change management

Change Management: A Case Study of Company X
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ABSTRACTChange management is one of the most critical processes that an organization must undertake when a particular change in the typical day to day operations of the company has taken place. It a systematic process of dealing with the transformation and transition of the organization’s technologies, goals, and processes. It, therefore, has the primary purpose of implementing strategies to effect change, control it, and aid the employees or the workforce adapt to the newly created situation. Some employees might react negatively while some might react positively. Change management is thus inclined towards making the change more of a success than a failure. This particular study will involve the study of the change management process in company X. Company X had undergone critical changes in its structure and functioning and thus had to employ change management processes to initiate the process of change. This study will delve into the analysis of the effects of change management in the company and how the workforce has responded to the changes. In particular, it will encompass the use of interviews and questionnaires to get feedback from the employees quantitatively and qualitatively that is to be analyzed for the outcome that the change management process had on them. This study will also obtain the significant challenges that were faced by those in charge of change management in the process of initiating and helping the employees transition.

The project’s significance is that it will inform the company’s stakeholders on the progress of the change management and how the employees have responded to the change and the subsequent management process. It will also add to the pool of existent knowledge on change management.
Keywords; Change Management, Change, Transition, Employees, Company X.

Table of Contents
TOC o “1-3” h z u HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586653” ABSTRACT PAGEREF _Toc527586653 h 2
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586654” INTRODUCTION PAGEREF _Toc527586654 h 4
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586655” RESEARCH RATIONALE/PROBLEM STATEMENT PAGEREF _Toc527586655 h 4
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586656” GOALS AND OBJECTIVES PAGEREF _Toc527586656 h 5
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586657” RESEARCH QUESTIONS PAGEREF _Toc527586657 h 5
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586658” CRITICAL LITERATURE REVIEW PAGEREF _Toc527586658 h 5
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586659” APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY PAGEREF _Toc527586659 h 7
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586660” DISCUSSION PAGEREF _Toc527586660 h 8
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586661” SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT PAGEREF _Toc527586661 h 8
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586662” RESEARCH LIMITATION PAGEREF _Toc527586662 h 8
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586663” PROVISIONAL WORK SCHEDULE PAGEREF _Toc527586663 h 9
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586664” REFERENCES PAGEREF _Toc527586664 h 11
HYPERLINK l “_Toc527586665” BIBLIOGRAPHY PAGEREF _Toc527586665 h 13

