ISSN: 2169-0286
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Mini Review - (2019)Volume 8, Issue 1
The aim of this article is both an attempt to identify the relationship between various disciplines of management sciences (change management, process management) and the reference to the issue of their integration. This seems to be a significant problem in the context of the inevitability of making changes in the organization (with a relatively fast pace), and still rising complexity of the organization, with at the same time decreasing of their operations recurrence. The article is a review − it integrates and interprets the current state of knowledge in the area of change management, processes management and projects management, pointing to the need and opportunities for integration/symbiosis of various sub-disciplines of management. It was developed primarily using the critical analysis of literature.
Change management; Processes management; Project management; Integration sub-disciplines of management
In view of the increase in the complexity of the organization itself as well as the environment in which it operates, with respect to the management of the organization, there appeared a need to divide tasks and specializations. This results in a tendency to separate individual sub disciplines of management (both in the theoretical and practical sense), focusing on a specific scope of the organization's activities. Certainly, it enables a more complete consideration of the specificity of a given aspect of the organization's operation, an adequate selection of management tools that ensure the efficiency of individual elements of the organization, but at the same time lacks a holistic view of the organization (in spatial, temporal, objective and subjective sense). It also reveals all the drawbacks associated with deepening the specialization in managing selected areas of the organization's activities.
It is worth undertaking an attempt to assess the progress in the development of individual subdisciplines of management, but also an attempt to assess their compatibility, identify any desired and undesirable effects for the entire organization and conditions.
The conditions under which organizations operate today, ie globalization, hyper-competition, virtualization, technology development, shortening the organization's life cycle, the spread of network structures, the dynamics of customer expectations and others, make it increasingly difficult for an organization to maintain a balance between stability and the need to make changes. What is more, in order to achieve the natural goal related to the duration of the organization, it must constantly make changes, because the changes have become a kind of "guarantor" of survival and the ability to face the challenges of the future [1,2].
Until recently, the frequency of changes and their degree of radicality were definitely lower; At present, we are dealing with a clear acceleration of the pace of change and with the growing demand for more complex (cross-sectional, fundamental) changes, for example in the business model of action (changes in the introduction of product innovations are insufficient). This situation puts the organization before the need to deal with many interdependent changes (related to each other or mutually conditioned) or with independent changes (running side by side at the same time, in parallel).
Today it seems obvious that the modern organization must shape and maintain an appropriate level of change capability, i.e. be characterized by a specific potential of volatility, which ensures its adaptation to transforming operating conditions, and at the same time determines its appropriate competitive position on the market, thus enabling achievement satisfactory level of effectiveness in action.
In the course of making changes in the organization reveal different types of problems of the organization leading to initiating too many changes at the same time, triggering the potential of volatility at the wrong moment (too late or premature), engaging the ability to change into changes that do not give a chance for the expected results - which can lead to wastage organizational volatility potential. Therefore, due to the fact that changing the organization is inevitable, but also that it exposes the organization to destabilization, there is a need to manage changes in the organization.
It can also be noted that individual authors agree that the unavoidable in formulating supporting standards for organization management is the paradigm of variability of the environment and the need to deal with the continuous uncertainty of these changes [3]. Moczydłowska calls it a paradigm of ambient turbulence [4]. Drucker notes that this variability forces the organization of the 21st century to focus primarily on the outside of the organization and defining its objectives in the context of market and client needs, which does not exclude changes in the organization whose impulses originate inside organization [5]. According to Grudzewski and Hejduk is the sustainability paradigm of sustainability, which they define as "the ability to constantly learn, adapt and develop, revitalize, reconstruct, reorientation to maintain a durable and distinctive market position...", stressing that for the meaning of sustainability, the assumption of a high dynamics of change is fundamental [6].
One can therefore formulate a thesis that in the foreseeable future this change will just give sense to management, understood here as an activity oriented towards achieving the organization's goals (ensuring its effectiveness and efficiency in operation). The ability to change both in the sense of adapting to changed operating conditions and in the sense of initiating changes on the principle of anticipating, ie taking advantage of opportunities, realizing a vision, will be a condition for the functioning of the organization (both in terms of duration and development).
Making changes is therefore a response to environmental impulses or internal needs is realized through a wide (constantly expanding) spectrum of concepts, approaches and management tools - also includes process management. To what extent, therefore, the implementation of changes in the organization as a realization of the paradigm in management requires a process approach (management)? To what extent will process management contribute to the implementation of changes in the organization?
A review of the subject literature on the organization's management indicates the possibility of using various approaches, including functional, structural and process-based approaches. Practically growing interest in the process approach was to some extent enforced by the introduction of quality assurance standards. Process management is also associated with the benefits that make up the socalled the effect of rebuilding the organization. It is a transition from functioning in a static structure, primarily oriented to functions, to a dynamic structure in which the orientation on processes dominates. This effect in the form of noticeable improvement in efficiency and efficiency increase is associated with specific distinguishing features of a process-oriented organization. These features are much more able to support the improvement of efficiency in current, far from stabilized operating conditions. Making such a structural reorientation leads to the construction of a process organization, which according to Grajewski is characterized by the following attributes [7-9]:
• It is a system that directs the relationship between the implementers of its tasks to activities contained in designed processes; all organizationally separated areas are treated equivalently due to their usefulness in the implementation of internal orders;
• Every area of the organization is a client and as such has the option of choosing the execution of the order both inside and outside the organization; each area of the organization is an internal service provider and may locate its services on the internal or external market (unless it is reserved);
• Separated areas are able to negotiate terms of service delivery, within a sequential chain of value creation, which involves mastering the ability to value their own and other products.
