MSC in Maritime Operations & Management 1 City University London

Discuss the possible psychological effects of the introduction of a significant change management programme within an organisation on the employees of that organisation .in addition critically explore possible mitigation effects.

1.0 About Change Management

Change Management is an advanced as well as the modern field of management. Change Management over past few years is almost with all Leading and Successive Companies and is with every one as one among all situations of life (Doolin, 2003, p-70). The process of continuous renewing an organisations Structure, direction and strengths in order to fulfil the needs of its stake holders, shareholders and internal and external customers, is the Change Management. Most three fundamental assumptions which the change management visualises the dominant approach to change to incorporate within each personnel among organisations is, firstly the acceptance of change, without any question is for the survival of the Organisation they work for (French and Bell, 1999). Secondly the change is always treated as threat to successive organisations (Peters and Waterman, 1992). Thirdly, Change is Show cased as strength of Leadership (Bass 1999, Wood Ward and Hendry 2004).

2.0 Types of changes that come across within organisation The only key important for a leading successful change is by developing a change strategy that will fit the type and scope of the change that which you are working for. Depending on the goal to which extent the acceptance of change and employee involvement the organisational change is planned and carried out. The three types of commonly used organisational change processes are, the developmental, transformational and Transitional (Ackerman 1997).

Ashraf Ali Ahmed 090039659

MSC in Maritime Operations & Management 2 City University London

2.0.1 Development Change

Development change comes into the focus when an organisation makes a further one step ahead in improvement to their existing business. When a company wants to provide more quality to their customers, increase of their standards and process improvement, these things among organisation considered as the development change. The first order change, emergent, planned is the Development change. The improvement of the existing skills or performance, correction of current process is the why mainly development change is for. Many companies to be in the race of competitive market, they continually involve in the development change.

2.0.2 Transitional Change

The transitional change is very much different from the development change, the newer procedures, newer policies, are replaced with the current policies and procedures of the company. The time period in which the old process and procedures are dismantled where the new procedures and policies are implemented is known as the transitional period. The result of the transitional change is unpredicted as the merger, corporate reorganisation, acquisitions, development of new products, involving new technologies, are the sample in the transitional change.

Transitional change is the second order change, which is planned, carried with regular interval, or radically. There are three stages in the process of transitional change these are, unfreezing the existing organisational equilibrium, moving to the further new position and refreezing the new equilibrium (Lewin, 1951).

2.0.3 Transformational Change

The sudden drastically transform of the companies process and the implementation of new technology is the practices in the transformational. This change is not the planned change and occurs generally after the transition period. This transformational change involves both the transitional and development change. The development and transitional change some times may not fulfil the needs of the organisation, in situations like change of supply chain
Ashraf Ali Ahmed 090039659

MSC in Maritime Operations & Management 3 City University London

significantly, unpredicted markets change rates rise or fallen, unpredicted competition, overdraft of revenue, or any other major mishaps (Linda S. Ackerman Anderson & Dean Anderson, pp-31, 39).

Two dimensional change views, the two dimensional change shows how the change is controlled and how radical the change is. The figure illustrates the audit commission report which was taken recently. The prerequisite before any change is initiated in the organisation is to ensure the management is whole is fulfil with the right strategies and measures for the successful flow of change management. Employees of the organisation does not take responsibility of the change, they only give the work to be effective, individual work effort and accuracy of speed of performance is only tackled with the employees, so manage ment has to prepare the change to be more important.

2.0.4 Planned and unplanned change

Organisational change might be planned and unplanned among the organisations. Sometimes the change in the organisation is unpredicted and needs the implementation and deliberate decision on change management has to be taken by managers, this type is the unplanned change.

3.0 Change might be unpredictable and spontaneous in two ways

Firstly, sometimes decisions emerge from the managers, and these change plans are unspoken and involves employees assumptions out of scope about the organisation. To make the things more profitable and worth full the management raise these type of change management plans among the organisations without any stakeholders. intimation about this prior with the employees or

Secondly, sometimes the change which is planned prior and presently executing with much care by the managers will run out of control and makes the management to involve for the unplanned change. For example, when HALLMARK Greeting Cards Company planned to be
Ashraf Ali Ahmed 090039659

MSC in Maritime Operations & Management 4 City University London

one of top business company in greeting cards, so it has planned almost for 3 years for drastic improvement in design of cards and introduced the silky and lively finish of cards with much impressive pictures and the change management plan was successive in much less than a month. Another example is the Nokia, one of top leading manufacturer of mobiles have investigated the error, faulty of their batteries in various models with 5 million mobile sets on 27th august 2007. It was investigated Matsushita Electrical Company, Japan based batteries manufacturer has supplied fault batteries (with BL-5C series) to Nokia. The fault with batteries were much overheating and as a pilot change management plan both Nokia and Matsushita jointly initiated the process to replace the batteries to customers with free of cost.

