MGW3130: Organisational Change Management - Essay Analysis

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of organisational change management within the context of modern business. It defines organisational change and its importance, exploring both planned and unplanned changes, and their impact on companies. The essay delves into the factors driving change, including globalization, technological advancements, political and social shifts, and workforce diversity. It examines internal factors like managerial changes, work climate, and employee expectations. The essay also investigates the complexities of change implementation, the resistance it often faces, and strategies for managing this resistance, such as communication, participation, and negotiation. It highlights the importance of strategic planning, education, and training in fostering successful change. Furthermore, the essay touches upon the paradoxical nature of change, the various types of changes organizations encounter, and provides real-world examples to illustrate key concepts. The essay concludes by emphasizing the need for organizations to adapt and embrace change to remain competitive.

Running head: ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Organizational Change Management
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors note

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Organisational change and its context in modern business are complex and varied.
There is no doubt in the fact that the study of changes in organisations has increased and most
of the organisations have identified the changes as an essential part of the business.
Organisational changed could be defined as the mild or deep changes that take place in the
work environment. The reason and effect of the changes are focused on the growth of the
company. Changes cast an impact on the people and procedure within an organisation. An
organisation that does not adapt to the changes might be swept away or left behind by the
changing forces. In a progressive culture, the changes in organisational set up are inevitable.
Therefore, the multiplicity of changes influence the versatile, highly dynamic and adaptive
modern organisations. The changes in an organisational set up could take place in various
dimensions. This may include the alteration of role and structure, changes in people and
demand of a product or anything related to it. This essay investigates the dynamics of
changes and how that effect the environment of an organisation. The complexity and
paradoxical idea of change would be at the centre of this discussion.
Changes could both be planned and unplanned when it concerns the organisational
environment. The nature of change requirements depends on the type of action or target the
organisation is trying to achieve through it. The main difference between these two types of
changes lies in the fact that planned changes are the one that results from the deliberate
attempts and decisions of the authority. According to Waddell et al. (2019), the alterations in
the organisational work process are sometimes necessary for introducing new work culture,
product or work time. These changes are goal oriented and made intentionally. On the other
hand, the unplanned changes are the one that is not part of the organisational decision making
process. These changes are the results of unpredictable situations of the market and could
possess a higher challenge to the company. This type of changes is imposed on the
organisation.

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The concept of change is directly related to the organisational development context.
The complex idea of change in work setups is primarily directed to the development of
company effectiveness and production. Organisational development is the part of planned
change approach, and it consists of the employee improvement and effectiveness of the
organisation (Bolden, 2016). The authority or the decision-makers of the company plan some
conscious interventions that influence the human resource and working process. Changes are
planned for the development of one or several parts of the organisation. Real problems of the
organisation are taken into consideration for the change planning. Most of the time, the
change agents for OD or organisational development are external consultants (Georgalis et
al., 2015). Sometimes, both internal and external factors jointly influence the context of goal
determination for the changes.
Changes are inevitable in the organisational, and they are influenced by a number of
factors. There are several steps between change planning and its execution and success. The
factors that lead to the organisational change are related to the work environmental aspects
within a company (Peck, 2017). The causes of these change could be divided into external
and internal factors. Changes to manage the external factors are supposed to be more crucial
and critical. Some of the external forces for change are globalisation, technological changes,
political and social changes and workforce diversity.
Globalisation is one of the most important factors in organisational change needs. The
companies are expanding their scope of business. Global markets have their unique features.
Organisations have to change their operations and policies according to these demand to cope
with the market conditions (Ziaee Bigdeli et al. 2017). The change might be rapid as the
situations in global market changes hugely. Technological advancements are the reason of
external pressure in the organisations. Adapting the changes in technology could gain firm
profit and competitive advancement in a stiff market. Political and social changes are not in

