Change is the law of life, since it enables humans, societies, and the organizations to cope with the inherent dynamism of time, and from this perspective one can identify change as an integral part of survival mechanism at any level of existence. The significance of change from the organizational perspective can be realized from the words of Hayes (36), who stated, "the paradigms of change are of great importance in how an organization is shaped by its environment, referring to economic conditions, competition, political interests and, consumer preferences," as "the essence of the punctuated equilibrium is that systems (organizations) evolve through the alteration of periods of equilibrium."
However, it will always be a mistake to go for a change for change’s sake, especially from the organizational perspective, where an inappropriate change may not only push an organization and its employees to the brink of disaster, but also make considerable negative impact in the business environment. Thus change from an organizational perspective should be considered as an extremely important as well as delicate instrument for the sustenance and development of an organization. For that matter, any change initiative should adopt a systematic approach that includes competent change agents, systematic diagnosis of the company situation, identification of the drivers for change, adoption of an appropriate change model, and a clear provision to evaluate the actual change outcome with estimated change results. According to Hayes (35), "Change agency refers to the ability of a manager to affect the way an organization responds to change."
Keeping in view of the above preconditions, this study presents a detailed change proposal for XYZ Company by following Gibson et al.’s (494) Seven-Step Model for managing the change and accordingly it first presents the rationale of change followed by the details of the findings regarding the change drivers for XYZ Company, before presenting the proposed steps of change and the expected outcome of change.
RATIONALE OF CHANGE
The XYZ Company holds around 38% share in the cellular service industry sector in the country with a heterogeneous employee as well customer base. In view of the increasing state of cellular service, such as 9% growth of the industry per annum, this company is expected to increase its business volume in all its branches. At this point it has been found the volume of sales in its branch M has been steadily decreasing since the last year, contrary to its other 18 branches across the country. Such state of affairs thus commanded a systematic investigation to find the required drivers for change and this study conducted PEST and SWOT analysis to find the same.
The PEST analysis underpins the following points:
The political and economic situation are supporting to the Branch M; and
In spite of the same it is failing to do business at expected level.
The above findings of the PEST strongly suggest that there may be some internal force that is preventing the Branch M.
The SWOT analysis underpins the following points:
The company needs to implement new customer care system in the Branch M and to deploy experts in managing the same;
The company needs to develop cultural competency of its workforce through training;
The company needs to develop inter-team and intra-team communication through training;
The company needs to build knowledge-sharing culture among workers; and
The company needs to change the current organizational culture and its work culture especially in the Customer Care Department (henceforth will be mentioned as CCD).
Proposed Steps of Change. With the aid of the inputs gained from the PEST and SWOT analyses, this study follows Gibson et al.’s (494) Seven-Step Model for the management of organizational change.
Step 1: Identifying Forces for Change. Here the study found technology within environment and behavior within internal situation as the two forces for change, where the existing customer care system has become outdated and creating noise (Gibson et al. 436) in communication and the current executives of the CCD are not letting to implement the advanced customer care system. The second issue can be described as a classic case of what Senge (Audiobook) once commented, that “People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.”
Step 2: Identifying the Impact. Due to the state of affairs as mentioned in step 1, the performance outcomes of the Branch M are being highly affected at all the three levels, such as organizational, group, and individual levels. A brief account of the affairs in the CCD would explain it. For example, the current system cannot share the customer complaints/requests instantly to the Branch M database due to its conflict with the current versions of browsers and the same cannot be processed immediately to the customers’ satisfaction, unless the executive copies the same and uploads separately to the database. Therefore, failure to record the customer complaint in Branch M database causes harassment of the customers, who blame the CCD in general and some of them even terminate the service agreement on the ground of non-redressal of their grievances. However, none of the 16 executives takes responsibility of such cases and labels any such issue as false allegation. On the other hand, foreign workers who are already conversant with advanced customer care systems but are placed in other departments, feel depressed by not getting the scope to successfully run the customer care service.
Step 3: Diagnosis of the Problem. The proposer has already identified the simmering grievances of foreign nationals working in this branch, besides identifying an undercurrent tension between two groups, such as a group of the native employees and a group of foreign nationals. Further, the proposer has come to know that some of the talented foreign workers are already seeking change in the competitor companies, which does not augur well for the future of the XYZ Company, since it is not easy to find their levels of expertise and attitude to work.
The above state of affairs prompts this proposer to infer that
There are two distinct problems, such as technological crisis and cross-cultural competency;
The technological infrastructure of the CCD should be changed and competent workforce should be deployed to manage that system;
The workforce of this branch should undergo cross-cultural training to increase its cross-cultural competency; and
The above change measures would sustain and develop the customer base of the company and prevent the possible exodus of expert workers.
Don’t you think it is necessary to change the customer care system as it has become outdated before modern versions of web services?
Don’t you think the experts irrespective of nationality should be deployed in that department?
Employees should undergo a cross-cultural training to increase their cultural competency.
The analyzed data from the same showed that 84% of the existing employees endorse the fact that customer care system should be updated, while 74% endorsed the view that existing experts in advance customer care system should be inducted in that department and 79% supported the proposition of undergoing a cross-cultural training to increase individual cross-cultural competency.
