Understanding the Perspectives

Organizational changes refer to the process through which the strategies, processes, procedures, culture and technologies of the business are varied. The techniques or process through which the changes take place affect the organization’s operational activities (Cullen et al., 2014). The various theories that are involved in changing the organizations as evaluated and further known as those specific methods through which the upcoming changes are systematically planned so that the firm’s short-term and long-term objectives and goals can be achieved.

 The analysis of Lewin’s Force Field is used to give an outline of the issues that is linked with the change in the business organization. Change management is crucial aspect for management that makes the business efficient enough in the environment in which the firm operates (Jabri, 2015). Management further has to develop strategies so that the change can be implemented. In this model there are various forces that drive changes and the existing forces that restrain it.  The equilibrium present in between these two forces further does not lead to any other in the organization. For bringing the desired changes in the business organization the desired forces present in the firm must be greater than the restraining forces of the organization. The Lewin’s model is also used to analyze various other objectives that include scrutiny of balance of the power related to the problem (Hankir, Cowley & Fenske, 2016). It is further used for the identification of key stakeholders on the related issue and the opponents or rivals in the business competitive market. Furthermore, the strategy to influence or affect the target groups is also evaluated.

Internal forces responsible for change that is present within the organization:

• The betterment of the organization as an outcome of the change.
• The need for the business organization to rapidly grow the efficiency, profitability and other performance related measures.
• The necessary requirements for reorganizing the business operational activities to raise the level of competitiveness.
• The natural ageing as well as declining in the firm’s machinery and products of the machines.
• The demand for increasing flexibility in the structure of the business organization.
• The overall concerns related to the organization for ineffective communication, poor business relationship or de-motivation in the organization (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015).
• The increasing conflicts within the department are also a vital factor responsible for change.

  External forces for change beyond the control of the organization:

• The overall increasing demands for efficient quality and higher customer service levels.
• The uncertainty related to the market economic condition.
• The increasing competition in the current market.
• The legislation as well as taxation.
• The political interests in the business market, where the operational activity takes place.
• The advanced changes in technology.
• The globalization activities in the organization.
• The increasing scarcity of natural resources in the business.
• The changing nature and composition of organizational workforce.

The increasing pressure that is related with the changes in the business is caused mainly because of the external forces than the existing internal forces present in the organization. The business firm should be well-prepared to tackle the ever increasing demands caused due to external environment, which is changing constantly at a rapid rate.

The restraining forces are the crucial factors responsible for the changes in the business environment and therefore making the business process more tough (Oreg, Michel & By, 2013). The reason responsible for the resistance to changes in the organization are low tolerance level, absence of understanding for the required changes, employees self-interest.

The Force Field Analysis of Lewin is the theoretical ontology as it helps the corporation for analyzing the organizational changes. This provides the mapping of the different organizational changes. Proper reviewing of various forces is vital in form that brings adequate flexibility in the corporation. This further strategizes the various operations that would provide the strengthening of the existing different forces.

Defining Organizational Change

The forces driving and resisting the changes are the two ontologies or the theoretical approaches that are related to the organizational changes are as:

• Problem centric Approaches (Scientific objective mode)

This approaches mainly focuses on the environmental and organizational issues, which tends to make a practical and positivist approach to the changes. This includes depersonalized systems, strategies and structure.

• Dialogic Approaches (Social constructionist mode)

The approaches are relational in nature that focuses more on the relations between the individuals and their relevance of communications and conversations among people that is to be identified to resolve several issues. The employees may change their understanding of the truth related to situation as per with the conversations with other. It is subjective in nature and involve negotiation and collaboration.

The organization taken in consideration for analyzing the changes that have occurred is Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft Corp. is a multinational organization founded in 1975, in Albuquerque, New Mexico (Microsoft.com., 2018). The two founder of the Company were Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The company deals with computer software and hardware, consumer electronics, social networking services, video games, cloud computing, internet and social networking services (Huang, Xing & Wu, 2013). The former CEO of Microsoft Corp. was Steve Ballmer was succeeded by Satya Nadella during 2104. Steve Ballmer has a different management style and brought changes in the organization.

Bill Gates served the organization till 2008 as a chairman encouraging innovation and creativity in the organization. His leadership style was authoritarian in nature and is a leading and most admired business leader, who believes in team achievements and recognizing individual potentials (Agote, Aramburu & Lines, 2016). In the year 2014, Satya Nadella became the CEO of Microsoft replacing Steve Ballmer. This change in the leaders of the organizations brings major changes for the corporation and its culture. Microsoft corporate culture under the supervision or leadership of Steve Ballmer was innovative in form. Steve Ballmer is regarded as an unconventional leader with the power of demanding higher level of staff excellence and power of associating with all the stakeholders. This decision making power was completely executed by Steve Ballmer and employees have to meet their expectations. His first priority was always to delegate authority and order to the people. He also emphasized the need to pursue new or advanced technologies to rise in the competitive business environment against its rivals Apple and Google in the smart phones sector.