INTRODUCTIONChange management is one of the inevitable aspects of businesses in contemporary times (“What is change management consulting?”, 2018, N.p). Change management refers to the process that is responsible for the management of variations in production operations from the process of commencement to completion (“Change management system,” N.d, N.p). In the customary periods, companies avoided as much as possible to make significant changes in their operations thus making them inflexible. However, with the incline in globalization, companies have been forced to adapt in order to compete on a global basis (Rick, 2014, N.d). The significant changes solicit for a change in the culture of the organization, and thus the behaviors and attitudes of the employees are affected (Balogun, 2001, 2). This particular research aims at the recognition of the impacts that change management had on company X. The major changes that occurred are; Breakdown of the business’ units, entrance into the offshore domain, and critical changes in the organization management team. Therefore, this project will tend to uncover the impacts on the employees due to the aforementioned changes in the company.
RESEARCH RATIONALE/PROBLEM STATEMENTCompany X has gone through significant changes in its standard functionality and has recently engaged in change management to help the employees transition through the process seamlessly. This, however, solicits for a review process that assesses the changes that the process has had on the company’s workforce. The problem is observed in the workforce’s attitudes, motivations, and general morale. This is because they are the major forces behind the company’s success and because this change in the company’s normal functioning affects them directly, they will be affected. Moreover, the workforce is directly in contact with the immediate consumers of the company, therefore, the effects due to the changes can directly affect the company’s normal operations with the direct clients and this project’s process is thus critical to the assessment of their attitudes, morale, and the general motivations after the change management process.
GOALS AND OBJECTIVESThe primary goals and objectives of this study are;
To find the particular effects that the changes had on the company’s labor force.
To assess how the changes were set into action.
To ascertain the challenges, the company had encountered within the process of change.
RESEARCH QUESTIONSThe research questions for this study were:
Was the change management process effective in the transition process?
What particular challenges did the workforce experience in the process of transition between the changes?
Was the change management elected for the process suited to the labor force’s needs?
CRITICAL LITERATURE REVIEWAnderson D. and Anderson A. (2010) talk about the significant drivers of change in any organization. He also discusses the processes on the evolution of change and the requisites of leadership attention and awareness expansion. In this book, the authors delve into the major types of organizational change and the different approach to the processes of transformation. They also discuss the significant roles and impacts on the mindset due to the changes that take place. Moreover, the two authors discuss the dominant assumption that is to be made. They also entail the conscious thinking process and other change process models. Lastly, they discuss the choices of transformation and the developing of a conscious change in the leaders. This particular book will be beneficial because it contains frameworks and theories of change and its management. The change management process will, therefore, be compared to those that are discussed by these two authors. This work will be critical to the study because it represents the possible types of approaches to the transformational process. It can be utilized in the recommendation process to recommend the best strategies to manage the transformation. In particular, the competency model that highlights the role of cognizant awareness in performance and learning can be used. This will also be a process of testing if this model can be applicable to Company X in case the need arises.
Aladwani M. (2001) says that during the implementation of an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), the management usually faces different attitudes from the employees and the potential users in which they resist the process of implementation. The author, therefore, says that the management should not reactively confront the situation, but in lieu, they should proactively deal with it. The author generally discusses the integrated and the approach that is process oriented in order to remedy the situation in which the workers resist the enterprise resource planning process. The work by the author actively promotes proactive confrontation of change management. It also recommends the use of the ERP system to provide support to the core organizational processes in the human resources. This makes it highly relevant as a mode of recommendation to manage the workforce. This system can be applied to the company X for better management of core activities of the organization. Also, because the work entails the types of reactions from the workforce, it will notify those in charge of change management in the company to be alert for any changes. The research will, therefore, develop and build on the ERP system.