Figure 1: Results of the Covert Survey
The above findings make one thing very clear – that resistance to change (RTC) factor would not be that intense to manage, since only 17% of the employees do not support the above changes, while the rest of the employees are in favor of the change.
Step 4: Selection of Appropriate Intervention. The proposer finds it important to select appropriate intervention at structural, technology, and behavior level due to three distinctive reasons, such as the CCD requires changing its technological infrastructure (technological change) and its executives (structural), besides developing cross-cultural competency of the workers (behavioral) in general.
Step 5: Identifying the Constraints. This proposer identifies leadership climate and organization culture as the two constraints due to two distinctive reasons, such as the existing customer care executives succeeding in stalling the implementation of the advanced system due to a laissez-faire (Tarsik, Kassim, and Nasharudin 3) approach of the current leadership and there are several instances of conflict between native and foreign workers.
Step 6: Implementation of the Method. The proposer evaluated three change models, viz., Kotter’s (1-187) Eight-Step Model, Burke and Litwin’s (523) Burke-Litwin Model (BLM), and Hiatt’s (2) ADKAR Model, before identifying BLM as the most appropriate within the context of the XYZ Company as well within the context of its Branch M, which requires to transform the employee attitude to work and employee behavior at interpersonal and group level. Therefore it requires a change model with maximum possible drivers of transformational change, where BLM provides the same. Due to space constraint, only the summary of the findings from a comparative study of those models are tabled below:
BLM contains 12 theoretical constructs that distinguishes the organisational culture from organisational climate, besides distinguishing the transformational dynamics of the organisation from its transactional dynamics and specifying the nature and direction of influence of organisational variables (Burke and Litwin 528). Thus, the first stage of action would be to explore the following diagram of BLM:
Figure 2: Burke-Litwin Model
[Adapted from Burke and Litwin (528)]
The above figure shows that BLM adopts an upward spiral path and keeps open all options of obtaining help from all resources through its system of utilizing bidirectional feedbacks. It clearly identifies the sources of work climate that leads to motivation and better organizational performance. On the other hand, it leaves the transactional issues to the management, while keeping the transformational issues to the leadership, thereby setting appropriate roles for the management and the leadership regarding change initiative.
The next job would be to explore the current status of the variables within the context of Branch M besides deciding on the expected status of them.
The change committee comprising of the management representatives, leadership, and the change agents should approve the above set of decisions and create a detailed task list regarding the proposed change along with timeline.
Step 7: Evaluation of the Method. After the completion of sixth week of the change initiative, the change agents will start collecting feedback from the workforce as well as from the customers regarding both changes, which might take a month. After that the change team will examine them and will decide on whether the change solutions require any adjustment.
Estimated Expenditure
It is not possible to estimate the cost of advanced customer care system, as its vendors present quotes only on official request of an organization. However, the cost of a six-day cross-cultural training program normally ranges between $9000 to $1800 (Chebium, 2015).
Expected Outcomes of Change Measures
A sample of three-level cross-cultural training model (Kwong) shows how the cross-cultural competency of the employees can be increased.
Figure 3: Mechanism of a Cross-Cultural Training Model
[Adapted from Kwong]
Next, the effect of the above training would develop both inter-team communication that works at macro level and intra-team communication that works at micro level within the Branch M in the following manner:
Figure 4: Inter-team Communication [Author]
In case of inter-team communication, various teams would operate together as per their jobs with an aim of achieving the desired organizational outcome.
Figure 5: Intra-team Communication [Author]
Understandably, the communication flow projected above would definitely provide solution to customer care issues, besides developing cultural competency of the Branch M workers as a whole, which in turn would bring more business to the XYZ Company. CONCLUSION
The change proposed in this study altogether clears three points – one, the technical change would stop the erosion of the customer base of the Branch M; two, the behavioral change would ensure more knowledge sharing in the department; and three, the cumulative impact of the above two would bring in more business for the XYZ Company, besides bringing in more happiness to the employees of the Branch M. This study, therefore, believes that the above proposal, which is based on an honest investigation and consultation of appropriate literature, would win the confidence of the management and receive the necessary approval for its implementation.
Works Cited
Burke, W.Warner and George, H. Litwin. “A causal model of organizational performance and change.” Journal of Management 18.3 (1992): 523-545. Print.
Chebium, Raju. “How to Create an Effective Cross-Cultural Training Program.” SHRM 60.1 (2015). Web. 21 February 2016.
Hayes, John. The theory and practice of change management (2nd edition). NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.
Hiatt, Jeffrey M. ADKAR: a model for change in business, government, and our community (1st ed). Loveland, Colorado: Prosci Research, 2006. Print.
Kotter, John P. Leading change. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1996. Print.
Kwong, M.H. “Toward a better understanding of culturally competent practice.” 2008. Web. 21 February 2016.
Senge, Peter Michael. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Random House Audio, 1999. Audio CD.
Tarsik, Nor Famiza, Norliya Ahmad Kassim and Nurhidayah Nasharudin. “Transformational, Transactional or Laissez-Faire: What Styles do University Librarians Practice?” Journal of Organizational Management Studies, 2014 (2014): 1- 10. Print.
