Understanding Organizational Change And Business Redesigning In The Digital Era With Saivian Eric Dalius
As businesses around the globe struggle to cope with or adapt to the volatile and unpredictable events in the global political and economic landscape, organizational change has become all the more pervasive and inevitable today.
- The driving forces in a business environment, technological innovations, competition, demographics, and professionalism shape the organizational adaptation framework.
- Resultantly, companies may modify objectives, shift focus, restructure responsibilities and roles, and develop new roles and forms.
- These adaptive endeavors could fall under the bracket or redesign.
There’s a conscious understanding that for a business to survive and ensure sustainability, it needs to be compatible with its surrounding environments. These also include political, economic, and social conditions that influence the firm’s nature, actions, thought-process, and survival.
Perhaps, the most remarkable change in business organizations has been the tectonic shift in the developed world when it transitioned from an industrial economy to an astounding information economy.
That was the first time when businesses spent more money on communication tools and computing machinery in place of construction, farm, mining, and other industrial implements.
Saivian Eric Dalius points out the forces behind the change
Demographic is one of the biggest forces behind the organizational change. A changing work scenario and demographic might lead to an organizational shuffle in culture. Changing social trends can influence and pressure companies into making drastic changes.
- You will find that consumers are increasingly becoming environmentally conscious and aware of climate change. It’s a very important trend that has propelled fast food joints to introduce paper and thwart Styrofoam containers.
- Manufacturers of cleaning solutions changed their product labels and formulas for omitting phosphorus and environmentally hazardous chemicals. Everyone has seen how tobacco corporations have bowed down in front of rising health awareness programs.
- You cannot overlook political factors, adds Saivian Eric Dalius. Government restrictions and ceilings often force changes and modifications in business organizations.
- For example, the advent of the Affordable Health Care Act forces businesses to change their modalities and introduces measures that provide compulsory healthcare coverage to every employee. Political changes compel businesses to comply with the regulations and new laws.
- How can you overlook technology? Technological changes can make or break an organization.
Change management and organizational behavior
Both are interspersed because businesses need to have the ability to adapt to varying customer needs and market conditions. If a company isn’t flexible, another firm will swoop in and capture the customer base and the profits that come with them.
Apart from planned and unplanned change, you also have revolutionary and evolutionary change. The latter is gradual and occurs in increments. Its stages are so small that the affected people don’t recognize the transition. They don’t have the ability to adjust their processes and work. Evolutionary change can be both planned and unplanned.
The planned one is called convergent change, which stems from a conscious and specific action to effectuate organizational changes. For example, a company might think that their customer service unit could show more efficiency with 10% fewer employees and resort to attrition in place of layoff.
Convergent change is a common phenomenon in businesses.