Managing Change for Competitiveness

Garg, Rajiv Kumar

Abstract

Multinational companies have freely entered into many sector's of the Indian economy as a result of liberalization. This has made the Indian industry compete in global markets and has subjected it to unprecedented level of competition. Changing customer needs and awareness, technological developments and environmental issues have compelled the existing Indian industry to change their working practices and culture to face the new challenges. It is expected that change in an organization would increase the working capacity of its employees, resulting in higher productivity and continuous improvement. A successful change process, however, involves structural change, systemic change, cultural change, technological change, employees' involvement, and application of the philosophy of Total Quality Management (TQM) in an organization. In this paper, it is emphasized that we do need to understand the factors that have undergone a change and how could we manage them better. A procedure has been suggested to adopt TQM by providing education and training to the employees introducing change in the organization by changing existing structure, system, technology, and employees attitude. The prerequisites for achieving desired change, however, are sincere efforts using a participative approach by top management and all employees of the organization.

Keywords : need of change, competitiveness, structural change, systemic change, technological change, cultural change, TQM.

Introduction

Unprecented level of competition brought about by globalization, liberalization and free entry of MNCs in the Indian market has forced the industry to change its age-old practices and become competitive. Changing customer needs, rapid technological developments and environmental issues have contributed to the present situation that demands the industry to be run with utmost professionalism, encompassing both short term and long term goals and actions. MNCs have a dominance of concepts and capabilities like innovation, risk taking, team spirit, commitment and stability amongst their employees leading to a "strong culture", whereas traditional Indian organizations are short of this type of dominance, or there prevails a "weak culture". Culture has a great impact on employee behaviour and attitudes, and is directly related to achieving organizational goals and competitiveness. The need of the time is, thus, to change from a conventional type of working to an environment of competitiveness, efficiency, teamwork and higher level of achievement.

The greater the forces for change, greater is the competitive pressure, and consequently a greater demand for change. Thus, the process of change becomes a vicious circle if new ways to compete in such an environment are not discovered. The ability of an organization to conceptualize and manage change is the true way to compete in the changing scenario. The universally accepted challenge of change is to learn how organization and employees can change faster than changing conditions, i.e. to change from inside of the organization than outside.

Organizations evolve through a life cycle, with each evolving stage introducing change challenges. Understanding and managing change is salient, especially for matured organizations where stability and security may be replaced by customer-service, self-confidence and empowered work force. The purpose of this paper is to explore how change can be managed in an organization. To do this, we will study the organization life cycle, agile manufacturing, detailed principles to guide change, and accomplish change.

Change in Organizational Life Cycle

An organizational life cycle may comprise the following stages:

* Entrepreneurial stage

* Business proliferation stage

* Organization maturity stage

* Business renewal stage

* Declining stage

All of these stages are depicted in Figure 1.

Entrepreneurial Stage

During this stage, the focus is on the definition and development of new products and marketing avenues. This requires extensive market research through customer interactions. Basic idea is to make a note of needs of society (by customers) and translate them into values thus overcoming the challenges of market (Beatty and Ulrich, 1996).

Business Proliferation Stage

After entrepreneurial stage, the business is expected to proliferate, i.e. spread. Many more competitors enter in the market making similar products with varying features. Survival of the organization is the major problem during this stage (Brown and Karagonoglu, 1989). As a strategy, small firms frequently join hands to form a large firm to sustain in the competitive market. The result is that the business organizations shrink down to a few business houses.

Organizational Maturity Stage

After proliferation stage, organization maturity is expected with time. The business practices are systematized and also streamlined. Also the organization gains its individual identity in the market. The organization and its employees acquire a reputed position in the society (Barlett and Ghoshal, 1995).

