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Managing Organizational Change | UMODML-15-3

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Part A: Effective Change Management and Successful People Management in Organizations The world is constantly changing—at an unprecedented speed bringing transformative and extensive changes to fundamental pillars. However, principles and values remain the same, despite the advances made by leading economies and organizations throughout the world. According to Cameron and Quinn (2011), organizational culture and organizational change are considered as important factors of any institutions. This is further backed by the number of research and studies conducted to gain a better understanding on the stance of culture or cross cultural management in organizations. Peters and Robert (2006) describes organizational culture as a means that can be utilized to achieve a high level of effectiveness. Similarly, Peters and Waterman (1982) argues that culture is defined by a shared set of values, beliefs, anecdotes or myths that reflect a symbiotic meaning within the circles of society.

This essay will highlight and refer to the case study of Leadership, Culture and Change: Jerusalem Paints Industry (JPI) by Samer Mashlah—underlining the key elements of change management, implementation of specific organizational changes and successful people management in such situations and key issues faced by the organization through the radical change of management.

Founded in Jordan in 1994, JPI began with two lines of products; a cement-based tile adhesive and a water-born interior walls putty. The organization saw a rapid change of growth in terms of production from 200 units to a daily production capacity of 200 per shift over the following decade. Despite having a strong corporate culture—a belief and value system that strongly aligned with the principles of the founder and CEO of JPI, the organization saw a disruptive change which led to misalignment in culture during the period of rapid growth and expansion as well as its new leadership.

JPI’s culture is based upon four main concepts which is derived from the Islamic teachings that articulates and intends to create a more people or support culture (Handy 1976), where the development of individuals is seen as the utmost important aspect in the work environment. The work values compromise of Amanah (moral obligation of upholding one’s

trust and duties), Taqwa (to ensure honesty and to self-monitor behavior), Itqan (to constantly improve and rectify oneself) and Shura (to consult and gain advice before making a final decision). These traditional work values align with the Schein’s three level model (1985) which suggests that the organizational culture consists of three interrelated levels; artefacts, values and assumptions on how the organization should work.

In Schein’s cultural model, it shows how the various levels influence each other mutually while it also opens up the possibility of analyzing how deeply interconnected beliefs and assumptions are to an organization’s set of values and artefacts. In parallel, Hofstede (1993 & 2001) indicate that the national culture of any country has an impact on the culture of organizations operating in that country and creates a distinctive culture based on the organizational and national set of beliefs, customs and values. Therefore, this suggests that the established patterns or set of values are influenced and developed on the basis of history and cultural aspects of the given country, for example; Jordan.

Control through culture (Knights and Williams, 2007) is a recurring theme in JPI as the set of integrated values elevated the level of work and commitment given by employees to the organization, where they firmly believed the system and applied it to current work affairs. It was also one of the main reasons behind the successful achievement of strategies implemented by JPI during the short period of time. This implies that the complexity of the organization’s culture (Brown 1998) is reflected strongly in the intensity of culture implemented while the strength of consensus among employees are depicted strong.

As any other organization, JPI also faced massive changes to the fundamental structure with the appointment of the new CEO to address the competitive market change and growth in the size of the company. This sudden change of leadership proved to be disruptive and created a mismatch and misalignment of beliefs and values between current and recently appointed employees. The rift between the established employees and new recruits further grew following the lack of support given by the new CEO to implement or school the system followed by the JPI team. Unlike previous efforts of cooperative and consultative teamwork, the employees moved forward to a more individual-based orientation which demonstrates that the business and organizational change moved to an interpersonal change dynamics phase.

Although there was a cultural shift within the organization, the value system remained dominant among the longstanding senior and middle managers and staff who were highly influenced by the founder’s personal values. Multiple attempts to introduce the traditional JPI values to the new staff further disrupted developments, especially in the area of developing skills and competencies of all staff. This was mainly due to the lack of support and reinforcement by the new CEO and saw the management moving from a normative integrationist structure or unitary to a fragmentation perspective (diverse integrated).

