Let it sink in: Rosenberg (1993) states that people need period to adapt to the thought of change. It is advisable to announce the change management plans much prior to the actual implementation commences rather than springing up the announcement when the actual transition is about to take place; generally it's been noted that individuals were unhappy with the rapidity of which the change management course was employed rather than the idea of change itself. If for example a business plans to layoff 20% of its staff by the finish of the week; no prior announcement of the action might cause severe chaos, anger and frustration by the employees who suffer from the problem there and then which could cause severe emotional and mental trauma.
Teach the staff well: Folks are usually more comfortable with the familiar and suspicious of the unfamiliar. For this purpose individuals might resist changing to a new system or procedure to do things since they are afraid of making mistakes and would prefer to work according to the tried and tested procedures. Management here must ensure that folks should experiment under the new system and are allowed to study from their mistakes rather than being reprimanded because of their behavior.
Relinquish some control: Rosenberg (1993) has mentioned over and over in her article that to bring about an effective change, it is necessary to provide autonomy to individuals in order that they feel that they are also in charge and play an integral role in the course of managing change. Again resistance is definitely not to the change itself; as opposed to the way the change was implemented. A good manager would always involve his employees in the change management process to garner their full assurance and support to the change being implemented.
Communication is the main element: This is an essential aspect as employees desire to be constantly kept informed regarding what changes are occurring in the business. Both employees and their managers have to keep an fluent mode of conversation so the queries and grievances of the employees can be addressed by the managers and the managers are also alert to the strategies they might have to make use of in order to compel their workforce to remain committed to the cause.
If managers want to successfully overcome resistance to change then they are some of the few viewpoints they need to keep under consideration when being involved with an alteration management process.
Kimberling (2006) has suggested four easy steps for overcoming resistance. For today's management one of the growing challenges is overcoming employee's resistance to improve. It is widely assumed that folks dislike change.
There are some means of overcoming employee's resistance to improve as given below:
Identify change agents early in the project/program
Train, train, train
Involve employees in the change enabling process
Over-communicate
According to Brown & Cregan (2008), "Cynicism tells regarding employee's opinion of these organization's management which is derivative of employee's familiarity with the environment, it may require considerable efforts by management to trim it down.
Engaging employees is a great way of managing Organizational Change Cynicism (OCC). Sharing information has been considered as the approach would work top-down form of engaging employees which has important and negative association with OCC. It really is believed that information passed down by the management is dependant on employee accepting of management decisions and therefore reducing degree of OCC. Taking inputs from employees validates that employees and employers have differing interests in the employment relationship. Delegating the role of decision making reflects shift by means of employment terms.
Managers and employees work in a cooperative environment where solutions/ decisions may emanate from either side and no more managers will be the only authority holders. Engaging employees in decision making reduces degrees of OCC.
This helps employees in understanding the fallout of managerial decisions as nothing comes to them as a surprise this undermines the potential of cynicism to build up.
This perspective is further supported by other researchers who state that frequent communication and employee involvement is the main element to an effective change management process. Communicating decisions justifies change, boosts sense of employee effectiveness, and makes clear the changes to employee responsibilities (Young and Post, 1993). Besides, it provides employees information on how the intervention may happen and its fallout and hence allowing them greater control over the process of change.
Successful Change: Watching the Intangibles
Adams (2003) asserts that though causing any sort of change is a challenging and intimidating task, confrontation to improve can be combated and an organization can make the transition to a new environment successfully. Adams (2003) further states that while there would be approximately 10-15% of organization's employees who be resisting change; there would also be another 10-15% who would be supportive of the change. Organizations who have implemented the change management program successfully in their vicinity have done so by involving these proponents of the change management program from the beginning stages in order to garner their full support. This will not mean that these organizations didn't face any sort of resistance; resistance to improve was there exactly like any change management program but it was dealt with in a good manner so the hostile and negative feelings of the employees did not take over the complete process.