Business Renewal Stage

Business norms responsible for success of matured organizations lead to complacency. These existing norms become irrevocable patterns of behaviour, which lead to an avoidance of challenges in the organization. During the maturity phase, product and technology parity is likely to emerge (Grover, 1999). Competitors offer customers similar products at competitive prices. In the renewal phase, manager identifies additional capability to meet customer needs, reduced profit margins, market share, reduction of scrap and waste, etc. and tries to be competitive. The emphasis is on to develop the ability to compete from inside out - to build internal organizational processes that meet external customer requirements. For building such internal organizational processes, concepts like self-direction, self-management and self-control need to be strengthened in place of traditional control. This may require a lot of changes to be made in an organization, such as technological change, structural change and systemic changes. Proper management of change can convert these changes to the culture of an organization leading to enhanced competitiveness.

Declining Stage

In the renewal stage, managers must learn to compete through competencies. They must learn and develop the ability to know and meet customer expectations through reactive and proactive improvements. Otherwise the organization ceases to compete in the market and the declining stage starts. During this stage, market share, profit margins, turnover, reputation etc. of an organization starts going down if no measures to be competitive are taken (Grover 1999)).

The challenge of change throughout the organizational life cycle consists of the following aspects:

i) Identification of market and learning how to enter/ capture the market share during entrepreneurial stage?

ii) Survival of organization during the growth stage,

iii) Business renewal and be competitive.

Thus, change through the life cycle converges to business renewal tactics and competitiveness.

Agile Manufacturing

The Indian industry has witnessed the emergence of a number of manufacturing philosophies and technologies in the last two decades. Customers are demanding varieties at less price with good quality and services in a short period of time. In this situation, agile manufacturing concept is very suitable as a new approach. Agility of a company can be characterised as the ability of the company to bring variety of models in short period of time. This trend is quite established in consumer durable industry and automobile sector as well. The term agile manufacturing can be defined (Ramesh et al., 2002) as

* Ability to closely align the enterprise system to changing business trend.

* Capability of the enterprise to quickly respond to the market requirements.

* Agile manufacturing is the science of a business system that integrates management, technology and workforce making the system flexible enough for a manufacturing organization to switch over from one component that is being produced to another component that is desired to be produced in cost effective manner, in a short time.

Thus, this manufacturing approach calls for changes in manufacturing, planning and setups in traditional manufacturing environment. The challenge is to build modular, flexible and reactive system, which can be easily reconfigured and which can provide capabilities for managing change and innovation.

Organizational Culture and Life Cycle

The greatest effort in meeting the renewal challenge is to change the culture of the organization, i.e. method of thinking and working of employees of all levels. Culture represents a shared way of thinking" and behaving" within an organization. Culture includes behaviours and attitudes also. Culture is often formalized in vision, values and mission.

Policy of an organization affects the culture a lot. As the organization becomes matured, the vision, value and mission become fixed/get freezed. The employees are paid/ rewarded and compensated as per the established norms of the organization. Organizational culture also becomes a means of encouraging unity, viz. teamwork, and enhanced job responsibility. In an old/matured organization, the fixed norms of culture become a liability and act as resistance to change because of fear amongst its employees. Another obstacle to change is mindset of employees at all levels (Robbins et al., 2001). "Mindset" represents a system of shared meaning held by members that distinguishes an organization from others. Organizational change is concerned with how employees perceive the characteristics of a culture, not with whether or not they like them. It takes time for mindsets to be instilled. By the time an organization becomes matured, it is likely to have established a relatively fixed mindset. They are rewarded by promotions, salary increases, and enhanced job responsibilities, when they embody the mindset. In old organizations, mindset can become a liability and its intensity may hinder the ability to change. To counteract, this traditional control-measures should be replaced with an empowered workforce that is more self-controlled and self-directed. This also results in need of less number of decision makers, i.e. managers. Change is a challenge that looks like a bottleneck, which, after energizing transforms the declining stage of organization into a revived state of activity, refer to Figure 2 (Garg et al., 2002).

Organizational Competitiveness and Change

Competitiveness accounts for a number of parameters like reduction of hidden costs, quality conformance and improvement, reduction of services time and delivery time, maximization of profits and profitability, enhanced market reputation, and assured markets in future by innovations, learning and strategies in an organization (Szamosi et al., 2002). Accordingly, achieving any of these parameters leads the organization to achieve an increased competitiveness.

