Leading Change in Bureaucratic Organizations (Coursework Sample)

Leading Change in Bureaucratic Organizations
Going tech is arguably the most visible trend in the corporate sector in this digital era, as business organizations strive to streamline functions and improve internal efficiencies as a means of cutting costs and meeting customer needs through quality improvements (Bernard, 2011). However, the craze for technology is not without its share of challenges, which threaten to derail change initiatives and the organization’s ability to achieve change goals within a reasonable timeframe. Initiating and implementing change involving the adoption of a new technology is especially significant in the techno-driven corporate segments, where a given technology is domed to become obsolete within a short time owing to the rate at which new technologies are invented and introduced into the market. Thus, one of the most pressing challenges for change agents is recognizing and addressing all potential sources of resistance within the organization to guarantee the initiative’s successful implementation. From the perspective of project management, the corporate environment is particularly unfavorable to change as a result of bureaucracy which slows down decision making, and the existence of different power centers and factions with conflicting interests, creating resistance to change projects that threaten the interests of these groups.
Resistance to change is common in the corporate environment because of the nature of the power structures that exist, as well as the organizational culture that defines power relations among employees (Garston, 2012). For instance, senior managers’ ability to make, enforce or reverse decisions give them more autonomy and power compared to middle-level managers who typically act as conduits of information between the senior management and low-level employees. At the same time, the top-down nature of bureaucratic organizations condition employees to learn to respect authority and carry out orders from above without questioning their implications. During an organizational change phase, bureaucracy creates resistance because the new change threatens to disrupt the status quo. It has been argued that bureaucracies resist change because it (change) introduces new ways of doing things, which necessarily require employees to update their knowledge and skill sets to remain relevant.