A Qualitative Analysis of Australian Public Sector Organisational Change - Article Example

Change Management Critical Review Student’s Name Institution’s Name Date Change Management Critical Review Hossan C., Dixon, C., & Brown, D. (2013). Impact of group dynamics on eservice implementation: A qualitative analysis of Australian public sector organisational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 26(5), 853-873. Change in any organization is normally characterized by a number of challenges which normally increase the complexity of the process. However, according to Lewin’s theory of group dynamics, these challenges can be minimized by considering the group approach in organizational change rather than individual approach. The Hossan et al. (2013) article focuses on demonstrating the importance of group approach other than individual approach when employing change in an organisation. The paper is based on Lewin’s theory of group dynamics which demonstrates the importance of focusing on a group while employing changes in an organization, rather than individuals whose behaviours are normally influenced by the groups they belong to. The paper empirically reappraises the importance of Lewin’s theory of group dynamics in a context of local government technology related changes. The authors qualitatively examined the processes of change management in five Melbourne Metropolitan city councils in Australia. They conducted 23 semi-structured face-to-face interviews to top management officials in different organizations involved in this change. The research revealed poor group involvement in the change and hence, delays in the process of change in the government sector compared to other private sectors. The three authors demonstrate their great knowledge in organization change management thus, they are able to provide reliable recommendation based on the research findings. The paper has adopted a standard research paper structure which starts with an abstract containing various subtitle that summarizes the entire structure of the paper. This section clearly defines the purpose of the paper, its research methodology, the research findings, its limitation, its implications and the paper originality or its founded theory. The paper then provides a detailed introduction that focuses on organization change and the importance of embracing a certain strategy while employing change in the organization. In this section, the authors clearly point out the reasons for a high rate of failures in various change initiatives, and the strategy an organization can employ to enhance success in organization changes. The stated causes of failure and the recommended measures in this part of introduction are highly supported with previous literature, demonstrating that the authors based their arguments on tested and approved facts. The lack of suitable guiding framework to manage and implement change is considered as the main reason change process failure in various organizations. Nevertheless, the authors also acknowledge that failures in organization changes could have been highly attributed to a wide range of confusing and contradicting change theories. With this, the authors try to convince the readers that they have actually identified the underlying theoretical problems that contribute to the change failure in organizations, and that they have a theoretical solution for it. They eventually manage to convince the reader on the reliability of their solution by appraising the Lewin’s theory through a well thought empirical research. The second part of the introduction provides a background review on the Australian government intention of employing new technology in their operation system. Although the intention was clearly stated, the authors demonstrate the complexity the government have experienced in implementing its plan. According to Hossan et al. (2013), this was highly attributed by negative view of technological changes in the governmental sectors. The conservative nature of the government officials is cited as the main cause of poor performance of technological changes in these sectors compared to private sectors. The authors cite this as a way of demonstrating how the government sectors fail in influencing their employees to embrace technological changes. This eventually result to their failure, since individual approach rather than group approach is employed where, only a few individuals focus on implementing change while others distaste it and consider it as a threat to their jobs and their conservative functionality. The selection of government sector was therefore a great choice to demonstrate how individual approach would result to failure in change management, and how this can be corrected by use of the group approach advocated by Lewin’s theory. The authors use an extensive range or literature to justify why group dynamics theory was applicable in resolving the constant change management failures in the governmental sector. This reinforces the authors’ arguments on the employment of the right approach to fight failures in the organizational changes, particularly where technology is involved. The paper then provides a detailed literature review on Kurt Lewin theoretical work. The section demonstrates how Lewin’s work has practically been used successfully in a period of more than 50 years. The section reviews various approaches that Lewin defined to reinforce change management in organization, and why the authors considered embracing or appraising group dynamics theory over others which include Field Theory, 3-Step model, and Action Research. The mention of the extensive work of Lewin in this section is basically meant to demonstrate his extensive knowledge and resourcefulness in change management in the organization. The authors used this approach to convince the reader that the choice of Lewin’s theory of group dynamic was well researched and highly evaluated, before being selected as the best solution for the current problems experienced in different organizations, while employing changes. The section demonstrates clearly how individual behaviours are influenced by the environment and why individuals in a group cannot change their behaviour individually, unless the change is implemented within the group. This justifies why group dynamics need to be considered while making changes in an organization. Lewin’s work is highly supported with work of other researchers such as Cartwright who focus on group understanding and principles that should be employed to change the mind-set of a group to ensure change. The authors use this section to reinforce their argument on the employment of the group dynamics theory to enhance successful change management. The section also integrates the literature review argument with the current reviewed context of e-service system employment in the Australian local government to demonstrate its applicability in the current situation. In the methodology section, the paper explains how a qualitative research is conducted to appraise Lewin’s theory of group dynamics. The section clearly describes the techniques used to sample the involved participants in the targeted region. It also gives justification for the sampling techniques used. The section also displays various questions that the researchers focused on, while conducting their research. In the results sections, the research quotes various responses obtained from various respondents interviewed in the research. Being a semi-structured interview research, it was hard to clearly tabulate data in a more concise way. However, the researchers have tried to provide the most useful responses that would justify their arguments. In a way, this form of reporting can be considered to be bias, since it hardly gives a comprehensive analysis of the obtained responses from all the participants involved. Nevertheless, the researchers tried to report on the respondents responses based on what gained the support of the majority or based on the response of the majority. Thus, the results are still reliable to arrive to a conclusion. One of the major challenges observed in this research was difference in the operational level of the involved respondents in the change management team in the local government. This created a great variation in their responses. However, the result clearly demonstrated lack of collaboration in development of the change management strategy, and improper involvement of all the involved parties. Some individuals seem to be in dark with regard to some very important strategies of changes in the governmental organizations. The authors demonstrate a great win in their effort to show how the government inability to involve the entire workforce contributes to the failure in implementation of change. Although the interviewed individuals were highly ranked in the change management project from various organizations, a number seem to be little informed about the process. This simply means that other employees who are ranked lowly in these organizations are not whatsoever involved in the change, and they may even be unaware of its existence. This is despite the fact that the new system is intended to be used by these individuals. This is a clear demonstration of failure in change management approach. Thus, the authors can be commended for their effort to appraise the Lewin’s theory of group dynamics by reviewing the government sector. In conclusion, Hossan et al. (Melbourne) qualitative research paper is richly based on theoretical work obtained from different literatures on organizational change management. The authors have applied a number of organizational change theories and frameworks to analyse the situation at the Melbourne city council project. They have intensively reviewed Lewin’s theory of group dynamics where the importance of group approach is demonstrated, when enhancing changes in an organization. The paper is well organized with high sense of writing professionalism. Authors’ arguments are highly supported by previous suitable literatures and thus, they are highly reliable. The authors have also managed to demonstrate their rich knowledge in the change management, especially in an organization, an aspect that is highly demonstrated by their arguments, their empirical example, and the recommendation provided to the governmental organization to enhance success in their future organizational change efforts. References Hossan C., Dixon, C., & Brown, D. (2013). Impact of group dynamics on eservice implementation: A qualitative analysis of Australian public sector organisational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 26(5), 853-873. Read More