Topic
CONSIDERATIONS AND ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Instructions
Essay Question (total word count 3,000 words plus/minus 10%)
Part 1: What are some of the key elements of effective change management? Critically review the implementation of a specific organizational change and evaluate the implications for successful people management in situations of organizational change (approx. 2000 words).
Part 2: In your judgement, is organizational change typically managed well? Critically reflect on your own experiences of change situations. Compare and contrast your experiences with your discussion of successful people management of organizational change in Part 1 (approx. 1000 words).
Answer Preview
Firstly, the change management initiative should be anchored in a real business value. The change agent should therefore define the goals he/she wants to achieve with the proposed new ideas or practices (Palmer, Dunford, and Akin, 2009). This provides a basis for influencing the other people in the organization to accept and participate in the change process. If there are no clear and well-defined goals, the attendant ambiguity may increase chances of resistance from the employees. To realize effective change management, there ought to be a strong justification. As Buchanan and Dawson (2007) state, the change process is a multi-faceted discourse. If a change agent lacks a clear sense of direction of where the planned change should take the organization and its people, it is harder to execute the multi-story change process. Similarly, according to Lewin’s change management approach based on three phases, the first step, namely unfreezing involves creating a need for change within an organization (Lewin, 2009, p. 74). In such a way, the leader has a basis for pushing for change and obtaining employee and management buy-in. This way, the other two phases, namely changing and re-freezing, follow less problematically (Burnes, 2004, p. 977; Coghlan and Brannick, 2003). They involve implementing the new ways and reinforcing desired outcomes to internalize the practices.
Word Count: 3600