This means introducing market relations to the inside of the organization and using the chance of a more open opening to the market environment, while verifying the actual participation of individual elements in the creation of added value, and this mainly determines the possibilities of improving the efficiency and competitiveness of such organizations.
The reconstruction of the organization towards processes is also supported by the fact that [9]:
• The process approach makes it easier to improve the system's operation (rather than in A functional system, indirectly by changing the order of tasks);
• The process approach particularly emphasizes pro-client attitude, which is reflected in the way of designing processes;
• The process approach directs the activities of the organization's members to learning a broader scope of achieving fulfillment of goals than in the functional system, which is an impulse that supports the learning of both its members and the organization itself.
Advocates of the process approach emphasize that such an organization creates conditions for:
• Introducing changes to individual processes as well as their configurations (on the principle of eliminating old ones and introducing new ones);
• Maintaining the optimal pace of change (in the face of the need to adapt to the growing pressure of change).
Considering the relationship between management/process approach and management of changes in the organization, it would be necessary to take into account the diverse spectrum of tasks carried out as part of the process management. Paim et al. [10], analyzing the tasks of process management in a conceptual and practical dimension, distinguished the following groups of these tasks:
• Process design,
• Operational process management,
• Supporting learning-related processes.
The tasks of the first group are mainly related to the creation of conditions for introducing changes of a cross-cutting, revolutionary nature, which usually violate the previous concept of business operations, they become a requirement to obtain/maintain a competitive advantage. The significance of these changes does not allow decisions about them to be made at the level of the owners of particular processes (or management of functional divisions), institutional/procedural solutions are required to ensure enhanced coordination (enabling the use of diverse knowledge/skills from specialized entities under specific ranges/functions).
Tasks of the second group are today the center of gravity of process management, they focus on the daily/repetitive implementation of tasks that do not violate the existing architecture processes in the organization, but assume the introduction of not very large modifications, improvements that through their systematic implementation are able to significantly improve the advancement in process maturity of the organization, thus creating conditions for further improvement of the organization's effectiveness.
Considering the fact that using continuous process improvement over time leads to the achievement of the critical point (further improvements are not able to bring the expected/desired results), in the subject literature it is recommended to use a mixed approach, i.e. alternate implementation of radical changes and continuous improvement of processes [11]. This approach assumes that the process implementers along with its owner initiate it/apply and make changes to the process/processes. It is important to support activities related to creating conditions for learning, freeing creativity, and conscious involvement of the organization's participants in this type of undertaking. Contemporary understood process management, including a group of tasks related to the promotion of organizational learning, becomes a means to achieve the organization's objectives more fully.
Recognizing the compatibility of change management (which is based on the idea of organization learning) and process management, it should be noted that the nature of the process organization does not directly suggest that the process approach has a mechanism to optimize the changes introduced in the organization, while reducing the costs associated with changes. The "defense mechanisms" of making changes not always justified are also weak.
As noted by Sońta-Drączkowska, processes in the organization are a response to the need to implement various changes and can be treated as "carriers" of these changes. Trocki, considering the structure of activities implemented by the organization in the light of two criteria, ie complexity and repeatability, draws attention to the special role of processes and their growing participation in the implementation of all activities. He believes that the need for process management results, on the one hand, from necessity, and on the other hand from the potential benefits of focusing on processes. It can be assumed that the management of processes in an organization is an expression of attempts to "standardize" (within defined limits) those activities that are unique, individualized and each time lead to results clearly indicating the difference between the initial state and the current (final) state. They indicate a change [12-20].
Thus, at conceptual level, there are far-reaching analogies between process management and change/change management.
The above-mentioned usefulness of the process approach in developing the organization's ability to introduce changes (adaptive and innovative) leads to shaping the conditions ensuring integrity in the application of approaches appropriate for individual subdisciplines (understood not only as the field of theoretical knowledge but also as a set of necessary skills) to effectively implement the paradigm of managing modern organizations [14,21-23]. There is a need to check the possibility of using principles, tools and solutions concerning important issues related to change, process and exchange of achievements between these management sub disciplines. As for the possible "contribution" to this integration from the side of change management, you can take into account, for example:
1. The concept of a change model with particular focus on the stage of persistent change,
2. Coping with the problem of reducing the efficiency of the process during the change (resulting from the so-called right hole),
3. Building the so-called an influential coalition (transforming reluctance and resistance into employees' involvement),
4. A developed spectrum of ways to neutralize the resistance of process participants/enterprises while making changes.
It is obvious that for the integration understood in this way, the flow of knowledge and experiences is important on the basis of feedback, which is manifested, among others, in interest in change management and project management methodology.
Citation: Jasińska J, Hab (2019) The Process approach to Manage changes in the Organization. J Hotel Bus Manage 8:193.
Received: 16-Dec-2018 Accepted: 19-Jan-2019 Published: 27-Jan-2019 , DOI: 10.35248/2169-0286.19.8.193
Copyright: © 2019 Jasińska J, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.