Change transformation and the role of leader
Due to Globalization, every organization has to face such a climate created by its external factors in which any company is free to enter in any kind of business in which they interested along with no boundaries for international business. Change has become a crucial part of any organization to survive in the competitive world (Pieterse et al, 2010). The wind of change has altered the entire climate right from the privatization process of public sectors to customers changing tastes. Without change, no organization can survive because today’s is the time of diverse work culture where the transformation of culture, behavior, learning, and attitudes occurs and if the organization is not able to adjust in the massive diverse environment, the organization will not be able to handle the different competitive and tough business situations (Burnes and By, 2012).
Change transformation and the role of leader
Gulf Air is the popular carrier airline services of the UAE. The Headquarter of Gulf Airline based in Muharraq which is the third largest area in Bahrain. Gulf Airlines was the oldest airlines of UAE on the basis of their international flights. In 1970, the state of Qatar, the Abu Dhabi and Oman government decided to manage this airline corporation BOAC which was relatively small airlines in compare to British Airways (Hooper et al, 2011). But in 1980, the government decided to expand this airline on the international level and its first international flight landed at Riyadh. In 1998, Gulf Air entered into the no-smoking policy which was created in Singapore. The result of this policy was that after the 1998s the Gulf airways were started getting losses and moving towards the weak zone. Therefore, the UAE association decided to expand its business worldwide by focusing on its operational cost in 2015, where every airline company was struggling badly. Gulf Air revenue fall down from 28% to 23% but still, it was favorable for them (Kassem and Habib, 2011).
The Gulf Airways was facing the same problems in the 2015`s when the global aviation industry was in economic crisis. In this phase, we can adopt the continuous change process and have decided to go restructuring the organization by reducing its operational cost. The top executives of the Gulf Air will play a major role in this change by spending more time among the staff and listening to their issues and problems, provided training to managers to handle the situation if its panic during the change process.
Change management is defined as the regular process of upgrading an organization in the form of guidelines, structure, and ability to handle the changing wants of external and internal business environment. Change is present in the Gulf Air both at the process and strategic level. Therefore, the doubt should not be there related to the importance to the Gulf Air of its capability what needs are required in future and how change can be explored in the Gulf Air (West-Burnham, 2009). Therefore, due to this, it is not that only business source is being transferred, also the workforce gets transferred which creates a situation which is full of diversity including different culture, values, and beliefs. There can be two types of change in the Gulf Air; first is continuous change and the second is discontinuous change. Continuous change is that change in which there is a connection between pre and post-change and no sudden change is planned. Actually, continuous change is a need of internal environment of the Gulf Air (David, 2014). While in discontinuous change is a sudden change in the Gulf Air and there is no connection with previous or post change that has already taken place in the Gulf Air. The discontinuous change will always bring problem for the Gulf Air and will also create lots of problems to get adjusted with the change process. The Gulf Air people have no idea about this type of change nor have they planned for it in association with the external environment of the business. In the above case, management planned a discontinuous change and leaders play a democratic style of the leadership role in the organization (Dawson and Andriopoulos, 2014). The cultural factors and diversity in the Gulf Air will play a crucial role in the change management process, while the change agent also takes a major part to bring changes in the organization.
Gulf Air’s challenges and opportunities for business expansion
My role as a change agent is also a crucial part of change management in Gulf Air. The role of a change agent for Gulf Air is of great importance when internal members resist accepting the change. In this case, the senior manager, team leaders and top executives of the Board members play an important role to establish an understanding between the employees who oppose the change and the change agent (Jarventie-Thesleff, Moisander and Villi, 2014). Normally people having no idea of the new change, or they unable to adjust to the new changing environment, resist the change in the organization. The external change agency also plays a crucial role in bringing change. The change agency basically overviews the need of change related to the particular situation and provide the suggestion related to the pattern to carry continuous change in the organization or a need if a discontinuous change is required (Yukl, 2008).
In the era of globalization and due to continuous organizational change the role of managerial skills has been increased in the modern day of the business environment in all over the world. Due to globalization, innovation, and technological advancement for expansion of Gulf Air, a lot of issues related to the workforce as well as shifting towards social trends can emerge and change should be done according to the demand of time (Naranjo-Valencia, Jiménez-Jiménez and Sanz-Valle, 2011). As there is no restriction of the organization to carry out business beyond boundaries, this has motivated the Gulf Air to introduce their business on the international level and have also encouraged international organizations to go for the domestic level. Therefore, for expanding the business in the market many organizations are actually competing for the same product or services. In recent time the number of Airways companies in the aviation industry is increasing day by day that cause’s tough competition for other existing players like Gulf Air in the aviation industry (Augier and Teece, 2009). Corporate culture is a hard thing to get right and it takes time to grow and evolves.
Two change management models and the application of leadership theories according to the situation
Situation- Expansion of business
Gulf Airways is in need of change transformation in their culture and cost reduction of operations by apply ‘Theory O’ which will change the behavior and culture of the whole organization and ‘Theory E’ which will focus on operational cost reduction. Because of the expansion of Gulf Air, there was an increase in the number of employees, the number of routes served, starting of air training college, and outsourcing some of the catering services. Culture is an important aspect of organizational change. It can be said that it is possible to “lead” organizational change using culture as a vehicle (Battilana, Leca and Boxenbaum, 2009). The culture of an organization influences the change management process but a change in the culture does not necessarily impact the change management. Every manager of the Gulf Air is well aware of the importance and role of organizational culture in the Gulf Air’s success. But it is not always factored into change management processes. Changing culture is the most frightening process in any organization because it is not easy to understand the different culture in the same place with different angles (ILO, 2018). The culture of Gulf air is a soft concept where there is no real way of defining or assessing culture then it is a hard job to measure it. Normally, it is very hard to change the behavior of an individual then how a person can change the culture of the whole organization. But if a leader wants to build a high-performing organization it is necessary to focus on bringing cultural change in the organization.
