Project Topic – AN EVALUATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND ITS IMPACT ON STAFF PRODUCTIVITY

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

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       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