Task: be sure to include references, examples and any evidence based literature to support your claims.
The topic should be based on Queensland Health organisation
6 references
Organizational change
At this age of globalisation, many organisations face different challenges. Therefore embracing change has become one of the ways to handle these challenges and enable organisations achieve their goals. Working at Queensland Health organisation, I have been part of the team that has spearheaded a number of changes that have contributed to the provision of quality healthcare.
One of the organisational changes I have contributed is a technology-enhanced programme to deliver more quality healthcare services to members of the community at distance from the hospital (Queensland Health, 2014). This programme look complicated but it is one of the easiest and use friendly in provision of healthcare. The system allows the clients from the community to communicate with the medical practitioners at the comfort of their homes. The client needs to dial specific numbers that gets them in touch with the various medical professionals who advice the patients on the medical situations. The programme at first received resistant from the members and other stakeholders because they could not understand how it could affect the quality of healthcare. This resistance however, was managed through adoption of various strategies.
Various management theories help in management of change and allowing stakeholders embrace the innovation. The change theory adopted was the six change approaches developed by Schlesinger and Kotter. This theory aims to minimize or prevent resistance to change in an entity (Flamholtz & Randle, 2008). The approach is adapted to any size of an organisation and cover many issues that an organisation many never face. The major resistant factors that this theory focuses on include employee disagreement and reasoning, misunderstanding, self-interest and low tolerance for change. The reasons why people or employees in most instances resist change is due to these aspects. Some of them have their own self interest and therefore see change as something that is threatening these interests, others is because of misunderstanding caused by lack of information (Mitchell, 2013).
Therefore, we managed to successive spearhead this change because we understood the obstacles to change and put into practice the six approaches. As a team, we first educated the members and used effective communication to help the stakeholders and employees understand or see the logic of the change effort (Hanson, 2013). This education created awareness and alleviated any misconception about the technology/programme. Effective communication helps us to convey the message appropriately to foster understanding.
We also allowed employees and other stakeholders to participate in the change effort. We allowed them to contribute their opinions, views, and clarification of how they thought about the project. This actually made them to have a sense of belonging (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012). The management also assisted in helping some of the employees to alleviate with their fear and anxiety about the project. Some of the fear was that they would be required to work for longer period. However, they got an assurance that they would receive necessarily support to enhance their working conditions. We also negotiated and agreed to work together with the employees. Incentives were to be provided to employees that would show commitment. We also used manipulation and co-option to ensure that the change was embraced (Shang, 2012). We allowed some of the members to join the group just to ensure that they support the agenda. The last strategy was use of implicit and explicit coercion. Some of the employees and stakeholders were forced to accept the programme by making clear that those opposed were at risk of losing their jobs or face transfers.
This theory contributed to the achievement of our objectives. Many people that seemed to resist the implementation of the programme were convinced that indeed it was a noble cause. This allowed smoothly programme implemented with less resistant.
In conclusion, change is something that elicits mixed reactions from stakeholders. It is therefore, prudent to understand and employ appropriate strategies to manage this resistant. Six approach models is one of the best management theories that organisations can adopt to drive their change agenda.
References
Battilana, J., & Casciaro, T. (2012). Change Agents, Networks, and Institutions: A Contingency Theory of Organisational Change. Academy of Management Journal, 55(2): 381-398.
Flamholtz, E., & Randle, Y. (2008). Leading Strategic Change : Bridging Theory and Practice. Cambridge, UK : Cambridge University Press. eBook
Hanson, S. (2013). Change management and organisational effectiveness for the hr professional.
Cornell HR Review, 1-7.
Mitchell, G. (2013).Selecting the best theory to implement planned change. Nursing Management – UK, 20(1):32-37.
Queensland Health. (2014). About Queensland health. Retrieved from http://www.health.qld.gov.au/about_qhealth/default.asp Shang, S. (2012). Dual strategy for managing user resistance with business integration systems. Behaviour & Information Technology, 31(9):909-925