The basic factors that have been recognized by Adams (2003) for successful change implementation are: accepting the need for change, faith that change is both favorable and probable, enough fervent assurance, explicit deliverable goals and a starting strategy, structures or mechanisms that require a repetition of the new pattern, feeling supported and safe, patience and perseverance, clear accountability, the responsibility of 'others' in the business (not only change agents) and rewarding of new behavior. Many of these factors combined have worked together in bringing about an effective change program in various organizations that applied these theories or factors either totally or used combinations that supported their organization structure. The basic premise of bringing about an effective change program has been that it is possible to overcome resistance if the clear strategy if firstly determined and secondly people are managed so in order to develop feelings of enthusiasm and commitment towards the procedure of change. It is how these intangible factors of change are managed that determines the successful implementation of any change management program in the world.
Simultaneously, with fast pace of change organizations are currently experiencing, you can find parallel increasing involvement in the role of organizational trust within these procedures. (Mayer et al. , 1995). Lower degree of trust in organization can make change look doubtful and upsetting. Change agents need to have a closer check out trust and control factors in order to grasp better what sort of constructive association among employees and employers can be continued.
Triumphant organizational change may take place if employees stick to the processes sketched by organizational leaders. Non-acceptance or refusing attitude towards change may harm the relation between individual and organization (Ferguson & Cheyne, 1995).
On the other hand, control is seen as 'a regulatory process where the fundamentals of something are created more foreseeable by making standards in the quest for some preferred goals or state' (Leifer & Mills, 1996, 117). Which means that when employees have a higher sense of control over a big change intervention, this means they predict the result associated to it, hence they feel safe increasing the likelihood of sticking to the change.
Some authors have treated trust and control as substitutes (e. g. Inkpen & Currall, 1997; Leifer & Mills, 1996), such that a lot more trust you can find in somebody, the less need to control its behavior.
A different approach is presented by Das & Teng (1998) which state that these parallel phenomena hold a supplementary character. According to them, "If employees' perceptions of control over change represent how comfortable and familiarized employees are concerning the change, what is the impact of lower or higher control in the partnership between employees and organizational agents? However the stronger is employees' rely upon their supervisor, the greater committed these employees are to their organization, we believe trust has differential effects on work outcomes depending on how employees perceive change (i. e. how much they feel they control the change process)".
For this purpose Das & Teng (1998) clarify the idea of organizational change interventions. Organizational change interventions are situations where both perceptions of rely upon the supervisor and control over change are high stake factors as a result of risks entailed in them. A predicament where employees have low perceived control over an organizational change intervention is a predicament where trust concerns are increased. If an employee has lower control over the change, a trusting relationship with his supervisor can help him maintain his degree of commitment to the organization. As a consequence, not only employees with low perceived control over change and low rely upon the supervisor are anticipated to really have the lowest levels of organizational commitment, but also the relationship between trust in the supervisor and affective organizational commitment is stronger for employees with lower perceptions of control over the change intervention.
Brockner et al. (1997) found that when trust concerns are more prominent, the level of employees' rely upon organizational authorities is much more likely to influence their support for the organizational authorities and their organizational commitment.
The Hard Side of Change Management - The DICE Factors
Sikrin et al. (2005) has some other opinion which factors to concentrate on when result in the change. Recently the gurus of change management tend to pay more attention and focus on soft factors such as culture, leadership and motivation. These factors play an intrinsic role to make an organization attain success but one cannot concentrate on these factors only when an organization needs to be transformed. Such basic factors do not always affect the change management programs in organizations. For instance, a good leadership is vital to the success of any organization but is not the only real affective factor. Communication plays a significant role when bringing about any change but again, is not really the only factor to severely affect the change process. The most challenging factor to change is changing the mindsets of individuals; individuals and organizations have certain perceptions and behaviors that are so deeply inculcated in their personality that it is very hard to steer them in a different direction. Sikrin et al. (2005) also states that while surveys can be conducted to understand the effect of such soft factors such as culture and leadership, it is difficult to quantify such soft factors.
