Managing Change Organisations

Managing Change Organisations

Change is not new to organisations. From the beginning to the end organisations are facing to changers due to drivers such as globalisation, new technology, inflation, environmental changes, customer expectations and competition. Most of well established and also newly established organisations are able to face the changes and to win them by using techniques and theories.

Globalisation is one of major drivers of change. Due to the globalisation organisation cannot survive in the market all alone and therefore all the organisations need to change according to the new business environments. As a result of globalisation the barriers to enter to the global market are removed. Also it creates both opportunities and treats for organisations. So changes need to be done to retain in the competitive market. New technology is another driver of change. Globalisation helps organisations to share the new technology. Competition is another factor that forces organisations to change. In order to retain in the competitive market organisations need to adopt the new technology. Also organisations required to change according to customers' need. Customer expectations are changing with time and because the future of an organisation mainly depends on its customers, changes need to be done in according to customers' expectations.

An organisation that has faced some of above mentioned drivers is Ethames Graduate School. It is an organisation established in United Kingdom which is a resulted of globalisation and now facilitates the higher education to international student. They have built a new building in Canary Wharf and also they have added lots of facilities to the whole campus in order to retain in the competitive market and to satisfy the customer expectations. They have introduced live campus web site, online assignment submission link and plagiarism check which were resulted of adopting new technology. Also the management has announced the students to wear formal clothes to adapt to the environmental change from Ilford to Canary Wharf.

The Classical approach

This concept highlights a one best universal organisational form for all bodies. Burnes (2000) highlights the approach as a concept that follow 'the one best way' to achieve companies' success and that is treating the people as economic beings motivated by money to achieve companies' goals.

Human resource approach

This explained the important of individual contribution to the organisation. Further it highlights the disadvantages of strict rules and regulation for an organisation to get the maximum output of employees. This approach indicate the importance of identifying and understanding the emotional and economic needs of people who work for the organisation, their strengths to be developed and weaknesses to be overcome in order to achieve organisations success.

The contingency theory approach

The contingency theory approach is rejecting the theory of classical approach. That is instead of following the 'one best way' approach; Carnall (1995) identifies the contingency approach as an approach that follow the assumption of there is 'no one best way' to create organisational structure. Also the author states that instead of depend on one factor, structure and operation of the organisation is depend upon a range of factors such as size, nature, history of the organisation, the technology that organisation use, expectations and nature of employees and customers. Therefore this approach indicates the important of developing several strategies to meet the organisational effectiveness according to different circumstances of new technology, resources and other factors that are affect in the environment that organisation operation.

Bureaucratic organisation

Bureaucratic organisation

In 1947 Max Weber suggested the bureaucratic organisation concept that organisations could be managed on an impersonal, rational basis. This impersonal concept is more helpful to the organisation to change as it is based on formal organisational structure rather than personal. Carnall (1995) highlights the bureaucratic organisations as an approach which is based on impersonal and reliance on control of workers whilst it provides equal opportunities for all employees. Also it has a nature of high degree of job specifications. It has a clear hierarchical structure. Further the organisations are maintains detailed regular rules and procedures for its paper works to deal with workers as well as its output. This structure is suitable for organisations which are operating in a stable and simple environment.

Strengths and weaknesses of the bureaucratic organisation

Strengths

In a bureaucratic organisation there is a clear hierarchical structure. The power and the authority increase bottom to top. Most of the time the top levels of an organisations are holding by more educated and experienced people and each level managers have clearly specified authorities. Since the top level have the full authority to control the lower level workers it help to enhance the productivity of the organisation.

Bureaucratic organisation has sets of well defined rules and regulations for every department which help the organisation to maintain the organisations stability and effectiveness by observing and controlling the employees within the organisation. Ensuring that employees in all the levels are working in the right track according to the rules and regulations it helps to achieve organisational goals. Also it helps the organisation to ensure the uniformity of procedures and operations.

Impersonality nature of organisations ensures the fairness for all employees and also avoids the favouritism by managers. The impersonality leads managers to treat the employees in the formal ways rather than personal or emotional ways. Therefore it leads to a good inter-relation of the managers and employees within the organisation.

The job specialisation of each divisions of work helps the organisation to get the maximum output of its workers by utilisation of the human resources. And use of specialised people to certain divisions resulted to improve the quality of the output.

Weaknesses

Since it has a tall hierarchy, it prevent to take the right action at the right time therefore it lead the organisation to slow down of taking corrective action. Today's organizations face to high competition in the market place. Hence slow down of any corrective action may lead the company to lose its position in the market