Making organizations change-ready

In a fast-changing and increasingly global business environment, organizations are constantly faced with the need to reinvent themselves or to undergo transformations to remain relevant and competitive. Change is no longer a matter of choice, but a necessary tool for survival.

However, enabling change is an often difficult process simply because organizations are human systems. Even when what is being changed is technology, processes or structures, the success of the transformation will ultimately depend on the people who will implement these changes. In order to understand the factors that influence employee commitment to change, the Ateneo Center for Organization Research and Development surveyed 1,962 employees from 29 small, medium and large organizations in the Philippines.

Our results highlight the importance of three factors: leadership, change management and organization culture. We used Kouzes and Posner’s Transformational Leadership model that describes five types of leader behaviors—challenging the process, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, modeling the way and encouraging the heart. Our findings suggest that leaders who are able to display these behaviors have subordinates who are more committed to change. Thus, organizations that wish to create a transformative organization need to invest in selecting and developing transformational leaders.

The results also show that change management processes influence employee attitudes to change. Specifically, we found that organizations that created a change team, planned and organized the change, consulted people on the change, clarified change goals, communicated the change, provided resources to enable the change, and monitored progress toward change goals had employees who were committed to change. We also found that employee attitudes toward change are related to the extent to which leaders display sensitivity to employee reactions and support and modeled the changes.

Beyond leadership and change management, we also found that good relationships appear to be a requisite foundation for change initiatives. This is not surprising given the collective nature of Filipinos. When a culture of management-employee cooperation and teamwork is in place, the organization becomes not just a workplace but an extension of oneself.  Members feel a sense of oneness with their bosses and co-workers. This sense of collectivity is an important value that can be harnessed in the efforts to transform Philippine organizations.

The results suggest that it would be truly difficult to drive organization transformation when relationships are broken and there is no goodwill between the employees and leaders. How does one cultivate such culture? One way is to provide venues for interaction including celebrations, eating together, teambuilding programs, interdepartmental interactions, and company-wide events. Rather than viewing these as unnecessary costs, these should be seen as necessary investments in building a sense of family among employees. Positive relationships and trust are important foundations in order to engage employees.

Beyond venues for interactions and celebrations, the results highlight the importance of ensuring that leaders have good people management skills. Although company activities will certainly help, the day-to-day interactions employees have with their leaders will also shape the way people feel toward their bosses and, ultimately, the organization.

As competition pushes organizations to transform in order to survive, our study suggests that we need to invest in leadership selection and development, sound change management processes, and culture-building to ensure that employees embrace and accept change. And as our study shows, there are no quick fixes to transformation. Rather, we need to take a long-term perspective and lay the foundations to ensure that our organizations are change-ready.

The authors are faculty members of the Ateneo de Manila University Department of Psychology. This article is condensed from “Predicting Commitment toward Organizational Change” in the Journal of Social Transformation. For feedback or inquiries, contact Ateneo CORD at [email protected].