An focus on the unconventional outlook of change management, the hard factors, is also important to be studied into consideration. These factors have three important characteristics that are the following:
Organizations are capable to judge them in straight or circuitous methods.
Organizations can merely correspond their significance, both inside and outside of the organizations.
And possibly mainly vital businesses are able to influence those essentials rapidly.
Such important factors that directly affect the change process will be the time span taken up to undergo a process, the individuals necessary to carry out the many job requirements and finally the financial returns that such an activity results in.
There are numerous researches that depict that hard factors play an essential role in causing any sort of change process, else the organizations face failure. (Sikrin et al. , 2005). Alternatively additionally it is necessary for the management to pay an equal amount of focus on the soft factors. However, if organizations do not firstly emphasize on the hard factors, the entire change process would cause severe failure.
Sikrin et al. (2005) write in their article that they gained an insight into a new aspect when they studied and recognized the essential factors of change that processes shared. They conducted a hypothesis that studied how various organizations conducted similar transformation programs. For this purpose the authors studied various industries in various countries to be able to take out the normal elements. 225 companies were area of the research conducted where it showed that there is a directly related relationship between your outcome of a change process and tough four elements: "plan life span, specifically enough time between plan feedbacks; performance veracity, or the abilities of project teams; the dedication of both higher staff and the low staff whom the transform will influence mainly; and the extra attempt that peoples must make to control with the alteration. They named these factors as the DICE factors since we could stack them in support of projects' accomplishment" (Sikrin et al. , 2005).
According to Sikrin et al. (2005) "We finished our learning in 1994, and in the 11 years since that time, the Boston Consulting Group had used those four elements to forecast the results, and direct the completion, of more than 1, 000 change management stances globally. Not merely has the association held, but no other elements (or combo of these factors) have forecasted results as well. "
The Four Hard Factors
Organizations use the four factors in several ways in order to produce new combinations. Using one end of the continuum, there are projects that will eventually face success than those that are going to face failure on the other end. For instance, Sikrin et al write, " At one end, a small plan led by an able, ambitious, and regular team, led by top management and implemented in a division that is open to the change and has to put in hardly any further attempt, is destined to thrive. On the other end, a lengthy, designed plan implemented by an unskilled apathetic, and incoherent groups, without any higher management sponsors and aim at a function that disapproves the alteration and has to execute a excessive efforts, will be unsuccessful".
Through this technique the organizations can then find out which change program fell at which end of the continuum. However, the majority of the change processes finished up in a neutral position where it was difficult to discover if indeed they were a success or if indeed they had failed. It's the responsibility of executives to conduct an in-depth analysis of the DICE factors to decipher which direction the change program go.
Following will be the DICE factors:
D. Enough time span "Duration" required concluding a transformed plans if it has a limited duration; if not limited, the longevity of time between feedbacks of objectives.
I. The plan's team's performance Integrity; that is, its skills to complete the program on time. Which are associated with team's skills and expertise according to plan's necessities.
C. The Commitment to revolutionize that top hierarchy (C1) and staff affected by the transformation (C2) display.
E. YOUR TIME AND EFFORT apart from the routine work that the transformed initiative necessitates from staffs (Sikrin et. al. , 2005).
This study therefore goes to show that there are multiple methods that might be adopted in order to bring about an efficient change management process. Furthermore, case study research shows that there are multiple methods adopted for managing change. "While many prescriptions, guidelines and models exist, managers accountable for executing the changes are selective in the manner they use these ideas" (Storey, 1992).
Keeping in mind the above mentioned viewpoint we can assume that to a significant percentage of the change varies from individual to individual. "Those who see themselves as creating organizational change as an intentional process (i. e. top management formally leading change) will have some other perspective to those who are on the receiving end of change" (Kanter et al. , 1992).
