Change Management Essay

1. Change management is a necessary component for any organizational performance improvement process to succeed. Critically review the contribution of J.P, Kotter to management of change. Introduction to change management Contemporary trends of business and management are dynamic in nature. This is the reason why different organization employ strategic change in order comes up with current business demands. However, it is always difficult for the employers to accept this change effectively and there are several reasons behind it. For instance, some employers feel uncomfortable to manage with the change and some employers consider it a threat to their expertise and job. This situation makes it difficult for the organizations to perform core business activities that ultimately affect the profitability and working processes of that organization in one way or other. Change management is an important factor since it enables the organization to comply with the contemporary market trends. However, there has been a lot of research on this topic due to the intricacy cling to it. It is convicted that change is managed on organizational level rather than individual level yet without psycho-analysis and behavioral analysis and without compelling and convincing human resource of the organization, it is not possible to gain benefits from implemented strategic change. So, one of the major component for change management is human resource management. When an organization employs some strategic change, it has to face resistance from employers because it involves transition from known to unknown. Some individuals try to maintain this change and find it comfortable yet others are usually unwilling to adopt this change which causes failure of strategic change plan. Most often, it happens in enterprise resource planning programs because it involve different complex processes which enable some people to move on comprehending the organizational state while some of them has to experience different transition processes. This is the reason why a lot of large scale ERP confronts failure due to resistance of employers. Importance of change management: Leading organizations like Nestle and Adidas usually form balancing relation between their organization and human resource through contemplating their needs. Since the organization is consisted of different people, personal change should also be considered an important factor. A change strategy involves infrastructural change in an organization and in order to adopt this change successfully, people of that organization has to change themselves. It has been observed in majority of the organizations that they handle the organizational change from technical perspective without contemplating the human resource which ultimately causes failure to achieve successful change management. Hence, the organizational management should keep the effects of change on individuals while implementing change strategy and for this purpose, different tools like one promulgated by J.P Kotter (1996) in the form of his 8 step change model. Effect of organizational change: In order to scrutinize the effect of organizational change and its proper management, a study has been conducted by Bovey and Hede (2001) in which nine organizations participated including federal government corporation, state governmental departments, large private sectors and local government agencies. The change was realignment and restructure of the divisions and departments introducing novel technologies. The result indicated that approximately 32.2% respondents were facing a great effect of this change where as 37.3% demonstrated that they were affected by this change to a large extent. hence, most of the respondents had been confronting and experiencing remarkable change in organizational infrastructure. Techniques to adopt change management Different researchers have identified a lot of techniques for making change lucrative through change management on organizational as well as individual level. (Aladwani, 2001) These techniques involve: †¢Communication in order to affect cognitive conduct †¢Communicate in order to give brief about strategic change †¢Train and educate the employers to deal with the change effectively For making change management effective, Kotter’s (1996) 8 step change model can also be used. The steps involved in this model are: †¢Creating urgency †¢Powerful Coalition formulation †¢Creation of changing vision †¢Communication †¢Removal of obstacles †¢Creating short term wins †¢Building strategic change objective †¢Amalgamating changes in organizational corporate culture Conclusion: To conclude, it can be stated that for the success of an organization, change management plays a major role and among all basic components, human resources is the major aspect that should be given proper attention. No organization can achieve success unless its people are capable of dealing with strategic change and for this purpose, organization management can implement different techniques and contribution of Kotter (1996) cannot be neglected in promulgating change management techniques through his 8 step change model. References: Aladwani, A. M. (2001) â€Å"Change management strategies for successful ERP implementation†. Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 7 No. 3. pp. 266-275. Bovey, W. H., Hede, A. (2001) â€Å"Resistance to organizational change: the role of defence mechanisms†. Journal of Managerial Psychology. Vol. 16 No. 7. Kotter, J. P. (1996) Leading Change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School.