INTRODUCTION
Ideally, change involves movement away from present state towards future state and or response to such significant opportunity arising within the organization (Cited from, Gilgeous, 1997) as business environment can be fast changing and with impending move to the globalization of markets, organizations have to cope with changes in business dynamics. Furthermore, changes in organization take place in response to business and economic events and to processes of managerial perception and actions where managers see events taking place that indicated the need for change (Cited from, Pettigrew, 1985). Moreover, organizations found change to be real challenge. The change process is unique in each situation, due to the differences in nature of the organization, the nature of business, the work culture and values, management and leadership style and the behavior attitude of employees. Change is truly part of life. Change has been intrigued, scared as well as excited and mystified us for many centuries and continues to challenge individuals from all walks of life. In recent years within a business context, however, the term “change” has also become synonymous with upheaval and chaos (Cited from, Pritchett, 1996). As a consequence, it has become critical for companies to understand how to better manage and cope with change.
DISCUSSION
The Impact of Organizational Change in Culture and Leadership
Amiably, Cao et al. (Cited from, 2000), believed that organizational change showed diversity of the organization in its environment, and also the interaction of the technical and human activities that had interrelated dimensions in the organization. Organizations should be interested in preventing dysfunctional workplace behavior, such as for instance violence, because such behaviors can be very costly or damaging to the organization. Indeed, organization can contribute to displays of dysfunctional behavior in one of two ways, by “creating social conditions that promote violence by generating aggressive inclinations” or by “lowering restraints against violent actions” (Cited from, Berkowitz, 1993, p. 281). Even when the individual predisposition is high, the actual display of dysfunctional behavior is “most likely to occur when cognitively based inhibitory restraints are minimal” (Cited from, Berkowitz, 1993; Carlson et al., 1990, p. 622). The organization can become an important contributing factor to whether or not violent displays of behavior are expressed by the individual, especially when, for example, the threat of punishment from the organization is minimal or absent (Cited from, Berkowitz, 1993).
Accordingly Schein explain that, “culture is accumulated shared learning of given group, covering behavioral, emotional, and cognitive elements of the group members’ total psychological functioning. For shared learning to occur, there must be history of shared experience, which in turn implies some stability of membership in the group. Given such stability and shared history, the human need for parsimony, consistency, and meaning will cause the various shared elements to form into patterns that eventually can be called a culture” (Cited from, Schein, 1992, p. 10). The role of culture in situation of change is to confirm or deny the legitimacy of the new arrangements as there relates to changes of personnel or differences between specialisms. Thus, Morieux and Sutherland described how the cultural values and methods of operation of new managers or managers in particular specialisms can clash with the existing culture in organizations. This can lead to conflict, the challenging of existing norms and certainties and the undermining of the authority of managers.
However, culture is not static as Burnes argues that new circumstance, the entry into and exit from the organization of groups and individuals, contribute in complex and unpredictable manner to the evolution of culture. Such changes are inevitable but they can lead to conflict between the old and the new and between groups and individuals who have to adjust to them. If change is too fast rather than sustaining the organization, it will lead to disintegration of the common goals and ways of working which have previously existed. Consequently, it is necessary to recognize that organizational changes which challenge or undermine the cultural status quo can, if managed badly, have severe repercussions. It has been argued that one of the key methods of avoiding this is to involve those affected in assessing the need for, and implementing, change.
Generally, culture and leadership in such change from with organization impose such influences on individual as well as group attitude and behavior such as those involved in diverse workplace and tough business environment (Cited from, Lok and Crawford, 2004). An organization's culture is shaped by its leaders, but it also shapes the behavior of its leaders (Cited from, Brown and Thornborrow, 1996). Characteristics of organizations have been shown to influence the ethics or integrity of executives (Cited from, Tourigny et al., 2003), and qualities of leaders have been shown to be critical in the development of an organization's culture (Cited from, Ribière and Sitar, 2003). Dysfunctional organizations generally fail to achieve their goals and frequently are notable for poor leaders. Dysfunctions in top management have been shown to prohibit groups from effectively accomplishing their tasks (Cited from, Paul et al., 2002). Kets de Vries (Cited from, 2004) suggests that an organization can become dysfunctional because its culture reflects the dysfunctions of top managers (Cited from, Kersten, 2005). According to Ahmed (Cited from, 1998), innovation is the engine of change and the possession of positive cultural characteristics provides the organization with necessary ingredients to innovate. Culture could enhance or inhibit the tendency to innovate. Pool (Cited from, 2000) then, suggested that organizational culture allowed an organization to address ever-changing problems of adaptation to the external environment and the internal integration of organization resources, personnel and policies to support external adaptation.
