Sirius

This essay is primarily concerned with leadership and organizational change management. The purpose is to discuss critically the manner in which resistance to change is managed within an organization, with a focus on its benefits as well as drawbacks. The phrase ‘change management’ is defined and how its implementation affects organizations and employees. In today’s business environment, it could be debated that successful management of change is essential to any establishment so as to survive, remain competitive in today’s market, and for continued success (Anderson and Anderson, 2010; Wittig, 2012). In most literatures (Bovey and Hede, 2001; Yılmaz and Kılıçoğlu, 2013) concerning leadership and management, concept of ‘change’ has been defined as a process which involves going from the known to the unknown. In this regard, it is hard for employees to adapt to change at most organizations (Ravichandran and Piramuthu, 2012), therefore, employee resistance is inevitable, and management must be well equipped to deal with it (Baker, 1989 cited Fine, 1986). The phrase ‘change management’ has been defined as “the process of continually renewing an organization’s direction, structure, and capabilities to serve the ever-changing needs of external and internal customers” (Todnem, 2005, p. 369 cited Moran and Brightman, 2001, p. 111). Generally, organizational change can be initiated by managers or come into existence through external pressure or implemented as a result of specific changes in policy and procedures. In brief, organizational change is an effort made by management to have members of the organization to think, behave and perform in a different way (Yılmaz and Kılıçoğlu, 2013 cited Kreitner and Kinicki, 2010).

Changing nature of technology and economy, and the changing behaviour of customers pose pressures on businesses to change their cultural, structural and functional characteristics (Hashim, 2013).

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