Types of change and their impact on the organization
A study was done over media organization for bringing change in the organization. Data was collected, analyzed, interpreted, and structured. But it was found that organization is not ready to think out of the box rather they just want to remain in their own world as there is no such world of external business environment and are standing still with their inertia . Therefore, the need to pursue both continuous and discontinuous change is actually a challenging one. If the organization wants to be succeeding then it has to avoid inertia and it should remain open for the innovation and creativity. This need of doing the thing in a unique way will definitely give rise to the importance of change will help in implementing change in the organization with full potential.
The role of power in Gulf Air change will become crucial and very impactful. Power is related to complexity and diversity which is the important source in the area of organizational development and change. The three main viewpoints related to power change in strategies, the role of change agent and inspiration behavior related to decision making determines the success or failure of power change (Cummings, Bridgman, and Brown, 2016). Generally, employees resist the power change and impact is also rigid of it on the organization. The power change basically connected to three points. First is the nature of the organization, second is the analytical framework and third is the change agent. This basically concerned with two different leadership styles; transformational leadership style and transactional leadership style. The transformational leadership mainly deals with the change by considering the interest of co-worker and employees while the transactional approach of leadership in change management remain untouched with the co-worker system and mainly focus on the value systems of the co-worker and provide them with the necessary benefits from this (Karp, 2006).
Here the role of the change agent will be so crucial. The role of a change agent is also important in bringing change in the Gulf Air. The ill-preparedness and inappropriate planning of change agent can result in the unexpected outcomes of change implementation. Old approaches and philosophies to change suggested that if the organization does not adopt change then it cannot be effective (Grabs, et. al, 2016). It was also stated that if an organization want to be successful in the future, people need practices to be operative and able to improve their performance with the help of continuous change.In Gulf Airways, the top leader of the company such as Chief executive and the chairperson play the role as a change agent. The continuous interaction of top leaders with the staff members and the continued training can soften the harsh impact of cultural and organizational change.
All leaders own some pattern which differs from individual to individual with contingency approach. Some front-runners have autocratic personality, some have a democratic personality, some have transformational personality and some have bureaucratic personality. But between all them most significant is transformational style. Transformational frontrunners introduce new thoughts, constant upgrading, implement springiness in the work procedure and uphold a good association with not only associates of the company but also from the outdoor world (Langley et al, 2013). They typically shape their association with the workforces by means of some of the aspects like charm, motivation and individual deliberation. Carrying alteration in an organization is not an easy object. Change continuously brings antagonism. Antagonism leads to confrontation. It has been seen that workforces always hate change because they have to absorb new procedure again by giving up the earlier procedure; they must to give up their preceding work design and have to accept the new design of work. In short, they have to regulate their entire life into a novel one which will have an influence on the steadiness life of the worker. So, here originates the character where a leader can attain the trust of his worker and can demonstration them that they actually care about their workforces. In this title role, the leader act as a counsellor or trainer (Yilmaz and Kilicoglu, 2013). The leader tries to discovery out the first importance of his/her workforces and then start guiding them consequently which is also known as modified consideration.
Role of change agent in change management
Here leader starts systematic approach by supervisory his workforces in such a mean that their importance may not get troubled and also coach the worker about the welfares of fetching this alteration in the company along with how this alteration will reform their upcoming (Ulrich et al, 2007). If the leader actually wants to attain the faith of his workers the most significant thing which the leader must keep in mind is that in any condition the work time of worker must persist stable with the private life of the worker (Weber, Reichert and Rinderle-Ma, 2008). The leader can achieve this by authorizing the workforces to accomplish things on their own. Leaders can offer exercise session in which the leader can offer them the essential knowledge about stabling life. The leaders can also introduce workshops in which the worker will face the actual circumstance and from the circumstance, they will learn the essential skill that they might need in complementary their private and specialized life. If this feature is unexploited it can clue the company to sit on the red-hot stove.
After all these change implementation the final stage comes in the form of monitoring. As we know that after implementing any change, if we will not fix this change the situation will move towards the previous one which means total failure of strategy. Hence, as a change leader I will apply Measure & evaluation plan under which each change will be measured according to the circumstances and then proper evaluation will be done to ensure the continuous progress in this change strategy.
Conclusion:
The major focus of Gulf Air should be the cultural change transform for the expansion of the Gulf Air so that it can provide the customers the same quality service all over the world so that people without seeing the name of the airline can recognize its service related with the company. The role of leaders will be very important during the change management as CEO of the company will always interact with the staff and also ensure their presence in all operational processes includes managing flying crew members to the program which are designed for managing people first. Overall we can say that the expansion of Gulf Air will be successful only because of their strategic planning and adoption of the proper change process. The continuous model of the change process ensured that no staff opposed the change process. The decision of top management related to the restructuring of Gulf Air will help them to survive in economic crisis and can operate very well in the present and future time. The expansion plan of the Gulf Air was not very successful because it was not able to properly introduce change management in the operation of the Gulf Air and for achieving excellence it must utilize the change management in proper phase because expansion means diversity of technology and workforce only culture act as gum.
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