Steven H. Appelbaum Faculty of Commerce and Administration, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada Normand St-Pierre Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Montreal, Quebec, Canada William Glavas Pratt and Whitney Canada, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Presents an overview of strategic organizational change (SOC) and its managerial impact on leadership, learning, motivation and productivity. Theoretical and empirical data presented are: the sources and determinants of strategic organizational change; the management implications of SOC; organizational leadership within the context of SOC; learning aspects of SOC; the impact of SOC on organizational and individual productivity; a model that explains the relationships between SOC, leadership, learning, motivation and productivity. Depicts strategic organizational change as an integrative process with all organizational elements such as human resources, systems and technologies being considered for successful change to occur. The proposed model for strategic organizational change is an attempt to link the software and hardware components of organizations. In view of the pressures being expected from the external environment and the critical vision of organizations, research suggests that top management needs to establish a flexible and adaptive infrastructure that should lead contemporary and complex organizations to optimum levels of performance. The largest barrier to “change” is not changes to technologies and work processes but changes involving people.
Introduction
For centuries philosophers have struggled with definitions of “change”, …To the ancient Greeks… tampering with the basic character of things – was, if not actually blasphemy, a sure path to disaster … In modern Western culture, “change” is a more malleable notion, a means to bend fate to one’s ends… (Kanter et al., 1992).
Critical determinants of
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