Hailey and Balogun (2002) say that there is a growing need for organizational change designers to develop approaches to the implementation that are sensitive to the contexts for it to be successful. They claim that there is a plethora of organizational change contexts which need great considerations but are not readily accepted by practitioners because they do not exist in a comprehensive state. Their paper is based on change Kaleidoscope that aims at achieving the comprehensiveness of contexts. It illustrates the framework’s applicability in order to aid managers to develop implementation strategies that are context sensitive. This work is relevant to the context of the research and can thus be used by the change management officials in the company to make strategies that are sensitive to every intricate detail to make sure that the change and transformation is welcomed and accommodates all existent, and most critically, any new conditions that may arise. In particular, the change Kaleidoscope model can be employed in order to create strategies that are ‘tailor-suited’ towards the existent and developing needs of Company X. This process will thus tend to build and develop on the framework in the research.
Lown J. (2011) claims that psychologist recognize the effects of internal beliefs and external variations on behavior and belief. Therefore, being able to understand the beliefs on financial self-efficacy of the consumer enables counselors to make financial decisions that would not only be beneficial to the economy but also, would be beneficial to them. Over the past decades, research on consumers depict the behavioral facets of financial management and consumption. For instance, the TTM (Trans-Theoretical Model) is grounded on self-efficacy constructs, behavioral change processes, and decision balance. This research is relevant to the undertaking of the project because it entails the elements of self-efficacy, behavioral change, and decisional balance not only on the workforce but also in the customers or consumers. Because the article talks about the effects of external variables and internal beliefs on the consumers, it will be critical to the research because it will be able to assess the effects of the change management process on company X with regards to the end user or consumers. This is because changes in the company do affect the consumers too. This particular research will thus be testing the theories from this work.
APPROACH AND METHODOLOGYThis study will take a descriptive approach that involves both qualitative and quantitative information (“What is descriptive research,” 2001, N.p). To obtain the effects of change management towards the company’s workforce, data will be collected using questionnaires and interviews. In particular, questionnaires will be handed to the employees of the company while the interviews will be directed towards the management team that is in charge of the change management process. This is done in order to obtain the intimate details of the change management process from the time of commencement to the time of completion. The questionnaire will obtain both qualitative and quantitative information from the labor force using Likert scale questions, open-ended, and closed-ended survey questions. They will then be forwarded for analysis in a descriptive manner.
DISCUSSIONSIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECTThe project’s significance is that it enlightens the stakeholders of the company and the general public on how the change management processes had an impact on the employees. It will also add to the pool of existing research on the domain of change management and its subsequent impacts. This particular project aims at signifying the effects or impacts that the change management process had on the employees of the company. It will intricately delve into the intimate details of the effects of the change management process and how they have generally impacted the attitudes, morale, and motivations.
Primarily, it will extend the existent literature on change management and will add to the pool of knowledge regarding change management. It can thus be used by other future researchers as it will suggest directions for future studies.
The company X will also benefit from this research as it will provide primary information regarding the effects of the change management process on their employees. It will thus be a form of critical feedback to the company, on the condition of the employees and the impacts, whether positive or negative, that the change management process had on them.
RESEARCH LIMITATIONThe significant limitations of the research are:
The constraint of time is one of the significant limitations because of the defined timeframe.
The data gotten from this research cannot be generalizable because different companies have different modes of management of change.
The participants might not be entirely open due to the fear of reputation.
PROVISIONAL WORK SCHEDULEThe project is expected to take place over a three-week period in which all the necessary processes are to be conducted and concluded. The processes of the schedule range from obtaining of the grants and finances of undertaking the research, to the final presentation of the project’s outcomes to the stakeholders and the correlated parties. The processes are broken down below and are each assigned to different individuals to enable the successful completion of the project.
Task Name Duration Start Finish Predecessors Assigned To % Complete Status Comments
Obtaining grants and finances 1d 18/10/18 18/10/18          
gathering available and relevant literature 4d 19/10/18 23/10/18          
getting participants and volunteers 6d 20/10/18 26/10/18          
sampling procedures 1d 29/10/18 29/10/18          
conduction of interviews and questionnaires 2d 30/10/18 01/11/18          
analysis of data 4d 01/11/18 05/11/18          
comparison and contrast to other studies 3d 07/11/18 10/11/18          
REFERENCESAladwani, A.M., 2001. Change management strategies for successful ERP implementation. Business Process management journal, 7(3), pp.266-275.
Anderson, D. and Anderson, L.A., 2010. Beyond change management: How to achieve breakthrough results through conscious change leadership (Vol. 36). John Wiley & Sons.
Balogun, J. (2001). Strategic Change. [ebook] pp.1-2. Available at: http://xqdoc.imedao.com/1533d1f4e7d13ee3fe246a36.pdf [Accessed 14 Oct. 2018].
Change Management System. (N.d). Uit.stanford.edu. | University IT. [online] Available at: https://uit.stanford.edu/service/changemgt [Accessed 14 Oct. 2018].
Hailey, V.H. and Balogun, J., 2002. Devising context sensitive approaches to change: the example of Glaxo Wellcome. Long Range Planning, 35(2), pp.153-178.
Lown, J., 2011. Development and validation of a financial self-efficacy scale.
Rick, Torben. (2014). Organizations are forced to change faster. [online] Available at: https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/change-management/forced-to-change-faster/ [Accessed 14 Oct. 2018].
What Is Change Management Consulting? (2018). Norwich University Online. [online] Available at: https://online.norwich.edu/academic-programs/masters/leadership/resources/articles/what-is-change-management-consulting [Accessed 14 Oct. 2018].
What is Descriptive Research? (2001). Members.aect.org. [online] Available at: http://members.aect.org/edtech/ed1/41/41-01.html [Accessed 14 Oct. 2018].
BIBLIOGRAPHYOrlikowski, W. and Hoffman, D., 1997. An improvisational model for change management: The case of groupware technologies. Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century, 265.
Nastase, M., Giuclea, M. and Bold, O., 2012. The impact of change management in organizations-a survey of methods and techniques for a successful change. Revista de Management Comparat International, 13(1), p.5.
Sturdy, A. and Grey, C., 2003. Beneath and beyond organizational change management: Exploring alternatives. Organization, 10(4), pp.651-662.
McIvor, R. and McHugh, M., 2000. Partnership sourcing: an organization change management perspective. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 36(2), pp.12-20.
Hayes, J., 2018. The theory and practice of change management.