Change Management Models: Commonalities and Key Challenges in the Industry

Gonzalez Munoz, Raul Article Change Management Models: Commonalities and Key Challenges in the Industry ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Provided in Cooperation with: IRENET - Society for Advancing Innovation and Research in Economy, Zagreb Suggested Citation: Gonzalez Munoz, Raul (2022) : Change Management Models: Commonalities and Key Challenges in the Industry, ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion, ISSN 2706-4735, IRENET - Society for Advancing Innovation and Research in Economy, Zagreb, Vol. 8, Iss. 1, pp. 239-247, https://doi.org/10.54820/entrenova-2022-0022 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/268330 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 239 ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Vol. 8 No. 1 Change Management Models: Commonalities and Key Challenges in the Industry Raúl González Muñoz Capgemini Engineering, France Abstract It can be argued that managing change is crucial for any organisation to survive and succeed in the present highly competitive and continuously evolving business environment. However, theories and approaches to change management currently available to academics and practitioners are often contradictory, mostly lacking empirical evidence and supported by unchallenged hypotheses concerning the nature of contemporary organisational change management. This paper seeks to understand the key challenges faced when implementing change management projects in the industry, especially in aerospace, and the commonalities across existing change management methodologies. The paper describes results from interviews with industry experts and the literature review to provide a discerning sight of the challenges faced when implementing change management projects and the components shared by the available methodologies. Keywords: Change; Management; Organisation; Model. JEL classification: M00 Acknowledgments: This research project is funded by Capgemini Engineering. The author would like to gratefully acknowledge the support and assistance from many staff of Capgemini and many change management industry practitioners during the research. Paper type: Research article Received: 24 Feb 2022 Accepted: 29 Apr 2022 DOI: 10.54820/entrenova-2022-0022 240 ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Vol. 8 No. 1 Background Change management is ‘the process of continually renewing an organization’s direction, structure, and capabilities to serve the ever-changing needs of external and internal customers’ (Moran et al., 2001). According to Burnes (Burnes and Bernard, 2004), change is an ever-present feature of organisational life, both at an operational and strategic level. Therefore, there should be no doubt regarding the importance to any organisation of its ability to identify where it needs to be in the future and how to manage the changes required to get there. Consequently, organisational change cannot be separated from organisational strategy or vice versa (Rieley et al., 2001). Over the past decades, change management has become a common practice in most organisations due to the increasing role of change and stakeholder expectations (Autissier et al., 2015). Figure 1 Change management discipline evolution Source: Autissier et al., 2015 It is no longer possible to talk about change from state A to state B. The ordinary situation of the organization becomes one of movement, and change is permanent. This evolution can be represented by a historical evolution of paradigms, as shown in Figure 1. Currently, several change management methodologies can be found with origins both in industry and in academia (Galli, 2018), in many cases developed with specific aims and fields of application, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software tools (Kulkarni, 2019). Furthermore, critical reviews (By, 2005) and implementation guidelines (Cameron and Green, 2019) can be found in the existing literature. However, a study of the challenges changes management practitioners face in the industry would provide additional value. 241 ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Vol. 8 No. 1 Research Methodology The research methodology involved three main phases, as illustrated in Figure 2. The initial phase focused on a literature review within the field of change management. Thanks to this analysis of the state-of-the-art, a starting point in the research was established. At the same time, a set of face-to-face semi-formal interviews was performed with industry experts. The questions and the topics approached in those meetings aligned with the knowledge obtained from the literature review. These interviews aimed to get an insight into how change management is addressed in the industry and the present challenges, being able to contrast this information with the literature available. The profile of the industry participants was as diverse as possible, coming from varied educational backgrounds and with different ages. This was intended to gather information from different points of view. There were 13 interviews, the duration between 20 and 60 minutes, depending on the participants and their knowledge. The iteration between literature research and industry interviews helped to provide a clear view of the current landscape regarding change management. Figure 2 Research methodology structure Source: Author´s work The second phase involved identifying the key challenges in change management, derived from the literature review and the interviews, and identifying common phases/components between change management methodologies based on previous research and valuable information gathered from industry experts. The third and final phase concerned