Managing organisational change Essay Example

Being a student majoring in Human Resource Management and having studied managing organizational change course, I have learnt a number of issues;

• The intensity of competition on a global scale calls for a change in the mindset of managers to embrace new forms of organizational management than those previously applied in the past.

• Organizational development is an important ingredient in the prevention of upheavals and conflict during organizational change and hence it is one way of planning for change

• Organizational development also plays an important role in preventing and minimizing resistance to change in the organization.

• The most appropriate approaches for organizational change include appeal to intrinsic satisfaction and identification which means doing it because it is worth doing it and leading by example respectively.

• One of the significant forces of change is globalization and this can be viewed from the social, cultural, economic, political, legal and financial dimensions.

• Other forces of change include global economic, individual and technological forces all of which play an important role in the success of the organization on the global scale.

• Organizations can be viewed from the lens of living organisms seeking to adapt and survive in a highly competitive environment

• Hence, the primary goal of the organization is environmental adaptation and survival.

• Different types of change in the organization include transformational, transitional, continuous, discontinuous, incremental, frame-breaking, and frame-bending.

• As a distinguishing feature of organizational change, organizational development focuses on organizational processes and organizational culture

• Management consulting firms can also aid in the process of organizational change. Thus, engaging the services of the consulting firms helps to minimize the numerous problems that organizations might face when change is initiated in the organization.

• Weak management results into increased engagement of consultant services while a strong management minimizes the costs incurred in consultancy services.

• The focus of organizational development is total overhaul of change in the system

Evaluation of benefits obtained

The study of organizational management provides a great opportunity for managers and would-be managers to utilize the knowledge obtained in the change process. In this regard, the knowledge I have obtained in the study of human resource management and the study of organizational change provides has provided me with key knowledge and skills I can apply to initiate and effectively undertake change in the organization. For example, the understanding of organizational development as the most important factor that enhances the change process shows that as a manager I should begin by effectively undertaking organizational development before initiating change.

Additionally, it is pretty obvious that people in the organizational setting have diverse values and beliefs and these coupled with organizational culture contribute significantly to resistance in the change process. As a result, these values and beliefs as well as organizational culture must be overcome in order to achieve successful process or organizational change. In my evaluation, organizational change is inevitable and as a human resource manager, my role should be to equip people in the organization for change.

References

Hunt, J. (2003). Chapter One: The Anatomy of Organizational Change in the twenty-First Century. In Weisner, R. & Millett, B. (Eds.), Human Resource Management – Challenges and Future Directions, Wiley, Milton Qld.