CHAPTER 1
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Bateman and Zeithaml (1990), who
identified four major areas of organizational change: strategy,
technology, structure and people. All the four areas are related and
companies often must institute changes in the other areas, when they
attempt to change one area. The first area, strategy changes can take
place on a large scale-large for example, when a company shifts its
resources to enter a new line of business or on a small scale for
example, when a company makes productivity improvements in order to
reduce costs.
There are three basic stages for a
company making a strategic change: realizing that the current strategy
is no longer suitable for the company’s situation, establishing a vision
for the company’s future direction and implementing the change and
setting up new systems to support it.
Technological changes are often
introduced as components of larger strategic changes, although they
sometimes take place on their own. An important aspect of changing
technology is determining who in the organization will be threatened by
the change. To be successful, a technology change must be incorporated
into the company’s overall systems and a management structure must be
created to support it. Structural changes can also occur due to
strategic changes as in the case where a company decides to acquire
another business and must integrate it as well as due to operational
changes or changes in managerial style. For example, a company that
wished to implement more participative decision making might need to
change its hierarchical structure.
People changes can become necessary due
to other changes, or sometimes companies simply seek to change workers’
attitudes and behaviours in order to increase their effectiveness.
Attempting a strategic change, introducing a new technology and other
changes in the work environment may affect people’s attitudes (sometimes
in a negative way) (Bateman and Zeithaml, 1990). But management
frequently initiates programs with a conscious goal of directly and
positively changing the people themselves. In any case, people changes
can be the most difficult and important part of the overall change
process. The science of organization development was created to deal
with changing people on the job through techniques such as education and
training, team building and career planning .Resistance to change:
Resistance to change based on the existing theoretical and empirical
study, the negative evaluation of and resistance to change may occur on
account of a number of factors.Bateman and Zeithaml (1990) outlined a
number of common reasons that people tend to resist change. These
include: inertia, or the tendency of people to become comfortable with
the status quo, timing, as when change efforts are introduced at a time
when workers are busy or have a bad relationship with management,
surprise, because people’s reflex is to resist when they must deal with a
sudden, radical change or peer pressure, which may cause a group to
resist due to anti-management feelings even if individual members do not
oppose the change. Resistance can also grow out of people’s perceptions
of how the change will affect them personally. They may resist because
they fear that they will lose their jobs or their status, because they
do not understand the purpose of the change, or simply because they have
a different perspective on the change than management.Making a solid
case for the change is critical for the change to have a lasting effect.
The source of information about the change must be credible. Stroh’s
(2001-2002) study indicates that the participation of employee leads to
more positive relationships with the organization and thus greater
willingness to change
Therefore the research intends to prefer an evaluation of organizational change and its impact on staff productivity
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The business environment produces change
in the workplace more suddenly and frequently than ever before.
Mergers, acquisitions, new technology, restructuring downsizing and
economic meltdown are all factors that contribute to a growing climate ;
of uncertainty. organisational ability to adapt to changing work
conditions is key for individual and organizational survival. Change
will be ever present and learning to manage and lead change includes not
only understanding human factors, but also skill to manage and lead
change effectively (Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991).
However for change to produce its
desired effect it must be accepted and embraced by the organizational
employees; But this is not often the case. Most changes results in
employee resistance of change in the organization ;Thereby resulting in
poor morale and productivity
Therefore the problem confronting this
research is to profer an evaluation of organizational change and its
impact on staff productivity with a case appraisal of First Bank plc
1.3 RESEARCH QUESTION
1 What is the nature of organizational change
2 What is the process and methods of organizational change
3 What constitute staff productivity
4 What is the impact of change on staff productivity
5 What is the impact of change on staff productivity in First Bank plc
1.4 OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
1 To determine the nature of organizational change
2 To determine the nature of staff productivity
3 To determine the impact of change on organizational productivity
4 To determine the impact of change on staff productivity in First Bank plc
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The study shall focus on the essential factors necessary to effect change in the organization
It shall determine the impact of change on organizational productivity
The study shall provide significant information on managing change to managers and organizations
1.6 STATEMENT OF THE HYPOTHESIS
1 Ho Staff productivity in First Bank plc is low
Hi Staff productivity in First Bank plc is high
2 Ho change is not accepted in First Bank plc
Hi change is accepted in First Bank plc
3 Ho The impact of change on staff productivity in First Bank plc is negative
Hi The impact of change on staff productivity in First Bank plc is positive
1.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study shall profer an evaluation of organizational change and its impact on staff Productivity.
1.8 DEFINITION OF TERMS
ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE
DEFINED;Organizational change occurs when a company makes a transition
from its current state to some desired future state.
MANAGING CHANGE
Managing organizational change is the
process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a
way as to minimize employee resistance and cost to the organization,
while also maximizing the effectiveness of the change effort. Change is
both inevitable and desirable for any progressive organization (Fajana,
2002).
Lewin’s model:
Considers that change involves a move from one static state via a state
of activity to another static status quo. Lewin specifically considers a
three stage process of managing change: unfreezing, changing and
re-freezing. The first stage involves creating a level of
dissatisfaction with the status quo, which creates conditions for change
to be implemented. The second stage requires organizing and mobilizing
the resources required to bring about the change. The third stage
involves embedding the new ways of working into organization.
Beer and colleagues:
Advocate a model that recognizes that change is more complex and
therefore, requires a more complex, albeit still uniform set of
responses to ensure its effectiveness. They prescribe a six-step process
to achieve effective change. They concentrate on task alignment,
whereby employees roles, responsibilities and relationships are seen as
key to bring about situations that enforce changed ways of thinking,
attitudes and behaving. The stages are Armstrong (2004):
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Mobilize commitment to change through joint diagnosis
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Develop a shared vision of how to organize
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Foster consensus, competence and commitment to shared vision
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Spread the word about the change
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Institutionalize the change through formal policies
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Monitor and adjust as needed
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Shaw’s model: looks at
change in a different form. Change is seen as both complex and also
evolutionary. The starting point for their (and a number of other more
recent models) model is that the environment of an organizations is not
in equilibrium. As such the change mechanisms within organizations tend
to be messy and to a certain extent operate in reverse to the way
outlined by Lewin. It is not appropriate to consider the status quo as
an appropriate starting point, given that organizations are not static
entities. Rather the forces for change are already inherent in the
system and emerge as the system adapts to its environment.
PRODUCTIVITY DEFINED
Productivity is an overall measure of
the ability to produce a good or service. More specifically,
productivity is the measure of how specified resources are managed to
accomplish timely objectives as stated in terms of quantity and quality.
Productivity may also be defined as an index that measures output
(goods and services) relative to the input (labor, materials, energy,
etc., used to produce the output). As such, it can be expressed as:
Hence, there are two major ways to
increase productivity: increase the numerator (output) or decrease the
denominator (input). Of course, a similar effect would be seen if both
input and output increased, but output increased faster than input; or
if input and output decreased, but input decreased faster than output.
Organizations have many options for use
of this formula, labor productivity, machine productivity, capital
productivity, energy productivity, and so on.