Managing Change: Evaluating System Theory and Practical Interventions for Change Management

Running head: MANAGING CHANGE
Managing Change
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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MANAGING CHANGE
Table of Content
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
1. Critically evaluating “system theory” as a basis for managing change, with reference to real
world case studies............................................................................................................................2
Practical interventions that managers might employ to draw on system theory to manage
change..........................................................................................................................................4
2. Examining the Fizz Event Management case study....................................................................5
Change management:...................................................................................................................6
Team building:.............................................................................................................................9
Develop leadership:.....................................................................................................................9
Strength and weaknesses of the plan.........................................................................................10
Recommendation.......................................................................................................................11
3. Intervention of the middle managers.........................................................................................11
Emotions to change....................................................................................................................12
4. Critically reflecting upon how this module has influenced my own attitude and responses to
change............................................................................................................................................12
Reference and Bibliography..........................................................................................................14

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Introduction
The present report revolves around the portfolio management highlighting the areas of
change management in the organizational context. Particularly, to understand how change can be
applied, system theory has been evaluated with the example of application. The report also states
how managers can intervene in the change management process to lead the organization towards
goals and avoid failure in middle. In order to understand change management process, a
particular change plan has been developed involving Fizz event management operational
scenario. The middle management plays a great role in managing the change; thereby, to
understand the role of middle manager in the process, the report includes a practical scenario.
1. Critically evaluating “system theory” as a basis for managing change, with reference to
real world case studies
Organizational change can occupy a centre-stage of academic as well as managerial scene
(Rice 2013). Organizational capability to deal with change is becoming increasingly important in
an environment where competition and globalization of markets are strongly intensifying. The
internal and external organizational environment remains as the compromised set of relationship
that exist between the agents and other factors that could go beyond the organizational control.
System approach is an integrative model, which usually harmonizes series of ideas as well as had
characterized management thought. However, Morgeson, Mitchell and Liu (2015) arguably
mentioned that the increasing complexity of organizational environment makes system concept
inadequate in dealing with the complexities in the environment. When digging into the detail of
system theory, it has been found that the system approach is known as an integrative framework

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MANAGING CHANGE
consisting the ideas of scientific management, behavioral science and management science
approaches.
In other words, Cameron and Green (2015) mentioned that system theory considers
organization as a complex system, which further holds the boundaries enabling the scope for
input and output. This means that organization system usually exists within a wider external
environment that exert pressure on its boundaries and environment with which the organization
must communicate. The theory also states that a change in any particular part of the system could
create the scope for change throughout the system. This means if one single area of the system is
changed, the other parts of must change to adapt to new system or changed system. On the other
side, Sharma and Good (2013) mentioned that organizational system can be defined with the
help of its boundaries as well as internal structure and it is usually considered stable. For
example, the furniture company IKEA orders the same 1000 pieces of glass from a supplier in
every month and them the supplier increases the price; hence, the change could affect the entire
system.
This is because IKEA has to adjust the cost of supplies throughout its all network. More
specifically, hence, either IKEA has to develop a product that requires less number of glasses or
it has to fulfill the need by locating another supplier. Thereby, according to this theory, it is
worth mentioning that change in one part can create changes in many other parts of the
organization. Agreeing to this context, Ahearne, Lam and Kraus (2014) mentioned that poor
coordination between the organization and its external environment in closed system can inhibit
organization’s capacity to grab adequate amount of energy from its environment for success.
Nonetheless, Hornstein 2(015) mentioned that in spite of its relevance, system theory does not
usually signify when and how the coordination with the organization should occur.