Free Management Dissertations - Kahn (1998) Suggests That Building An Organisation Can Be Seen As A Process
Kahn (1998) suggests that building an organisation can be seen as a process of re-establishing people’s culture in terms of a shared sense of history and values which seek to create norms for acceptable behaviour within the framework of organisational performance. Therefore organisational culture plays a critical role in the management of organisational change and has shapes how individuals within the organisation respond to and react to organisational change.
An obvious statement for larger organisations is that they are composed of people from different cultures, with different values and beliefs, this being especially more so for larger global organisations. Organisational culture is based on the roots of certain types of behaviour including an organisation’s members’ attitudes toward change. This can be seen in the fact that some organisations in which the management style is more aggressive in responding to organisational changes. In order to maintain high levels of growth in companies within particularly rapidly developing industries are often possessed of this characteristic. On the other hand firms in mature industries tend to be more careful in their approaches to change especially revolutionary change. Research demonstrates that the growth of an organisation is closely related to the development of organisational culture which is the internal environment organisations evolve in, (Henderson, 1996). Therefore the responsive ability of an organisation’s culture in reacting to changes determines to large degrees the efficiency of managing change. This is because the dynamics of organisational culture could be negative or positive towards change and inappropriate cultures towards change could result in failed organisational growth phases.
Strategic Change Management
A recent study suggests that roughly 70 per cent of respondents reported that their organisations had restructured in the previous two years and 51 per cent of respondents’ organisations were experiencing major transformations during the research timeframe, (Ezzamel et al, 1994). Therefore strategic change management is particularly important as it is highly probable given external environmental conditions that an organisation will face some form of restructuring in the future. While some researchers view strategic change management as a formal rational and pre-planned process, others tend to see strategy as a messier and diffuse process. Burnes (2000) for example sees organisational change flowing from an organisations’ predetermined strategy which means organisational change is not to be viewed solely as a result of strategic decisions but is also a vital part of ongoing corporate strategies. It is fair to say then that the implementation of change management goals determines the efficiency of overall corporate strategies to some extent.
