Blog 3 Task – Change Management

Question 3

A business change is defined as restructuring and remodeling of the business operations and organisational flows from time to time. It is also related heavily on the change management of the company organisation. Change is indeed important for business operations in order to ensure the long-term sustainability of the company. To manage the change, Transtheoretical model of change can be used as its guidelines to monitor the human change behaviour. The change model is illustrated in Figure 3.1 below.

Figure 3.1 – The Transtheoretical Model of Change (Boston University School of Public Health 2013)

Based on the change model in Figure 3.1, there are 5 main stages of change. The stages are contemplation (includes both pre-contemplation and contemplation), determination, action, relapse, and maintenance (Boston University School of Public Health 2013). People are not ready for change during the contemplation stage and they will tend to refuse change. At determination stage, people started to be ready to accept and take change. This is followed by action stage, where people are making changes significantly. After that, there is a relapse stage, where a period of time is given to monitor a person whether relapse occurs or not before proceeding to maintenance stage of change. At maintenance stage, a person sustained the change and to maintain their current state of change (Ijevleva & Arefjevs 2014). As a whole, the process of Transtheoretical model of change can also be related to Kotter change curve model, where the change stages involved are denial, anger, depression, experiment, acceptance, and integration (Change Management Toolkit 2013; Quiros 2014; Jaffe & Scott 2010; The University Of Warwick 2015). The Kotter change curve model is shown in Figure 3.2 below.

Figure 3.2 – The stages involved in Kotter Change Curve Model (Quiros 2014, p1)

Based on Figure 3.2 that shows Kotter change curve model, the people will show certain shock and numbness on the change implementation. This leads to the denial of the people to accept and adopt the changes. This process will then followed by anger and depressions, where the people will tend to placing blame on the change issues. After certain level of depression, the process will be followed by acceptance and acknowledgement of change, where the people will start adopting the changes at this stage. This is then followed by testing of the change. Once the change testing is successfully adopted well, the people will go into the integration stage, where this leads to new change model of the organisation. At this stage, new opportunities and new way of working approaches are carried out in the organisation (Quiros 2014; Jaffe & Scott 2010; Zigarmi & Hoekstra 2008). However, there are advantages and limitations of this model. The advantages and its limitations are stated in table 3.1 below.

Kotter Change Curve Model
Advantages	Limitations
Culture of the classical hierarchies are well considered	A rigid approach and sense of urgency is not established well
There are clear details for each of the process	Difficulties in studying the change management projects
The steps are well communicated and promote higher successfulness of change	Lack of specific vision and declaring a vision too soon
The model is easy to understand	Obstacles to the new vision are not removed
Buy-in of employees are considered as the success factor	Guiding coalition not powerful enough

Table 3.1 – Kotter Change Model advantages and limitations (Petersen et al. 2007; Brisson-Banks 2010; Appelbaum et al. 2012; Akrivos et al. 2013)

However, there are also some disadvantages of business change to the company itself. The pros and cons of business change to the company are discussed in Table 3.2 and Table 3.3 respectively (Dawson 2005).

Positive aspects of business change

1. Increase productivity Productivity can be increased with the business changes in terms of technologies and organisational structure. According to the case study carried by Deogaonkar in year 2014, the telecommunications technologies helped in advancing India telecommunication company in terms of service quality and productivity. As a result, the company can compete better with their rivals.

2. Reduce the operation costs The operational costs can be decreased as changes involve in new equipments and machineries. These changes can replace the traditional methods in the past such as labour forces that incur more costs in long term aspect compared to the latest equipments. Resource utilization also can be fulfilled as a result of the changes in terms of equipments in business operations.

Table 3.2 – The positive aspects of business change to the company (Deogaonkar & Washimkar 2014; Dawson 2005; Donald & David 2006)

Negative aspects of business change

1. Involves failure risks The result of changes in business can be unpredictable as it not only requires the good change management of the company, but also the staffs’ commitment of adapting the change as well. Besides, the successfulness of the change also relies on company’s business environment in terms of internal and external. There is possibility that the company operations getting even worse due to the change.

2. Work stress among the staffs As changes require staffs to learn new methods that they are not familiar with, the staffs might having mental stress in the process of adapting new changes. Resistance of change among the staffs might be triggered due to the implementation of changes.

Table 3.3 – The negative aspects of business change to the company (Dawson 2005; Hornstein 2014; Donald & David 2006)

There are two company examples of the effective change management skills in the organisation. One of the company examples is British Airways. The British Airways CEO, Colin Marshall, makes transformation on British Airways operations in terms of its fleet services, organisational culture, and staff management starting in year 1983 (Grugulis & Wilkinson 2002; Grundy & Moxon 2013). Besides, he also adapted lean software development in managing the British Airways operations, in which this process promotes optimization use of resources in more efficient and effective way (Asmi 2012; Upchurch 2010). As such, he gave trainings and seminars to the staffs and management level to keep the business updated in line with aviation technologies. He uses the change curve model in approaching the staffs to adopt the business change (Upchurch 2010). As a result, he successfully transformed the British Airways operations by changing organisational culture of change effectively. Currently, British Airways new CEO, Willie Walsh, still continues to developing latest lean software development using change curve model approach to ensure the company sustainability in long-term (McCue 2006; Chapman 2010). The example of Lewin change model and Kotter change model used by British Airways can be referred to Figure 3.4 below.

Figure 3.4 – The Lewin change model adapted by British Airways (Akrivos et al. 2013, p3)

Another company example that illustrates positive impact of effective change management is Toyota from automobile industry. Toyota strikes for adapting the changes in terms of the operation flows and car quality monitoring. Akio Toyoda, the CEO of Toyota uses the change curve model in implementing just-in-time (JIT), Toyota Production System (TPS), and total quality management (TQM) strategies to the staffs and management level (Amasaka 2002; Shim & Steers 2012). In order to have effective change management, Toyota introduced scrum masters and adapted the Lewin change model as illustrated in Figure 3.4 to monitor and ensure the staffs accept the business change through coaching and learning practices process (Chowdhury 2014). As a result, Toyota maintained its high operation level and successfully shaped strong branding image of its excellent product quality (Jayaram et al. 2010). Figure 3.5 shows Toyota problem solving framework in adapting the operational change.

Figure 3.5 – Toyota Problem Solving framework (Jayaram et al. 2010)

In a nutshell, the writer has the thought that managers should use the change models such as Transtheoretical model and change curve model in change management. This is because the change models can bring positive transformations on organisation’s business that greatly benefits the organisations in terms of management and sustainability (Nikezić 2015). Adequate trainings and coaching should come together with the change model implementation to ensure that the staffs can adopt the change effectively and systematically (Hornstein 2014; Grugulis & Wilkinson 2002). These measures can promote better business change results to the organisation.

(812 words excluding figures and tables)

References

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