Challenges Facing the Field of Organizational Change Management

In the modern day business world, organizations are facing more changes than it has been witnessed ever before. One of the factors that have brought about the rapid change is globalization that has led to an increase in today’s market’s growth and revenue increase. Organizational change management is a field that gives guidelines for preparation, equipping and supporting individuals to be successful in adopting change with the view of driving organizational success and outcomes. However most of the changes and individuals are unique, research has proven that some actions can be taken to influence affected people in their transitions. It is a discipline that provides a structured approach of how individuals can be supported in their organization to be able to successfully transit from their current status to that if the future  (Dyer, 2017). Most precisely, organizational change management is a framework that is aimed at managing the effect of new business processes ch anges in the structure of an organization or enterprise cultural changes. While there are laid approaches towards change management, there also exist several challenges in the same field  (Buchanan, 2014). The primary aim of this paper is to explore the challenges facing the organizational change management field. The exploration will involve a literature review in the challenges facing the field of organizational change management followed by a critique of the same. Different authors have taken an interest in the subject of organizational change management, probably because it is a critical subject that determines how organizations are likely to adapt to changes in their organizations. According to different schools of thought, various challenges are associated in the field. However different authors take different angles in analyzing the challenges, their arguments seem to have a common focal point. According to one school of thought, organizations either change or remain the same. According to the author, one of the challenges in the field of organizational change management is resistance to change. The author argues that people are status quo biased and that they are willing to get low pay struggling to get into a stable organization  (Gioia, 2016). He further argues that resistance to change usually has political motives and that people tend to resist changes whose origin is political adversaries. He argues that people may resist a change directly either through political influence or indirectly through passive aggressive behavior. According to the author, another challenge is an unknown current state. He says that it would be difficult for an architect to repair a building without first looking at the existing blueprints. He claims that most of the organizations often try to change without having a glimpse at their blueprints, something that fuels the complexity of the building’s architecture. This blind move makes it difficult to transition to a future state  (Lewis, 2017). Another challenge is integration. The author likens managing a large organization to repairing an aircraft while it's still on the flight. He says that change is a moving target and therefore implementing a process will change the business processes it supports. He further argues that changing n organizational structure will lead to employee turnover occurring in parallel. He concludes by saying that long-running changes with many integration points are usually prone to failure. Another challenge according to this author is competitive forces. He says that in most of the times organizational change is influenced by external forces such as competition, technological change, market conditions, external threats and economic forces. Organizations may plan to change to respond to external threats. He argues that however if a competitor releases a product that is many years ahead of your product chances are there that you are driven to an extreme pace of change whose likelihood of failure is too high  (De Massis, 2018). According to the same author, another challenge in the organizational change management field is complexity. He says that when organizations develop more complex systems, processes and product change become very challenging to make and therefore complexity of a change is a big barrier. He argues that complex changes need an effective and efficient project, quality, knowledge, risk and change management. He concludes by giving a change management principle that says that one should never tackle a change which is too complex for his organization to manage. According to another school of thought, one of the challenges facing organizational change management is planning. The author argues that without stepwise planning an organizational change would bring about more problems than the benefits it is anticipated to bring. He argues that you need to precisely need to know which changes are to take place and how they’ll occur. Overall, the author advises prior planning of how the change will be executed. According to the same author, another challenge is lack of consensus  (Ololube, 2017). He argues that failing to involve everyone in the corporate changes will lead to increased barriers to the change execution. He advises that a decision to make corporate changes should originate from the top organizational level. He also says that the associated management level staff should be present to be in a position to deal with the challenges otherwise the staff will dissent. Another challenge according to the same author is failing communication. He argues that failing to communicate to all employees in the organization beforoe the change brings about fear and rumors in the entire organization especially if facing major changes such as downsizing or emergence. Communication failure brings about the uncertainty that makes the employees feel that they are not part of the decision  (Pettigrew, 2016). He advises involvement of employees and updating them regarding the plans and progress towards the implementation of the change. Another challenge is employee resistance. He argues that sometimes employees resist change especially when they had become comfortable with the way their organization runs. It is because they have been used to what is expected of them in the organization. He argues that some major changes disrupt the familiarity of the employees thereby making them upset. In this case, the employees are not willing to relearn their jobs or change th e way they used to undertake their duties. That becomes an enorbigmous challenge. He concludes by advising that provision of training for any new responsibilities as well as supporting then will ease the transition. Now, according to another school of thought, one of these challenges is lack of employee involvement. He argues that that is the main and common barrier to effective change management  (Senge, 2015). He argues that most of the employees have a fear towards change and that there is the likelihood that even the most loyal employees would resist the change if they were not involved. He further argues that failing to involve employees in the change