As has been explained earlier, with the traditional ways of working and fixed mindsets, it is nearly impossible to achieve enhancement of any above parameters. This needs a change of culture, system, structure and technology hitherto being prevalent in the organization. Each of these parameters of change complements one another. A well thought of change process built on scientific and logical basis using these strategies sequentially can only be successful.

Change Process in an Organization

Having identified the need for change of an organization, work activities can be identified for the same. Synthesizing the results of various studies reported in literature from time to time, the process of change can be described to follow the following stages (Beatty et al., 1996), although all the organizations may not stick to the same sequence as some of the stages may occur simultaneously. However, a justification of the sequence proposed below is given subsequently.

Stage-1: Introducing Structural Change

Organization change begins with the concept of structural changes. Generally it denotes the change of hierarchical structure (vertical) to new structure (flat). Downsizing and delayering are the possible methods for the same that ultimately result in reducing the manpower. In the changed structure, teams are formed and team management is applied, so the organizational layers are reduced. Strong communication network is to be formed between teams and members of the teams so that the physical hurdles can be eliminated. With this reduction, the organization becomes lean at all levels. Measures of an organization per employee improve as a result. Task of organizational structures has to be handled with sensitivity - revolutionary in thought, and evolutionary in implementation (Business India, Sept. 22, 1999). Reduction of manpower in public sectors, banks, corporations etc. has been introduced as premature retirements, voluntary retirements, plant closings/shutdowns, consolidations and re-employment schemes, as a restructuring policy. Such reduction results in huge savings of organizational recurring expenditure and initiate renewal process. It is noted that at HMT Pinjore, a public sector organization, around 1800 employees were reduced by VRS. Such structural changes require a bold leadership. The leaders of structural changes must implement a process that ensures equity and due consideration to employees. Such changes are possible when leaders regularly turn around the organizations. The secret of the organization has as much to do with vision, values and culture, as it does with vertical reporting structures (Ghoshal et al., 1995).

After Godrej Soaps Limited and Proctor and Gamble (P&G) parted ways in 1996, P&G walked away with Godrej's distribution setup. The company had to go for a major organizational restructuring. Earlier the company had three departments: the consumer product division, the chemical division and the product supply organization, which looked after the purchase of raw materials etc. After the partition, Godrej Soaps divided along its business lines-Consumer product division and Chemical division. Two business heads were appointed separately for these divisions. To improve sales and distribution, Godrej Soaps had to setup its separate distribution system to build trade confidence (Business India, Sept. 20,1999).

Recession in automobile industry resulted in restructuring of supply chain. Globally, automobile manufacturers are moving towards vendors who supply complete subassemblies rather than components, to support a lean manufacturing structure in vehicle industry. Also there is a global trend to reduce the number of vendors. The TATA Engineering and Locomotive Company (TELCO) had only 130 vendors for Indica compared to its truck division, which has over 1000. Bajaj Autos also restructured its supply chain to considerably cut down the number of its vendors (Business India, Sept 20,1999). The result was the transformation of auto component industry into tier-1, tier-2 and tier-3 suppliers. Tier-1 suppliers are large component manufacturers who will supply entire subassemblies. Tier-2 and tier-3 are medium and small manufacturers supplying components to tier-1 manufacturers.

In 1989, split of Usha Shriram led to two major group companies-Siel and Usha International. Shriram Industrial Enterprises Ltd. (Siel) was primarily an industrial manufacturing company, whereas Usha International is the largest consumer durables marketing company. With Usha International churning profits out of the group, it was the ailing Siel that needed comprehensive restructuring-creating new factories and tie-ups, e.g. Daikin Shriram Airconditioning Private Limited, Siel-TIZIT, a joint venture (JV) with Plansee of Austria, manufacturing tungsten carbide tips and tools, Siel South Africa (Pvt.) Ltd, Crisp Air (Pvt.) Ltd, Siel Indusial Estate etc. For the success of each and every business/factory, outsourcing professionals restructured it by making various studies of the group (Business India, june 26, 2000).