According to Clegg et al (2008), organizations under the fragmentation perspective have no dominant value system and are in constant battle of cultures to find what is best suited for the organization and its employees. To become a normative integrationist organization, the mission and values instilled by top management need to be accepted and applied by the workforce. Pettigrew (2011) defines organizational change as a phase that must be properly passed through managers to their employees, for them to understand the true nature of change and to come an actualization that the change dynamic is brought for the betterment of an organization. Henceforth, change needs to be both sense making and sense giving for the individuals and for the whole organization.

In contrast, Kotter’s 8 step model (1995 and 2007) to transform organization suggests that a sense of urgency needs to be built in order to grab the attention of the whole organization and give them the necessary push to evaluate and create a powerful coalition to establish a vision that will allow the organization to succeed continuously without fail. When related to the case, we can see that the JPI’s new CEO failed to comprehend the level of disruption with the workforce and its implication on day-to-day management and how he could have avoided with better planning at the beginning. By establishing a proper system that allows both the current employees and new recruits to work together, JPI could have improved significantly and gathered a better market share with new strategies and ideas combined through perspectives or opinions relayed through the workforce.

Another approach that could have been utilized by JPI is the transformational change or charismatic change (Dunphy and Stace, 1990) which allows organizations that is out of fit or little time for extensive participation to implement radical change through collaborative consultative strategies within the organization. This was later followed by JPI, where the new CEO hired a consultant to assess the main issues faced by the organization and to come up

with a change agent or component that can improve the situation and improve the quality of the work environment. To overcome the full nature of the problem faced by JPI, they will have to re-establish a more coherent and less divergent culture that allows the influx of old and new employees to work together in harmony. However, it is inevitable to avoid disruption completely but it can be managed through a strategic leadership approach (Simpson 2014) which is a combined style of management where the leader is visionary, administrative, managerial, empathetic and inspirational to divert and implement successful people management in a vastly growing organization.

To conclude, organizational culture is something that can be either relayed and instilled through top management or created from similar personal values of people that can make up an organization. These values and morals need to be something that is sense making and sense giving in order for the culture and change to be fully established and practiced among individuals. Failure to identify issues of sudden change or uninformed change can have a negative impact on an organization where there could be cases of disruption or fragmentation perspective; a divide within employees. In such situations, change needs to be established through strategic planning to ensure gradual flow and acceptance among the organization. However, it is inevitable to avoid cases of denial and negative feedback as this is the first reaction any individual would have to change. To fully tackle and make the best out of a situation, organizations should identify the pros and cons demonstrated from the leadership styles and which ones integrated to ensure unitary among the workforce.

Part B: Reflection As part of the assignment for Managing Organizational Change, this reflection intends to provide an insight into the key areas that I have learnt, old and new theories, how these practices have impacted my behavior or how I address change in a work environment or in other relevant similar scenarios. It will also compare and contrast my previous experiences with the current ones, how I can further improve my stance on change and the personal dynamics of change success. It will also reflect upon my learning through writing an essay regarding culture and management along with the implications of unplanned leadership change to an organization which may have either positive or a negative impact. Kurt (1947) describes organizational culture as a transaction between the current state and future one, towards where the organization is directed to. This is further backed by the common understanding of how ‘change upon an organization depends on change of individuals in an organization’.

Change is a phenomenon that is inevitable to avoid and is a process that all individuals go through. It can be either led by individuals themselves on an organization where ‘personal development’ is the main area of focus or through a linear change which allows organizations to transition from one state to another with less complications or influences. One model that gives us a wide background of how change happens is the Dawson’s processual approach to change framework (1996) which demonstrates the contexts of change and highlights upon the situations where change mostly occurs and how it is influenced. Dawson argues that change cannot be treated as a series of linear events and that the processual perspective framework highlights and views organizational change as a complex and dynamic process. Overall, change depends on the mindset of individuals and that is how we can identify whether it is a proactive or reactive change.

