Despite the success rate of some change models in different organisations across the world and the much publicised idea of adopting ‘best practice’, it is difficult to
Particular vision and policies, cultural background, people and local settings shape programmes in unique ways. Even if the words used to label aims, problems or outcomes are the same, what exists on the ground will inevitably be influenced by particular characteristics in each and every instance. The findings from most of the relevant studies showed that change is often snubbed by employees in many organisations because it was mandated by the management and forced on the organisation and employees had not been consulted. Katzenbach (1996:149) states that: ‘change efforts are often conceived as waves of initiatives that sweep through an organisation from the top down, or the bottom up, or both, and flow ! across functions’. This suggests that change initiatives – as most of the organisational plans – are prepared exclusively by management at the top then dropped on the employees. Based on the fact that change models are mostly goal- driven aiming towards attaining a purpose, goal, function, or desired end state, thus change is seen as purposive and planned. Models are built on the assumption that outcomes are not a historical necessity but the result of purposeful human actions. According to Greenhalgh et al (2004), change and innovation fail not because the new strategies or goals are inappropriate but rather because organisations are unable to successfully implement them. Similarly, Worrall and Cooper (2012:3) conducted a comprehensive study and their findings were significant. They state that:
‘Our research has pointed to the existence of a negative cycle in many ! organisations that often originates in ill-conceived and ineptly managed ! organisational change which leads to increased workplace stress, lower !
motivation and lower productivity. This cycle of decline is often compounded ! by damaging leadership styles and uninspiring management behaviours’
Organisational change management literature suggests that there are serious constraints to overcome and ‘change fatigue,’ is one of them. This refers to the exhaustion that sets in when people feel under pressure to make too many transitions at once. The change initiatives are untimely, rolled out too fast, or put in place without sufficient preparation. It is also a likely result of management being ill prepared and ill qualified to deal with change effectively. There are some common reasons why strategies for managing change do not work. The odds of change management failure depend on numerous key factors: These can be summed up as follows:
• Unclear or incorrect goals or vision
• Insufficient communication and motivation
• Change seen as a senior management issue only • Implementation strategy not thought through
• Lack of skills to ensure that change can be sustained over time.
• Too much focus on the technical side of change – rather than people issues • Culture not changed
In their final report, Worrall and Cooper (2012:5) express their concern about the tinkering nature of some of the change strategies:
‘Our prime concerns are that, when it comes to organisational change, many senior management teams appear to be making things up as they go along ! and they are often too ambitious in what they think they can achieve without !
permanently damaging or alienating the entire workforce. When it comes to ! managing change, the end of term report for UK managers is definitely ‘could do better, must try harder’.!
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In conclusion, change literature has discussed and presented different change theories and varying steps involved in change processes; however, there is no evidence that indicates that these have been translated fully into change processes and successfully implemented in practice. This is supported by Robertson et al. (1993: 619), who claim that: “relatively little effort has been devoted to the task of ! empirically validating, such theoretical models”. Moreover, Dougherty and Cohen (1995:100) stress that: “piecemeal tweaks and incremental shifts […] are not enough. Managers need to grab the configuration and shift it all at once.”
Critics argue that one of the causes of change initiatives failure is attributed to leaders who do not prepare the organisation sufficiently enough (Self et al., 2007). Leaders tend to rush into change initiatives, so much so that they lose sight of the objectives (Beer and Nohria 2000), overlook the importance of communicating a consistent change message (Armenakis and Harris 2002) or fail to understand what is necessary to guide their organisation through change (Self and Schraeder 2009).
Dunphy (1996) holds the view that organisational change is of itself a failure of the organisation to continuously adapt. The need to introduce change arises where continuous improvement has not been undertaken and the organisation requires remedial action to address the weaknesses. This view is also advocated by Weick
and Quinn (1999:362) who argue that: ‘The basic tension that underlies many discussions of organisational change is that it would not be necessary if people had ! done their jobs right in the first place.’!
In addition, change management theories and models tend to use simplistic and mechanistic language and create often unrealistic routines and structures to maintain and manage people.A good deal of research involving organisational change efforts views change as a linear process, as if people going through change behave or work predictably and linearly. Thus standardised change approaches with leadership styles for all types of change are put forward. As Cummings and Worley (2009:41) point out:
Current thinking about planned change is deficient in knowledge about how ! the stages of planned change differ across situations. Most models specify a ! general set of steps that are intended to be applicable to most change !
efforts…..Considerably more effort needs to be expended identifying ! situational factors that may require modifying the general stages of planned ! change.
Combe (2014) states that, in a study of CEOs, IBM (2008) identified the top challenges to successfully implementing strategic change as:
1. Changing mindsets and attitudes (58%) 2. Corporate culture (49%)
4. Shortage of resources (33%)
5. Lack of higher management commitment (32%) 6. Lack of change know-how (20%)
7. Lack of motivation of involved employees (16%)