Change Management About the World
Change Resistance in Bureaucratic Organizations in Jordan
To realize why employees resist change Khassawneh (2005) highlights the reason why and causes behind employees' resistance to administrative change in various bureaucratic organizations in Jordan.
There were eleven factors, were recognized as being significant reasons of change resistance in bureaucratic agencies. These factors include: inadequate financial and non-financial incentives wanted to government employees, insufficient employees' participation and involvement in the change process, distrust between employees and higher management, expectation of more control and supervision from higher management, expectation of additional job demands and requirements, comfort with status quo, disruption of stable work standards and social relations, insufficient goal clarity, insufficient employees' conviction in the goals of change, concern with loosing job and/or job prerogatives, and the sudden and confused manner in which change is introduced (Khassawneh, 2005)
According to Khassawneh (2005) the most important reason of resistance to change was discovered to be insufficient employees' participation in the change process. This factor was assessed on the basis of two parameters: seniority in organization and range of training programs attended by employees. Senior employees who have been part of the organization for five years or less resisted strongly due to lack of participation in the change process than their seniors who had served in the organization for periods ranging from 6-20 years. Employees who had served for five years or less in such government institutions made 32% of the sample (133 respondents). These individuals were involved in activities concerning of any executive nature and therefore played a substantial role in the running of the bureaucratic organizations.
Employees who had not attended any training program felt that insufficient involvement led to resistance to change. Therefore this attitude would go to show what an important role working out programs play boosting employee morale and involvement as training enables individuals to discover their strengths and weaknesses and also instill in them a feeling of belonging in their organization. Which means respondents who did not get an chance to take part in any training programs claimed to acquire low sense of involvement with the organization treated the management with greater suspicion, than those who took part in certain training programs.
Another major cause of resistance to improve was as found out by Khassawneh (2005) was lack of proper incentives for employees. This lack of proper incentives was correlated to five of background characteristics of respondents which were namely; seniority, administrative rank, number of training programs attended, age and degree of education (Khassawneh, 2005). Younger, low level ranking employees resisted more due to insufficient proper incentives. Employees who have served for longer periods of time have a tendency to receive greater incentives as the longer they stay in a government organization.
Resistance to improve also came into being when the employees viewed the management with suspicion and distrust (Khassawneh, 2005). Younger employees working at a minimal level position who did not get enough decision making authority or those who did not attend enough training programs were mainly the individuals who highly resisted any kind of change.
Khassawneh (2005) states that if such low ranking employees are also not given enough information about the change process, then such employees would always create issues in the business.
Change Management in Indian Banks
Hegde & George (2002) in their study further highlight reasons of why employees resist to change of shifting towards automated services in the banks. Prior to the privatization wave started out in India, the general public sector commanded a major chunk of the economy. Though there was excessive regulatory mechanism there is widespread corruption, a higher cost economy and poor performance from the state of hawaii owned enterprises. State-owned banks were also run within an extremely inefficient manner due to interference from political quarters and therefore these banks were frequently caused to undergo bankruptcies. Employees in these banks too were not prepared to accept any new changes as they preferred the old practices and lived happily under the umbrella of State protectionism.
Hegde & George (2002) conducted this at Goa, in which a sample of 100 branch managers (BMs) with the objective of learning the factors that motivate or inhibit BMs in servicing customers. In addition they focus on the reasons why employees resist any kind of new change occurring in the organization.
Transition to a new work methodology was cited as a significant factor contributing towards employee resistance. Because the traditional bureaucratic banking practices did not focus a lot on customer support, the employees needed to be given intense training in how to approach the customers, how to react to their queries regarding new services as well as how to respond to complaint situations. This required a complete new work ethic and attitude to be developed among employees as well as they were not equipped to deal well in the client dealing sphere. Along with this the staff needed to also learn in the new technological aspects of the ground breaking banking solutions as well (Hegde & George, 2002).