Through organizational development, individuals go through six types of learning which includes; single loop learning, double loop learning, lower-level learning, higher-level learning, adaptive learning or generative learning. These mainly depend on how an individual is structured and their mindset on taking new changes, enthusiasm to learn and through reflection. However, some individuals face learning disabilities due to defensive routine; i.e; due to fear of failure or making a fool out of themselves, being too fixed upon events; not

willing to take a step forward or due to lack of opportunities or support given by an organization.

During the essay writing component, I gained a better understanding on ways change can affect the whole structure of an organization and that even an organization which has a strong dominant value system like JPI can face major challenges depending on the process of change it goes through. For example, JPI is seen as an organization which follows a set of values and beliefs that are highly valued by all of the employees and further reinforced through the support of the founder and CEO of JPI. The case study shows how these values are instilled to each and every employee and ingrained to every task that they perform. Further, the relationship of honesty and trust grows among the employees due to the ritualist harmony and performance among individuals to ensure that the value system is followed by all of the organization.

However, JPI faced disruption when the leadership changed and the massive growth and expansion faced by the organization. If these changes were taken in considerate steps after evaluation by a board of members on how it can affect JPI, perhaps the result of change might have been different and could have given the organization another boost for growth. Mainly, organizations fail to realize that the first reactive response to a change by any individual can be denial depending on the context of it. It could have further improved performance in the dynamically changing and complex business environment. For a radical change to take place, organizations need to gather a better understanding on the technical skills, capacity and what or where organizations need to be at in the future. This can also be done through incremental changes with the occasional radical changes implemented through constructive guidance and opportunities offered to employees.

Individuals and organizations can also go through proactive changes, where reflection is the main component or backbone of any change that happens. Through reflection, we can identify the areas that we are lacking and are in need of improvement, how we can move forward with change and gives us the necessary push to rectify ourselves and to continuously learn. The main conundrum of change is individuals react or change differently and that the change dilemma can be dealt with behavioral approaches such as positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and cognitive reinforcement. Managers need to identify how to reduce people’s learning stress in order to create a better stance for development and

encourage people to welcome personal development with a more positive mindset. Having a psychodynamic approach where managers understand the capabilities and emotions of employees or a humanistic approach where managers are authentic and encourage individuals to grow or change—these can have an impact on how the change management is seen or identified by the workforce.

The Myers-Briggs personality test (1962) is a type indicator which allows individuals to gather a better understanding of their personality and to determine why people act and speak in certain ways. This is also an instrument used by organizations nowadays, when recruiting new staff, applicants are asked to complete a psychometric test which allows employers to see whether they are fit or compatible to their organization. The type indicator further helps individuals to identify key areas that can be taken for further development and growth of themselves. Similarly, upon taking the Myers-Briggs personality test, I was identified as an individual who falls under the category of INFJP; introverted, intuitive, feeling and a combination of judging and perceiving. According to Briggs Myers and Jung, individuals who fall under this category are seen as mediators, people who encourage and guide individuals to take change as a positive process and motivates them to undertake personal development to reach their maximum potential.

Therefore, to improve myself through personal development, I need to understand the areas that I am lacking in or have issues with in order to tackle the challenges I face on a daily basis in life. Goleman (1998) suggests that the effects of change are easier to understand once individuals are able to gather a better comprehension of oneself before moving forward. Approaches that can be taken to utilized to identify this includes mindfulness where people can see opportunities rather than negative outcomes. One approach that can be conducted is Buddhist meditation through activities such as yoga which helps to relieve stress and improves mindfulness by allowing one’s mind to relax and reflect upon the positive outcomes in daily life. This is a positive emotional attractor (PEA) and is practiced by many leading business entrepreneurs and leading professionals worldwide as it helps them to self-regulate and gather self-awareness to constantly improve themselves for the betterment of their environment. Delayed gratification is also a factor that can help to achieve and maintain individual progress to work harder to achieve goals by giving bad news first and then relaying good news. To sum up, organizations need to strategize and identify key approaches

that can be utilized to improve and motivate employees to further develop their skills and to expand their capacity through personal development.

References

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