A major challenge facing organization is to bringing organizational change effectively. In many sector of the economy organizations must have the capacity to adopt quickly in order to endure the speed and complexities of change this severally test the capabilities of leaders and employees to adjust quickly and effectively. This scenario forces them call for struggle to achieve a nimble organization (Conner, 1998: V).Conversely regardless of strengthen and success history, Organizations has the need for change is inevitable because the only constant thing is the change itself (Flamholtz and Randle, 1998:5-9).
Any system unable to keep the pace and complexity presented by its surrounding environment can not survive (Conner, 1998: vii).Today’s organizational change has become more and more predominant in all organizations and forces them to change or die. This shows that the only thing we can be certain about is that everything changes how long ago your business career has existed is the rule rather than the exclusion (Jacobsen, 2013:20-21).
Both advanced industries societies and developing countries are in the process of unstoppable organizational change process. In a very real sense organization are undergoing several business process revolutions sudden, radical and complete reorientations of the means (Sudan and N. Kummar: 2004:30). However, all the changes are not the same type some are incremental others are substantial some even transformational (Flamhoitz &Randle, 2008:5)
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Even though we are dealing with constancy of change, the failure rate for change programs shows a great number of 70 % ( Keller and Aiken, 2000, Lomberg, 2012,Bolman & Deal, 2005:454) Hence reason for this is too much focus on physical structure while ignoring critical human aspects like feelings, motivation and commitment. We can say that organizational change is problematic its appearance was without acknowledge. No matter the cause of this high failure rate, changes are obvious challenge for an organization. (Sudan and N. Kummar: 2004:30)
As a result, it is important for organizations to focus on the ability to have good change management practices to manage and perform a change (Jacobsen, 2013). (Conner, 1998) says that leading organizational change is the most significant task for a manager in today’s society. This emphasizes the essence of the leader’s in organizational change which is the main topic of this thesis. thus (Normann, 2001:269) writes in his book, leadership could be seen as the art of guiding an organization through structural change.
In addition to this Kotter’s model geve a heavy emphasis on the leaders’ responsibilities and roles in leading organizational change. The main idea is to get the change drive going quickly and keep it going until the change is made and becomes a part of the organization’s day to day functions and culture. As change is particularly dynamic, the change management process must also be adaptive. Changing an organization’s culture is one of the most tricky leadership challenges. Hence Conner states that whenever inconsistency exists between the current culture and the objective of your change, the culture always wins. That’s because an organization’s culture consist of an interlocking set of behavior, beliefs, communications practices and assumptions of the organization (Conner,1998:223) as the result this thesis tries to study to how leaders practice contribute to bring an organizational change in public sector in study area.
In discussion with change, governments pay a great attention to public organizations thus public organizations dealing with a wide range of economic activities that tend to accelerate the development of the country (kumar, 2006:168). Like wise (Tria and Vollotti, 2012:2) highlights that the public sector is now characterized by thoughtful transformation across the globe, with ramification that are yet to be interpreted.
Similarly the Ethiopian government is highly concern in under taking overall organizational change one on another since 1991 but this thesis will focus only on current organizational change practices in Addis Ketema sub city, on selected sectors.
If you look not fifteen years back but only five years at anything it has changed many times, people, fashion Cars, street in front of your home, buildings, construction, technology and etc… We read and hear about organizational reorganizations constantly. The fact that an organization is performing a change is nothing unusual, it is rather very common. The statement by Jacobsen (2013:20) that organizations have to change or die is accurate by companies constantly changing or closing their business.
Therefore what is leaders role and how they contribute in a organizational change process?, is there any implication of reshuffling in leaders to organizational change?, what are the challenges that they face in the process of organizational change?, why most intended organizational change process fail with out fulfilling their mission? and what type approach is appropriate to organizational change for study area questions in my mind when I start doing this research proposal which made this topic an obvious choice for researcher.
From (Kotter and Rathgeber’s, 2006) we can see that change is happening and it cannot be ignored. The fact that changes are common makes knowledge regarding the topic extremely necessary, we cannot ignore the fact that changes happen and we need to continue to discuss the issue.
