Managing Change in Busines

MANAGING CHANGE IN BUSINESS.

INTRODUCTION

In every aspect of life we all need management one way or the other, Imagine an army with no General or a Nation without a government. How could the army beat the enemy? Or how could the nation avoid complete anarchy? They could not. Everyone happens to be a manger in his or her own life; Examples are, a student managing his time as to get his social life along with academic work. This is the same way and organisation cannot succeed without a manager. Change is a Constant occurrence in our everyday activities, so does it affect the business field, the writer would be talking about Management, Managers, their definitions, purpose, function and managing change in a Business organisation.

In an Organisation, Management can be described as the process of achieving, planning, leading, Organizing and controlling people within a group in order to achieve goals (Beech J , et al 2004), this means in lay mans term that it can be defined as the techniques of getting things done to achieve a certain standard. This definition emphasises that a manger plans and guide the work of other people, therefore making the person in charge of management of an organisation called a Manager. Through evidence of research by the writer shows that a manger would be handling a lot of work in an organisation. Despite the essential roles managers play in business, they still get laid off due to change, economic problem, and new technological demands making life tough for managers. However business would always need a manager because no business can run by its self so this is the main purpose of management in business. Economic and competitive conditions will always present challenges; this means that no matter how good a business is, it would always want to do better. A professional Manager would be ready for change at any point in time.

Managers role change as they move up an organisation, there are 3 main levels of Management that form a hierarchy, in which they are ranked according to how important they are, we have the top level, middle level and first level.(Razak, N 2010, university of Bolton handout).

At first level managers they are more concerned with the details than the overall picture of the organisation (Hannagan T, 2002 pg 8), their duties may be involved in selling or in supervising a small number of sales people. examples are team leaders, unit managers, supervisors. They also usually have one on one relationship with their employees, their subordinates are closely supervised by them, and because they have close relationships with operational level they use more of human and conceptual skills than conceptual. There are more first level managers in an organisation. The middle level managers are responsible for carrying goals set by top management; they do so by setting goals for their department and other business unit, they report and are responsible to the top management and are accountable and responsible for the junior managers, they do more managing than relation to operations. They use more human skills than conceptual and human. Top level managers are also called senior management staffs or executives, they make more decisions affecting the whole firm (Charles, B,2010 handout, university of Bolton) they are responsible for the gain or loss of the organisation, they have less communication with junior managers and they make use of ultimate conceptual skills than human and technical skills.

Also different management styles are used in order to achieve this maximum goal, this is either done to suit the level of management, type of organisation, character of the manager. There are four different types of management styles which are Autocratic, Democratic, consultative and laissez faire styles.

Briefing on the Autocratic style is it the manager that dictates orders to their staff and makes decision without any consultation of junior staffs (Razak, N 2010, university of Bolton handout). With evidence on research it is effective in the sense that there is consistency and efficiency on how project are handled, there is less confusion among the staffs. This style also increase the responsibilities of one's role in an organisation and there is quick decision making and very effective in employing unprofessional workers. This helps with low class employment as well. The Democratic style delegates authority to his or her staff. Communication is two ways therefore they receive feedback from them. There is trust between the employers and their employees. In a business environment this style is very effective because the share the knowledge of the subordinates and use it collectively in the achieving the common goal of the organisation. This style is effective because everybody's view is better therefore increasing the input from people with a variety of skills. While the consultative is defined as a form as management where manager ask staff for their views and opinions, but the final decision is made by the manager and the laissez faire manager sets task but the staff are able to complete the task as they see it, there is less intervention from the manager.

Communication is an important aspect of an organisation; communication can be defined as of any form talking, writing or listening and passing information to another or from one level to another. A really good manager should spend about fifty and ninety percent of their time talking to people (Mintzberg, H 1973). There are two types of communication know as formal and informal communication. A formal communication is on that goes through formal channels in an organisations, it is mostly written while informal goes outside the formal channel of an organisation this is most verbal between people in the organisation, or body language also another form that can be used by managers but it is less talked about, it is the physical or symbolic communication when gestures, facial expression or even the tone of voice does not align with the word spoken.(Selley, S 2002), with good form of communication in the office there is less conflict incident, they organisational would have well planed objectives to achieve their goals, there would be job satisfaction and employees can carry duties on time. Effective communication can be achieved in business situation by following (clamptin 1991) where he said effectiveness can only be determined in the light of communication goal. He developed three model of approach to communication which are the arrow, circuit and dance approach. The arrow approach talks of accuracy in the sending of information. This believes that a clear and straight forward communication should be passed and reached to the destination as told, neglect the long chain it passed through and either it might be changed. The circuit approach the understanding between the superiors

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