Secondly the researchers found out that insufficient technological know-how/training also contributed to resistance to change. Branch managers admitted that these were not aware of all the workings of the new bank operating system and could not answer customer queries regarding ATM machines as they were not proficient in the workings of ATMs. Put into this computerization was another major woe of the employees as they employees were give inadequate training where they learned by using a learning from your errors process which resulted in delay and frustration with the work accessible. Furthermore the top management frequently decided to change the software being used therefore the employees had to go through the whole process of learning through trail and error again. Lack of communication and inadequate training resulted in a high degree of de-motivation and resistance from the employees who were not willing to simply accept the new changes as they felt that the new process created more confusion and damage rather than resolving the issues.
Hegde & George (2002) also discuss how the staff was downsized by the management to be able to cut down on its cost where a Voluntary Retirement Scheme was introduced in order to let the staff go. This led to paucity of staff a the branches where the few remaining staff was overworked and underpaid which led to further resistance and de-motivation of the staff, a lot of whom quit their job as they felt exploited by the new change management process introduced by the very best executives.
Through the span of their study, Hegde & George (2002) find out that the main element to customer satisfaction is firstly employee satisfaction as employees who feel de-motivated and discontented of their jobs and companies exhibit their feelings via not serving the customers properly and even by speaking bad about their company before the customers. Exactly why employees resist changing is basically because the reason why and advantages of the change are not communicated to them, enough training to cope with new procedures is not provided and moreover staff is let go without the prior warning which creates feelings of insecurity and mistrust towards the business.
Finally resistance to change might have been overcome if the management proceeded to effect a result of the change process in a systematic manner. If all the employees were communicated the plans of the management right in the beginning and the benefits associated with the change to the employees and the organization were made common knowledge, then the employees would become more emphatic on the change process. A business is nothing with no support of its employees and to be able to bring about any sort of change the organization has to be sure that its internal customers are satisfied prior to the external customers are serviced.
The IBM Making Change Work Global Study
IBM's (2008) research department addressed the issues as to why most organizations cannot bring in regards to a change successfully within an organization. IBM's research was conducted using a sample size greater than 1, 500 key practitioners through surveys and detailed interviews. The goal of the research was to find out why implementing an alteration management program was met with resistance by the employees and just why the program didn't be implemented in most organizations successfully.
The study revealed that 44% the projects failed to be completed on deadlines, or within budget or without decided quality of end goals, while 15 percent either ceased or didn't meet any of the objectives. The reason why cited for these failures range from insufficient clarity of goals, failure to execute the project successfully from the perspective of the very best management and insufficient employee involvement, age factor, educational level and concern with new change from the perspective of the employees.
The major challenges to improve were divided on two parameters; soft factors and hard factors. The soft factors of resistance to improve included: changing mindsets and attitudes, corporate culture, complex nature of the change process, insufficient dedication from the medial side of upper level management, and scarcity of motivation of employees involved. As the hard factors of resistance to change included: shortage of resources, insufficient change information, not much transparency because of incomplete or unreliable information, change of process change of computer systems, technology barriers. Its was discovered from this study that as the hard factors play an important part in hindering the procedure of change, surprisingly it was the soft factors that was harder to get right. "Altering thinking, behaviors and norms associated with an entity typically need different methods and skills that are applied time after time and over enough time. Sometimes they require being applied over a series of consecutive assignments and even a few of them often continue after the project has been finished formally". (IBM, 2008).
In order to overcome these resistances, the study then focused on the parameters that made a big change successful. While leadership, employee engagement and honest communication were cited as the major areas providing impetus for change; again the list was split into hard and soft factors that made an alteration management process successful. The soft factors made up of: higher management's commitment and support, employee motivation and participation, open and accurate communication on timely basis, organization environment and culture that motivates and promotes change. The hard factors included: efficient training programs, adjustment of performance measures, efficient organization structure and monetary and non-monetary incentives. The major responsibility of implementing the change was that of the top management. The results of the research revealed that "Practitioners firmly place key responsibility for the fate of change projects in the executive suite - an overwhelming 92 percent named 'top management sponsorship' as the most crucial factor for successful change" (IBM, 2008).
