MIS2- Assign5 :)

The rate of organizational change has not slowed in recent years, and may even be increasing. The rapid and continual innovation in technology is driving changes to organizational systems and processes. Witness the startling growth of the internet, which is enabling much faster and easier access to knowledge. Add to this the increased expectations of employees as they move more freely between organizations. And, of course, globalization has seen the tearing down of previous international market barriers. It is no wonder that relentless change has become a fact of organizational life.

In spite of the importance and permanence of organizational change, most change initiatives fail to deliver the expected organizational benefits. This failure occurs for a number of reasons. You might recognize one or more of these in your organization.
absence of a change champion or one who is too junior in the organization
poor executive sponsorship or senior management support
poor project management skills
hope rested on a one-dimensional solution
political infighting and turf wars
poorly defined organizational objectives
change team diverted to other projects


Failed organizational change initiatives leave in their wake cynical and burned out employees, making the next change objective even more difficult to accomplish. It should come as no surprise that the fear of managing change and its impacts is a leading cause of anxiety in managers.

Understanding your organization and matching the initiative to your organization’s real needs (instead of adopting the latest fad) is the first step in making your change program successful. Beyond that, recognize that bringing about organizational change is fundamentally about changing people’s behavior in certain desired ways. As is apparent from the above list of reasons for failure, lack of technical expertise is not the main impediment to successful change. Leadership and management skills, such as visioning, prioritizing, planning, providing feedback and rewarding success, are key factors in any successful change initiative.

Change Management Principles
Adopting a principled approach that displays integrity and engenders openness and trust will see your change program through the hard times. Our consultancy promotes five key principles of successful change management. Adopting these principles in both spirit and practice will enhance significantly your chances of success. These principles are:

1.Sponsorship
The change program has the visible support of key decision-makers throughout the organization and resources are committed to the program.

2.Planning
Planning is conducted methodically before program implementation and committed to writing. Plans are agreed with major stakeholders and objectives, resources, roles and risks are clarified.

3.Measurement
Program objectives are stated in measurable terms and program progress is monitored and communicated to major stakeholders.

4.Engagement
Stakeholders are engaged in genuine two-way dialogue in an atmosphere of openness, mutual respect and trust.

5.Support structures
Program implementers and change recipients are given the resources and supporting systems they require during and after change implementation.

Significant organizational change occurs, for example, when an organization changes its overall strategy for success, adds or removes a major section or practice, and/or wants to change the very nature by which it operates. It also occurs when an organization evolves through various life cycles, just like people must successfully evolve through life cycles. For organizations to develop, they often must undergo significant change at various points in their development. That's why the topic of organizational change and development has become widespread in communications about business, organizations, leadership and management.

Leaders and managers continually make efforts to accomplish successful and significant change -- it's inherent in their jobs. Some are very good at this effort (probably more than we realize), while others continually struggle and fail. That's often the difference between people who thrive in their roles and those that get shuttled around from job to job, ultimately settling into a role where they're frustrated and ineffective. There are many schools with educational programs about organizations, business, leadership and management. Unfortunately, there still are not enough schools with programs about how to analyze organizations, identify critically important priorities to address (such as systemic problems or exciting visions for change) and then undertake successful and significant change to address those priorities. This Library topic aims to improve that situation.

As I continuously browse the net for further articles, I had found some of the Major roles during and
Capacity Building, The process of organizational change can include a variety of key roles. These roles can be filled by various individuals or groups at various times during the change process. Sometimes, individuals or
groups can fill more than one role.

Change Initiator
It is conventional wisdom among organizational development consultants that successful change is often provoked by a deep “hurt” or crisis in the organization, for example, dramatic reduction in sales, loss of a key leader in the organization, warnings from a major investor, or even actions of a key competitor. It is not uncommon then that someone inside the organization reacts to that deep hurt and suggests the need for a major change effort. Often the person who initiates the change is not the person who becomes the primary change agent.


Change Agent
The change agent is the person responsible for organizing and coordinating the overall change effort. The change agent role can be filled by different people at different times during the project. For example, an outside consultant might be the first change agent. After the project plan has been developed and begins implementation, the change agent might be an implementation team comprised of people from the organization. If the change effort stalls out, the change agent might be a top leader in the organization who intercedes to ensure the change process continues in a timely fashion.

Champion for Change
Change efforts often require a person or group who continues to build and sustain strong enthusiasm about the change. This includes reminding everyone of why the change is occurring in the first place, the many benefits that have come and will come from the change process. The champion might be the same person as the change agent at various times in the project.

