2.2.10 Change and its impact on organizations
A well-intended change can impact negatively on the performance of organizations. Negative impact of change in organization are evidenced in the form of reduction in productivity; reduction in competitiveness; confusion within the organization; and friction in the operations of organizational activities. Bruck (2002) emphasized that mitigating these negative impacts require that a change process should be carefully planned and adequately managed. Change is both risky and murky endeavor that can create undesirable results if the change process is not adequately managed. Blanchard (2010) observed that approximately 70 percent of change initiatives fail. This high rate of failure has made organizations cynical toward change initiatives.
2.2.11 Change Management Models and frameworks
As it was stated earlier in this study, there seems to be lack of managerial frameworks that help telecommunication companies implement effective change management practices and provide a lasting solution to some of the challenges the companies are facing during the change process. This paper closes this gap by presenting a managerial framework for the implementation of change management in the telecommunication sector. This has been deemed necessary as all of the available change management frameworks are general in nature and cannot be used to deal with the complexity and nature of change in the telecommunication sector. However, there are many change management frameworks available in the literatures that are conceptual in nature. One of these models is the ADKAR model for managing change. It stands for awareness of employees, their desire to change, their knowledge about change, ability to change, and reinforcement to keep change in place. This model can help managers to determine where their employees are in the change process. It only deals with leveraging employees capabilities to support the change, and it does not cover organizational aspects in the change process (Raftery 2009). Kotter (1996) has also presented a change management model as a result of studying change management practices in more than hundred organizations. Kotter’s model concentrates on making change occur; highlighting the importance of the feeling about the necessity of the change in the organization, and highlighting the need of effective communication through change process (Mou, 2013; Cameron and Green, 2004). However, the model does not cover fast changing business environments such as the telecommunication sector environment.
Another model of change management that has taken a significant take up in the field is Lewin’s Model of Change (Price and Chahal, 2006). Lewin’s model visualizes the change as the process which keeps the forces that affect the behavior of the system stable (Duffy, 1996). The change process according to Lewin’s model of change includes three steps: unfreezing the status quo, then changing to the desired future state, and refreezing the new state (Vakery and Antonio, 2010). Although the model is theoretically comprehensive, it showed lack of practical tactics that can sustain organizational changes. Furthermore, O’Neill (2012) stated that the process of the organizational change can be successfully managed in five steps. First, create the big message. In this step managers must identify what’s in it for me? They must also share the message of the change, and the need for the change, as well as the benefits of changes in the workplace with their employees. Second, take the Pulse of the Organization. In this step, change managers must use many approaches to determine the readiness of the change and attitudes of employees and holding short informal meetings and conversations to make people invested in the plan. Third, deliver the Message by creating an overall communication plan. Fourth, Support the Move; this step includes celebration and organizing a ribbon cutting for starting the move process. Fifth, evaluating the process; this last step includes conducting interviews and distributing surveys to evaluate the process as well as summarizing the lessons and applying them to improve the process of change. While this model is one of the best available models of change, it lacks clear identification of strategies to deal with employees’ resistance and organizational readiness aspects.
Change models in an organization can either be planned or unplanned. Planned change is a proactive response which aims to developing an organization capabilities and core competencies in order to improve the organizations performance and achieve its business objectives. Such change is usually an incremental, process-oriented, focused on long term benefits, and is expected by various stakeholders in the organization. It usually has internal focus on resources strategies and processes (Kates et al, 2006). Unplanned change on the other hand is a reactive response to pressure caused by alterations in the internal and external conditions. Such change is usually radical and change oriented. It usually has an external focus on the shifts in the environment and industry and applies to a specific division of an organization Bertels, 2010).
