Question

An organization that is managed in a traditional and bureaucratic way will find itself stagnant, dysfunctional, and unable to adapt to its environment. Write a short essay that explains people change and culture change, and evaluate why they are necessary to achieve the change process. Be sure to include a detailed example of each in your answer.

Answer 1

Traditional and Bureaucratic organizations are basically very formal and arranged. they need organisational charts for each department. Employees knows their place and responsibilities and are in charge of only performing their day to day activities of the corporate. Traditional and Bureaucratic organisations are basically very inflexible and are therefore very immune to change. Typically, many levels of Management exist during a bureaucratic organisation, but the decision making is held by a really few people within the organisation especially CEO, CFO etc. Hence decision is extremely slow, thanks to the inherent nature of the organisation. Any decision matter is pushed up through the hierarchy to the senior most officers. This makes the method of change very slow and these organisations cannot adapt quickly to the environmental changes and ultimately becomes stagnant.

For Example: Government Organisations especially in countries like India where bureaucrats are least bothered of the change.

So, what's it that makes some organizations better ready to reform than others? Effective Change Management is that the key between success and Failure

Change is the essential link in management today. Market, product and competitive conditions are rapidly changing. Change is an alteration within the existing field of forces (external & internal) that tends to affect the equilibrium of an organisation.

In an era of accelerating change, organization’s degree to excellence is judged by its ability to deal with these changes. Organizations either become more adaptive, flexible and anticipative or they become rigid, stagnant and react to vary after the very fact, often when it's too late. Therefore, Managers must do quite just react; they need to be ready to anticipate the changing patterns of individuals, markets, products, services and technology.

The various levels of change are Knowledge Changes, Attitudinal Changes, Individual Behaviour Changes, Group or Organisational performance Changes.

Changes in knowledge tend to be the simplest to make; they will occur as a result of reading a book or a piece of writing or hearing something new from a respected person. Attitude structures differ from knowledge structures therein they’re emotionally charged during a positive or a negative way. Changes in individual behaviour seem to be significantly harder and time consuming. While individual behaviour is difficult enough to vary , it becomes even more complicated once you attempt to implement change within groups or organisations.

Change in any organization is tough to realize and if there are barriers that are institutional or structural then it becomes harder to drive through change. or instance, many family-owned businesses just like the TATA and therefore the Reliance Group often have charismatic and visionary leaders who are drawn from the family that features a controlling stake. On the opposite hand, professionally managed companies like Unilever and P&G are controlled by managers who got to answer all the stakeholders aside from those that have a majority stake within the company. So, the purpose is that it's easier for a person who has got to answer to fewer stakeholders to drive through change as against a manager who has got to take under consideration the requirements of the many stakeholders.

This is the rationale that Reliance has been hugely successful in implementing visionary and unique change programs over the course of the previous couple of decades whereas other companies have had moderate successes in driving through organizational change. Of course, Infosys is that the exception because the company runs on an owner-manager basis where the main stakeholders run the corporate professionally rather than like closed corporation manner. This accounts for the exceptional growth of the corporate over the years where its visionary leaders were ready to carry all the stakeholders with their business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit. On the opposite hand, companies like Unilever and P&G often take their time to drive organizational change thanks to lack of commitment from the managerial class or due to the absence of a motivational leader who holds a stake also .

The point here is that when the mixture of a visionary leader with substantial stake arises, then there's the double whammy of vision and votes on the board which make it easier for the organization to drive through change. Of course, the flip side is that the change program might fail because it's not well rounded or comprehensive and just relies solely on the leaders’ abilities. On the opposite hand, it's common to seek out companies like Unilever and P&G institute organizational change that's lasting and comprehensive mainly due to the varied levels the change management program goes through before acceptance.

It is clear that for effective change to be institutionalized, the change management program must have a mix of vision and nuts and bolts depth which comes if the leader also can achieve getting the change program vetted by all the stakeholders. Hence, companies like Infosys and to an extent the TATA group have managed to drive through change that's both leading edge and has enough depth. However, this is often to not say that either family businesses or professionally run companies have an edge over change management. Just that within the case of the previous , it's easier to urge stock whereas within the case of the latter, the change management program has got to undergo several layers of approval.

In conclusion, companies that have visionaries who can carry large sections of the organization alongside them often achieve driving through change better than companies that are bureaucratic or whose organizational arteries became clogged thanks to inertia and slowness to adapt to the marketplace.