Organizational Capacity for Change Building

¶ … Organizational Capacity for Change Building and Assessing Organizational Capacity for Change Today's economic agents are subjected to enormous pressures from both micro as well as macro environments. Within the internal environment for instance, managers have to address issues relating to the incremental role of the staff members or the most adequate allocation of resources. The external environment raises threats of growing customer demands or intensifying competition.

The best policy of responding to these emergent challenges is that of implementing a culture of change, due to which organizations become more flexible and as such more equipped to rapidly adapt themselves in response to the changing environment. In achieving this desiderate, it is advisable for economic agents to develop and implement a wide series of strategic approaches, some of which are descried below. John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen (2002) identify eight crucial stages to be undergone when creating a flexible and responsible learning organization.

Interestingly enough, despite the growing focus on the role of the organizational culture in enforcing change, Kotter and Cohen argue that this element remains the last on the list, rather than the first.

The eight steps are as such as follows: (1) Creating a sense of urgency in the implementation of change; this sense is to be promoted among the people who matter most and who can enforce change; it is desirable for as many individuals as possible to be included in this category of relevant people (2) The formation of a strong, reliable and highly capable team to handle the change process (3) The guiding team aims, and successes, in creating visions and strategies which have the ability to motivate the rest of the staff members to engage in the change process (4) It is then necessary to communicate the vision and strategies of the change, through simple and clear message and onto a multitude of open communications channels (5) Empowering the staff members and raising their levels of self-confidence and consequently their levels of involvement (6) Celebrating small wins, which are generally achieved once the employees are empowered (7) Consolidating the first wins and setting the course for the next priorities (8) Creating an organizational culture that embraces and promotes change.

"Here, appropriate promotions, skilful new employee orientation, and events that engage the emotions can make a big difference" (Kotter and Cohen, p.6). Michael Ward (1995) explains that a successful process of organizational learning is a cyclic movement based on six primary components: (1) Behavior (do it) -- the first and foremost important step is that of acting based on a set of given organizational behavior principles.

(2) First result -- the following step is that of ensuring that the behavior materializes in a result (3) Reflection (think about it) -- third, it is crucial to assess the results of the initial behavior (4) Concept (ask yourself why) -- this stage refers to the creation of one or several concepts which explain what happened that led to the previous outcome (5) New behavior (do it again differently) -- the new behavior is constructed at this stage based on the previous concepts (6) New and better result -- registering and assessing the outcomes based on the implementation of the new behavior; this stage is then followed by the continuous reflections and developments of new concepts for improved organizational behavior The specialized literature is filled with examples of models and concepts which sit at the basis of a successful implementation of organizational change.

Despite the fact that the form and the presentation of these models varies, fact remains that their foundation is basically the same, revolving primarily around elements such as employee motivation and empowerment, alignment to emergent demands or continuous assessment of behavior and results. All these concepts and ideas are best put into practice -- meaning also that the company stands an increased chance of successfully implementing change, becoming more flexible and a responsive learning organization -- through the creation and implementation of a management for change.

Also referred to as management of change, the concept is generically understood as the "set of processes that is employed to ensure that significant changes are implemented in an orderly, controlled and systematic fashion to effect organizational change" (Tech-FAQ, 2009). The greatest challenge of the change management is that of overcoming the resistance to change. This is a natural reaction of the organizational staff members, which must however be reduced.

There are five specific criteria that have to be met in order for the practices of change management to be successful in their efforts. These are generically organized under the term ADKAR, the acronym standing for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. In terms of awareness, it is crucial for the organization or the manager to realize the rationale behind the necessity for change implementation. Secondly, it is pivotal for both manager as well as staff members to be not only willing, but eager to participate to the change process.

Third, it is important for the manager to know how exactly to go about in implementing change. Fourth, it is required for the organization to have the ability to change; this basically means that it must employ new technologies, allocate more financial resource, train the staff members and so on. Finally, it is of the utmost importance to continually reinforce the practices introduced throughout the change process, otherwise there is an increased risk for the company to return to the pre-change behavior (Tech-FAQ). As it has been.