Stakeholder Evaluation
In the era of constant change, the future performance of the companies is deemed to rely on their staff at every level in order to understand the process of change. Organizations within the health and social care industry have undergone a drastic organizational change over the past five years (Al-Ali et al.2017). Considering the same, the objective of the essay is to carry out stakeholder evaluation of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust through using Kotter’s change management theory. Identification of change drivers in the organization along with barriers of changeare also considered in the essay. Leadership approaches implemented by the managers of the company will be evaluated with great focus on the communication tactics and its influence.
Stakeholder Evaluation: Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust
“Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” has various groups of stakeholders that has different levels of power and interest held by them. Stakeholder theory model is employed in order to gain an understanding on different stakeholder groups (Beck and Cowan 2014). The stakeholders those are observed within the company includes hospital boards, individual professionals, patients and public.
Hospital boards of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust has the power of developing appropriate organizational strategies, cultures and incentives in order to support the quality and safety delivery in the organization (Belias and Koustelios 2014). Despite such fiduciary responsibility questions were asked concerning the extent to which Boards have enough attention to safety and quality of care. It was gathered that the affordable care act needed hospital boards to attain a highly proactive role in strengthening the organizations governance process. This can ensure improvements in efficiency and quality. In England, a drastic failure at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust raised concerns regarding external checking systems, audit and verification at the cost of broader considerations associated with patient’s care (Bolden2016).
The employees of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust also had the power of maintaining positive safety culture within the organization. They are responsible for providing necessary information to the patients, proper recognition of employees along with their responsibilities, open along with receptive communication of staff with the visitors and the patients (Buller 2015). They are also responsible for generating meticulous attention to the cleanliness, nutrition, hygiene along with patient’s hydration. They have the power of maintaining production along with alignment with standard processes and maintaining effective discharge arrangements.
Trade unions are also a major stakeholder group of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust that has the responsibility to reveal the major cause of the issues that took place in the organization. Moreover, the trade associations such as The Patient Safety Charity Actions against the medical accidents supported the government’s announcement regarding the fact that a new inquiry might take place within a broader responsibility of heath authority and regulators (Cameron and Green 2015). These unions have a great role in revealing that obsession of the government with targets was highly accountable for neglecting patient’s safety within Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust. This serves as a disgrace that this stakeholder group successfully revealed that the patients were subjected to a poor situation within the hospital. The requirement for overall public inquiry is highly overwhelming. The stakeholder group reveled that regulation within the foundation trusts ensures including an innovative openness culture that must be considered important (Ceptureanu 2015). Care quality commission is also working effectively in making sure that the leadership within the company is highly efficient.
Change Drivers in Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust
“Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” emerged in the year 2010 and was involved in the role of conducting a full public enquiry being a commissioning, supervisory, public and regulatory body of supervising Mid Staffordshire Foundation NHS Trust (Daly, Hill and Jackson 2015). It was observed from the case of this company that it has undergone a drastic organizational change over the last five years. System failure along with organizational failure resulted in drastic changes in the organizational culture all through the company. Mid-staffs of the company reported calls for attaining drastic changes that can further enhance patient safety (Grolar-Murray, Decree and Lagan 2016). It was gathered that patients were harmed because of poor care as an aspect of sweeping charges and neglected safety pf patients. Monitoring and supervision of hospitals was lacked along with that it was observed that the care standards were inappropriate in the organization.
Absence of a patient centered culture, fewer acceptances of non-compliance with the important standards, transparency along with openness and cultural leadership was observed to be lacked in Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust (Hayes 2014). In addition, candor to patients, effective cultural leadership, compassionate and caring nursing along with accurate and useful information regarding services was observed to be lacking in the company.
Non-compliance with an important standard resulting in serious harm or death of the patients might be able to get prosecuted to be criminal offence till the concerned provider/ person might indicate that which is highly practical in deal with the same (Holten and Brenner 2015). Moreover, misalignment of the organizational goals, behaviors and actions resulted in drastic patient safety failure. Culture of learning was missing in the organization for which regulatory systemthat is essential in enhancing patient safety and is vital for attaining quick system response to such inquiry.
The causes that has resulted in the failings of “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” includes culture centered on conducting systems business and not of patients(Hornstein 2015). Moreover, failure of the company resulted because of high tolerance degree of the weak standards along with patients’ risk.
There was a communication failure among several agencies to communicate their understanding of issues. Moreover, another factor that was the driver of change for the company was its culture which ascribed increased weight to positive data regarding the service (Hughes 2018). This is in comparison to the information able to imply the cause of the concern.
