Business Innovation and Organizational Change

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Many organizations worldwide are undergoing challenges due to innovation. It has been perceived that employees are often not empowered or trained to innovate. Lack of collaboration, loss aversion and conformity tend to threaten the organizational change. Moreover, most of the companies are biased towards men than women. Besides, people with disabilities and different coloured complexions receive lesser acknowledgment and managerial guidance which lead the organizational innovation towards failure. All these tend to cause frustration within the workplaces to a high extent. Kuratko, et al. (2014, p.648) depicted that by bringing suitable changes, the companies are likely to focus upon four most important areas such as understanding the nature of innovation, coordination of the managerial roles, using effective operating controls and providing specific training to the employees to adopt the change. However, organizations with inefficient change management approach experience failure in implementing the innovation. This particular essay will emphasise upon adopting a definite and effectual change management approach through which the organizations can ascertain proper execution of the innovations and organizational success.

Organizational change is preferably the adoption of a new and creative idea by the organizations. According to Haberberg, et al. (2010, p.367), corporate responsibilities towards the society and people should be maintained while implementing a change. Managers mainly consider three types of changes relating to people, technology and structure. Although structural and technological changes are quite easier to manage, changing the attitudes, perception and expectations of the employees is not an easy task for the manager. Therefore, Chatterji and Fabrizio (2014, p.1429) opined that changes need to be implemented by complying with corporate ethics in terms of improving the quality of products and services.

In this respect, the management tends to push the employees and put more pressure on them which make them deviate from professional ethics and leave their jobs. Barnett and Salomon (2012, p.1304) commented that firms require paying off their employees well as per their efforts and performance standards; for which they need to have financial capacity and capital. Managers can lower their transaction costs to increase the pay of the employees for motivating them and engaging them at work. However, employee attitudes and behaviours did not seem appropriate towards the change implication. Biasness towards a particular group of employees over the others leads the organizations to experience high emotional distress, employee turnover, higher disengagement among staffs. Hence in this way, lack of concentration or coordination among them is perceived within the organizations.

Concerning the example of workplace outcomes in corporate America, it has been examined that the employees have a negative perspective while working in organizations. According to Hewlett, et al. (2017), biased behaviours of the leaders or managers towards the employees tend to demotivate them and decrease their interests at work. To understand the possible reasons behind employee turnover, the organizations of corporate America are investing a lot of money to conduct unconscious bias awareness training programs. Unconscious biases are related to the actual biased behaviours. Investigations revealed that women and ethnic minorities are underrepresented or unrecognised in the managerial decision-making process despite their high educational achievements. In the study conducted by Hewlett, et al. (2017), the managers thus need to be aware of the discontentment and lack of coordination among the team members and thus three possible solutions have been proposed such as inclusive leadership, diversity in executive rankings and access to sponsorship. Nevertheless, it has been argued by Chatterji and Fabrizio (2014, p.1434) the approach cannot yield favourable outcomes if the change is not managed well. Thus to do so, Lewin’s 3-step change management theory can be implemented by the managers of the organizations.

Through this theory, how organizations can improve their innovation and facilitate organizational changes can be depicted. According to the unfreezing stage of the theory, the management has to gather all the employees of different demographics together and facilitate open discussion to understand their causes of dissatisfaction and disengagement at the workplace. The emotions and perceptions of the employees towards the unconscious biases of the management must be understood clearly to initiate the change (Hussain, et al. 2018, p.124). In the second change stage, the effective transformational or inclusive leadership approach must be adopted with which the managers should even understand that the women and ethnic minority groups have the qualification and abilities to hold the executive rankings and take effective decisions for the business benefit. In the last or refreezing stage, the management must try hard to motivate the employees and guide them thoroughly so that the initiated leadership change can be solidified. Thus biases can be reduced within the companies.

The growth and development of business can be ensured if the necessary changes are implemented by involving innovative and creative ideas. This assessment has helped in understanding the importance of effective change management in ensuring competitiveness and innovative image of the organizations within the business environment. By citing the example of the employee disengagement and leaves in corporate America, it has been determined that by applying the change management model of Lewin, the organizations can adopt an inclusive leadership approach and encourage diversity in executive rankings which will empower both women and ethnic minority people equally as the men.

References:

Barnett, ML and Salomon, RM, 2012, ‘Does it pay to be good? Addressing the shape of the relationship between social and financial performance’. Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 33, no. 11, pp.1304-1320.

Chatterji, AK, and Fabrizio, KR, 2014, ‘Using users: When does external knowledge enhance corporate product innovation?’. Strategic Management Journal, Vol 35, no. 10, pp.1427-1445.

Haberberg, A, Gander, J, Rieple, A, Helm, C and Martin-Castilla, JI, 2010, ‘Institutionalizing idealism: the adoption of CSR practices’. Journal of Global Responsibility, Vol. 1, no. 2, pp.366-381.

Hewlett, S, Rashid, R, and Sherbin, L, 2017, ‘When Employees Think the Boss Is Unfair, They’re More Likely to Disengage and Leave’. Harvard Business Review.

Hussain, ST, Lei, S, Akram, T, Haider, MJ, Hussain, SH and Ali, M 2018. Kurt Lewin’s change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, Vol. 3, no. 3, pp.123-127.

Kuratko, DF, Covin, JG, and Hornsby, JS, 2014, ‘Why implementing corporate innovation is so difficult’. Business Horizons, Vol. 57, no. 5, pp.647-655.

Meyer, E, 2014, ‘Navigating the cultural minefield’. Harvard Business Review, Vol. 92, no. 5, pp.119-123.

Ross, FK, Wells, JT and Clarke, AT, 2014, ‘A Pipeline for Diversity: Initiative Spearheads Profession Wide Effort to Attract Underrepresented Minorities to Accounting’. Journal of Accountancy, Vol. 218, no. 2, p.48.