Effects Of Change Management On Organizational Performance In The Telecomunication Industry
[A CASE STUDY OF MTN NIGERIA]

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1    Background of the Study
Organizational performance is a fundamental variable for telecommunication industry in achieving its objectives and goals. Employees are an important asset to an organization that may affect it either positively or negatively. Due to unavoidable environmental changes, organizations today have been challenged to advocate for changes that influence Organizational performance. Therefore the top management has to ensure that factors that influence employees ‘performance are taken into consideration. Management can be defined as a creative and systematic flow of knowledge that can be applied to achieve quality results by using human as well as other resources in an effective way (Drucker, 2003).
 The importance of management in organizations today has increased multifold. Strategic outcomes depend on ways of management in organization, therefore key management functions that include learning to delegate, planning, organizing, communicating clearly, motivating employees, adapting to change and constantly generating innovative ideas are crucial. Change is unavoidable in organizations today and is of paramount importance to study how change factors affect organizational performance. Change is what presses us out of our comfort zone and it is inevitable (Sidikova, 2011). Kitur (2015) is of the view that change comes in an organization in many forms: merger, acquisition, joint venture, new leadership, technology implementation, organizational restructuring, and change in products or regulatory compliance. The change may be planned years in advance or may be forced upon an organization because of a shift in the environment. Organizational change can be radical and alter the way an organization operates, or it may be incremental and slowly change the way things are done. Change management can be defined as a style of management that aims at encouraging organizations and individuals to deal effectively with the changes taking place in their work. (Green, 2007).
 For change management to be successful and its impact positive, managers or supervisors in the organizations need to understand what motivates their team and enroll employee participation. In fact separating managers from leadership in terms of style is difficult because every manager needs to have leadership skills to get activities done and every leader should have managerial skills to induce workers to change directions. This is especially important in organizations or institutions which are going through change since constant motivation and guidelines are needed for effectiveness of employee performance (McLagan, 2002).
 The Nigerians Global System for Mobile Telecommunications (GSM) and Information Technology sector is fast growing and it is characterized by dynamic changes. Telecommunication industries witness dramatic changes at all levels (Tsekoa, 2002; Garber, 2013). There are many drivers for change in the telecommunication sector; caused by technological advancement, fierce competition that has risen drastically in the last years, and the need to develop new services in the telecommunication sector (Hodges, 1995). Telecommunication organizations need razor-sharp reflexes to cope with the fast changing technologies and management skills. Therefore, change management is a vital tool to be adopted by the telecommunication sector to maintain development and growth (Kanter 1991; Tsekoa 200
In the year 1990, there were only 11 million subscribers worldwide, but the introduction of digital services in the early 1990s, combined with competitive service provision and a shift to prepaid billing, spurred rapid growth in demand. However, Nigeria has not been left out of this race for rapid change and development in telecommunication industries, although the journey to success in the milieu had been long and tortuous because the industry failed to realize the importance of adopting strategic Change Management practices concern with how well changes are managed in organizations so as to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic creation of a highly committed and capable workforce.
The development of telecommunications facilities in Nigeria began in 1886 when a cable connection was established between Lagos and London by the colonial administration (Adegboyega, 2008). However, as the European mercantile activities gained foothold in the country, the first commercial trunk telephone service was established to link International Telephone Unit (ITU) and Calabar in 1923. In those early days, services were primitive and the coordinated pegboard switching system was used. The rapid change and transformation from primitive technology to a more advanced global switch system that was today lead to the invention of GSM was a result of change management practice adopted by the telecommunication industries to create enabling environment for the structural and technological change in the system.