The Roles of Managers in Organizational Change (Carnall)

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The Roles of Managers in Organizational Change (Carnall)

🔥 Effective change management goes beyond the mere implementation of change and involves leading, managing, directing the employees successfully through organizational change. Organizations may have a clear vision and clarity for executing major changes; however, obstacles are bound to arise. Change indeed involves risk and courage to go for it. Although change might be beneficial for the organization, not all employees embrace it gracefully.

Carnall's Roles of Managers in Organizational Change

That's why Carnell states that effective management of change depends on 3 management skills:

1. Managers should be able to manage transitions effectively by helping people to learn and by creating a risk-taking atmosphere.
2. Furthermore, a manager should deal with organizational cultures by establishing a more adaptable culture, for example through more local autonomy.
3. Finally, a manager should also be able to handle organizational politics effectively through an understanding and recognition of different agendas.

Only managers with these three mentioned skills will be able to create an atmosphere where risk-taking, creativity and better performance can be implemented (Carnall, 2007).

Carnall's Coping Style Model of Change

There are various reasons why employees are reluctant to change. These include close-mindedness, fear of the unknown or the fear of not being able to adapt to the new changes. Sometimes, employees might reflect an unwillingness to learn and assume that the new changes may not result in improvements. According to Carnall (2008), coping with changes takes place gradually. Quite similar to the Change Curve model by Kübler-Ross, Carnall says employees typically go through five stages during major organizational changes.

• Stage 1 Denial: It represents the first stage in which employees deny that any changes occur in the organization. They attempt to convince themselves that the old ways of working are better and try giving reasons as to why the new changes will never be successful.
• Stage 2 Defense: When employees start believing that changes will occur in the organization, they take a defensive stance by justifying their previous positions and way of doing things. This happens because they assume that the changes are taking place mainly because their old ways of working were faulty and error-prone in someway. It is important to understand that these assumptions held by the employees are mostly irrational and not always true compared to reality.
• Stage 3 Discarding: At this point, employees begin to realize that change is inevitable. They also understand that along with the organizational changes, employees need to change as well. Hence, they find it better to discard their old ways and accept change as the new normal.
• Stage 4 Adaptation: A tremendous amount of energy gets devoted during this stage. Employees spent more time trying to learn about changes in the systems, testing them and understanding new functions. This stage involves learning through adjustments and testing using trial and error. Thus, it often causes frustration and rising anger among the employees.
• Stage 5 Internalization: Finally, in this stage, employees become amalgamated in the new culture and become comfortable with the new changes, systems and the new working environment.

The above-described model helps us realize the need to consider each employee for effective change management. Different employees might be at different stages. Also, not every employee will accept change gracefully. There will always be those who will play the role of change resisters. Hence, there is a need for managers and leaders to act as a steering wheel for driving change effectively within the organization.

⇨ Do you agree these are the 3 main management skills needed in successfully executing organizational change?

Sources:
Carnall, C.A. and By, R.T. (2014), Managing Change in Organizations. Pearson Education.
Culcrattanak. (2017, July 1). Blog 4: Managing change. Kawin's Blogs.
Stark, P.B. (2014, December 10). Why Employees Resist Change. Peter Barron Stark Companies.

		Comments by date▼ Comments by rating Rating
		2 Aniket Deolikar Consultant, India
	Change Curve Model The Change curve by Kübler-Ross is such an effective concept that wherever change comes we will always be able to find such stages. Whether it may be personal change, the pandemic which we face now (a big change to almost everything) or organizational change. It is such that you will always be able to find traces of the change curve.

		7 Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	Managers Should Understand the Emotions in a Change Process The Kubler Ross model and the variant by Carnall basically describe the EMOTIONS people go through when facing and going through a change process. These emotions are definitely one important thing for us managers to understand (and manage) if we want to manage the change process in such a way that the desired change happens relatively quickly, easily, without huge costs and successfully.

		2 Tilak Dissanayake Consultant, Sri Lanka
	Managers Managing the Change I believe Devayani has correctly identified the requirements for managers leading change due to the psychology that enables barriers to exist. To be an effective change agent or ambassador you have to sell or germinate (Editor: ~seed, start early growth) the idea carefully and get the peoples' participation and cooperation by making them part of the change. Any risks involved should be transparently analysed and evaluated and calculated risks taken if benefits outweigh the disadvantages. You can use the organisation's grapevine productively to infiltrate into their closed airtight compartments and get them involved as a team. Here a team building stratagem will also be helpful.

		2 Francis Kahihu Strategy Consultant, Kenya
	Crucial Conversations for Effective Change Management I agree with the proposed three key skills to introducing and sustaining change. In addition to the three, or strategically infused into the three skills, is the ability to successfully engage in diff...

		0 Ashok GANESAN Analyst, Austria
	Creating a Risk-taking Atmosphere Needs More Clarification The phrase "creating a risk-taking atmosphere" in point I. needs careful understanding. Before creating a risk taking atmosphere, it is important to create a culture of risk assessment/evaluation and ...

		3 Maurice Hogarth Consultant, United Kingdom
	Managers Leading Change Should Involve People Of course it may be argued that none of this coping requirement is true, per se. People like change, people accept change time after time without any resistance. People like change when it is person...

		3 PeterMaria van Herpen Switzerland
	If Change is not Perceived as Necessary... There is the other model of change, saying 'Unfreeze, Change, Freeze". Regardless of which model may or may not apply, it should be common knowledge to all managers that change can only be successful ...

		1 Molokanova Professor, Ukraine
	Communicating the Truth Honestly Makes for Effective Change Managers All change in an organization starts with a person. Major changes in the organization often lead to or require a change in the established emotional background of the organization and makes it possibl...

		2 Gera Teacher, Kenya
	The Type of Change Matters for the Role of Managers In a situation where things change frequently in small steps, employees should be equipped to initiate and address the challenges themselves. If a manager allows challenges to accumulate, a radical an...

		3 PeterMaria van Herpen Switzerland
	Role of Change Manager in Small Changes Hi @Gera, interesting comment, but I disagree to a certain degree. Even small changes require change management, like also a small project requires project management. Whenever a small process change ...