Lack of communication is another driver of change within the organization. It is deemed to be apparent that the people within the senior leadership responsibilities at mid employees did not maintain connection with the employees offering care and selected an extremely “top down approach” for operating the clinical teams. Such communication barrier might develop a hierarchical culture which might make things for destroying within the company (Komives 2016). The effective managers understand the cultural change aspects needed by the organization and importance of developing a leadership strategy. Lack of effective communication flow among the nurse and other people with whom they communicate resulted in development of effective organizational change approaches (Sharif and Scandura 2014).
Change Barriers in Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust
Change barriers in “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” are deemed to affect the change management process of the company. Among the important change barriers is poor communication prevailing within the organization (Kuipers et al.2014). Lack of effective communication all through the health care systems in sharing the concerns and information resulted in barriers to implement the change management system within the organization. Engagement with the colleagues is done with the effective communication and for this reason lack of effective communication with less closing actions and consistent messages. There is also lack of consistent reorganization that resulted in a systemic culture in which the organization took inappropriate assurance comfort given by trust else from actions considered by the regulatory organization (Moutousi and May 2018).
Lack of employee involvement in the organization is another major change barrier management in “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust”. Employees such as Mid staff and the nurses were not motivated enough to get involved within the systems change process and it became more likely that the most loyal employees of the company resisted certain changes. The reason for this barrier is that the management of the organization did not involve its employees within the process of change. This resulted in employees to faced fear for the unknown, absense of desire to maintain an innovative culture and gradually leads to change barriers (Thomas 2015). The managers did not make enough attempts in making announcement and introduce effective strategies. Employees were not informed about any change. It is gathered fromsuch communication barrier that they must be aware of the change which might affect them as well as explaining ways in which they can easily adapt to such change (Van der Voet 2014).
Poor culture shift planning by Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust is another change management barrier that existed within the organization. In certain instances, the planning team has limited idea that certain change might impact its major stakeholders such as patients, employees and suppliers. The planning team of the company drastically failed in taking effective decisions relied on feelings and anticipations (van Dierendonck and Sousa 2016). This overlooked the way in which people feel and work that generated barrier to change
Several leadership approaches have been adopted by the manager of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust in order to bring a cultural revolution within the company. One of the approach to bring in positive cultural change in the company is setting new responsibility for the organization that includes NHS constitution (van Rossum et al.2016). This constitution must be initial reference point for every patient and employees of organization. The managers have also set up common valuesof the system along with legitimate expectations, respective rights along with obligations of the patients.
Leadership Approaches in Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust
Regulatory reform is another major leadership approach taken by the managers. In order to address the regulatory gaps there must be a regulator that can deal with financial competence, corporate governance, feasibility along with compliance having patient safety along with quality standards for every trust. In a situation where drastic harm or death has been caused to the patients as because of important standards breach, manager focused on following the criminal liability(Al-Ali et al. 2017).
The manager of the company also focused on the role of commissioners considering the same the all-purpose practitioners requires conducting a supervising responsibility on the patients’ behalf that attain excess hospital along with the specialist services. Moreover, the manager also attempts to maintain transparency, openness along with candor for bringing positive change within Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust. A statutory obligation was compulsory for every health care provider in order to supervise the duty of candor(Al-Ali et al. 2017). Gagging causes along with disparagement clauses is highly prohibited on the contracts and policies of the health care company, commissioners and regulators insofar for they seek or intend to decrease the bonafide disclosure in consideration to public interest concerns of patient care and safety.
The manager has also implemented strategy of nursing in order to maintain positive change management culture within Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust. There must be a high focus on education, nurse training along with professional advancement on the practical needs of offering compassionate care(Belias and Koustelios 2014). Ward nurse managers are making sure that they are operating within a supervisory capacity rather than staying office bound. They are also concerned regarding attaining knowledge about the care plans associated with all the within their ward.
The managers of “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” ensure proper flow of communication within Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust. In this approach constant interaction and engagement among the patients and nurses those are near to them ad this must be systemized by means of regular ward round(Belias and Koustelios 2014). The manager developed an effective communication approach in which all the employees require to be skilled in interacting beneficially, in a supportive and responsive manner with the visitors and the patients. In all the places in which the wards must have less areas in which large number of mobile patients along with their visitors can meet within privacy and ease devoid of troubling other patients(Beck and Cowan 2014). The manager made sure that NHS is developing an increased willingness to communicate through e-mail with all the members of the organization. Communication regarding information based on older patient’s progress, situation along with the care along with discharge plans must be assessable and shared with patients(Beck and Cowan 2014).
