In some point, every organization has to face a situation that they need to change. Reason can be internal, where, for example, there needs to be change for better profits or cutting the costs, or external when you are organizations is affected, for example, by a new law. Whatever the reason is organizations have to accept the fact that change is inevitable and be ready to change, what means there has to be a constant search to do things better, or readiness to adapt to the changing environment. In an organization, this is called organizational readiness as the Weiner (2009) states in his research for a theory of organizational readiness. Present paper has arguments that organizations have to be ready for the change, the change is a learning process, and the change has to be managed appropriately throughout the change. Following five literatures attempt to support these arguments. findings from the literature
In the research article by Smith, Buxton and Marshall (2008) focus was to find out prevalence of organizational learning and learning organization at two case organizations. They state that to being a learning organization, there have to performed organizational learning activities that are, for example, innovation, communication and having a learning climate and capability. The research was conducted through interviews and inquiries to two organizations Lafarage SA and Rockwood Electronics Materials, and it managed to have answers from all of the staff in REM, but in Lafarage SA’s case only seven out of eighteen answered. In the research, both of the case organizations failed to be a learning organization. Lafarage SA showed a lack of innovation as REM did not manage communication trough different departments. Organizational learning activities show signs that they increase the organizational readiness for change. Like Weiner (2009) discuss in his theory about how there has to be belief and confidence in the organization that change can happen, and there are enough resources, as well as the outcome of the change, has to be valued. Weiner also specify; that it does not matter if the change is valued for different reasons, and admit that for efficient implement of change, there has to be coordinated behavior management.
Marshall and Olphers (2008) introduce a case where National Health Service was under a lot of pressure to cut some costs and need for a saving of £250 million. Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland had six Primary Care Trusts and the plan was to merge that six to two. In the NHS changes have been happening all the time during its existence and there were findings that this affected the employees during this bigger change and merge. Staffs of NHS were used to changes, so they were not shocked by the news of change. As time passed people start to feel that there were lack of clarity in the roles and fear of losing their jobs. This lead to a situation where respondents were incapable of making decisions, they were afraid to take time off sick, and there were lack of commitment to the job. Survey from the respondents show that the main problem was a lack of strategic management which led to cyclical changes. Staff felt uncertain and felt that they were not listened or considered during the change.
Similar findings can be seen in the research of Harry Sminia and Antonie Van Nistelrooij (2006). They introduce the concept of organization development and how it could be used when organizations are designing their change strategy. Doing the change from an OD point of view your organization has to adopt the bottom-up approach simultaneously with the strategic-management-inspired approach. Bottom-up approach means that there is full and active involvement of all employees. Research was done based on a case study where a public organization, the UWV in the Netherlands, faced a change by merging seven different administrative organizations into one. Management introduced the ViZieR project that