Therefore it can be concluded from this study that while employees would always be suspicious of any type of change and would resist the efforts of the management out of this fear and suspicion. It depends upon the top management to ensure timely communication, encouragement of employee involvement and appointing of professional change agents would pave just how for an effective change management process for just about any organization.
Factors Affecting Resistance to improve: A Case Study of Two North Texas Police Departments
Gaylor (2001), tried to explore the issues that affect conflict with change. For this purpose a police agency was chosen as the just to illustrate i. e. two North Texas Police departments where the police consequence of mature education and expectation on the authorities team's degree of opposition to improve and the results of contribution and mutual understanding on reliance were examined.
There were 5 factors that were recognized as very influential on organizational change. These factors were: 1) Employee participation in resistance to change, (2) Rely upon management, (3) Communication process, (4) Quality of information available and (5) Education (Kent, 2001)
Research resulted that factors that affect resistance from employee side are involvement in the process, have confidence in management, processes of communication within organization, and exchange of information.
The synopsis by Kent (2001) states that employee involvement along the way of change encourages him to feel to be owner for the new system and for that reason, boosts the comfortableness and trust between employees and the management. Secondly, the organization will need a proper system of communication for employee solution and support. This also escalates the degree of trust between your two stakeholders. Third, employees must be provided with accurate and timely information in order to reduce the level of chaos which are created at the time of change in virtually any organization. And finally, to feel secure about their jobs and statuses and other issues of change process, employees need to have a high level of trust in management.
Leading and Dealing with Change
Woodword & Hendry in 2004 undertook 2 surveys to check out different perspectives in research about how change is being managed in financial services institutions of London's. These involved representatives of senior management personnel who had been responsible for initiation of change in the organizational and all other employees inclusive of managers experiencing change while serving at different levels.
The aims of the study were:
To define the abilities and attitudes necessary to lead change and those needed effectively to cope with change and
To develop a model to show how change is absorbed within the organization
They organized their findings in five parts as described below, which have been arranged in the following manner. In the very first section, as people keep on wanting to explore that the proceedings in their organization, states the actual employees and employers consider as the key pressures for change, their formal boss' responses, and in what ways these changes have impacted them. Then, as conventional ways of working are tempered, in parts two and three they show how people cope and what different resources are required in conditions of skills and competencies to perform well in this new changed environment.
Then in part four they describe specific qualities required by the change managers to cultivate with respect to employee needs. Finally, they state the particular organizations do to be able to support their workers through the change process, and how senior management and employees percieve this. The results of the research provide the researchers with reasons for the failure of many initiatives of change management and exactly how failures may be managed successfully.
Woodword & Hendry (2004) then investigated what various employee coping strategies were adopted through the change management process. They told employees to indicate the level of their readiness in giving an answer to any further changes in their job or work. A considerably large fraction of these who were surveyed were seen to be equipped for the change and considered it an integral part of life with an optimistic feel about it.
As coping is approximately creating a balance between demands and living within the limitation of the system, employees were told to specify main hindrances they had to handle with in the new environment. Five factors that were extracted from this exercise were:
Increased accountability but reduced resources;
A focus on tasks with a corresponding neglect of employees;
Feelings of insecurity and uncertainty in roles and direction;
Other employees not coping and lacking skills to adapt;
Managers themselves failing to cope, and employing poor coping strategies.
On a question of all helpful personal coping strategies, employees listed several strategies, including from proactive approach to denial or avoidance.
The researchers also studied the many competencies that are necessary for dealing with the change. Adapting to negative or positive coping strategies is afflicted by the way in which employees perceive demands and resources balance in the new employee-to-work relationship in changed environment.
