Leading Change Paper

University of Phoenix

A manager needs to understand the interdependency of departments, internal partnerships, and the influence of power and politics to effectively manage across the organization. Effective managers use various political tactics to increase their power within the organization to coordinate and support the work of their peers and subordinates to meet company objectives. Managers regularly acquire and use power. Power-oriented behavior has an impact on managerial career progress, on job performance, on organizational effectiveness, and on the personal lives of employees (Obholzer, 1995). It involves the combined topics of power, influence, authority, and organizational politics. When running an organization, all these factors should be taken into consideration.

In managing an organization effectively there are critical partnerships and alliances that a new manager must maintain in that organization. Companies are increasingly looking at strategic partnerships, alliances and joint ventures as avenues to enter new markets, establish new business offerings, across new distribution channels or pursue new areas of growth (Schwartz, 1999). Corporate alliances can help mitigate risks of new initiatives and they can also leverage skills and resources provided by others. Strategic partnerships may take a variety of forms and may involve product/service development, sales, marketing and delivery. These strategic partnerships can become significant competitive differentiators by increasing times to market in developing product/services, accessing new clients in current or new geographies and improving internal operations. In this simulation, I first used the input of upper level management before making a decision and combining their input with my ideas to make a logical decision that will help the company expand.

The formal structure is the organization's plan for "executing its processes". In other words the formal structure defines how it will apply resources to carry out what it needs to do (Egan, 1994). The formal structure also reflects the authority and responsibility that individuals have for applying the organizational resources. Formal power structure can hinder managerial effectiveness in several ways. In formal structures, decisions get made through personal influence and are not made by people who are meant to make them. People argue about who should be doing what and some things do not get done at all. The organization can sometimes seem fragmented and time and resources are wasted. While running the Good Sport simulation, I navigated the power structure in many ways. Processes need to be broken down and allocated to individuals and departments so that they can share the workload or employ specialist skills. Because the work of many individuals needs to be coordinated towards the common mission, specialist management roles and an organizational structure are required to manage effectively.

The informal structure is the network of relationships in the workplace that are not described informal job descriptions, role statements, organizational charts, etc. The informal structure is the "unofficial organization" that is implied by saying "It's not what you know, but who you know..." We all know that this exists and most people in organizations use the informal structure without realizing that is what they are doing. If you want to influence someone you could not normally reach you may approach them indirectly through someone else who is close to your "target" person. The informal structure is not inherently positive or negative (Halton, 2003). In the simulation, I worked within the informal culture of Good Sport by making ethical and logical decisions while running the simulation. It is important to examine the profiles of each management level and understand their particular capabilities and requirements before distributing power. Each decision empowered managers and had a high impact on the morale graph.

One of the strategies used in the Managing across the Organizations is to establish information sharing, granted greater flexibility and increased budget setting authority. In case of Good Sport it restructured the organization, established formal channels for information sharing, granted flexibility and increased budget setting authority. The company also uses the organic structure for ensuring that the resistance from sales and production that is seen in the simulation of Managing across the Organizations is overcome. The production and sales responsibility is not given to the company workers from the top they come from the different project leaders.

Organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organization members and their behaviors. Members of an organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. Culture is one of those terms that are difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. For example, the culture of a large, for-profit corporation is quite different than that of a hospital which is quite different that that of a university. You can tell the culture of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what they brag about, what members wear.

Typically, the concept of organizational change is in regard to organization change, as opposed to smaller changes such as adding a new person, modifying a program, etc. Examples of organization-wide change might include a change in mission, restructuring operations (e.g., restructuring to self-managed teams, layoffs, etc.), new technologies, mergers, major collaborations, "rightsizing", new programs such as Total Quality Management, re-engineering, etc. Some experts refer to organizational transformation. Often this term designates a fundamental and radical reorientation in the way the organization operates (Burton & Obel, p.13).

In today's business environment, without having proper design, structure and culture a business cannot survive and also it should have the capability in changing its business environment affected by its internal and external environment. Organizational structure, design, culture and change are all interrelated with each other, especially structure, design and culture. Organizational theory is able to analyze the structure and culture of their organizations, solve the problems and utilize the process of organizational design and make an adjustment that helps the organizations to achieve its goals. Organizational design influences both the structure and culture of the organization because of increased competitive pressures and increasing use of advanced