Change Management Assignment: Literature Review

Question

Task:There are two parts (A & B) to this assessment. Part A is the Literature Review. Part B is the critique of the literature.

There are five major themes that form the bases of the lecture sessions:

The Challenges Facing the Field of Organisational Change Management;
Diagnosing Change in Organizations and the Role of Change Agents;
The Process of Change: Readiness to Change and Designing Change Frameworks
Managing Resistance to Change
The Role of Leadership and Culture Change during Transformational Change.

Students are required to select one of the themes from the five themes listed above and conduct a review of the literature that relates to that theme. Please select up to five journals to review on the topic. The journals must be from the top tier journals. In order to get assistance in writing the literature review, please refer to notes and PPT slides on VU Collaborate under literature review’.

STUDENTS who demonstrate deep learning, critical analysis, referencing reputable authors and integrating contrasting views on the topic from the literature will be rewarded by marks that reflect effort.

Answer

Introduction
According to Fadzil, Mohamad & Hassan (2017), resistance to change (RTC) has been a topic of discussion since the 1950s however; the appearance of this term can be dated back in early 1928 by popular change guru, Kurt Lewin. There are many definitions of changes management, which have been popularised by numerous scholars. However, all of them conclude or portraying the same meaning according to which resistance to change is a process of opposing a movement from a familiar state to an unfamiliar state. Generally, the term resistance to change is associated with the organisation where change is frequent. As stated by Fadzil, Mohamad & Hassan (2017) the key to success for organisational changes is associated with how good an organisation can manage resistance to change. Henceforth, many scholars believe that the best way to manage and resist change is to understand the resistance itself. This change management assignment provides a review of pieces of literature developed by contemporary scholars and their view of managing resistance to change.

Managing Resistance to Change
The basic concept of managing resistance is being discussed in this change management assignment . It change starts from understanding the change within the organisation. As described by the literature developed by Bejinariu, Jitarel, Sarca & Mocan (2017) a holistic approach of change management can be built on Morgan's Organisation metaphors. Based on the Morgan's four-organisation metaphor, one can get the idea of how organisations work within the interconnected world of its own. According to Bejinariu, Jitarel, Sarca & Mocan (2017) organisational change can be referred as the change is organisational structure, systems or sub-systems, employees and their relationship with each other, in either intended or non-intended way, resulting in good or bad for the organisation. On the contrary, organisational change can be described as an act of constantly renewing the direction of the organisation, change the structure and people of management in a changing environment. Therefore, the organisation must prepare itself with plans, which can resist the change.

Organisational members can respond in three ways towards the changes, and those are effective, cognitive and behavioural. These three ways of response suggest different meaning and thus change leader must be able to understand the significance of various responses of employees.

Khan, Raza & George (2017) in their article have discussed the change within General motor and Nokia. The initial change made by the general motor was cutting the pay of the employees, which faced major resistance from employees however; this cost-cutting helped General Motor to achieve their target of cutting cost up to 15 billion. However, the result of such change has had a negative impact on employees and customers of General Motor as eventually; they became unsatisfied. Cost cutting was one of the strategies, which have been adopted by General Motor in order to survive bankruptcy and save some amount for future business. It was a huge change and employees were not aware of such a strategy, henceforth, General Motor faced such resistance to change.

It can be found in many cases that employees try to oppose change during the initial stages however that does not mean that they are against the change, one of the possible reason is they are not aware of the change process, like the case of General Motor. According to Khan, Raza & George (2017), organisation needs to involve their employees and empower them to ensure less resistance to change from employees. Leadership plays an important role in change management. The organisation must find capable leaders who are able to motivate and support employees through the organisational changes. In many cases, employees oppose changes, as they do not understand how to cope with the changes or whether the change will be helpful for them, however with the support of a change leader-employee learn to cope with the change.

According to Vos & Rupert (2017), leadership is considered the ability, which can influence the way employees to look at the change. Vos & Rupert (2017) further added in their article that change leader within the organisation create a vision for change which they communicate with employees in order to overcome barriers during change and make the change a success.

Conclusion
The objective of this change management assignment was to understand a different way of managing resistance to change. From the above finding in change management assignment it can be concluded that the organisation first need to understand the resistance and significance of the change in order to manage the resistance. Some significant ways can be found from the above discussion, and those are informing change to an employee and communicate them about the significance of the change, motivating and supporting employees during the change process and adopting right change leader to support the change. However, it is highly recommended by this change management assignment that resistance strategies must be monitored after its implementation to ensure best results.

References
Bejinariu, A. C., Jitarel, A., Sarca, I., & Mocan, A. (2017). Organizational Change Management–Concepts Definitions and Approaches Inventory. In Management Challenges in a Network Economy: Proceedings of the MakeLearn and TIIM International Conference 2017 (pp. 321-330). ToKnowPress. DOI: JMMR-2(3)-2017

Fadzil, A. S. A., Mohamad, S. J. A. N. S., & Hassan, R. (2017). Resistance to Change (RTC): A Taxonomical Perspective (No. jmmr160). Global Academy of Training and Research (GATR) Enterprise. DOI: JMMR-2(3)-2017

Grama, B., & Todericiu, R. (2016). Change, resistance to change and organizational cynicism. Studies in Business and Economics, 11(3), 47-54. DOI: DOI 10.1515/sbe-2016-0034

Vos, J. F., & Rupert, J. (2017). Change agent's contribution to recipients' resistance to change: A two-sided story. European Management Journal. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2017.11.004

Tags: management literature review change management

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