Hence, coping strategies are influenced by the availability of resources. Skills and competencies are a major personal resource. Employees specified lots of skills and competencies they found especially helpful in absorbing and dealing with change:
Communicating with others holding different perspectives (since nowadays people work in teams for most activities);
Organizing work and managing time effectively (in response to increased job scope and the need to meet a variety of objectives);
Assimilating and interpreting information (to identify significant information and filter irrelevancies);
Dealing with people (since financial and professional service organizations deliver a lot of their services through people);
Innovative problem solving.
Also specifying all these skills, employees rated many other personal abilities, skills and qualities as very important. These include motivation; judgment accuracy; customer need understanding; commercial awareness; ability of influencing and negotiation; lively mind; and positive attitude towards change.
Senior managers were of the view that key personal skills or functions of performing well in a dynamic environment should also include a dedication to improve, acceptance of the changing situation, an ability to gel in the changed environment, and a variety of personality traits.
Woodword & Hendry (2004) then go on to go over how important could it be to for the change managers to lead change in a reliable manner. However, this important part continues to be overlooked by a considerable minority level, with 33 percent of senior managers claiming that human aspects were ignored in the change initiatives. Only 20 percent employees rated the concerned management as very able enough to implement changes in the organization. Almost all the others had equally divided responses, which range from average to poor. Inspite of the reduced rating, employees were observed have a feeling of sympathy and appreciation for difficulties faced my management in leading and managing the change.
Employees were inquired as to when and how sometimes it becomes difficult or hard for employees to absorb change or adopt it. These key areas were classified into six categories, as follows:
Communicating (not being kept informed, acquiring conflicting messages, attempting to understand but not being given explanations);
The change process itself (when change is perceived as happening too slowly or too fast, when leaders are seen to carry unrealistic expectations, or when change is managed with incorrect sequencing);
Relationships (including situations when change leaders seem to be remote and isolated from employees, do not exhibit constructive attitudes and behaviors, or behave within an autocratic fashion);
Consultation (when employees do not feel they can be informed or consulted, and when staff needs and ideas are disregarded);
Skills and experience (when change leaders are seen as lacking the mandatory skills, talents and experience, so when the change leader lacks credibility);
Motivation for change (when there appears too little involvement or motivation for change at the top, or among senior managers elsewhere in the business).
The employees were also inquired about how precisely managers, actions could be was most helpful to them to cope with changes in the organization. Out of 19 objects gathered from the traditional change management literature, each except one was rated 'very helpful' or 'quite helpful'. Senior managers determined the competencies such as strong leadership, purpose/mission clarity, enthusiasm, participative employees, and improved communication. They were somehow similar with then ones determined by the employees.
Again this isn't applicable to conventional behaviors and with 'top-down' attitude.
Finally, employees were told expressing their feelings on the extent they received support while the implementation of change in the organization with the statement: 'employees are given with sufficient problem prevention and support to cope with organization changes. ' While a majority of the senior management staff agreed with this statement, less than twenty five percent of employees did. You can find, therefore, a gap in how each looks at the amount of support provided. For example, most employees said that their employer entity 'let them have sufficient authority to get their work done in an effective manner', and hence, there existed 'better professional relationships', but also for other factors, only a minority reported option of support. Alternatively, the most common mechanisms of support that senior managers report included detailed career development counseling with their employees in order that they could be skilled enough to prepare yourself their new job responsibilities; skills enhancement; telling them as to where in fact the organization is heading, and what could be the roles and tasks of employees'; measures to make sure that there is an alignment between structures and systems and improved salary and compensation packages.
Comparing this with what employees report, Woodword & Hendry (2004) state that employees and managers do acknowledge some of the important points, but show disagreement about how adequately the provision of the is.