In addition, change oriented models of leadership have sustained the interest of managers and scholars alike because of their promise of extraordinary individual and organizational outcomes (Cited from, House, 1995). The importance of leadership to the change management process is underscored by the fact that change, by definition, requires creating a new system and then institutionalizing the new approaches (Cited from, Kotter, 1995). For example, there can be such dispositional model of strategic leadership in organizational change is informed by the literature on regulatory focus theory (Cited from, Brockner and Higgins, 2001; Higgins, 1997, 1998, 2000; Taylor-Bianco et al., 2004) and regulatory fit (Cited from, Higgins, 2000; Taylor-Bianco et al., 2003). The model suggests that strategic leadership of organizational change manages the paradox of change and stability by embracing positive self-regulation: the process by which individuals formulates goals that are congruent with their individual preferences, and the styles and strategies they use to attain them over time. When organizational members experience compatible fit through positive self-regulation in the change environment, they become fully motivated to support the change goals. The strategic leadership responsibility include positive self-regulated change behavior and the creation of an internal environment that supports eagerness and vigilance in positive self-regulated change behavior (Cited from, Higgins et al., 2003).
However, the discussion of strategic leadership of organizational change brings to center stage the need for leaders to develop an awareness of their self-regulation orientation and strategies. As noted by Burke (Cited from, 2002, p. 294), there is much still to learn about organizational change in respect to the “behavioral complexities that leaders face, interpersonal, informational and decisional,” and the relationship of leaders and followers in the change process. One risk in neglecting this complexity is failure to recognize and adequately deal with pro-innovation bias (Cited from, Sturdy and Grey, 2003).
The impact of change in leadership builds on the experiences inside every company involved in change that are often overlooked and underutilized. It is aimed at quickly growing the internal talent needed to achieve breakthrough results, then replicate and sustain them. The basic philosophy of change leadership is that people learn best by doing from real life experiences. This process of discovering successful behaviors is key to the concept. Positive deviance does not focus on the solution but on the process to discover the solution that already exists in some parts of the community. Although most often the company is not aware of this, there are certain things that work in their unique environment, and others that do not. The organization has gathered experience with which to manage change. The change leadership approach is designed to look at the specific way an organization deals with change and to leverage this experience. The objective can be to fuel an epidemic of projects that apply lessons learned and avoid pitfalls encountered in other projects by reflecting the existing organizational knowledge about how to manage change in unique environment.
The modern business environment requires skilled and experienced people who can implement change in variety of functional settings. Then, the employees chosen to participate in change leadership effort are trained to understand successful behaviors and transfer them into organizational reality for everybody in the company because change leadership does not focus on the one single answer but on learning a process that helps to discover the model that has been proven to work in practice, the process can be applied everywhere.
Where certain opportunity arises which requires change, they may have much to contribute in terms of defining whether change really is required and, if so, what form it should take. The need to draw on staff knowledge is relatively straightforward and can, in many instances, be accomplished by consultation and communication. However, if certain knowledge is to be forthcoming, it does require staff to have a positive attitude towards any proposed change. This leads on to the second main reason for involving staff in change projects: to gain their commitment. If an organization embarks on change project which is markedly out of step with the attitudes of those concerned, it will meet resistance unless those concerned change their attitudes; and this is only likely to occur if they believe that they have some choice in the matter. Thus, where the level of dissonance occasioned by proposed changes is low, attitudinal adjustments will be minor and potential resistance negligible and so, the level and type of involvement should be geared to the level of dissonance that any proposed changes may give rise to improvement in organization activities and other functions.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, managing the human part of the organization becomes major challenge in handling change processes in the organization as it involves values, preferences, and attitudes toward a particular activity. Attitudes can be difficult to change as people are generally more comfortable with what they have learned or knew due to stereotyping, fear of taking risks, intolerance to ambiguity, and possibly the need to maintain tradition. Nonetheless, for any change to be effective, it is crucial to challenge and clarify people's beliefs, assumption and attitudes because the most potent leverage for significant and sustainable change resides within the human system at the core of every business system. Therefore, it is expected that certain types of culture might facilitate the change process while other types of culture might not. One major issue confronting organizations is to determine which type of organizational culture favors organizational change. This can be a challenging task for top managers, as the managers have to decide how to implement changes in their organization. Some have argued that the process has to start at the top while others have suggested that it should also start with the bottom-up approach. As such it appears that there may be relationship between organizational culture and attitudes toward organizational change.
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