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the control of organisations, but these influence the business world immensely. Governmental
policies compel the organisation to change its internal policy and work process sometimes.
Another external factor is the workforce diversity. To balance the diversity of culture and
individuality in the workplace, companies often take some steps (Lozano, Nummert &
Ceulemans, 2016). Examples are ample in this context like we take the social and cultural
aspect of the organisational change. Mcdonalds is a USA based company that has expanded
its business all over the world. This company changes some of the food preparation and work
environment in their stores according to the country they are operating. Their work process
and menu items in China or India are not as same as the UK or Russia.
Internal forces are developed in the organisation itself. These changes influence the
work climate of the organisation. Some of the internal forces for change could be managerial
level changes, work climate change, declining effectiveness, and deficiencies in the system,
crisis and employee expectations. Internal changes are mostly predictable and planned for
organisational development. Changes in the managerial personnel could be the cause of
change (Rosenbaum, More & Steane, 2018). The new personnel’s in the managerial posts
might have different work ethics and procedure than the previous person. Changes could also
happen when the company is going through a rough phase in its effectiveness and wants to
revive the work climate. Increase in employee expectation may also be the reason for some
changes in a company. These aspects of employee expectations are wage rates, decision
making process and improved working conditions.
Determination of the change type in the organisation depends on the requirements and
individual point of views. As opined by Vakola & Ioannis (2017), the perspective of the
person in charge of the change matters the most in determining the type of changes. For
example, in an organisation like Amazon, the technological departmental head could perceive
a change that has systems, tools, hardware and software in it. Again the CEO of this company

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would judge the change in terms of the company's overall strategy and structure. The changes
are paradoxical as these are so complex sometimes that it could not be defined through one
person’s standpoint. The changes are important for the organisation, and at the same time, the
management of change is hard. Therefore, the confusion arises from the fact that how to
contemplate the need for change to achieve the set objectives of the organisation.
Some common types of changes are strategic changes, policy change, legal agreement
amendments, process and structural changes, work culture changes, product change and
technological integration. The complexity and uniqueness of change in an organisation
depend on the study of different disciplines. There are a number of theories that concerns
distinct types of changes, but no one theory has been able to integrate them all (Hayes, 2018).
The scope of change management has the necessity to judge all or some of the aspects of
changes in the organisation. The interesting fact is that all changes are not deep and long
term. Some of the changes are there is the company only for uplifting or fine tuning of the
existing process. These fine-tunings are associated with the changes in the work environment
or improving the workshop productions of the organisation (Corfield & Paton, 2016). The
minor changes could include the introduction of new incentive plans or increasing the quality
of the product by adding a small but innovative feature. These changes do not need high
financial or workforce support. They could be achieved through small changes in work
operations.
The implementation of the changes is most difficult as people are not comfortable in
changing at any level. Resistance to change is natural in the organisational background. The
managers and authority have to be ready for this resistance and their plan for managing the
resistance should be ready. Modern business institutions need to embrace the changes with
speed and effectiveness. Competition is high, and any kind of delay in change, whenever
needed, could affect the company's economic and strategic developments (Cook, 2015).

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Therefore, these changes and their implementation in the work culture of the organisation
also need to be managed quick and carefully. Firstly the reason for resistance has to be
determined. For example, when Zara decided to take its operations in online platforms to gain
higher profits, the employees were not immediately ready to take the challenge like this. The
separate unit was built for Zara' online promotions, and sale and they were given special
training for this. The resistance that the company faced for this change implementation faced
resistance at first but was solved with the help of training and management planning.
Resistance to change could be there in two forms; it could be individual resistance or
organisational resistance. Individual resistance may happen when the employee of the
organisation has a fear of obsolescence of skills. The person in authority might fear economic
loss and do not want to have changes in the organisation. Uncertainty and risk is the cause of
fear for most of the people (Hornstein, 2015). Change has unknown measures and
possibilities, but most of the people have a fear of the unknown, and they refuse to take part
in the process of change. The workgroup may have to break down for a change
implementation, which could be the cause of resistance from the group people. In the
organisational level, the person who sits in a high position might think that the change could
possess a threat to the position and influence or power. Sometimes the resources and financial
assistance are not available for the organisation to make the change possible.
There are some common practices of managing the change like communication and
education, the participation of the people engaged, empathy and support, negotiation and
coercion. Communication is transferring the data related to change to every level of
organisation and convince worker about the necessity of the change. Companies sometimes
manage it through negotiation. They offer something valuable to reduce resistance. That
could be incentive or raise in salary or any other thing. Support of the management and
authority to let the people get the changes are needed. But there is an instance where some