execution process lead to fear of the unknown and the lack of desire to support the change which eventually becomes very challenging  (Grosser, 2015). According to the same author, another challenge is lack of effective communication strategy. He argues that in some organizations when some of the top leaders announce a change and assume that people will automatically adjust to the new change which is not the case  (Meyer, 2015). The author argues that this approach is the silliest way to introduce a change and therefore it usually leads to change resistance. He says that employees need to know how the change will affect them as well as how they will be able to adapt it. Another challenge according to this school of thought is bad culture shift planning. The author argues that sometimes the planning team lacks the idea that the change will affect the people. He claims that in most of the times the team concentrates on planning the administrative structure, job responsibilities and work reporting structure ignoring decisions regarding feelings and intuitions. By so doing, that becomes a challenge to change management  (Kiefer, 2014). Another challenge according to this author is an unknown current state. He says that many organizations tend to introduce and to implement a change without assessing and understanding their current blueprint. He suggests that this can be overcome through a full understanding of the current corporate's blueprint before formulating or implementing any change. Another challenge is organizational complexity. He argues that sometimes organizations start developing complex processes, something that makes the process of planning and implementing a change very challenging  (Stensaker, 2015). He argues that these complexities include complex products, processes, and systems which act as change barriers because they are difficult for the organization members to understand. He suggests a solution that an organization can counter this barrier by making use of a quality, diligent and effective change management approach  (Tushman, 2016). He says that it is wise not to tackle a change that is too complex for an organization. He also advises that it is not wise to implement complex changes if the organization does not have the maturity to handle the complex change. According to the literature review conducted above concerning the challenges facing the organizational change management field, it has been evident that different authors have different approaches to the same subject as well as different thoughts and ideas. However, at some point, their arguments have the same baseline. In considering the first author, his arguments are precisely true, and much evidence has been garnered to support the arguments. As seen in the above literature review, the author has come up with the challenges that are facing organizations in the contemporary world. It seems that the author conducted enough research to know what the modern day organizations are facing  (Kuipers, 2015). The explanations provided by the author are valid and convincing. Taking an example, the author said that one of the challenges facing organizational change management is resistance to change. He began by hinting that people are status quo biased and went ahead to prove the same by showing that they can easily opt to get a lower pay to get into a stable organization rather than getting a higher pay in a changing organization. He goes ahead and provides the reason as to why people may resist change and finally illustrates how they resist the change. That is a sure indication of enough pre-conducted research on the study topic. However the author has strong points, he is too brief. The author is dedicated to tackling key points rather than giving full explanations, and this is one of the drawbacks of his piece. According to his principle on complexity barrier, organizations should not tackle complex changes  (Buck, 2015). This principle, however workable, is a discouragement to organizations as it drives that view that some impossibilities in change management are beyond solution  (Kiel, 2014). That is not true, in the business world, every problem has a solution, and therefore the author should have given a solution to the problem rather than arguing for not giving it a trial. The second author has taken the topic at a different angle. He has looked at the challenges of organizational change management from the employee’s point of view rather than the organizational point of view. He has looked at the factors that may make the employees unwilling to adjust to the change such as poor planning, poor communication as well as lack of consensus. The arguments are true and have enough explanations. The author has in fact taken time to deeply explain his arguments so that they can be easily understood. The challenges given by the author apply to organizations in the modern day business world and thus helpful. While his arguments are true and practical, the author should not have looked at the challenges in the employees’ point of view only  (Cameron, 2015). The author should also have looked at the same in the organization perspective such as competitive forces, an unknown current state among others. That would have been more helpful. The third author has not done any research concerning the subject. His arguments are just a copy cut of the first author’s arguments. As seen from the literature review, the same challenges given by the first author are the same challenges given by the third author. The author lacks originality and distortion of initial message in the zeal of attaining uniqueness is evident. His arguments are weak with the usage of offensive words such as â€Å"the silliest approach.† Overall, the author has not introduced anything new on the subject. Change is indisputably one of the hardest things to adapt. This fact poses a major threat to companies wishing to change their structure, systems or operations with the fear that the affected stakeholders may not be willing to accept the change. Many authors have given several challenges, but the bottom line is that employees will hardly accept and adopt changes. However, there is an opportunity to provide solutions for these challenges by proper planning and involving all the affected members. Therefore, organizations should not be afraid of making major changes especially if they bring positive impacts to the company. Buchanan, D., 2014. No going back: A review of the literature on sustaining organizational change. International Journal of Management Reviews, 4(8), pp.43-69. Buck, T., 2015. Long-term orientation and international joint venture strategies in modern China. International Business Review, 6(89), pp.58-64. Cameron, E., 2015. Making sense of change management. 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The challenges to sustaining momentum in learning organizations, 8(45), pp.12-22. Stensaker, I., 2015. Change management choices and trajectories in a multidivisional firm. British Journal of Management, 9(6), pp.61-87. Tushman, M., 2016. Ambidextrous organizations: Managing evolutionary and revolutionary change. California management review, 6(8), pp.56-85.