The above case studies show that the purpose of restructuring of an organization is to make it cost effective and competitive. However, results of structural changes in banking sector by introducing VRS are not exactly on the expected lines. It is noticed that maximum number of persons who opted for VRS were hardworking and capable. Their vacancies have led the banks to an unmanageable situation. As a result, the banks are contemplating to lift the ban on further recruitment for their replacements. However, services like Automated Telling Machines (ATMs), increased business hours, electronic clearances etc., as well as the promise to provide customer satisfaction make these structural changes successful.

Stage-11: Introducing Systemic Changes

A system pertains to the existing practices in an organization. In systemic changes, the attempt is to eliminate the unnecessary procedures, reports, approvals, meetings, policies, or other activities, which generally create backlogs/bottlenecks. Red tapism and other bureaucratic procedures also need to be changed which cause frustration amongst employees as their capabilities and role is not judged individually. To achieve this, proper training needs to be given to the team members so that they can become self managed gradually. Simulation based guidance add more value to it (Jick, 1992).

Systemic changes should follow structural changes in an organization. In structural changes, employees who are afraid of challenges and are in favour of job security only, get annoyed. Most of such changes are being seen as contractual appointments than life long appointments. As a result employees feel their contract as short-term contract and psychologically react accordingly. Managers in such cases should be able to sustain employees' commitment by replacing loyalty with other means of employee considerations like opportunity. Opportunity can be provided to the employees to develop talents, participation in key decision-making and belongingness to the organization. It is possible by systemic changes. After the reduction in manpower in any organization, workload remains the same and adjustments have to be made to meet the work volume requirements with less manpower. Unnecessary, non-value added activities must be removed to gain parity between employees and their workload (Beatty, 1996). Introduction of ATM, electronic clearance etc. in the banking sector are examples of systemic changes along with structural changes.

New incentive scheme for the workers linked with performance was the major systematic change at Maruti Udyog Limited (MUL). MUL was going for base year 1998-99 for labor productivity, whereas MUL employees union wanted it to be 1988-89. The result was a tool-down strikes, demonstrations inside the factory, suspensions etc. If the incentives are calculated based on 1998-99 as base year, average package of an employee was to be increased from 22,000/- to 33,000/- per month; however, the package was to shoot up to 43,000/- as per the union demand (India Today, Nov. 2000). Also two new systemic features in the incentive package linked to external environment incensed the union. The first is an incentive related to company's ratio of sales volume to its installed capacity, i.e. telling a worker that he should be ready to accept a drop in income when times are bad, with a part of production capacity lying idle. Another feature of package relates the incentive to the turnover of the spares produced in the factory. MUL makes spares worth Rs 350 crores in which profit margin is as high as 15%, making up the dropping margins in the car business. The union says that both are unrelated to the jobs, but management says that it is a part of worker's burden as stakeholders in the business. Underlying the incentive war is an effort of the MUL management to make the workers accept the Japanese production philosophy of Kaizen or constant improvement of existing ability. Inspired by this, vendors are also inspired to unload their trucks on the conveyor belts which drives accessories directly to the assembly areas, rather than unloading them at central stores. The result is saving of power, time, labor and cost.

Leaders must demonstrate flexibility and listen to all reasonable requests as long as they add value to the customers and fall within legal and ethical boundaries. Also leaders need to encourage and reinforce risk taking among employees who initiate bureaucracy-busting activities (Keller et al., 1996). For this, committed employees are to be selected and leaders have the responsibility of reducing the fear of failure.

From the above discussion it can be concluded that systemic changes result in saving of power, time, cost and effort, leading to increased competitiveness. Any success because of systemic changes in an organization is the result of, bold leadership.