Managers also rely on comparatively few major resources of support. Eventually, organization employees emphasize more or less entirely on those things that provide them a feeling of control and autonomy, while managers rely on the items that they control as managers. This then continues in the pattern where senior managers exhibit a normal leadership model, while employees be able to get a multitude of behaviors that are of help for these people.
The Dynamics of Change in the present day World
The ever changing global economy and rising competition is compelling organizations to constantly adopt new practices also to proactively embrace change if indeed they want to survive in the current global economy. This constant need for change also arises as newer economies enter the entire world market bringing new competition to the forefront. According to Bridges (2003) if a company wishes to remain alive nowadays of competition, it has to face ten times harder time than surviving in the industry say a decade ago. Industry giants have to constantly introduce new ideologies, technologies and new marketing concepts to be able to remain a step before their competitors, while new organizations have to fight hard to enter into a market and retain the interest of these customers and stakeholders. Failure to look at to newer change models by either of the classes would greatly hinder their likelihood of survival in the current competitive environment.
Theoretical Framework
Keeping in mind the variables determined by the literature, the researcher has developed the following figure (Figure 1) as depicting the theoretical framework. Developed from an alteration perspective, its assumption is the fact that resistance to improve is actually exhibited from the employees when certain factors create a sense of confusion and uncertainty among the employees facing the change.
Figure : Theoretical Framework of the Research
A review of relevant literature reveals that the common causes of change resistance at individual level fall within certain aspects or areas such as fear of unknown, climate of mistrust, disruption of stable work norms and relations, fear of loosing job and job security, habit, misunderstanding of the purpose of change, lack of employees' participation, comfort with the status quo, group norms and threat of power and influence.
Intensity of resistance to change within an organization is also complemented by factors such as employees' level of education, the number of years employee has worked with the business and employees' rank in the business, if they accumulate with the primary causes mentioned above.
CHAPTER FOUR
"RESEARCH METHODOLOGY"
Research Methodology
The research, being truly a case study, was qualitative in nature.
Since the research was exploratory in nature the researchers chose a research study methodology. Moreover, out of literature reviewed by the researcher, lots of the research papers and articles emphasized on qualitative case study pattern and researcher was of the view that case studies provide a detailed study of the many frameworks and theories.
Key Variables
Independent Variables
Administrative change
Level of education
Seniority
Rank in organization
Dependent Variables
Employee Participation
Cognitive Dissonance
Job Insecurity
Complacent Attitude
Sampling
The respondents were employees belonging to the very best to Middle Level Management of HBL. From these levels of hierarchy the employees from branches and head offices were chosen, as the major change management process was implemented in the branches of HBL primarily. 30 out of 157 branches of HBL in Karachi were chosen on convenience basis. The branches selected were those, that have been around before HBL was privatized.
Approximately 2000 middle level management employees work in HBL at Karachi, out which the study sample size consisted of approximately 150 employees, who work in branches and have been with HBL before privatization.
Apart from branch level employees, questionnaires were also distributed from business heads (or their nominated personnel) of 3 departments namely Human Resources/ Organization Development, Branch Banking and Service Quality as these departments were directly in interaction with the employees and played an important role in managing and implementing the change process. The number of business heads which were interviewed was 8 individuals.
Sources of Primary Data
Interviews of Top Level Management: The first approach to data collection was the interviews of top level management of HBL which were conducted by the researcher in order to understand how the resistance to improve was managed while implementing the change management program at HBL. Questions were submit to the top management from the departments of Human Resource, Organization Development, Branch Banking and Service Quality as these departments are directly in interaction with employees and have a significant role in managing and implementing the change process. For this purpose Senior Managers and Heads of Departments were interviewed and a total of 8 senior management personnel were interviewed.
Questionnaire: After conducting an experimental test survey, the formal questionnaire survey to be administered to the branch banking employees of HBL was completed. The questionnaires were developed keeping in mind the variables recognized during the interviews with the most notable management and also the common variables which were found out during the research of varied literature on change management. The questionnaire questions
