The Role of Organizational Culture in a Successful Change process

Abstract

This study examines the organizational culture in the context of organizational change, focusing on the role of culture in the success of the change process. Too many organizations failed in their attempt to change systems and work processes since they were merely mechanistic in their approach and neglected the role of culture within the process. The main two hypotheses laid in this research were! 1. There is a positive correlation between the dissatisfaction with the current organizational culture and the success of the change process; 2. There is a negative correlation between the strength of the organizational culture and the success of the change process. Other hypotheses dealt with company size, company age, employees' professional experience, and employees' education as moderators in the above correlation. The research was conducted in IT division of a European corporate during a change process it went through, and included 12 companies. The preliminary stage of the research was in-depth interviews, which led afterward to a quantitative research conducted in twc stages. Findings of two companies were eliminated because of their small size and ou! of 700 employees 344 participated in the survey before change and 411 participated in the survey after the change (nine month later). The findings confirm the two main hypotheses and most of the secondary ones: 1. The stronger dissatisfaction with culture is the more eased is achieving success of the change process. It becomes even easier in more mature companies) with longer employees' professional experience, and with lower level of employees education; 2. The stronger culture is the more difficult it is to achieve success of the change process, It becomes even more difficult in bigger companies, more mature, with longer employees' professional experience and with higher of employees education. The main managerial consequences following these findings are: (a) Strong culture may become a curse when change is required unless the culture is learning oriented and change focused; (b) Change will be eased i f managers consider dissatisfaction with the current situation as an essential tool to start breaking the status quo the organization is used to.