The traditional Organizational Development (OD) approach of the change management has been stated to be myopic for its underlying assumptions that it holds about people, organization, and the change. The same issues were seen when my friend’s organization (commercial bank) attempted to downsized in a bid to reduce the operating expenses. The top-down unanimous approach created ambiguity hampering the daily working of the bank. I believe, due to the lack of in-depth intention understating of employees along with the thorough analysis of the reasons for resistance from the employees, the organizational change process gets stagnated and deadlock as inferred by (Werkman, 2010). In reality, employees have different mental models; they are unique and challenging in their way, perhaps the whole process was delayed by a year. Later, regional level restructuring committee was formed where the sense-making approach was incorporated to value and understand each employee. Management combined their feedback rather than following a standardized protocol of OD. The process helped the employee to understand the novel, unexpected, and confusing events.
The process started with comprehending each cue that had created a sense of insecurity to the employees, the regional teams in an active coordination of branch manager summoned the employees and listened to their concerns for resisting, the empathetic model assumed by management was attempting to construct the unique identity of the change to each employee, and incorporated the suggestion and advice in layoff policies, expect this management discussed the agenda of restructuring in open assembly with the trade unions to maintain transparency. As, tradeoff existed between decreasing operating expenses of the bank and job security of laid-off employees, the bank as suggested by (Bolman & Deal, 2013), assumed artistic than assuming the rational model in dealing with the trade unions as the social sense-making and its implication was of prime concern. Since the impact of layoff to the employees was socioeconomic and cultural, the bank instead of going in facts initiated generative conversation. Actually, it partially changed its approach from traditional OD model to dialogic OD phenomenon. Series of collective bargaining and negotiation was undertaken, leading to finalized handsome voluntary retirement schemes and additional retirement benefits to employees.
The sense-making process is an ongoing phenomenon, some employees accepted the bank's strategy and were aligned with the changed model whereas some alienated from the strategy. Some validated with the frame whereas some broke the frame and here the change leader played an interpreter role. This role of change leader/managers attributed to drag employees out of cosmology episode (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014); the depressive moment when an individual feels no hope from the world.
Actually, in context of my friend’s company, initially fragmented sense-making (Maitlis & Christianson, 2014) existed; a situation characterized where stakeholders raise issues and argue for potential solutions in regard to passive management. Being a middle-level manager, my friend was also delegated with the power to manage the change along with his span of control. Yes, he did utilize his ability to play the bridge role between management and employees. He used emotional intelligence and diplomacy to share the issues with his staffs at the branch level, the clear language depicting curiousness for their concern is most. The most of communication was direct and face to face. He focused on clearing their disposition by creating conducive organization context as referred by (Oreg, 2003). The fragmented sense making was rectified towards guided sense-making strategy, where he along with the management were energetic in promoting understanding of the change, and employees also actively engaged in shaping the beliefs, actually, it was the interpreter ability, the most crucial one to handle the change.
Perhaps yes, he did exercise power to manage the changes. In reality, though every concern of employees could be listened, the management could rarely reciprocate back every of their expectations; making employee to feel the breach of psychological contract causing them to resist the change (Palmer, Dunford, & Buchanan, 2016), even due to offensive disposition, negative perception towards company, employee neglects the change. And same had happened in my friend's company; he was abiding along the authority that he was delegated, he used political skills/powers and intelligence. And focused on the weakness and insecurities of agitating employees. He diplomatically shared them about uncertain government regulation and its privatization strategy which could if happened reduces the retirement facility in days ahead. Whereas, in coordination with the manager, they applied coercion to some employees who were trying to negatively influence other co-workers and impacting the daily operation of the branch.
As they had diplomatically built up an alliance by clustering majority of employees accepting change; after the increment of retirement benefits, management’s saying was in the higher note. The interpersonal influence, networking, and social awareness created a positive sense towards the process, and the majority of targeted employees supported the change.
The management was able to downsize the company in its second attempt only. Employees resisted the traditional OD process but later after consulting with World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the bank adopted sense making modality which altogether created positive organization scholarship (POS). Cutthroat competition and the heightened level of demand from the customer had made ever-changing change phenomena, the static model of problem-solving focusing in progressive and incremental growth in my view didn’t give competitive edge to my friend's organization. Further, as the organization was large entity having more than 150 branches throughout the country, middle-level manager(my friend) played a crucial social and political role to happen the objective come true through their interpreter image of leading change.
Bibliography
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2013). Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Maitlis, S., & Christianson, M. (2014). Sense making in organizatios: Taking stock and moving forward. The Academy of Management Annals.
Oreg, S. (2003). Resistance to change: Developing an individual differences measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(4):680-93.
Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Buchanan, D. A. (2016). Managing Organizational Change A Multiple Perspective Approach. MC GrawHill Education.
Werkman , R. (2010). Reinventing organization development: How a sense making perspective can enrich OD theories and Interventions . Research Gate , 1-20.
No comments:
Post a Comment