In addition (Bolman and Deal 2005:42)argue that large and complex organizations are hard to manage but it is extremely important to highlight issues. Discussion on such matters will have an important role in today’s complex society. We must address these issues and highlight them to make it easier to handle. As well Changes are problematic for an organization and difficult to handle which makes it crucial for us to continue dealing with this topic. In order to become successful in managing organizational changes we have to continue to do research and try to propose solutions for managing them (conner, 1998)
Leading change is the most central task for leaders and managers of today. Understanding leadership perspective will be extremely important for this thesis. Managers do not only control production, they have to handle change processes that connect a turbulent and unrest environment. (Conner, 1998:211-215) Hence, more knowledge regarding the issue is required. Today there is already existing literature in this field international level though little locally. Still, the failure rate of change processes is 70 % (Keller and Aiken 2000, Lomberg 2012,the researcher believe that this study could give idea of factors influencing leaders practice in bringing organizational change processes and compare it to the existing literature.
Since current theories provide general “guidelines” for organizational change the researcher want to make in depth research and study how a change process works in reality in public sector at the study area. Many organizations are faced with challenges that force them to adjust or change regularly. Organizations have to go through change processes when having to respond to new development scenarios or simply as part of their development or restructuring processes (Burnes, 2004).
Hence leadership can make a great difference, and that its importance for organizational success is intensifying. Yet we still know too little about the qualities and practice of effective organizational change process. But the organizations need continuous change since the environment changes continuously due to increase demand of customers, globalization, technological change and increase completion, (conner, 1998:5).
Due to the above facts the Ethiopian government has tried to implement various change management tools like result oriented system, BPR, Kaizen and BSC to help public sectors to make various changes in their operation and to make them competent. There are limited research studies regarding these areas in Ethiopia. As (Tesfaye, 2011) Public sector management reform and change management in Ethiopia have faced a number of challenges that have limited the scope, speed, and quality of services rendering. Similarly (Tensae, 2016) on his MA thesis, organizational change management practice and challenges in the case of geosynthetics industrial works plc had identified challenges like employee resistance, lack of knowledge and awareness about the implemented change management model, lack of training and trainers, communication gap, insufficient training and insufficient employee participation in change process.
Furthermore empirical research of (Alemayehu, 2001 and Paulos, 2001) reveals that the civil service reform implementation process is constrained, with some major hindrance and challenges mainly associated with lack of institutional capacity in terms of human capital development. besides the studies show that institutional incompetence in terms of human capital development remains a major obstacle to civil service reform in Ethiopia.
(Government of Ethiopia, 2004; Getachew & Common, 2006; Paulos, (2001) they criticizes the reform efforts of Ethiopian the ground that it lacks vital preconditions such as a well developed bureaucratic structure with incompetent personnel. In addition, the available manpower is not properly utilized and weaknesses in the areas of human resources management, including weak practices of selection and recruitment, training, and pay and incentives have rendered the civil service unable to attract and retain qualified staff and motivate existing employees to become increasingly involved in reform implementation.
In addition to above(Hilena,2015) in her thesis she has tried to see leadership impacts and challenges on implementation of organizational change at Ethiopian electric power corporation the thesis indicates Since Ethiopia is categorized under developing nations that there were problems in the change management and implementation process like lack of commitments from leaders and departments, lack of knowledge about the new management models or systems, resistance to change, lack of proper rewarding system and other external forces. Therefore, leaders have to give attention to the main challenges which is faced in the organizational change process. This study assesses practice, contribution level, approaches and challenges of leaders in organizational change process in the sub city.
Having this in mind, a general contribution to the field is limited. However the purpose with this study is to examine a specific and extensive case for sub city to see what was done, how it was done, how this corresponds to existing literature and if any suggestions or advice can be given to sub city to consider in the future. Since a case study makes generalization difficult the focus is to see if the result can help sub city in the future. However, this research could provide clues and suggestions that should be further investigated to see if the sub city could contribute to the general guidelines.