the creation of a set of conclusions regarding the exploratory nature of the work conducted, as well as possible suggestions for the next steps in the research. Change Management Models: Key Challenges For this paper, different industry and related service participants have been interviewed. The profile of the participants involved can be seen in Table 1. Questions were asked to find out their understanding of the following: • Vision and opinion of the field of change management in the industry • Major methodologies used in the field of change management, together with personal experience • Differences between major methodologies • Harder and easier points to deal with within each methodology of change management • Experiences of both success and failure with change management projects and the reasons behind 242 ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Vol. 8 No. 1 Table 1 Relationship between Region and Business Performance Participants Change Experience Management Role Participant 1 10 years Senior Consultant Participant 2 10 years Senior Manager Participant 3 3 years Change Management Consultant Participant 4 3 years Communication Consultant Participant 5 3 years R&D Director Participant 6 8 years SME Director Participant 7 5 years HR Manager Participant 8 8 years Freelance Consultant Participant 9 20 years HR Director Participant 10 10 years Business Analyst Source: Author´s work The answers obtained were compared with the available literature to identify the industry's main change management challenges. For that purpose, early research and findings in the available literature were contrasted with specific examples from the participants. As a result of this iterative exercise, eight main challenges were identified. • Difficulty in project decomposition into workable packages • Proper stakeholder mapping • Misalignment of the organisation's leadership • Lacklustre interpretation of the change management methodology • The culture clash between stakeholders • The human tendency to distrust change • The diffuse frontier between project management and change management under the name “agile.” • Lack of proper change management methodology Furthermore, using the information gathered during the interviews, a ranking was established based on how many times each challenge was mentioned by the participants, shown in Figure 3. By far, the most common challenge identified was the undertaking of change management projects without a formal decision of which methodology to use, relying on previous experiences in past projects and improvisation. Conversations with the participants did reveal that it was quite a common practice not to use formal change management methodologies when conducting change management projects. It remains unclear how this lack of formal methodology impacted the project's progress. The participants' second by order of importance would be the proper stakeholder management, the misalignment of the organisation leadership, and the diffuse frontier between project management and change management under the name of “agile”, all sharing the same score. Particularly, the first and the second are quite connected, while the third has been an increasing concern as the methodology “agile” has been becoming more mainstream across the industry. Figure 3 Number of participants that mentioned each identified challenge 243 ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Vol. 8 No. 1 Source: Author´s work The third, by order of importance, would be a wrong interpretation of change management methodology and culture clash among stakeholders. The latter is a significant challenge in projects involving teams from different countries. Finally, the less-mentioned challenges were the project decomposition into manageable work packages and the human tendency to distrust change. These results firstly reinforce the idea that there is a lack of formal methodologies currently being applied in the field of change management in the industry. From this absence, some of the other challenges identified could be, if not completely, at least partially derived from. Particularly, the challenges related to culture and distrust of change could be, at best, partially mitigated, as they are firmly rooted in human nature. Change Management Models: Existing Commonalities In the initial research previous to the interviews with the participants, several change management methodologies were selected based on the existing literature, both academic and from industry, and discussions with change management practitioners. The selected methodologies were the following ones: • ADKAR • Seven Challenges of Change • COD (Airbus) • AGILE (CM) • OCM (SAP) • Lewin Change Management Model • 8-Step Process for Leading Change • Lack of proper change management methodology 244 ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Vol. 8 No. 1 These models were selected based on their origins, trying to aim for a good mix of generalist models with a wide target audience and in-house developed methodologies such as COD (developed within Airbus), veteran methodologies such as the ones of Lewin and Kotter, and new ones such as ADKAR, and finally, methodologies that had been validated by the academy such as ADKAR and methodologies that had just been used/validated by industry, such as the Seven Challenges of Change. During the interviews, the participants were asked to provide a score from 0 to 5, based on how well acquainted they were with each of the eight models selected, with the aim of understanding which was the most popular model among industry practitioners. The results of this process are presented in Figure 4. Figure 4 Change management model scores as provided by the participants Source: Author´s work As observed above, the change