Search results

Although change is a necessary part of organisational life, achieving a successful change is complex. Change readiness is a critical element in successful change implementation, yet studies assessing change readiness as an underlying mechanism in the link between organisational-level factors and successful change implementation are scarce, particularly in the African context. Accordingly, the present study examined the extent to which change readiness mediates the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation in the Ghanaian context.

The study utilized a standardized questionnaire to collect data from 364 participants, working in public and private universities in Ghana. The participants were selected via the convenience sampling strategy to complete the survey on the main variables at a single point in time. The study was purely quantitative, as path analysis – a form of structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypothesized relationships in the study.

The results show that both learning organisation and change readiness facilitated successful change implementation. Finally, it was observed that change readiness served as an important mediating mechanism in the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation.

Change readiness was found to explain the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation. Thus, it is important that managers and leaders of public and private sector educational institutions in Ghana invest resources into preparing and getting employees to accept, be committed to and ready for change.

The present study contributes to the scarce knowledge of the mediating role of change readiness in the link between learning organisation and successful change implementation in the African context.

Information technology (IT) project implementation is still a grey area. There are differences of opinion among educators and practitioners on strategic emphasis and implementation methods. Implementation of IT projects, especially large IT projects, is synonymous to management of changes in an organisation, be it for altering the work culture or gaining competitive advantages. When formulating effective change management strategies to support the introduction of IT, it may be useful to integrate and use concepts and practices drawn from disciplines such as traditional project management, organisational/product innovation, and change management theory and practices. This paper examines project management and product innovation literature to identify change management concepts and practices.

Implementing total quality management (TQM) is not without difficulties and achieving its promised benefits is not easy. The purpose of this paper is to identify the barriers to TQM successful implementation.

A literature review has been done to explore the major reasons for the failure of TQM programmes.

An examination of 54 TQM empirical studies identified 54 obstacles to successful TQM implementation. There are both theoretical and practical difficulties in applying TQM in organisations. An ineffective TQM package, inappropriate TQM implementation methods and an inappropriate environment for implementing TQM are the main reasons for TQM failure. The most frequently mentioned reasons for TQM implementation failures include insufficient education and training, lack of employees’ involvement, lack of top management support, inadequate resources, deficient leadership, lack of a quality-oriented culture, poor communication, lack of a plan for change and employee resistance to the change programme.

The review was limited to articles written in English language during the past 30 years (1980-2010).

TQM does deliver better performance when an appropriate model of TQM is appropriately implemented in a supportive environment. The findings of this paper provide managers with a practical understanding of the factors that are likely to obstruct TQM implementation. Managers should overcome these barriers to achieve the TQM benefits.

Understanding the factors that are likely to obstruct TQM implementation will help organisations in planning better TQM models.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper understanding of how transformational leadership relates to followers' innovation implementation behavior, the psychological mechanisms of this relationship, and the role of individual perceptions of climate for initiative.

Perceptual data were collected from 198 employees in lower and middle management positions of a multinational automotive corporation. Relationships were tested using hierarchical regression analysis.

Results demonstrate that transformational leadership was strongly related to followers' innovation implementation behavior and that the nature of this relationship was moderated by followers' levels of perceived climate for initiative. Additionally, commitment to change fully mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and followers' innovation implementation behavior.

The paper is based on a cross‐sectional design. A causal interpretation requires studies with experimental or longitudinal designs.

Companies should invest in transformational leadership training and in the selection of supervisors with this leadership style before initiating the implementation of innovations. Enhancing contextual factors, such as a perceived climate for initiative, should be promoted by integrating them into organizations' reward systems.

The paper is one of the first to investigate the relationship between transformational leadership and followers' innovation implementation behavior. It specifies the organizational contexts under which transformational leadership is most likely related to innovation implementation behavior, and those in which such a relationship is unlikely to occur.

Enterprise systems (ESs) are hard to maintain, since they embed a large fraction of organisational data and tasks, which are often intertwined and highly interdependent. The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology for enterprise resource planning (ERP) post-implementation change management to support business analysts during perfective maintenance.

The methodology draws a parallel line with engineering change management and considers the steps of mapping the dependencies among ES components, understanding the ripple effects of change, and defining metrics to quantify and assess the impact of change. The methodology is instantiated in the case of ERP systems, for which a tool has also been implemented and evaluated by ERP implementation experts.

Experts positively evaluated the proposed methodology. General design principles to instantiate the methodology in the case of systems other than ERP have been derived.

While existing ESs change management methodologies help to identify the need for change, the proposed methodology help to structure the change process, supporting the task of perfective maintenance in an efficient way.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate new emerging organizational parameters and their roles in successful change implementation. These organizational parameters are rarely investigated especially in the context of organizational change (OC) in private and public sector organizations.

In cumulative, 403 valid responses have been obtained randomly from public sector workers by using self-administered questionnaires.

