BBMG1002 Principles of Management and Organisations

Principles of management in the context of evolving organisation            

In the contemporary world, organisations need to be continuously evolved with time, to compete with the revolutionising challenges in the business market. Regular adjustments are required to adapt to the conditions and meet the needs of the environment, which is impacted by multiple factors. The evolution of the organisations depend on their ability to adapt to the changes, where the principles of management plays a crucial role (Naveed et al., 2022; Oyibo and Gabriel, 2020). This essay explores the significance of management principles, the challenges while implementing management principles and the effective use of management principles in overcoming the identified challenges in the context of evolving organisations.

Evolution in organisations have to be managed with specific principles of management or management models of change. For example, one most commonly applied model to bring evolution to organisations is the Lewin’s model of change. This model of change is based on three steps (unfreezing, transition and refreezing). This model of change allows managers to bring change by communicating the need of change among its members (unfreezing), implementing the change (transition) and help people adapt to the change and make them feel positive about the change (Errida and Lotfi, 2021). For this purpose, managers have to keep in mind certain principles, which assists them in managing the change in the organisation. These principles includes effective and open communication with the people of the organisation (employees, stakeholders, etc.), empowering employees through leadership and guidance, managing resistance to change, focusing on change vision and mission (Phillips and Klein, 2023). From a theoretical perspective, managing and implementing these principles and change management models seems quite simple, but practically, evolving organisations often face challenges while implementing these principles. Below are the most common managerial challenges which evolving organisations face.

Managerial challenges faced by evolving organisations while implementing management principles:

Environmental uncertainty (External and internal):

In evolving organisations, where constant innovation and change is required to be managed, certain environmental uncertainties acts as a challenge to the mangers while implementing management principles. These challenges include the adoption of new technologies, according to the latest modifications, and to meet the needs of the dynamic business markets. Usually this issue is seen in the form of high costs of updating new technologies, fluctuations in the economy and pricing, technical integration and installation of technologies in the whole organisation. This is a commonly perceived challenge faced by organisations aiming to evolve through technological adoption (Ullah et al., 2021). Another challenge faced by revolving organisations while implementing management principles is the resistance of employees towards adopting change in the organisation, as many people think that the upcoming change might harm their position or might pose a threat to their job. The way change is perceived by every individual of the organisation differs from person to person, as employees have varying levels of education, experiences  and personalities, which changes how they see change as. this challenge occurs when change is not effectively communicated and managed by managers, and when managers fail to express the need of change among people (Furxhi, 2021).

Furthermore, evolving organisations while implementing managerial principles of managing change, have to experience the challenge of shifting preferences of the consumers, as according to Figueroa et al. (2019) it gets difficult for the organisations to understand the current need of the consumers, as it impacts the whole application of management principles. In addition, changes on economic and political level also impacts the managerial implementation while managing change, as the organisations have to align their practices according to the newly modified regulations as well. similarly, economic fluctuations impacts how organisations will have to manage cost required for the process of change, for example, training employees to learn the technological violations in the organisation.

Ethical and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR):

while managing change in evolving organisations, it is important for managers to consider the fact that change will not violate the ethical considerations associated with the organisations and will adhere to the corporate social responsibilities. According to Payne et al. (2023) organisations often experience mistrust of employees while applying the managerial principles. This is because in some cases employees perceive change as a threat to them, such as to their job or privacy. for example, an organisation aiming to bring AI-based technological change in their organisation observed negative response from employees, as the employees were not ready to trust AI for daily use as it might threat their personal information. moreover employees were resisting because of another reason, which was a fear of getting replaced by AI (Łapińska et al., 2021). However, ensuring trust, eliminating fear of employees and ensuring their safety is one of the basic ethical responsibilities of organisations.

Moreover, from a CSR perspective, managers often face challenges of social inclusion. The study by Kulkarni et al. (2021) accurately portrays this challenge, as when organisations bring change, they often prioritise a particular group to be a part of their workforce. This prioritisation of organisations often leads to biasness or challenges the inclusivity of other social groups, therefore, it becomes a challenge for the organisations to ensure that the organisation does not incline towards a particular social group and respects social inclusivity. This challenge has also been highlighted by Veršič et al. (2022), that organisations fail to acknowledge the social and environmental perspectives while managing change in uncertain conditions, which results in impacting organisational activity such as like Covid-19, when the organisations had to evolve according to the situation. Organisations failed to consider social and environmental aspects are unpredictable, which created a challenge for the organisations later to manage change according to the Covid-19 impositions. This is not just related to the loss of managerial and operational efficiencies of the organisations, but is also relevant to the corporate social responsibilities. This is because change can also impact how the organisations respond towards their social responsibilities. For example, a cybersecurity organisation fails to recover a client’s personal information using the latest technique in the market, due to employee resistance of accepting that technology earlier.