The change occurred in Microsoft Corporation was in the year 2014, when Satya Nadella was appointed as the CEO major changes took place in the same year. Satya Nadella had earlier led the Enterprise and Microsoft’s Cloud division. In the same year, John W. Thompson took over Bill Gates for the Chairman’s role. Microsoft acquired its rival company Nokia in the year 2014 for $7.2 billion. Later Microsoft also acquired Mojang, video game company for $2.5 billion. Moreover, in the year 2015, the organization lost $7.6 billion due to its mobile phone business and thus firing 7,800 employees (Microsoft.com., 2018). Later in May 2106, the organization announced its strategy technique of laying off 1850 workers and further making restructuring and impairment charge of $ 95 million. The organization has expanded its business in the last few years and is considered as the largest business corporation. Furthermore, due to rapid increase in globalization, Microsoft Corp. is also practicing diversity in the workplace.

Analyzing Microsoft Corporation

Though at first the new organizational changes were resisted by the employees but later on the  changes were completely accepted by its employees, which led to the growth of the organization in the business market. Due to the change in the leadership the organizational culture and management style  of Microsoft Corp. also changed affecting the profitability and sales of the organization.

SWOT analysis is a strategic tool for planning and analyzing the competition as well as opportunity for the business organization. This analysis is used as a major tool for formulation of the brainstorming session (Sune & Gibb, 2015). Through the SWOT analysis the major organizational changes necessary for the organization is ascertained. The change in the management of Microsoft through the different leadership style has helped Microsoft in increasing the profitability besides improving the operational activities of the organization.

The process of SWOT analysis is applicable for both individual as well as organization. With the help of SWOT analysis, the objectives of the corporation can be supported beforehand. Both the internal as well as external analysis of business can be ascertained through SWOT analysis. The relevant information includes both quantitative and qualitative data, which is to be analyzed (Emoto et al., 2016). The major benefit of SWOT is that special skills or necessary training is not required for the analyzing the outcome. Moreover, the cost for performing the SWOT analysis for an organization is comparatively low from the other similar analysis. The internal staffs of the Corporation generally conduct the analysis without hiring any external staff.

The major disadvantage of SWOT analysis is that the factors cannot be rated or marked. The significance of SWOT factors cannot be analyzed with respect to each other. As this is a one-dimensional framework and the various factors related to the analysis of single factor cannot be adequately analyzed. After a particular or specific time period, the data obtained to analyze the SWOT model may become irrelevant (Pavel & Trossen, 2014). The major organizational Changes of Microsoft Corp. has been analyzed through SWOT analysis. The detailed analysis of the organization was not possible as through SWOT model, the factors creating an impact on the organization cannot be adequately rated.  SWOT model simplicity helps in clear understanding of the overall aspects of the business and its various ways or factors affecting the profitability of the organization are also determined. Microsoft Corp. organizational changes caused due to the leadership change is analyzed through SWOT framework.

• Clear vision of the organization is essential for the organization and Microsoft should adopt it goals to communicate its vision in an efficient manner. Proper vision is the strength for the management of leadership to attain a common purpose.
• The leadership management is vital for the Microsoft Corp. as this helps in analyzing the consumer demands in a more effective manner that makes the overall process work concurrently (Rafferty, Jimmieson & Restubog, 2013).
• The change management helps in generating adequate opportunities for the various management practices that can be controlled properly through the overall process.
• A well and proper change management helps in bringing new changes in the organization that would help in implementing new and improvised changes in the company.
• The change management is related to individual issues that are required for creating new changes in the organization to make the business more profitable.
• Ownership creation is important to help the employees of the organization to accept such responsibility (Chen & Wang, 2014). This would help in creating specific solutions for such issues that is to be faced by the organization while following the similar leadership method. The leadership teams of Microsoft Corp. have to involve themselves while engaging in the various tasks performed by the leaders.

SWOT Analysis and Organizational Change

Effective communication is vital in the respective company, Microsoft Corporation as this would enable the firm in maintain proper connections with the various issues that is faced by the employees within the organization (Michel, 2014). Moreover, help to engage the various staffs for analyzing the company’s overall success rate. This concept of change management helps in serving adequately the new approaches to be implemented in the company. Maintain the development of organizational culture is vital in nature as this result in creating the overall process, productive, innovative and profitable.

Microsoft Corp. has adequately implemented its leadership change management to help in better understanding the individual’s behaviour by making effective organizational change. The change management initiated in Microsoft Corp. would provide high return in investment, which would further make the necessary implementation in a faster phase. The leadership changes adopted by Microsoft would help in increasing the proper quality of outcome that would further clarify the various roles related with the change management in the organization.

