Change Management: Theories and Strategies for Organizational Transformation

Running head: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

CHANGE MANAGEMENT1
Table of Contents
Executive Summary......................................................................................................................3
Outline the “Calm-waters” and the “White-water rapids” metaphors for Change
Management..................................................................................................................................3
Discuss Kotter’s theory of Change Management....................................................................3
Discuss Force-Field Analysis: giving examples.......................................................................6
Changing an organization’s culture may be necessary as part of change management.
What can a manager do to change an organization’s culture?.............................................6
Case study analysis......................................................................................................................7
Conclusion and Recommendations...........................................................................................7
References.....................................................................................................................................8

CHANGE MANAGEMENT2
Executive Summary
The change management can be considered to be an essential part of the
organization and with respect to this, it can be considered critical for all organizations to
ensure that they are successfully able to analyze the different forces which lie in the
external environment of the firm and are thereby able to take the decision regarding the
right time at which the change procedure has to be applied within an organization,
Therefore the main aim of the report is to outline the different change management
theories and the manner in which the organization culture has a major role to play in the
field of change management (Hayes 2018). Moreover, the case study of IBM will also
be examined and certain recommendations which can be applied by the firm to bring
about the change in this field will be provided.
Outline the “Calm-waters” and the “White-water rapids” metaphors for Change
Management
The calm waters metaphor is referred to as the calm environment. Before
globalization, the business environment could be classified as the calm waters however;
this can be stated to be increasingly obsolete as the environment is not calm anymore.
Therefore, the alternative metaphor which is used in place of the calm water is the white
water rapids metaphor. With respect to this metaphor, the firm is seen as a small raft
which navigates a raging river along the uninterrupted white water rapids. The calm
water view has the tendency to view the firm as a ship in a calm ocean and the
manager in this case is exactly aware of the place which he is required to explore and
the different changes which the organization would be required to make in the long run.
The change in this case is viewed as an occasional disruption in the field of the
organizational environment (Doppelt 2017).
However, on the other hand, in the current business environment, the
organizations external environment can be viewed as the white waters which means
that, the change forms a constant part of the dynamic environment, the only certainty is
the uncertainty which exists, the competitive advantage does not last long in the firm,
the managers will be required to deal quickly and respond faster to the different
unexpected events and the firms are required to become change agents in the
stimulation, implementation and the support of change in the firm (Small et al. 2016).
Discuss Kotter’s theory of Change Management
The John Kotter 8 step change management model can be understood to be a
part of the book written by him in 1995 named, `Leading Change`. In this aspect, it
becomes integral to ensure that, for any organization to ensure that it is being able to
undertake a change management initiative in the right manner, all the 8 steps of the
Change Management Model are required to be applied so as to ensure that, the
initiative is able to bring about the long term benefit for a firm (Hussain et al. 2018). The
different steps have been discussed in the following sections with examples.
Step One: Creation of Urgency