Stage-Ill : Employee Involvement and Empowerment

Instead of empowering only top management, involvement of employees is very important. If openness between employers/ managers and employees is increased, this will result in change of nature of the organization. No doubt, by bureaucracy, the employees' involvement results in productivity enhancement, cost reduction, waste reduction etc. but their effects on the organization are not long-lasting. Employees' empowerment is a very wide term. In one sense, it allows the employees to take their decisions, plan their activities and remove the barrier between them and managers. In the long run, this results in increased belongingness of the employees with the organization and also changes in the nature of organization. A simple technique for employee involvement and empowerment is to encourage the participation of employees in organizational strategies (Kotier, 1995). In big Indian companies, as a policy, some important projects are primarily assigned to fresh officers and they are supposed to handle independently. This practice not only gives them an opportunity but also makes them learn more about their organizational business and goals, feel empowered to have an impact on the business and build relationships with their colleagues and seniors. The technique is in practice at Punjab Tractors Limited (PTL) Mohali, Swaraj Combines Ltd Mohali, and many more industries. Another technique in practice in many organizations is to invite new officers in the business-meetings and give them sufficient opportunities to express themselves. These examples of employee involvement mark a fundamental change from the traditional work culture of hierarchical matured organizations to a more fluid, flexible, mutual work environment. Empowerment is a movement away from leader and expert problem-solving system to a system where everyone is continuously involved in improving the organization in order to leverage its competitive advantage through speed and service. Leaders must learn that delegation/sharing authorities builds a capacity to change and increases the sense of commitment and competitiveness. After some years of the start of HMT at Pinjore, employees were invited to start the ancillaries for the same unit with the assurance that if failed, they will be reabsorbed in the same cadre. Necessary training and education for the same was rendered by Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) to them. Many of these employees ended up as successful entrepreneurs afterwards.

At MUL, it is more or less mandatory for all the officers to suggest innovations in the process/parts every year. They are free to think and act as per their ideas. Suitable rewards and recognition is given to the valuable suggestions. Thus, employee involvement and empowerment helps an organization in trying innovations, better services, less service and maintenance time, and enhanced reputation. All these parameters are indicators of enhanced competitiveness.

Stage- IV: Cultural Changes

Cultural changes relate the mindset, i.e. the way the employees think about their work. Employees, in general, feel the enthusiasm and commitment of trying new approaches to work and bring more desirable changes in the organizations. From literature (Saleh 1993) it is found that it takes roughly double the time to introduce a technological change in a matured organization as compared to a new organization. Cultural changes implementation is a difficult task that is generally done by an agent called change agent. Every change agent is judged by his ability to preserve, and how strong an advocate he is, of the new culture. he should exhibit tolerance since cultural changes requires time to take effect.

According to the Chairman of Suzuki motors, "Workers come to factories to work, not to walk". At MUL, there is no idle hand at the shoopfloor" (India Today, Nov. 2000). By giving proper perks, workplace and environment, the working culture becomes very strong. Strong beloningness of the employees towards company is also established.

Under the leadership of Dr. R.A. Mashekar, 40 odd laboratories of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have undergone a cultural change. he adds that "change is always a product of proactive leadership and in India, where personalities matter so much, leadership is more crucial". he replaced the old adage in science "publish and perish" with a new slogan "patent, publish and prosper" (Business India, 1999). In the last five years, CSIR has filed about 350 international patents and The National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) is the leader in US patent applications from India.

The conclusion of the above discussion is that cultural changes create a sense of competitiveness in an organization through social recognition, better salaries and high standard of living of its employees.

Stage-V: Technological Changes

Technological change is an ongoing process. Technology is the environment within which an organization functions. Technological innovations introduce changes in our social lives in addition to changing the ways of working. Technological changes lead to changed social customs as an irreversible effect. If the organizations are redesigned/ modified suitably to absorb the changed technology, the organization will benefit from the synergy of Man-Machine system. Availability of technologically superior tool, and enhancing the workplace productivity, is giving rise to one-man-multiple-job concept, like for example, in an office, it is possible for one person to write letters in his PC, receive and transmit faxes, and also gather data from internet. A single person with multiple skills will add effectiveness to the changing structure of an organization. With the availability of technologically superior system, the time required to complete various activities has drastically reduced. The changing technology needs to be handled carefully, nurtured and gainfully adopted in the organization to derive optimum benefits and results in addition of competitiveness.

