Organizational Change
Organizational change is an extensive field of study. According to some scholars, language and lexicon of change is inadequate to reflect complex change phenomenon in modern organizations (Marshak, 2002). Therefore, some studies can be conducted to extend lexicon of organizational change. The authors of this study are agreed with this perspective. However, to clarify extant concepts in field is so important as well. According to Downs and Mohr (1976), so many scholars who study on organizational change and innovation, don’t clarify basic concepts of the field. In this situation, danger seems to be that scholars can’t create a cumulative scientific knowledge (Bingham, 1978). Therefore, giving a definition of organizational change seems to bear an importance. According to Tosey and Robinson (2002), change is a set of responses which different elements of an organization give to various parts of an environment. It is clearly observed in this definition that Tosey and Robinson seemed to adopt a reactive change approach to a large extent. Organizations can sometimes exhibit proactive change behavior as well. In addition, these changes can be made in structure, strategy, technology, product and service, and culture of an organization (Appelbaum et al., 1998; Daft, 1998; Keidel, 1994). On the other hand, successful change projects generally take many or all of these elements into consideration at the same time (Appelbaum et al., 1998). This approach is sometimes called as “systemic view of organizational change” by some authors (e.g. Cao et al., 2000).
Since many organizations operate in dynamic environments, “Organizational Capacity for Change (OCC)” is vital. OCC means readiness of an organization as a collective entity (Judge & Detelin, 2005). Via a high OCC, organizations can obtain various benefits. For example, during the period of Margaret Thatcher presidency, British Airways (BA) went to a cultural change and replaced its “bureaucratic and militaristic culture” with a “service oriented and market driven”. By this way, BA significantly increased its financial performance (Goodstein & Warner, 1991). In addition, institutional environments can demand some changes from organizations. When organizations give responses to these demands, they can gain legitimacy in the eyes of stakeholders as well. However, these don’t mean that organizations should always change. Sometimes continuing a status quo can be more appropriate option when it is compared with a change project (Glover et al., 2002). In a similar vein, Abrahamson (2004) recommends that organizations should avoid from overdosed change, because excessive amount of change projects can give some damages to organizations. Organizations can understand from some symptoms that they accessed the limits. Some of these symptoms are burnout syndrome which can be diagnosed among employees of related organization, and initiative overload (Abrahamson, 2004).