management methodology to which participants were more attuned seemed to be AGILE. However, as explained earlier, one of the key challenges identified during the interviews conducted with change management practitioners was the lack of a clear distinction between Agile as a project management methodology and Agile as a change management methodology; hence this first result needs to be taken into consideration under this existing situation. In the second and third positions, the participants recognised COD and OCM methodologies from Airbus and SAP, respectively, as the most popular, being these models developed in-house by each organisation without clear academic validation. The following methodologies, Kotter, ADKAR, and Lewin, have academic validation, being fourth, fifth and sixth accordingly. Last, there were the Seven Challenges of Change, which did not get any recognition from the participants interviewed. It is remarkable in the view of the researcher how the most recognised methodologies for change management are methodologies without clear academic validation, supporting the idea that the latest developments in the field of change management have been driven by industry rather than the academic community. 245 ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Vol. 8 No. 1 Lastly, the eight selected models were compared to identify the common components shared across all change management methodologies. For this purpose, three main stages in the implementation of the change management model have been identified thanks to the study of the literature and the inputs of industry practitioners, namely “Awareness/Planning”, “Change Implementation,” and “Tracking/Monitoring”. The stages of each of the eight methodologies were classified within these three distinct phases, as shown in Table 2. Table 2 Change management model commonalities identified Models Awareness / Planning CHANGE implementation Tracking /Monitoring ADKAR Awareness + Desire Knowledge + Ability Reinforcement Seven Challenges of Change Activating awareness + Engaging change leaders + Creating and sharing possibilities Stepping into a new shared vision + Empowering visible action + Integrating systemic change Sustaining long term COD (Airbus) Preparation Deployment Monitoring AGILE (CM) Define Experiment Anchor OCM (SAP) Define + Design Develop + Deploy X Lewin Change Management Model Unfreeze CHANGE implementation Refreeze 8-Step Process for Leading Change (Kotter) Create a sense of urgency + Build a strong coalition + Form a strategic vision and initiatives + Enlist a volunteer army Enable action by removing barriers + Generating shorttime wins + Sustain acceleration Institute change Source: Author´s work As it can be observed, the only methodology that does not fit into the three identified change management stages is OCM (SAP) due to the particularities of the aim for which it was developed, mainly the deployment of SAP products, especially ERPs. Nevertheless, this showcases the underlying similarities between the selected change management methodologies in the sample, independently of the source of origin (industry or academy) or age. Hence, even with their particularities, most of these models will cover several predetermined stages related to any change process, independently of the nature of the project being the object of analysis. Conclusions Change management is a discipline that has been increasingly important for the industry in the last decade, with organisations looking to improve and optimise how they implement changes and react to change. In the present paper, a set of key challenges when implementing change management projects has been presented. Additionally, a sample of change management methodologies has been scored by order of popularity and compared. Hence, the key results are: • Main key challenges of change management projects in the industry • Change management methodologies scoring and commonalities These results will help industry and academia understand the particularities of change management projects within the industry, providing a starting point to identify and establish key commonalities that any change management model needs to have. 246 ENTRENOVA - ENTerprise REsearch InNOVAtion Vol. 8 No. 1 Future research should involve further exploration of the components that determine a wider success and adoption of particular change management methodologies. This will enable the development of newer change management methodologies that are more efficient and effective, building upon the current change management methodologies as well as the insights from industry practitioners. References 1. Autissier, D., Johnson, K., & Moutot, J. M. (2016), « De la conduite du changement instrumentalisée au changement agile ». In Les miscellanées du changement EMS Editions. pp. 229-242 2. Burnes, B. (2004), “Kurt Lewin and the Planned Approach to Change: A Re-appraisal”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 41, pp. 977-1002. 3. By, R.T., (2005), “Organisational change management: A critical review”, Journal of change management, Vol.5 No.4, pp.369-380. 4. Cameron, E., Green, M., (2019), “Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change”, London, Kogan Page Publishers. 5. Galli, B.J. (2018), “Change management models: A comparative analysis and concerns”, IEEE Engineering Management Review, Vol.46 No.3, pp.124-132. 6. Kulkarni, S. (2019), “Organizational Change Management in S/4HANA”. In Implementing SAP S/4HANA, Apress, Berkeley, CA, pp. 121-135. 7. Moran, J., Brightman, B. (2001), "Leading organizational change", Career Development International, Vol.6, pp. 111-119. 8. Rieley, J., Clarkson, I. (2001), "The impact of change on performance", Journal of Change Management, Vol.2, pp. 160-172. About the author