Sponsor of Change
Usually, there is a one key internal person or department that is officially the “sponsor,” or official role responsible for coordinating the change process. In large organizations, that sponsor often is a department, such as Human Resources, Strategic Planning or Information Technology. In smaller organizations, the sponsor might be a team of senior leaders working to ensure that the change effort stays on schedule and is sustained by ongoing provision of resources and training.

Leadership, Supervision, and Delegation
In this Field Guide, leadership is defined as setting direction and influencing people to follow that direction. A person can lead themselves, other individuals, other groups or an entire organization. Supervision is guiding the development and productivity of people in the organization. Effective supervisors are able to achieve goals by guiding the work of other people – by delegating.

Organizations can't change without people changing first. It is the collective action of individual change that emerges as organizational change. One approach to understanding how individuals change is the Transtheoretical Model (TTM), which is also known as Stages of Change (SOC). Change cannot be commanded, yet it is possible to influence individual change.

Automation is the use of control systems (such as numerical control, programmable logic control, and other industrial control systems), in concert with other applications of information technology (such as computer-aided technologies [CAD, CAM, CAx]), to control industrial machinery and processes, reducing the need for human intervention.In the scope of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Whereas mechanization provided human operators with machinery to assist them with the muscular requirements of work, automation greatly reduces the need for human sensory and mental requirements as well. Processes and systems can also be automated.

The widespread impact of industrial automation raises social issues, among them its impact on employment. Historical concerns about the effects of automation date back to the beginning of the industrial revolution, when a social movement of English textile machine operators in the early 1800s known as the Luddites protested against Jacquard's automated weaving looms[4] — often by destroying such textile machines— that they felt threatened their jobs. One author made the following case. When automation was first introduced, it caused widespread fear. It was thought that the displacement of human operators by computerized systems would lead to severe unemployment.

Rationalization of Procedures is the application of efficiency or effectiveness measures to an organization. Rationalization can occur at the onset of a downturn in an organization's performance or results. It usually takes the form of cutbacks intended to bring the organization back to profitability and may involve layoffs, plant closures, and cutbacks in supplies and resources. It often involves changes in organization structure, particularly in the form of downsizing. The term is also used in a cynical way as a euphemism for mass layoffs.

Business process reengineering (often referred to by the acronym BPR) is the main way in which organizations become more efficient and modernize. Business process reengineering transforms an organization in ways that directly affect performance.

The two cornerstones of any organization are the people and the processes. If individuals are motivated and working hard, yet the business processes are cumbersome and non-essential activities remain, organizational performance will be poor. Business Process Reengineering is the key to transforming how people work. What appear to be minor changes in processes can have dramatic effects on cash flow, service delivery and customer satisfaction. Even the act of documenting business processes alone will typically improve organizational efficiency by 10%.

The best way to map and improve the organization's procedures is to take a top down approach, and not undertake a project in isolation. That means:

Starting with mission statements that define the purpose of the organization and describe what sets it apart from others in its sector or industry.
Producing vision statements which define where the organization is going, to provide a clear picture of the desired future position.
Build these into a clear business strategy thereby deriving the project objectives.
Defining behaviours that will enable the organization to achieve its' aims.
Producing key performance measures to track progress.
Relating efficiency improvements to the culture of the organization
Identifying initiatives that will improve performance.

To be successful, business process reengineering projects need to be top down, taking in the complete organization, and the full end to end processes. It needs to be supported by tools that make processes easy to track and analyze.

Paradigm Shifts (or revolutionary science) is the term first used by Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) to describe a change in basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. It is in contrast to his idea of normal science.

The term paradigm shift, as a change in a fundamental model of events, has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, "A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share." (The Essential Tension, 1977). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, "a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself." (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Once a paradigm shift is complete, a scientist cannot, for example, posit the possibility that miasma causes disease or that ether carries light. In contrast, a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th-century theory of poetics, for instance.
Think of a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change.

Agents of change helped create a paradigm-shift moving scientific theory from the Plolemaic system (the earth at the center of the universe) to the Copernican system (the sun at the center of the universe), and moving from Newtonian physics to Relativity and Quantum Physics. Both movements eventually changed the world view. These transformations were gradual as old beliefs were replaced by the new paradigms creating "a new gestalt".

In initiating organizational change, the first step is raising awareness that some change is needed. An Organizational Assessment can be used as a point for initiating the dialogue that is necessary for organizational change to gain grassroots acceptance (the 1st step towards commitment). -”Rose A. Wirth, Ph D”

*References used in this assignment are posted at our forum:
http://usep-ic.forumsmotions.com/mis-2-f20/assignment-5-due-december-23-2009-before-0100p-t159.htm#2936