The transition that a firm or any organization undergoes is referred to as organizational change. The shift occurs as a result of a shift in the enterprise's strategies and the other major sectors of the organization adopting a new way of doing business. These modifications can also have a variety of effects on the performance of the firm's employees, as they can have a huge impact on the entire crew. Organizational change can therefore be detected or occur in the organization's structure; it can also occur in the organizational operation structure as well as the magnitude of the company's entire workforce. Change can also be noted as to occur to the working hours of the organization as well as the manner to which roles are carried out at different levels of the hierarchy of the organization. In concentrating on the scope of the role for a change to have taken place, then the situation, in which work is carried out and the structure as well as the terms and conditions or rather the new environment, is altered. This paper primarily researches on an organizational change that took place in a company, the causes and the introduction of the switch to the enterprise. It also checks on how the company handled the change and the outcome of the change to the organization to employees' motives and morale.
Background Research
Organizational change is a scenario in the business environment that can be of two types - namely the planned change and the unplanned change. The planned change is the incidence that occurs due to the deliberate decision that, in turn, alters the organization operation. It can also be described as the international, goal-oriented activity that invokes the changes in a company or business. On the other hand, the unplanned change is always imposed on the company or the organization and is not always foreseen to be happening. Another term or rather a scenario that can be associated with the organizational change is the corporate development, which can also be defined as the approaches that can be used to improve the employee and the organization at great effectiveness. Through the various inputs of the interventions that improve the processes and the strategy, which immediately bears the human aspect of the team.
Furthermore, the keenly looking at the features of the organizational development will find that a corporate development is simply the educational strategy, which intends to bring changes, which are mainly planned. It is also greatly related to the company issues rather than the hypothetical cases within an organization. It uses sensitive training ways or methods, which lay emphasis on the experimental basis. The changes agent of the organization is mainly the external causes, which together with the internal organization's managerial executives, can establish a good relationship, which involves the collaboration on the mutual trust and influences the jointly determined set goals and ambitions.
The organizational change has derivative forces that cause or impose the change in the organization
This includes the external forces and the internal forces. The external forces can entail various aspects that include the technological change, global change (Globalization), both the social and the political changes, and the workforce diversity that occurs in the organization. Then, looking at the internal forces that can induce changes in an organization includes the variations in the managerial personnel and a decline of the effectiveness among the workers; internal changes also include the change in climate and crisis among the staff or at individual levels. Numerous issues and problems that can take place in the existing systems of the organization and the expectation per every employee can also impose a change to the team (Markus & Robey, 1988).
Discussion
For a change to take place in the business there also must be a chain of the processes that must take place, which involves the explained steps. Firstly, the change starts from the unfreezing state, which involves the reduction of the quo; then, the change takes place, where the development of the new attitudes and values as well as the behaviors takes place. Lastly, there goes the refreezing stage, which reinforces the attitudes, values, and the behaviors that were involved in the change at the precedent process (Cornelius, 2001).
Another vital concept in the organizational change is the change agent, which is any person or factor with the abilities to stimulate, coordinate, and then cause the change in an organization.
The agents can also be either external or internal. They mainly have the responsibilities to make consultation, which involves the employees to find out the solutions to the problems that might be affecting the business. They also carry out training give the members chance to see the implications of the recent actions and compare it to the new set of skills and abilities that help in reading and translating the data.
In the Best Products Enterprises (BPE), a company, which deals as wholesale entrepreneurship, made technological changes in their organization so as to improve their marketing strategies, as the customer relationship with the business is also created.
The technological change involved the purchases of the new laptops and the desktops, which of were of high quality, including the Mac Books that could improve the business efficiency. The organization also developed and implemented the information system of the company as well as the installation of custom software that is specialized in certain operations within the organization. Its intent was to improve all sections operations as well cutting down cost and time of services. The company also went ahead to develop a comprehensive system of the customer relationship management (CRM), which is a system that mainly provides a cloud-based system of computing that manages various projects in the company. It also assigns the task and maintains the accurate log of client communications. The progress in making the technological change through the purchase of the new computers and new advancements made the organization to change its structures at large by making the changes to its departments through adding and removing other jobs that have been taken by the inclusion of the computer. The company took a step ahead to address the issue of the newly emerged change by inviting the experts to give professional training to the employee on how to operate the new system as well as how to use the new software that was installed by the company.
Through the new change of the organization, which is technology involved, there were the advancements in the communication sector of the business, as various processes and platforms for effective communication were also improved.
It came about through the purchase of the new computers and laptops, which could make everybody able to access the mailing services; and this has formed a platform for communication within the organization. Also, the technological change helped the creation of the company's website - now the information can be put on the staffs' template, and the employees could access it with ease. The experts also programmed personal digital applications that everybody within the business scope could have, and that also formed a platform of communication through texting and sending of short messages services. This mode of the communication is efficient to the BPE, as everybody in the company can access the relevant information at the correct time, and everybody can access the information from the top managerial executives (Cornelius, 2001).
The technological change had a lot of impact on the organization. The various benefits of the introduction of the various new technologies to the business included the reduction of the cost of operations. For example, the new software built had a purpose of controlling and automating the back office functions like the keeping of records, the accounting services as well as the payrolls of the employee. The new technological world also helps the business to secure different environments that assist in maintaining the sensitive information, including the customer information. The software programs installed are user-friendly; this helped the employee with little knowledge on the use of technology then to become able to use the programs that are easy in execution. The use of technology also helps the organization to improve the productivity of the employees. It is because the program that was installed helps the staff to produce more, as compared to using of the manual methods. The implementation of the technology helps the business to reduce the costs through the reduction of the human labor, thus there is a lowering of the labor costs. Also, the business technology helps the organization to reach another economic market through the use of the website, which can be accessed 24/7 in need of purchasing the goods and the services. The site also forms a platform for advertising the company products (Burns & Stalker, 1961).
The change theory, which is closest to the change methodology used by the organization, is the innovation essentials under the transforming philanthropy.
It involves the monitoring, evaluation, and the learning. It also stimulates the ideological perception on how to design and implement the control techniques as well as placing assessment processes, which strengthen the learning. It helps the organization to design and adapt to different approaches and methods that assist in monitoring the trend in the business and then carry out evaluation followed by learning on the critical needs of the organization, as it strives to meet the global challenges. It increases the impact of the organization and stays focused on the verge of a changing percept.
Summary
For any organization to achieve its goals in the challenging global market, it is effective to be able to make a change at any point that demand arises. It is because the organizational change has a lot of benefits to the workforce of the organization as well as greater profit realization to the company at large. As explained, the organizational change, which is a modification or rather the transformation that the team makes on its structures, it processes even the goods and services of the company. It can either be on the structure of the organization or of the magnitude of the workforce, which can entail the change in working schedule. It also occurs in different types, including the planned changes and the unplanned changes. The organizational change at a particular point can be associated with the organizational development, which are the planned approaches that help to improve the corporate effective at large. Change in an organization has a lot of benefits as seen in the scope of how the technological change brought about a lot of advantages to the workforce and, as a result, the ease of the organizational operation.
References
Cornelius, N. (2001). Human Resource Management: A Managerial Perspective. (2nd ed.) London: Thomson Learning, Print, 388.
Markus, M. L., & Robey, D. (1988). "Information technology and organizational change: causal structure in theory and research." Management Science, 34(5), 583-598.
Burns, T. E., & Stalker, G. M. (1961). The Management of Innovation. London: Travistock Publications, Print, 269.
