Organisational Change

In organisations the interest in human resource, in result orientation and in human development is intensifying.
Root causes of this increased attention include the scarcity of qualified personnel and the recognition of the importance of looking at organisations in terms of well trained and educated staff and management.

Ever more organisations find that ‘as they did yesterday’ does not work today and tomorrow even losses may result.
Organisations that wish to remain successful must timely implement change in the organisational structure and culture, in the way of work and the supply of products and services.

Major causes for change have been found e.g. the increased focus on quality, the change from product to market or supply chain orientation and the delegation of responsibilities and powers deeper down in the organisation.
Thus staff must ever more adapt to change.
Bringing about change on time and proper largely depends on the leadership style.

Managers ad change agents

Managers will play a pivotal role to bring about change. Their skill and the extent to which they can flexibly cope with new situations is of critical success. For a manager to work effectively on change, he or she must understand his or her own functioning well. The extent to which change operations can be successful in a specific situation, is largely determined by the managers effectiveness.

Through their specific style of management, managers exercise great influence on the quality of performance by staff. Managers must influence staff in proper ways. In order to achieve change the environment and the parameters should be changed to bring staff to open themselves to the new. The manner of leadership is one of the most important change instruments.

Effectiveness of Managers

The effectiveness of managers comes about by a combination of their behaviour and the situation in which they work. Five factors are relevant to the situation, these are the character of:
the management culture, colleagues, the superior manager, the nature of the position, and
that of the staff.

Each of these factors will affect the requirements for the conduct of a manager to be effective. Such behaviour can be regarded as the core of effective management.

Reddin studies have revealed what behavioural characteristics will distinguish more effective managers from their less effective colleagues.
The results of these studies (see Reference 6A) demonstrate that more effective managers will differ from less effective managers in six component parts, four of whom have been named ‘core dimensions’.
More effective managers are clearly known to staff for what performance they expect from them.
They will know their targets to be achieved (communicating).
They are willing to take responsibility and will credit staff for the results achieved.
They will understand the space needed to be decisive (management orientated).

Such managers will set high level goals and ensure that these are actually achieved (Result Orientated).

To counter balance such result orientation more effective managers are empathic, they will focus on staff needs. They can encourage staff to put their skills to service the organisation. They show appreciation for the performance of staff (people orientation). More effective managers know what is happening in their department and know how staff operate. By checking they will grasp the progress of the work (process monitoring).

Effective management can be displayed in the pyramid "of effective management,

Core Components

Effective management is based on six key components of management behaviour.
Four of six components are thought core components, these are:
Communicating, Result orientation, process monitoring, and feedback orientation.

They make the stepping stone for the proper performance of manager duties.
The extent to which a manager is capable of exhibiting appropriate behaviour on these core components at first determines the effectiveness of his or her manager behaviour.

Task and Relationship-specific components

Any particular position will impose specific demands on the managers behaviour. Directing a production department must differ from leading a sales department. Moreover the manner of leadership must depend staff culture. Experienced and highly skilled staff can cope with delegation better than the new and inexperienced.

Culture specific components

Each organisation inhibits its unique characteristics. These are related to the product or service, the age of the organisation and style of the leader. Staff in an advertising agency will behave in a different way from those in a bank. Thus will the culture in an organisation affect the degree of effectiveness of a certain manager behaviour.

Manager Effectiveness Improvements

When improving manager effectiveness the planned strategic development of the organisation must be taken into reckoning. This may determine what manager behaviour will be succesfull later on.
The point is that managers will learn to behave such that it will enhance the effectiveness of the organisation. They, the managers, play a vital role in this process. Their task is it to achieve the set targets within the required time and resource at hand. By training managers how to change the desired development can be achieved. Then the process can be measured again and again. The results of such measurements will trigger the manager time and again to improving his or her own effectiveness.