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employees are not at all interested in changing in spite of all the support and negotiation
(Vakola & Ioannis, 2017). In these cases, organisational take help of direct threat to the
resisters. The registers are threatened to accept the change. Otherwise, they could lose their
jobs and promotional possibilities. The experts do not support this solution for change
management for its unethical aspects.
Handling the change is a complicated task, but the target of change could be met by
strategic planning and communication. Changes most of the time creates emotional turmoil
and tensions in employees. To avoid the negative impacts of change, management has to be
specific about their steps and implementation plans (Hornstein, 2015). Training and
education play an important part in managing resistance to change. The employees need to be
trained to embrace the effects of the change and shun their skills for it. Communication of the
changes through the supply chain of an organisation is important for employee participation.
When the subordinates get a chance to involve in the changing process and participate in it,
the consequence will come positive. In the process, the management has to be patient and
support the work people to adapt to the changing scenarios. A reputed like Shell overcome
the crisis in share market through the leadership and change management strategies of the
new CEO Jeroen Van Der Veer. This new chairman of Shell believed that the company have
to implement some strategic changes in the operations to get back into the track. He
employed the experienced external change personnel and trained the existing employees for
the changes he wants to employ in the company.
Not all cases of change management was a success in real business companies. The
wrong judgment of market demands and other change factors could be the reason for an epic
fail. At the same time, unsuccessful implementation of the change is another cause of these
fails in change management (Hayes, 2018). The Coca Cola Company introduced its new
product "New Coke" in 1985. This company took a step to bring a change in the taste of their

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regular product. Unfortunately, the product was not gaining any positive review, and the
company bring back to the old coke in the market. Later, the CEO of the company analysed
the reason for the failure stating that they missed the voice of the customers. They have taken
a wrong step by avoiding the customers’ preferences and expectations from their products.
This instance shows that all the changes are not guaranteed to do better for the organisation.
Sometimes a wrong approach to the change could immediately affect the company profit and
reputation. Therefore, the context of change is complex and crucial in the organisational
background.
Changes are not supposed to be 'deep' or intense all the time. Companies adopt some
mild changes in their structure or program to 'fine-tune' the operations (Vakola & Ioannis,
2017). Apple is a well-established company and one of the highest revenue earners in the
industry. This company have a managerial set up that is self-sufficient and brave in their
decision making. In spite of the fact, the company authority took a decision to bring the
founder back in its authoritative unit in 1997. This step was taken as the company wanted to
have some improvements in its internal and external business factors. Jobs became part of the
board of directors and started helping the company in its growth. The role of Jobs was
immense in polishing the policies and operations of the company. This change was not tough
for the organisation, but it has influenced every context of the business of Apple. The study
of change management shows that these mild changes are important as they can bring
positivity in company performances. Each and every change, no matter if it is deep or small,
is significant for a company and its stakeholders as well.
The concept of change in the organisational set up combines more than one aspects.
Changes are required in a company to make it work in a more effective way or some time to
save to from the crisis. A number of internal and external factors are included in changing
forces. The purpose of the change needs to be determined perfectly by the change-makers.

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Globalisation has increased the scope of business and market expansion. Changes could be
both in intense and small scale. The companies need to cater to the demands of these
international market through implementing some operational and strategic changes. All the
renowned companies have to go through the complex procedure of change implementation in
order to get success. The resistance to change was obvious in all these cases. This resistance
might come in an individual or organisational level. The manager and the authority need to
manage the resistance in a way that would not affect the company’s performance and also
integrate the employees in it positively. They have to communicate, support and manage the
workforce in order to implement changes properly.

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References
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handbook of leadership and management development (pp. 143-158). Routledge.
Cook, N. D. (2015). Crisis management strategy: Competition and change in modern
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Corfield, A., & Paton, R. (2016). Investigating knowledge management: can KM really
change organisational culture?. Journal of Knowledge Management, 20(1), 88-103.
Georgalis, J., Samaratunge, R., Kimberley, N., & Lu, Y. (2015). Change process
characteristics and resistance to organisational change: The role of employee
perceptions of justice. Australian Journal of Management, 40(1), 89-113.
Hayes, J. (2018). The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave.
Hornstein, H. A. (2015). The integration of project management and organisational
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Lozano, R., Nummert, B., & Ceulemans, K. (2016). Elucidating the relationship between
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Peck, E. (2017). Organisational development in healthcare: Approaches, innovations,
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