Warrrilow, (2010) in his work stated that to effectively manage change in an environment experiencing change dynamics, there is a need to adopt strategies for managing such changes so that people can embrace change and direct it towards positive contribution of a given organization. He therefore suggested the strategies for managing change. He further stated that when opting for a strategy, we should take into account not only the circumstances we face, but also the preferred managerial style. Kotter and Schlensinger (2008) therefore offered six highly situational dependent ways of overcoming resistance to change as discussed under the conceptual review. He concluded that the best tactics to be employed in order to overcome resistance to change is communication and participation. Lynn (2009) agreed that it is important to freely discuss changes as possible in order to avert grapevine and rumor. Miller and Friesen, (2000) observed that employees tends to show resistance to change even when their environment threaten them with extinction. Many authors (Maurer, 2006; Strebel, 2004; Waddell and Sohal, 2008, among others) stress that the reasons for the failure of many change initiatives can be found in resistance to change. Resistance is a phenomenon that affects the change process, delaying or slowing down its beginning, obstructing or hindering its implementation, and increasing its costs and generally reducing organizational performance (Ansoff, 2000). On the other hand, resistance is any conduct that tries to keep the status quo, and thus avoid change (Maurer, 2006; Rumelt, 2005). Resistance has also been considered as a source of information; being useful in learning how to develop a more successful change process therefore it‟s not a negative concept as it could show change managers certain aspects that are not properly considered in the change process (Waddell &Sohal, 2008). Robertson and Seneviratne (2005) further explained that changes in technology and physical setting to the ways change can be accomplished, which they group with organization arrangements and social factors into a category they label organizational work setting. Their model of the organizational change process has three phases: (a) planned interventions create changes in the organization work setting; (b) these changes in the work setting lead individuals to change their behavior; (c) these individual behavioral changes impact organizational performance and individual development, the key organization outcomes. Others involved in this discussion would emphasize that the intervention strategy needs to be driven by vision and strategy (Beckhard and Harris 2008), and that the arrows linking the components should be double-headed, reflecting the interactive nature of the components in the change process. Richard et al. (2009) noted that organizational performance should be related to factors such as profitability, improved service delivery, customer satisfaction, market share growth, and improved productivity and sales. Organization performance is therefore affected by a multiplicity of individuals, group, and task, technological, structural, managerial and environmental factors. He claims that there can be no change management without a modicum of information as to performance information in basis period and, ideally, a targeted performance in a future time period. He refers to four dimensions of evaluating performance in hotels; the customer dimension, employee dimension, internal process dimension, and the financial dimension. Different approaches used in managing change will result in either a decrease or increase in the variables under each dimension. Telecoms should therefore aim to ensure the effective management of change so as to improve the overall organizational performance. Mildred Golden Pryor,et al (200) conducted a study on challenges facing change management and conclusions drawn by these researchers are that the driving forces for organizational change are the need to constantly improve productivity and efficiency.
Kabir & Sambo (2013) studied on the effects of the change management factors on the Nigerian banks organizational performance and the implementation level of change management related factors among banks in Nigeria. Change Management factors are operationalised by reward and motivation, communication, empowerment, people’s involvement, training and education, creative culture for change and stimulating receptivity of organization to change. Data was sent and collected through a hand-delivery method. A proportionate stratified random sampling was used for sample selection. 500 questionnaires were sent to banks’ managers, but 392 of them were returned; giving a response rate of 78.4%. The findings showed that all dimensions of change management had a mean score of more than 3.00. These findings generally indicate that the bank managers perceived that their banks were implementing good change management practices related to reward and motivation, effective communication, training and education, employee empowerment, human involvement, creative organization culture and stimulating receptive to change factors of change management. Second, the results showed that change management factors such as revised reward system, people’s involvement, empowerment, training and education were significantly related to overall organizational performance in terms of turnover, profit margin, customer service delivery and operational cost reduction performance.
Aregbeyen (2011) in his study using paired data between 1986 and 2008 examine the impact of re-engineering of operational change on the performance of the fist bank PLC. The performance of the bank was assessed focusing on growth, profitability and the extent of financial intermediation. The analysis of the data showed that the re-engineering project significantly improved the profitability of the performance of the bank but not for the growth and the extents of its financial intermediation.
Udo &Benjamin (2016) examines the obstacles, resistance and impact of change in organizations. Taking the Saudi Telecommunication Company (STC) as the unit of analysis and utilizing descriptive analytic approach, we investigated the subject of discourse using a sample of 450 skilled employees. The results confirmed that ineffective change management team, poor support by the company’s management, lack of resources and planning, and lack of communication are the fundamental obstacles to change in the company. The findings further revealed that the causes of change resistance in the company revolves round employees being comfortable with the status quo, change is imposed by force, lack of clarity, several changes happen simultaneously, and the fear of the future state. Additionally, the study confirmed that change has overall negative impact on STC. This is so because change in the company leads to reduction in productivity and competitiveness, it results to confusion within the organization and it does not make the company’s operations run smoother or easier.