Proper or efficient change management is vital for the growth of the organization due to its different advantages. Microsoft Corp. should implement the change management in the overall organization to raise productivity (Kuipers et al., 2014). The leadership management adopted by Microsoft would increase the efficiency of resources by clarifying various roles and responsibilities to those individuals involved in the management change through their relevant skills. Furthermore this provides the creative and experienced employees to bring major changes in the business organization.

Moreover, through implementing the change management in the organization properly it would help in reducing the activity level by the reduction in the duplication effort. This will as a result enhance the employee’s morale and reduce the cost of retention as well as recruitment (Nie & Ghamami, 2013). Microsoft Corporation has adopted the leadership change management which has resulted in the quality improvement of the outcome by ensuring different people, processes and system will involve in the proper and appropriate responsibilities for maintaining proper change management.

Hence, it can be concluded that efficient or proper change management is vital for the Microsoft Corporation for increasing the overall productivity and efficiency of the organization. This would further create a positive influence on the employee’s workload and would bring huge impact on various departments. Quality of outcome would vary by bringing the necessary changes as this would improve the change management through greater realization of the various benefits (Clark, 2016).  Moreover, the change management process helps in reducing the overall issues and would help in creating appropriate and proper level of change in the overall organization.

The dialogic approaches in an organization provide structure planning and adequate result oriented of the organization’s stakeholder’s dialogic (Zhang, 2016). This approaches serves in analyzing the reality besides the organizational relationships that are socially constructed in form. The various principles related to dialogic approaches include:

• The various organizations are adequately meaning making system.
• The various kind of languages matters in the various organization.
• Adequate transformational change is planned and emergent.
• The overall dialogic process involves different consultants.
• This increases the differentiation of the inquiry, which is participative in form and before seeking coherence there are no engagement.

Whereas, the approach that is problem centric views the particular changes as an orderly process that is controlled rationally. This is a systematic process of gathering different data properly through interpretation, which is rational in nature (Fard et al., 2013). The three main principles related to problem centric approach are as follows:

1. This diagnosis helps in adequately focusing on the environment analysis through proper design alignment of the system in the organization with the assumptions that various system can effectively respond to the different outcomes of the analysis in timely manner.
2. The overall system would be synchronized as well as aligned which would change the part of the entire system by influencing the various functions of other parts.
3. The diagnosis could help in searching the system capability through proper optimization.

There are various drawbacks of both problem centric and dialogic approach involving various factors like human factors, which would influence the overall communication process. Through the qualitative nature, the overall concept becomes subjective in form. The dialogic approach used in the organization requires more time to plan or decide and take necessary actions (Heckmann, Steger & Dowling, 2016). It is quiet difficult to predict the change methodologies by the various group of stakeholders, thus also increasing the overall uncertainty.

Furthermore, the approach that is problem centric in form is unable to draw the various skills that require the changes in the overall process of the organization. Adequate leadership approach is vital in form as this would lead in analyzing the various values of inclusivity by engaging the overall group (Thomas, 2016). Change management is important because this helps in understanding the overall drawbacks or benefits and will serve the corporation to analyze the issue.

Benefits

1. This approach is generally holistic in form and the overall impact in the organization is considered.
2. Besides being consultative, the model is inclusive in form and all the organizational stakeholders take actively participations.
3. The communication process is both constant and inclusive in form.

Drawbacks

1. Longer time is required to take a valid decision or proper action
2. The methodologies responsible for the changes cannot be predicted by the various stakeholders group, which increases the uncertainty level (Dehghani & Ramsin, 2015).
3. The qualitative nature of this approach makes it more subjective.

Benefits

1. The overall data presented through this approach is in objective form and this leaves a very little gap for interpretation and corruption in the society.
2. The decisions through this method are made very quickly and only few key players are involved in the overall operational process.
3. The problem centric approach is stable and predictable in form as the stakeholders comfort level increases due to the increase in stability level of the approach.

Drawbacks

1. This approach cannot measure the varied factors like impact of employees on the corporate culture.
2. This approach is unable to draw on the experiences, skills and the values present within the vast group of stakeholders (Hayes, 2014). moreover, there are no appreciative or engagement enquiry carried in the business organization.
3. The major changes in communication is often made after obtaining the complete data, thus the approach becomes irrelevant for the planning process.

In the Microsoft Corporation, the approach that can be utilized is problem centric in nature as this will provide a better understanding of the various issues faced by the corporation. This approach will help in ascertaining the problem areas and thus resolving the issue. The obtained data will be completely qualitative in form and provides better understanding of the skills, experience and the overall planning process (Jacobs, Witteloostuijn & Christe-Zeyse, 2013). The overall change process is predictable through the problem centric approach that helps in stabilizing and raising the comfort of the organizational stakeholders by providing certainty. Through this approach the immediate decision making process are taken, which help in proper analysis of the qualitative data approach of Microsoft Corp. however, there are issues that should be considered for problem centric approach as the methodologies can incorporate different changes in the organization. Moreover, this problem centric approach is unable to consider the various factors that influence the overall organizational culture.

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