Change is an inevitable element in an organization inspired by both internal and external factors. The process of change is accompanied by challenges that cause great stress slowing down or preventing the process from taking place (Myers, Hulks & Wiggins, 2012). Despite being cumbersome and expensive during implementation, organizational change is beneficial in ensuring that the organization copes with market trends or changes in human needs.
Internal Factors
Internal factors leading up to change are factors within the organization. The factors may be the need for engineering the organization's mission, organizational structure, mergers, and adoption of a new technology or enforcement of total quality management programs. Internal factors are the most crucial since they influence the organization’s ability to deliver or perform in a market with other competitors in case of a business set up (Myers, Hulks & Wiggins, 2012). The internal structure of an organization should be modified to the matrix structure especially in those that operate by meeting consumer needs. The matrix structure is a favorable organization structure since the consumer is given priority to suggest the quality or type of product they need as the organization provides the resources and the skills to accomplish the consumer needs (Gottlieb, 2007).
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External Factors
External factors leading to change are factors that occur outside the organization's environment such as competition, market change, and government regulations. A business organization or any organization that serves the public must always operate in the interest of the public (Myers, Hulks & Wiggins, 2012). In such cases, when there is a change that should be adopted to meet consumer needs, the change should be considered. In cases of competition for a common market, new strategies must be brought into effect to enable the organization to compete effectively. The government may also introduce laws and other regulations that may result in organizational change.
Stress
The leadership or the subordinate staff can initiate the change process. It should be conducted after a careful analysis of the organization needs and the inputs of all the stakeholders. The process is not a smooth especially especially when the leadership initiates it without involving the rest of the stakeholders in planning. The employees are the ones likely to suffer more due to the introduced change which causes some to suffer in health (Dahl, 2011).
Organizational changes are expensive, disruptive, and confusing to the employees, which cause the employees to reject or resist changes. In extreme cases, the employees may fail to turn up for duty especially when the introduced changes affect the organization in ways that affect the employees’ performance (Dahl, 2011). Such responses occur because organizations fail to conduct in-depth research of how the change will affect the employees. In case a comprehensive investigation was done, changes could be introduced smoothly. Therefore, changes should not be introduced randomly or abruptly but in order progressively. This will help the employees to be assimilated into the new process (Dahl, 2011). By introducing change in phases, the organization should be prepared to account for the time that it will take to implement the whole change process. The advantage of this slow change process is that it gives the organization time to check each change step and ensure, observe employee reaction, confirm if the change is aligning with the organization's goals and general objectives. A change may be introduced abruptly or speedily that will affect the firm's image negatively and destroy the brand image.
While applying Lewin’s change model, the leader should unfreeze the employees hold on old procedures or methods by taking them through a process of reviewing the benefits the new process would bring. In case they accept the change, the change is then applied as the second stage. Finally, the change is halted to prevent employees from springing back to the old procedures (Lussier & Kimball, 2009).
Conclusion
Organizational change is beneficial in transforming an organization to be able to meet the growing demand and the changing trend in human life. Changes may be due to both internal and external factors. Internal factors are factors within the organization while external factors arise from factors outside the organization. As the change is implemented, stress factors are likely to be experienced. The stress factors often affect the employees, which may lead to low turn-up, health problems, or employees quitting. A slow introduction of change will be found to be very beneficial to the organization since change cannot be avoided altogether.
References
Dahl, M. S. (2011). Organizational change and employee stress. Management Science, 57(2), 240-256.
Gottlieb, M. R. (2007). The matrix organization reloaded: Adventures in team and project management. Greenwood Publishing Group.
Lussier, R. N., & Kimball, D. C. (2009). Applied sport management skills . Human Kinetics.
Myers, P., Hulks, S., & Wiggins, L. (2012). Organizational change: Perspectives on theory and practice . Oxford: Oxford University Press.