According to Sanjay Nayak, CEO of Tejas Networks "The technology business is totally people centric. If you have a world class team, then you can compete in the global market" (Business India, August 7, 2000). As a result of liberalization in economy, a large number of Indian industries have technical collaborations with MNCs to compete in the market. MUL in technical collaboration with Suzuki Motors of Japan, was the first landmark in this direction. Indian software industry is a sterling example of technological changes adaptation.

This is clear from the earlier discussions that every stage of change management results in an increase of competitiveness in some direction. The success of change programme is very much dependent upon the abilities of change agents. The mission and vision of the founders of an organization also have a major impact on the organizational culture. For keeping a culture alive, top management and change agents have to continuously strive for quality, cost reduction and morale upliftment of employees that ultimately results in increased competitiveness of an organization.

justification of the Proposed Sequence of Stages for Competitiveness

The discussions on various phases of change management demonstrate that every stage of change management contributes to one or more parameters and indicators of competitiveness of the organizations. However, depending upon the situations, different stage-sequences from the one suggested above, can be possible in various organizations. After interacting with a number of Indian automobile industrial units, it is found that the proposed sequence of change, in general, is applicable to most situations.

By advocating the use of the proposed sequence of phases of change management, it is not attempted to show that there are clear boundaries between these stages, and the next stage will start only when the previous one is complete. Rather, it is again emphasized that these stages are highly interwoven and overlapping. The main point being emphasized here, however, is that unless and until structural change, however small, is implemented, changes in systems, technology and culture are not expected to be effective. Any change initiative must have the elements of Optional change' and 'compulsory change' in it. Beginning with change process with structural change makes the changes in subsequent areas of system, technology and culture absolutely necessary for survival and competitiveness. Rather, the employees in post structural change scenario start demanding for systemic, cultural and technological changes. On the other hand, starting the change process with technological, cultural and systemic changes does not bring in seriousness and lack desired results. As an example, in the very beginning computers were procured by many offices for typing and other works without any simultaneous change in organizational structure and this did not result in their optimal use. They continued to use expensive typewriters for years till computer data-entry operators were recruited and trainings were imparted to the existing staff. These initiatives, however, are definitely required to be introduced before a major structural change.

Thus, structural change is the first stage in an organization adding to its competitiveness. This change includes alterations in authority relationships, coordination mechanisms, degree of centralization, job design, delayering and downsizing (Robbins, 2002). Structural change can be introduced in two ways:

i. First order change

ii. second order change

First order change is linear and continuous. It implies no fundamental shifts in the assumptions that organizational members hold about the world and how the organization can improve its functioning, i.e. by motivation and education. In contrast, second order change is a multidimensional, multilevel, discontinuous, radical change involving refraining of assumptions about the organization and the world in which it operates i.e. by force (Robbins 2002). First order change is very slow, taking into account, the mind set of the people. Therefore, enforcement of structural change by second order concept forms the first stage in the direction of achieving competitiveness. This change has some of the systemic changes introduced into it like redesigning of the process of approvals, procedures, authority and responsibilities of individuals. Also some of the employees may be involved at various levels by getting their authorities and responsibilities changed. just at the introduction, this stage results in wide criticism and resistance, but slowly persons starts adapting to it. This stage is followed by second stage of systemic changes. In this stage, policies and procedures can be redesigned as per the goals and objectives of die organization. Sometimes, some of these policies and procedures are identified to be impractical after taking the employees views/experiences into account which call for introducing third stage of change, i.e. employees involvement and empowerment. After this stage, organization keeps on adapting to new style of working without any problem and here is the introduction of fourth stage i.e. cultural change. Employees start getting a feeling of belongingness with the organization. Their salaries, positions and benefits start increasing in time, forming a rich culture in the organization. After getting rich culturally, fifth stage of technological change is introduced. In this stage, new techniques of working, machines, equipments and processes are introduced, which account for some of the structural change for its accomplishment making the change process as a continuous process.

Relationship of Change Initiatives with Competitiveness

The relation between change initiatives and competitiveness has be summarized in Table-1 given below:

From the above discussion, this is evident that attitude of people carry a remarkable change in an organization. Structural change, systemic change, technological change, cultural change and employees' involvement can bring a change in the attitude of people. However, all of these aspects are followed in total quality management (TQM) approach as well.