The results reveal that knowledge sharing regarding incremental and radical changes can helpful for effective OC implementation. Findings highlight the significant role of emotional and social intelligence in managing resistance and bringing openness to change in these organizations. It is also found that social media has become an important emerging organizational parameter to foster effective communication and knowledge sharing during OC implementation. Apart from the direct effects, readiness to change has multiple effects coupled with emerging organizational parameters to implement change successfully.

The results of the current study offer diversified implications for theory, practice and global society. The theoretical base is taken from the well-known theories of management (i.e. Lewin’s three-step model, field theory, intelligence theory, cost-effective theory, social exchange theory, social network theory and social penetration theory). Emerging organizational parameters that have a potential impact on effective change implementation are identified. The findings suggest that global organizations should have to initiate effective networking structure using social media applications and social intelligence skills to remain connected and get positive responses about change formulation and implementation decision.

A majority of studies have presented the research model on OC implementation in the context of developed countries, which form 30 percent of the world’s population, mostly the Americas and Europe. It is observed that a developing country, such as Pakistan, has a culture that is based on power distance, collectivism and more political influence as compared to developed countries. Triandis et al. (1980) argued that any theoretical contribution without considering the cultural aspect can lead to bias findings. There is limited research available in the world that is conducted to examine the interactive effects of readiness to change on the relationship between effective change implementation, knowledge sharing, intelligence and social media. These findings are useful to plan and execute OC using new emerging organizational parameters.

This paper aims to report the results of a comprehensive literature review concerned with exploring the distinctive roles of the underlying multidimensional psychological mechanisms through which organizational culture (OC) affects TQM.

A thorough review of the relevant existing studies focusing on the direct and indirect links between OC, employee readiness for change (ERFC), employee commitment to change (ECC) and TQM implementation was conducted. To identify studies to include in the review, electronic searches of prominent databases and journals were carried out for the period 1980 to 2020.

The thorough analysis of relevant studies indicates that various types of OC influence TQM through certain psychological mechanisms namely ERFC dimensions and employee affective commitment to change. As a consequence, the paper develops a set of propositions and a novel integrative conceptual framework to explain the mediating roles of ERFCs and EACC in the OC–TQM relationship and then concludes by suggesting future lines of research and highlighting practical managerial implications.

Drawing on academic perspectives from multiple literature streams, this study offers a more advanced understanding of the relationship between OC and TQM implementation via exploring multiple mediating paths.

Lean healthcare is used in a growing number of hospitals to increase efficiency and quality of care. However, healthcare organizations encounter problems with the implementation of change initiatives due to an implementation gap: the gap between strategy and execution. From a change management perspective, the purpose of this paper is to increase scientific knowledge regarding factors that diminish the implementation gap and make the transition from the “toolbox lean” toward an actual transformation to lean healthcare.

A cross-sectional study was executed in an operating theatre of a Dutch University Medical Centre. Transformational leadership was expected to ensure the required top-down commitment, whereas team leadership creates the required active, bottom-up behavior of employees. Furthermore, professional and functional silos and a hierarchical structure were expected to impede the workforce flexibility in adapting organizational elements and optimize the entire process flow.

The correlation and regression analyses showed positive relations between the transformational leadership and team leadership styles and lean healthcare implementation. The results also indicated a strong relation between workforce flexibility and the implementation of lean healthcare.

With the use of a recently developed change management model, the Change Competence Model, the authors suggest leadership and workforce flexibility to be part of an organization’s change capacity as crucial success factor for a sustainable transformation to lean healthcare.

Although an increasing number of organisations implement the Information Technology Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) with the aim to improve provision of information technology services to their customers, a significant number of ITIL implementations do not achieve the expected outcomes. The organisational change strategies of organisations during ITIL implementation initiatives may have an effect on success, but empirical research on this topic is scarce. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A multiple case study methodology comprising successful ITIL implementations in eight large Australian organisations is used. A socio-technical systems approach represented by Leavitt’s Diamond is adopted as a lens to shed light on the attributes of effective organisational change strategies for successful ITIL implementation.

This paper identifies organisational change strategies employed by organisations that have effected a successful ITIL implementation. The authors identified that the ITIL implementation required changes to the four components of the socio-technical work system (STS) identified in Leavitt’s Diamond. Changes to one STS component affected other STS components when implementing ITIL; and that effort applied to the STS components did not need to be equal, but appropriate to the requirements of the ITIL implementation and the organisation.

The sample size of eight ITIL implementation cases studied may limit the generalisation of findings.

This research provides IT service management researchers and ITIL practitioners, for the first time, information about organisational change strategies as applied to successful ITIL implementations.

This research has developed novel insights into organisational change strategies and ITIL implementation that had not previously been explored.

The implementation of organizational change has long been problematic. Over time two approaches have developed. The participative approach assumes that employee support is a pre‐requisite of change. The unilateral approach argues that behavior must be changed first and attitude will follow. The results of a study of 408 change episodes indicate that unilateral implementation approaches are more effective than participative. While employee support was related to change success, it was the function of change type not participative implementation. Behavioral‐social change types generate more support than technical‐structural changes. The implications for future research are discussed.