In short organisations while implementing managerial principles to manage change or evolve their practices, often perceives challenges from ethical, environmental and social aspects as they fail to assess the consequences of change on all these aspects. This leads to the violation of ethical values, social dynamics, and environmental aspects in which the organisation is operating.

Application of management principles to overcome this challenge:  

Recommendations:

The identified environmental, ethical and CSR issues can be tackled with effective management principles, or strategies. For example, Malik et al. (2021) recommends managers to ensure sustainability and adhere to environmental ad CSR aspects by organising green activities such as employee and stakeholder training on environmental sustaibility, which can inform stakeholders on the importance of taking care of environment while managing change. Moreover, managers can also involve employees in environment friendly activities and campaigns (such as planting, cleaning campaign etc.). This will help managers overcome the impact of change management in the social and environmental network in which the organisation operates.

In addition, to resolve issues like employee resistance, Phillips and Klein (2023) highlights that managers can address ethical issues such as employee’s mistrust on the organisations or change by listening to the employees and openly communicating the purpose and need for change. listening to the concerns of employees will allow them to openly share their issues related to the violation of their privacy or job replacement. After keenly listening to employee’s concerns, managers are recommended to openly communicate about the need for change, and should be able to ensure and convince the people that their ethical values will not be violated due to change. In this way, evolving organisations, can manage employee’s resistance to change.  However, to overcome challenges related to technology, managers are recommended to provide leadership (guidance) to the employees on the use and adoption of technologies, which can be provided in the form of training programs and workshops. Managers can make arrangements for such programs, which can help develop tech-competencies among the people to overcome challenges impacting evolution.

Conclusion

Adapting to changing dynamics is essential for evolving organisations, in order to remain competitive. However , evolving businesses often face challenges from environmental, organisational, ethical and social aspects. Managers can overcome these challenges by applying effective principles or strategies of management, such as adopting leadership styles to guide employees and to manage resistance, train and develop employee’s skills and competencies according to the nature of change. Moreover, managers can play their role in acknowledging sustainability and ethical considerations among stakeholders while managing change in the organisation.

References:

Errida, A. and Lotfi, B., 2021. The determinants of organizational change management success: Literature review and case study. International Journal of Engineering Business Management, 13, pp.1-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/18479790211016273

Figueroa, C. A., Harrison, R., Chauhan, A. and Meyer, L., 2019. Priorities and challenges for health leadership and workforce management globally: a rapid review. BMC health services research, 19, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-019-4080-7

Furxhi, G., 2021. Employee’s resistance and organizational change factors. European Journal of Business and Management Research, 6(2), pp.30-32. DOI: 10.24018/ejbmr.2021.6.2.759

Kulkarni, V., Vohra, N., Sharma, S. and Nair, N., 2021. Walking the tightrope: gender inclusion as organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 34(1), pp.106-120. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-05-2017-0197

Łapińska, J., Escher, I., Gorka, J., Sudolska, A. and Brzustewicz, P., 2021. Employees’ trust in artificial intelligence in companies: The case of energy and chemical industries in Poland. Energies, 14(7), p.1942. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14071942

Malik, S.Y., Hayat Mughal, Y., Azam, T., Cao, Y., Wan, Z., Zhu, H. and Thurasamy, R., 2021. Corporate social responsibility, green human resources management, and sustainable performance: is organizational citizenship behavior towards environment the missing link?. Sustainability, 13(3), p.1044. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13031044

Naveed, R. T., Alhaidan, H., Al Halbusi, H. and Al-Swidi, A. K., 2022. Do organizations really evolve? The critical link between organizational culture and organizational innovation toward organizational effectiveness: Pivotal role of organizational resistance. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 7(2), p.1-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2022.100178

Oyibo, C. O. and Gabriel, J. M., 2020. Evolution of organization theory: A snapshot. International Journal of Innovation and Economic Development, 6(3), 46-56. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Justin-Gabriel/publication/344788773_Evolution_of_Organisation_Theory_A_Snapshot/links/5f90764392851c14bcd92d39/Evolution-of-Organisation-Theory-A-Snapshot.pdf

Payne, D., Trumbach, C. and Soharu, R., 2023. The values change management cycle: Ethical change management. Journal of business ethics, 188(3), pp.429-440. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05306-8

Phillips, J. and Klein, J. D., 2023. Change management: From theory to practice. TechTrends, 67(1), 189-197. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-022-00775-0

Ullah, F., Sepasgozar, S.M., Thaheem, M.J. and Al-Turjman, F., 2021. Barriers to the digitalisation and innovation of Australian Smart Real Estate: A managerial perspective on the technology non-adoption. Environmental Technology & Innovation, 22, p.101527. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eti.2021.101527

Veršič, S., Tominc, P. and Štrukelj, T., 2022. SME top management perception of environmental uncertainty and gender differences during COVID-19. Sustainability, 14(6), 3593. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063593