4.0 Measures for the Effective Organisational Change Management

Change Management does not involve any single step process, or any only one individual involvement, change is complex and above it does not only have single solution. Proper and perfect training has to be provided to the employees involving in the change. Effective and Impressive Leadership has to be incorporated. Organisational development has to be implemented for the organisational effectiveness. Communication is more complex, the communication between the participants in change management must be clear and instructions to them must be understandable. Two way communications is much preferable.

Above all, HRs role in change management is most important and remarkable, as only HRs is responsible in accessing the change impact on individual, department, branch of organisation, another part of organisation, communicating the views of stakeholders and performance measurement.

5.0 Critical Findings

Employees should involve in all phases of change management, and make them informed in all steps of change as individual effort is the team success and change can resist strongly only when it gets roots from deeper. Change Management can be emergent or planned, change may be either but the prerequisites has to be carefully examined and to be started only when
Ashraf Ali Ahmed 090039659

MSC in Maritime Operations & Management 5 City University London

it is necessary. Need of change and the necessity of change of it has to be correctly educated to the participants in change management process, as best results appear only from clear understanding. Change process developed has to be perfectly suited for the problem, this can be achieved only by knowing current situation and future state of change by well expertise and managers. Leadership Practice is showcased only when the organisation is successful in it change process and the organisation should mould for every change management process initiated. Companies often implement change, as for renewing, restructuring, innovation, to be with market change and for the profit interest of customers, stake holders and share holders. Change management performed has to be planned for long term, as the change result is unpredictable the long run plan change can involve some corrective and supportive changes for a successive change. Organisational change is emergent element; it is not linear or not fixed. The change may vary the goals start up at the initiative. Strength of the success of the organisation is reported only when the change is performed and outcome is successful.

6.0 Conclusion The change will be successful when the equal contribution happens among all the levels of the organisation. Different kinds of change require different strategies and plans to effectively gain employee engagement and acceptance of change. However, change is a requirement when an organisation faces trouble through this competitive business world. The change management is therefore performing its inevitable role to make it easier for the organisations. The three types of change that occur most frequently within organisations are developmental, transitional and transformational change. However, change management theories effectively support how to deal with developmental and transitional change, but are less effective at dealing with successfully implementing transformational change (Ref# Linda S. Ackerman Anderson & Dean Anderson, pp-31, 39). A critical step in determining which approach to use in overcoming resistance to implementing organisation change is to determine which type of change the organisation is experiencing. This is why Fisher and Torbert in 1991 states that, applied to individuals and to organisations through a process we call action inquiry (Ref# Fisher and Torbert, 1991, pp-143, 73). Inquiry is must related factor of an organisation in critical considerations.

Ashraf Ali Ahmed 090039659

MSC in Maritime Operations & Management 6 City University London

However, as a shipping business the use of change management could be very vital for its problem solving situations as well as the organisational expansion. Though, the change management is very effective it has some excessive demerits of its improper uses.

Ashraf Ali Ahmed 090039659

MSC in Maritime Operations & Management 7 City University London

References (Part A):

1. Doolin, B. (2003), Narratives of change: discourse, technology and organization, Organization, Vol. 10 No.4, pp.751-70.

2. French, W.L., Bell, C.H. (1999), Organization Development: Behavioral Science Interventions for Organizational Improvement, 6th ed., Prentice-Hall.

3. Peters, T., Waterman, R. (1982), In Search of Excellence Woodward, S., Hendry, C. (2004), Leading and coping with change, Journal of Change Management, Vol. 4 No.2

4. Bass, B. (1999), Two decades of research and development in transformational leadership, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology.

5. Beyond Change Management: Advanced Strategies for Today's Transformational Leaders, 2001. (Kindle Edition), Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer (A Wiley Company) Linda S. Ackerman Anderson & Dean Anderson, pp-31,32,39

6. Transforming managerial practice: beyond the achiever stage, Fisher, D., Torbert, W.R. 1991, in Woodman, R. W., Pasmore, W.A. (Eds), JAI Press, Greenwich, pp.14373.

Ashraf Ali Ahmed 090039659