Politics and organizational change - the lived experience

Politics and Organizational Change – The Lived Experience affiliation Politics and Organizational Change – The LivedExperience
1. What are the ‘ lived experiences’ of organizational politics from the standpoint of the change agent described in this paper?
Organizational changes are challenging are, and only a few people are successful in them (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, 2005, p. 45). In every organization, managers experiences resistance and persuasive features as they attempt to solve disputes regarding values, goals and solutions within their organization. Many organizations are negative on political involvement, and they view political activities as norms rather than as variants (Buchanan and Badham, 1999, p. 610). They view politics as a dirty game which has to be avoided and eradicated at every cost.
A change agent is any person who is interested in changing organizational roles, structures and processes in an organization. Such people often experience conflict and resistance from different people who are motivated by either organizational concern or their self-interests (Buchanan and Badham, 1999, p. 614). People who are resisting change often block change agents, and they mostly employ political tactics to trigger a parallel response. Any champion of change experiences resistance to their new ideas. People have different opinions, morals, beliefs and understandings and therefore implementing change will always trigger political involvement (Buchanan and Badham, 1999, p. 614). However, successful agents of change should view it positively since it triggers them to being more creative. Managers who ignore political activity are termed as failures, and this places agents of change into complex situations since they have to consider what they want to implement and at the same time listen to the political point of view (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, 2005, p. 49).
2. How do change agents become engaged in political activity, and what forms does this engagement take?
Due to the pressures from the surrounding environment, every change agent has to be involved in political activities either willing or unwillingly. To attain the expected success in organizational change, the change agent has to be involved in politics to gain power (Buchanan and Badham, 1999, p. 614). The writer says that an agent of change must defend the voice of his followers, and this is inseparable from political activities. They must employ the rule of overt to convert in order to implement the expected changes. Politics are involved in organizational and human issues and failure to give attention to such issues have made some agents of change fail. Organizational change and politics are intertwined by many factors and are hence inseparable.
A change agent has to involve politics in their actions in ways such as organizing meetings with the relevant political authorities that can offers opinions. In the case 1 presented in the paper, the involvement of political people contributed to speeding up the project, and it created a pool of ideas (Buchanan and Badham, 1999, p. 618). In the case 2 in the paper, political involvement made the teachers do their work more smart that usual. In order to remain a top rank school with high credibility, they had to offer favors to political officers (Buchanan and Badham, 1999, p. 619). All change agents must, therefore, engage the political environment to create a streamlined environment for implementation of their organizational changes. Change agents might be forced to do certain favors to other people so that their projects are successful. Although such activities might appear to be wrong, the degree of rightness exceeds that of wrongness since in the end both parties benefit.
3. What are the implications of this paper for our understanding of organizational change?
From this paper, it is evident that organizational change is a challenging task, which is surrounded by a political environment, which retards its pace. In order to implement change successfully, it is necessary to involve the politics since it creates mutual gain. Politics has been considered “ dirty” over the years, but it is impossible to evade them since there are the control tools in every nation (Bowyer and Martinelli, 2004, p. 77). In conclusion, agents of change cannot evade the political involvement.
Bibliography
Bowyer, J., & Martinelli, S. 2004. Organisational management T-kit. Council of Europe. Strasbourg
Buchanan, D., & Badham, R. 1999 ‘ Political and organisational change: the lived experience’. Journal of Human relations, vol. 52 no. 609 , pp. 610-629. Retrieved from DOI: 10. 1177/001872679905200503
Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. 2005. Organisational management and information systems. CIMA. Oxford