In order to successfully implement the organizational change at the Synergetic Solutions Inc. the COO should analyze some factors, their implications and take the right decisions. The COO should analyze the internal and external forces called “driving forces” and the “restraining forces” that tend to preserve the status quo, which normally is the employee reaction to the change. (McShane & Von Glinow, 2002, p. 476-477). The COO has to analyze the work environment, current employee skills, and the technology, and to see how they need to be changed and adapted in order to support the new structure. The COO must take into consideration unfreezing the system, moving to desired conditions and after that refreezing the system. (Kwon & T Zmud, 1987). The imperative tasks to be implemented during the change process are:
- Designing the work environment and organization structure to move from present departmental structure to the new team based structure.
- Develop new Human resources policies and programs to help employees make the transition.
- Upgrade current employee skill sets and/or hire new employees with relevant skills.
The restraining forces mentioned above are factors to be considered and analyzed by COO during the change. They appear as employee behaviors that tend to block the changes. The resistance can be in different forms like complaints, apathy, absenteeism, and turn over, doing as little as possible, indifference, strikes, deliberate sabotage etc. Some of the reasons why employees resist changing are:
- Direct costs- Employees tend to block action that results in lower benefits that existing ones.
- Saving face- Employees usually resist changing in order to prove that the decision is wrong and the person implementing the change is inexperienced and unreliable.
- Fear from the unknown-Employees resist because they are afraid of the insecure future and their ability to adapt to the new environment. (McShane & Von Glinow, 2002, p. 479).
- Loss of status and job security-The changes threat to eliminate jobs and hierarchical positions and this creates strong resistance.
- Lack of tact or poor timing-The resistance occurs because changes are introduced in the wrong moment and place or in an insensitive way.
- Non reinforcing reward systems-The employees resist to get more work or to change attitude if they will not get rewards for changing. (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2003, p. 687)
In order to manage and reduce the resistance the COO should implement some strategies:
- Communicating by keeping the employees informed about the changes and what they can expect from change process.
- Training employees in order to increase skills and gain the appropriate knowledge.
- Employee involvement in the change process decisions will create a sense of responsibility between employees.
- Reducing the stress of change by implementing the stress management strategies.
- Negotiating with persons that obviously are going to loose a lot from change.
- Coercion use when the time is limited and other strategies have not functioned. (McShane & Von Glinow, 2002, p. 484)
The leadership styles sometimes can make an organizational change be successful or be a totally failure. “Leadership style is the pattern of behavior used by a leader in attempting to influence group members and make decision regarding the mission, strategy, and operations of group activities”. (Scholl, 2000). Applying the right leadership style in the right moment and situation is the best approach in effectively managing a change or decision situation. The transformational leadership style is the right one and the most used during the organizational change of strategies, and culture.
“Transformational [leaders] encourage and support innovation and open discussion of issues and ideas so that challenges become opportunities rather than threats” (Bass, 1998). The transformational leadership creates a strategic vision, communicate that vision, model the vision, and build commitment to the vision by being consistently involved in the process of changing. By acting as role models, they inspire employees to put the good of the whole organization above self interest. They also stimulate employees to be more innovative, and they themselves take personal risks and are not afraid to use different types of methods in order to achieve the collective vision
The organizational world is rapidly changing into something to hard to easily predict, with an enormous information flow going in and out. This simulation exercise was very important in understanding the leadership style influence, driving and restraining forces during the organizational change, and how these restrain forces can be managed in order to increase the effectiveness and the success of the change. It helps in practicing and mastering different types of strategies during different situations and influence factors. The lessons taken from the simulation can help in understanding the needs for change within an organization, identifying external and internal environmental forces, and making the right recommendations and decisions in order to adapt the appropriate strategies to cope with these environmental changes, and better compete in the market. The leadership style lessons taken during the simulation will help in better selecting the strategies and decisions in successfully overcoming the confusion created by the environmental change in the now days world.
References
Bass, B. M. (1998). Transformational Leadership; Industry, Military, and Educational
Impact, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. Retrieved April 25, 2004, from ProQuest database.
Kreitner & Kinicki. (2003). Mnaging change and stress. In UOP (Ed.), Organizational Behavior. McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Retrieved April 24, 2004, from University of Phoenix, Resource, ORG/502- Organizational behavior Web site:
Kwon, T.K. and Zmud, R.W. (1987).Unifying the Fragmented Models of Information Systems Implementation, in R.J. Boland Jr. and R.A. Hirschheim (Eds.) Critical Issues in Information Systems Research, New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1987: 227-251. Retrieved April 26, 2004, from ProQuest database.
McShane, L.C., & Von Glinow, M. (2002). Organizational change and development. In UOP (Ed.), Organizational Behavior. McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Retrieved April 15, 2004, from University of Phoenix, Resource, ORG/502- Organizational behavior Web site:
Parry, W.K., & Thompson, B.S. (2003). Leadership, culture and performance: The case of the New Zealand public sector. Retrieved April 25, 2004, from ProQuest database.
Scholl, W.R. (2000). Application of transtheoretical model. Changing leadership style. Retrieved April 25, 2004, from University of Rhode Island Web site:
