WAYS HOW ORGANIZATIONS HAVE CHANGED OVER THE YEARS 1
Ways How Organizations Have Changed Over the Years
Teri Weekes
Introduction
Corporations have a life expectancy as they live like creatures in which they are born, grow and die. To ensure that they stay in the market for a long period while meeting and exceeding the rivalry, many corporations opt to study the market and make the necessary changes based on the market trends to safeguard, protect their markets and ensure rapid growth and expansion. Organizations have been overhauling their structures, processes, and systems to guide the journey of discovery internally and externally, a trend applied over the years. Various concepts have been developed and advanced to help adapt to the environment, which holds different grounds that should be employed to attain the corporate objectives. Organizational ecology implies the ability of the entity to interact with the environment and choosing the best resource that attains the corporate objectives.
Other organizations have been utilizing the resource dependency theory that relies on the open system approach, which sustains those organizational change variables based on the relationship and the environment (Todnem, 2020). On the other hand, transaction cost theory holds that corporations should analyze their environment and choose the best low-cost way, which heightens competition while building their brand in the market. In the same way, the contingency theory holds that corporations should adapt to the environment, technology, and the strategy in their organizational structure. The business environment constantly experiences many external and internal factors, facilitating the continued need for change. Through value-based leadership and collaboration efforts, organizations must continually change to meet and exceed their market demand, particularly customer needs and wants.
Background From the Past to the Current Organizational Development Changes (From the 1920s-2000s)
Organizational changes started in the 1920s when various concepts were advanced by various scholars, which facilitated the need for utilizing the approaches to make a difference in the market and improve efficiencies. Since the 1920s, the organization was divided into three categories encompassing the buying function, selling function, and the store function, which performed the essential duties hence failing to demonstrate the role of leadership towards influencing and advocating for changes in the market (Ceiik & Ozsoy, 2016). Accordingly, the service was traditional, including visiting the old store with advertisements and promotions communicated through the radios and the local television stations. Given that there were no technological advancements, the need for innovation, product design, and development was minimal. However, following the gaps witnessed in the production. Forthwith, the companies introduced four various strategies comprising selling, buying, service, and control.
From the end of the Second World War, human relations became the most studied field, which led to the formation of the behavioral and the systems approach, which was established based on the need for improving communication to elevate the organizational change process. From these concepts, the need for hierarchy was developed. Departments were created, with the top-level organization being tasked with controlling the middle and the low-level management levels. The hierarchy of the communication would facilitate the systems and the changes while providing centralization and flexibility. Accordingly, based on these structures and procedures that should be followed, gaps were witnessed since flexibility was a huge issue that prevented the ease of adaptation in the environment. Hence the centralization model for running a business did not align with the market conditions, customer expectations, and communication structures which was a substantial managerial challenge between 1947 to 1955.
There was an increased need to develop innovation and electronic data processing guided by the technology to promote the wheel of discovery. Onwards the 1960s, the number of skilled and unskilled men and women increased with the population equally. On the other hand, the population grew unprecedentedly, demonstrating that they came with their distinct needs and wants. The focus for the entities went into elevating the efficiency where the psychological processes were significantly considered essential to the employees since the productivity output depended on how the organization treated them. If the management treated the employees well, their behavior and perception towards the overall working of the entity would increasingly elevate, illustrating that it was important for companies to change the processes and the success (Fløvik et al., 2019). Much of the emphasis was placed on the political processes, authority, and power that formed the planned change processes. From the 1980s, studies outlined that managers had a massive responsibility for supporting the change processes, and they directly influenced employee motivation leading to the overall attainment of the objectives. Between the 1980s and 1990s, the focus of the study shifted from personnel management t human resources. Therefore, different fields became the area of interest, including leadership, information technology, and management, including the managerial and employee career paths. This implies that providing the employees with a better career path was the assured way corporations would retain the skillful employees towards spearheading the objectives and values of the entity.
Arguably, the traditional methods of conducting business and the failure to utilize information technology imply a considerable decrease in the corporation’s profitability. Therefore, building a positive environment for the employees was essential for reinforcing the corporate culture, job satisfaction, and commitment, improving organizational functioning. Therefore, the new trends in the workplace environment were based on five crucial components: the increased need for better and new work structures, the need to develop organizational development theory, the growing interest for mergers and acquisitions, and an increased focus on organizational culture. All these trends were parallel and could not be separated from each other. If the corporation wanted to have better performance, they required high commitment for work systems. The processes and procedures were tied to effective leadership and a better environment that empowers employees to thrive. Until this stage, the fundamental aspect of the change was mainly tied to the vision and adherence to the corporate values, with charismatic leadership being the effective leadership style that would elevate the employee coherence.
Ways Through Which Organizations Have Changed
Increased Collaboration
From the 1990s, the focus has shifted to the context, contextual, processes, and outcome, which has facilitated effective organizational structures and environment which fits the mission and the direction. Mainly, much emphasis has been placed on the transformational, charismatic, servant and transactional leadership styles where the leaders increasingly involve the employees in decision making. Creating a favorable working environment has facilitated employee participation in all the employees’ activities, which has enabled immense growth to both the small and big corporates (Zamanzadeh et al., 2014). Most importantly, other than employees competing, the organization continually champions for improved working environment. The focus entails empowering all the employees to improve their performance while working as a team. The leadership values all the employees and has built a strong work culture for innovation that assures the corporate to attain overall functioning. Arguably, the current positioning of the entity is built on eight facets comprising the outcome, strategic responses, resources, procedures, competencies, strategic intent, learning capacity, and market dynamism. The increased collaboration has led to various theories such as Kewin’s model for change comprising the unfreezing, moving, and freezing. These policies have outlined the five crucial stages for successfully implementing the changes, including planning, communicating, accepting new behaviors, changing from the past to new, and setting the new state. Employees have also been empowered through a better working environment favorable for their working environment, career advancement, better communication and feedback channels, and better employer-employee relations, which have created a positive working environment.
Since the 2000s, the dimensions of leadership have included human relations built and developed by the concept that uncertainties are achieved through the conceptual context, processes, outcome, and leadership. Because of the increased global interconnectedness, effective communication has been essential towards helping the corporate attain its objectives. It has made employees, and the leaders adhere to the structures outlined by the top-level organization hence lessening the likelihood of resistance when introducing different types of changes within the corporation (Gopalkrishnan, 2019). Undeniably, organizational changes fail because of various contextual factors comprising the individual, leadership, managerial, cultural, political, and processing challenges occasioned by a lack of appreciating the differences. Therefore, the team’s increased coordination and collaboration have enabled increased readiness for change, commitment, and openness. The various outlined procedures and policies, organizational change approaches, employee participation, managerial support, effective communication models, and adequate resources are needed to accomplish the varying magnitudes of the work. Through the increased collaboration between the employees and the management, the management has asserted controls that have enabled better relations and development of culture for innovation whereby the increased employee’s commitment is crucial for strategic planning of the entity, which elevates the rapid organizational changes. However, the main focus has nowadays shifted to leader, participation, programs, and leadership development.
Values-Based Leadership
Value-based leadership has become the norm of every small and big organization. Employees rely on their leaders to provide them with direction and guidance, which promotes corporate objectives. Leaders have increasingly been creating effective communication, building trust and confidence, improving the emotional intelligence, coaching and empowering employees towards becoming more dependable and the ability for working on their own (Žydžiūnaitė, 2018). Notably, consumer behavior keeps on changing in which leaders must guide the employees towards becoming more innovators while at the same time applying critical thinkers. The customer buying behavior has become a central area which the management cannot decide on their own without the employee input. As such, the employers have been applying decisive leadership whereby the employees, through the increased better relationship with the employer, have helped identify the problems faced by the entity while outlining the various measures that should be undertaken to elevate the corporation’s performance. Leaders have been utilizing emphatic leadership and mindfulness. Leaders have a result of heightened awareness comprising the behaviors, values, and decisions. Equality-based environments have also become the approach where men and women have increasingly been given equal opportunities to display leadership skills. Employees increasingly want to work in an environment free from harassment, intimidation, and even suppression.
Accordingly, the favorable workplace environment has facilitated employee ownership where they become accountable for their duties, but this is dependent on how the management treats them. In this regard, many employers have appreciated employing employees from different cultures since they have a wide range of knowledge and experiences needed by the corporate. Corporations that employ cultural diversity reflect the society, becoming one of the best approaches to building a solid brand needed to dominate the local and regional market and successfully expand globally. All this implies that leaders should utilize the best approaches to build the employees and improve performance. Accordingly, this implies that employees are more than a paycheck which was the traditional notion for managing them. Nowadays, while compensation is vital, employers are expected to move a step further to develop a strong culture, better employment terms, continuous training and development, and a flexible working environment. Therefore, the organization has considerable responsibility for meeting and exceeding employee expectations. This denotes that the management’s primary focus depends on how the management values the employees. On the other hand, entities have become less hierarchical, demonstrating eliminating barriers such as bureaucracies (Billinger & Workiewicz, 2019). Employees can share information and decision-making between the employees. The transparency for running the business to the highest standard is empowered by the ability of employees to participate fully in the daily operations.
Conclusion
The market is full of dynamism. Corporations are constantly changing to meet the market changes, which align with the structure and strategies needed by the customers and efficiency to attain the corporate objectives. Initially, the organizational structure was mainly hierarchical, but the same has increasingly changed to human relations, subsystems, and leaders. Much emphasis has been placed on the theoretical framework on the organizational ecology, resource dependence theory, strategic choice theory, transaction cost theory, and contingency theory, which all emphasize effective leadership in adapting to the natural environment. However, there is increased uncertainty in the business environment where evolution theory has become the norm and trend in the business environment, which entails integrating the workplace environment. Much focus has been placed on the increased collaboration between the employees and value-based leadership. The first component entails a better relationship between the employees, enabling a work culture to facilitate corporate objectives. Employees will only improve performance if they are provided with better employment and have better relations with their employers. This is attributed to better organizational structures and subsystems aligning with the behavioral concept.
From the 1970s, employees became the focus of the change agents, illustrating that if provided with value-based leadership, they would become less resistant to change. This makes the employees overcome the challenges and help an organization identify the gaps in the market and suggest the best measures that should be employed to attain the corporate objectives. Accordingly, the management has a considerable role in ensuring that the four principles comprising planning, staffing, leading, controlling, and organizing have played an instrumental role in attaining the corporation’s objectives. In this regard, the strategic human resource management encompassing the vision and the strategic objectives are essential in influencing change management without much resistance.
References
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