolio, project management and programs. Since projects and program management is the backbone of any firm's operations, a successful change project will focus on altering how these two aspects of the company are handled. By managing these successfully, the company would stand a better chance at initiating a successful and fast change process, save on money and gain considerable advantage over its competitors (Cabrey and Haughey, 2014). Therefore, our thesis statement is as follows: organizational change programs can lead to both enhanced growth and productivity given that they are aligned with the ongoing projects, programs and portfolio.

Organizational Development Defined

The meticulous organizational projects aimed at improving a company's efficiency and productivity is what organizational development (OD) is all about. Despite this simple and straightforward definition, most of the OD theorists would have a more elaborate definition of the concept. Even though these multiple definitions might hint at the topic's broadness, some experts believe that this is a manifestation of a total lack of understanding the topic in general.

OD focuses on a company's readiness to instigate, implement and adopt change. In totality, any OD should help a company adopt changes in beliefs, attitudes and overall company relevance with reference to changing technology and market forces. This means that unlike what many people think, OD is never about any training or personal development of a team or individual employees in the company.

This common misconception puts OD in the same league with Human Resource Development (HDR) and Learning and Development (L&D). OD is all about managing change; hence, it has to partly touch on HDR and L&D. However, since it is also about development process and systems, it will also have to deal with more than what each of these employee improvement processes handle. The fact that OD is all about developing the organization, rather than merely training staff makes it very diverse and different (SJBIT, 2014).

The Impact of Organizational Change

For an organization to maintain a profitable business, it has no option but to invest in changes that respond to events and circumstances in the market. This can easily translate to the fact that the only way to keep in business is by embracing and incorporating change into the daily operational plans. Organizational change falls into quite a number of categories. It could include:

• Changing individuals in the organization

• Changing company or job structure and description

• Shifting specific employees or asset roles in production

• Including new processes and rules in the daily work schedule (Brazier, 2014).

Since these changes will most definitely disrupt the normal flow of events, the company should be ready to accommodate the backlash as it implements the changes to its operations plan. Failure to plan well could lead to catastrophic results since this turbulence is harmful to operation and survival of the organization. The business environment is a dynamic world and therefore facts, regulations and expectations are ever shifting. Since a company does not have any control over these factors, the changes fall under the 'unpredictable change' category (Burnard and Bhamra, 2011).

With so many factors to consider, it means that any organizational system stands at risk from factors that could be either internal or external (Burnard and Bhamra, 2011). One of the most common cultures related to modern day capital organizations is organizational culture. The development of the organizational culture concept is fuelled by the consideration of roles humans play in the evolution and development of any organization. Despite its importance in the modern day dynamic business society, there is a considerable drop in the number of people researching on its importance and roles in a business (Muscalu, 2014).

Creating an organizational change process that will result into some tangible impact in any firm will require a great deal of complex planning. By ensuring that a company creates a strong buffer between the changes in the operational process and role of each person in a firm, it stands a better chance at instigating successful change. The employees and managers should all feel comfortable with the changes. The changes should be of a productive nature to the production process (Muscalu, 2014).

Organizational transformations have a profound impact on the company's cultural strata. Regardless of the level in which the transformation will occur, having a strong cultural change plan is always the key to ensuring that the changes seep deep into the organizational fabric. Any preservation of past cultures will undermine the success of the change no matter how elaborate and well planned it could be (Muscalu, 2014).

The only adequately covered aspect of organizational change impact could be what it has over a firm's growth. This could be so since most of these researches focus on the impact of organizational change to Small Business Enterprises (SMEs) under other upcoming businesses that are mainly interested in horizontal growth in order to survive in the competition. We should note that most of the research focuses on companies operating in developed economies. This means that the studies assume that the firms in question are running in a fairly stable market and that all the top level managers are interested in helping their companies improve and be the very best they can be in that favorable market. According to the most recent studies, these results and studies are fairly biased. It is impossible to apply results and conclusions made from information gathered in informed companies running in stable economies. This means that these studies on organizational development are not a perfect fit to most of the firms in emerging economies (Shirokova, Berezinets and Shatalov, 2014).