TQM involves everyone of the organization in decision-making. TQM also stands for continuous improvement. Structural changes, systemic changes and technological changes empower employees towards cultural changes. Employee's empowerment builds employee's commitment. Their initial commitment is translated into long-term processes so that individualism gets converted to a systemic version. Continuous improvement efforts begin in companies by focusing on error detection and then error prevention by using statistical and graphical tools. Continuous improvement is changing not only the technical tools of management, but also the fundamental approaches to management. Focus on continuous improvement must be upon the "right" work that was identified through structural and systemic changes (Saeed, et al., 1993). The work has to be linked to technological advancements through speed and simplicity in work process. When this philosophy is understood in the organization, it ensures an ongoing commitment to improve work processes. By instilling this philosophy, leaders are able to set a direction, motivate and steer a company through renewal. The continual change cycle is shown in Figure 3 (Garg et al., 2002).

Continual change in an organization is possible by keeping in touch with its customers and its competitive environment, rather than achieving by a functional department or part of a hierarchy. This is about every individual being empowered to act in a controlled way to encourage and make the changes as the organization needs. The continual change cycle involving reactive improvement is based on Plan, Do, Check and Act (PDCA) cycle. While applying the continual change cycle to an organization, it is felt that after sometime, changes are absorbed in the organizational work-culture and once again, the need for further improvement is felt and planned with respect to this new level. Efforts are needed by the change agents to educate the employees of the organization for the possible benefits of the planned change. This procedure of carrying change in the organization by making efforts in levels pertains to the process of change by tinkering. "Tinkering denotes introduction of mainly small changes in an organization to introduce new product, model etc. with existing setup, facilities, expertise etc. but with a definite strategy" (Abrahamson, 2000). Every higher level achieved out of tinkering results in better state of adapted change in the organization, and this process keeps on repeating till the organization fully adapts to total quality management as its ultimate goal, as shown in Figure 4. This stage can only be achieved by imparting necessary education, training and skill to the employees as followed in the process of "kludging" (Which denotes tinkering for big changes in an organization with the help of formal education and training of its employees (Seth, 2000)."

From Figure 4 it is evident that structure, system and technological changes, together are responsible for introducing change in an organization for which culture of the organization should he favorable from the very starting till, the end, otherwise cultural reforms are needed. Combination of changes of structure, system, technology, and culture, results in permanent cultural changes of an organization (Garg et al., 2002). With setting of new goals/ objectives and motivation of employees along with proper education and training and feedback, the organization can be energized for total change to achieve TQM.

Conclusion

Any well established organization must change. They should redefine their work and recreate work culture consistent with changing customer demands. The changes are inevitable because organizations and leaders at all levels have developed a new vision of strategy and culture. Organizations are becoming far more strategic, purposeful and customer-oriented. The organizations will have to find ways to change their culture. Their vision will have to be translated into specific actions and managers should be helpful to employees to observe their progress and also to consider their feedbacks. Employees must strive for continuous improvement and change the organizational culture by making each effort adding value to its customers- strategically and continuously.

Rexibility Mapping : Practitioner's Perspective

1. What types of flexibilities you see in the practical situation of "Change Management" on the following points:

* Rexibility in terms of "options;'

* Rexibility in terms of "change mechanisms?'

* Rexibility in terms of "freedom of choice" to participating actors.

2. Identify and describe the types of flexibilities in change management that are relevant for your own organizational context?On which dimensions, flexibility should be enhanced?

3. Try to map your own organization on following continua

(Please tick mark in the appropriate box(es))

4. Develop a S^P-LAP (Stuation Actor Process-Learning Action Performance) model of "Change Management" relevant to your organization.

Reflecting Applicability in Real Life

1. Is your organization going through a change? How will you use the findings of this study to manage change?

2. How will you manage change for competitiveness? Generate ideas to manage change using the process proposed in this paper.

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Rajiv Kumar Garg

Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial Engineering,

Dr B R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar

T. P. Singh

Professor, Department of Mechanical Engg,

TIET Patiala

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