Complexity of the organization Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust served as a vital change barrier that resulted in failure of the systems of this company. Such complexities encompass the complex processes, systems and products which resulted in change barriers due to the fact that they are quite complex for the managers of the company to understand(Cameron and Green 2015).
Kotter’s change management
Organizational change is being undertaken through the proper implementation of the Kotter’s change management model (Northouse 2018). The model helps in determining the phrases that the organizations are required to undertake for bringing in the change in the systems and the functioning. The urgency for the change is being conceived by “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust”, which is supposed to be the inception of the change management procedure. On the other hand, the model also determines the development of the strategies that supports the organization in determining the change for coping up with the issues (Pugh 2016). It helps in the proper organizational function and then brings in improvement in processes undertaken by same.
There are certain important factors mentioned within Kotter’s change management model which can facilitate effective management of change leadership in “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust”. Hence, the five most crucial factors to effective management and leadership of change in Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust comprise of the following:
Shared vision:
When laying stress on any change effort, it is the job of the change leader of “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” is to form and deliver inspiring view of the future state while enlisting others to move towards the same. The individuals assimilate numerous stuffs easier while working with higher commitment at the time vision guides them. This is the point of initiation in relation to transformational change (Belias and Koustelios 2014). In case, this step is not followed or missed, the other critical success factors for successful change would not suffer in “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust”. This factor is related to the third stage of Kotler’s change management model, which is the guiding coalition in developing a picture of the future and this would help in directing the change effort.
The change leaders of “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” need to gain an insight of the related stakeholders along with the support level for the change effort and the extent to which it could be influenced. Such information is identified in the plan of stakeholder management. Hence, understanding, supporting and creating two-way communication with the stakeholders could form or break the change effort success. This step is associated with communicating the change vision depicted in the fourth step of the Kotler’s change management model.
Tools and skills:
Another primary skill needed for a change leader in the trust is effective communication. In order to communicate effectively, the change leaders of “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” are needed to obtain an overview of conflict modes and individual communication styles along with the ability to realize resistance and the way of overcoming it. Effective communication implies appropriate language to the audience along with striking the appropriate balance between emotion and logic(Belias and Koustelios 2014). The ability of the leader in “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” to communicate is required for execution of the change effort making it a critical element for success. In a similar manner, tools such as the plan of stakeholder engagement might be used many times during the course of change initiative. Even though there are a number of tools to be used, they require being masters of these tools. This factor is related to the fifth step of the Kotler’s change management model in order to strengthen staffs for broad-based actions.
Enabling behavior:
Change takes place at the behavioral level. The modification of the organizational infrastructure in supporting the effort of change is the key in maintaining the change. This can be in the realigning form for the job explanations, plans of performance management along with systems of measurement in “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust”. However, it is to be borne in mind that the responses of the individuals are different to change. As a result, the change leaders are required to provide support, coaching and training for keeping the change effort without alienating the stakeholders. Thus, the change leaders of the trust need to realize and reinforce appropriate behavior by providing regular feedback on the change progress. In addition, it is to be remembered that every individual in “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” goes along with the change curve in a different fashion. This factor is related to the seventh step of the Kotler’s change management model for consolidating gains along with producing additional change.
Measures and processes:
The final success factor is the supporting foundation of effective transformational change is the way of gauging performance within “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust”. The transformational change needs leadership for investigating and realigning the existing systems of measurement for supporting the change effort in all the areas irrespective of whether the metrics identify processes, financial or personnel performance. Even though there is existence of contradictory measures in “Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust” this drives the past behaviors along with eroding support for the change. This factor is related to the eight step of the Kotler’s change management model for forming new approaches in the future.
Conclusion
The objective of the essay was to carry out stakeholder evaluation of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust through using Kotter’s change management theory. It was gathered from the paper that the case of this company that it has undergone a drastic organizational change over the last five years. System failure along with organizational failure resulted in drastic changes in the organizational culture all through the company. Mid-staffs of the company reported calls for attaining drastic changes that can further enhance patient safety. Considering the same, Organizational change is being undertaken through the proper implementation of the Kotter’s change management model. Several leadership approacheshave been adopted by the manager of Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust in order to bring a cultural revolution within the company.Regulatory reform is a major leadership approach taken by the managers.
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