The link between organizational culture and change

Moreover, cultural change takes place in stages. The most profound steps a company ought to take when instigating cultural change include:

• Identification of existing culture: This involves a complete diagnosis of factors like cultural norms within an organization.

• Planning the change: a company puts together a list of proposed changes, carry out risk assessment and suggest a plan of action.

• The new culture: Create a new culture that is in line with the factors gathered during the analysis.

• An implementation: Involve all the necessary business units in ensuring that all plans actually come into existence.

The related change processes, on the other hand, include:

Secret organizational facts that cannot be exposed or shared with everyone since it will take long to understand.

• Attempts at organizational change procedures that are not only too involving but also impractical with respect to the company's capabilities.

• Resistance to change from people in the organization. This is natural and expected especially if one does not give time to the workforce and help them understand the change (Muscalu, 2014).

If the change efforts are to work effectively, the firm must focus on creating a vision for change within the firm. Lack of goals and a clear vision to drive through the implementation process could lead to lost focus and concentration on matters that do not actually matter in bringing about the bigger picture. A vision will ensure that all the people in the company focus on doing what really matters in effecting the change.

The management has the responsibility of coming up with the vision and also ensuring than it maintains focus throughout the change implementation process. Making everyone in the company understand that the changes will not only affect the company as a whole but also make their work process simpler and easier could help stimulate how fast they embrace the change. Some people will naturally see change as an opportunity to grow. Others will perceive it as a risky affair that will draw them out of their comfort zones. It is the latter that companies should be interested in moving (Chiloane, 2013).

An institution's culture is evident in how the firm handles its daily activities. It manifests itself via the company's ideologies and parameters. Employees and boss behaviors help foster and cement the overall cultural behavior the company works on. Experts define it as the commanding attribute that is mirrored within the attributes and understanding of the workforce, execution of both policies and processes, and is commonly classified as a profound, less-conscious collection of connotations about nature of work in the firm (Chiloane, 2013).

It is a powerful organizational gem that has the power to determine how productive a company can be or determining its dynamicity in the face of change or tumult in a market. Just as culture determines human behavior in any society, a company's culture will have an impact on every employee's conduct and attitude to work. It defines how much the employees love the company and are willing to do for its success. This means that it could either have a positive or negative impact on the company (Chiloane, 2013). With this in mind, we can safely conclude that organizational development focuses on:

• Improving on inter-personal trust and confidence amongst employees

• Increasing employee satisfaction, commitment and motivation

• Helping employees confront their workplace problems rather than ignore them

• Opening avenues to effective conflict management

• Boosting morale and cooperation between employees

• Make the firm solve problems better and faster

• Improve on the current organization process and make it better over time (SJBIT, 2014).

Why an Organization Needs Organizational Change and Development

The main driving factor to any organizational change is the need to accommodate changes in the external world. Even though the response to these changes is inevitable, more often than not, companies will always have difficulties in implementing changes that will keep them afloat the new market. The most notable factor in this is organizational culture. The influences of organizational culture to changes in an institution have made it quite a popular concept in the past few years. Despite this fame, very few organizations understand what it really is and the effect it has on an institution's ability to embrace change. Nonetheless, many academics have created models and frameworks that aim to help organizations understand culture, change and make the ideal balance between the two to survive amid the current company dynamics. Any change proposals will sit differently with people in the institution. Changes make people feel uncomfortable. Some will feel that status quo might change. Other employees will be uncertain of their future and positions in the company. Understanding and accommodating this beforehand will help the firm implement the changes in the smoothest way possible (Chiloane, 2013).

Even though change can be classified, some people still find hardship in implementing their share of change. ABC bank, for instance had some problems in implementing its change processes effectively. This could be due to the fact that the institution failed to evaluate to what extent its employees might resist the change. Understanding ABC's own resistance to change is paramount since the resistance stems from company specific organizational culture (Chiloane, 2013). Any effective change management process ought to be continued and cyclic. It has to focus on the gradual transitioning of people and culture from the current state to the future desired state. The change should begin with the genuine effort of leaders in the ABC bank who are focused on creating an initiative in line with the company's dreams. The strategic initiatives must always in response to changes in the current business setting. This is crucial since studies have established that projects and programs are the key drivers of any organizational change (Cabrey and Haughey, 2014).