Strategic change management and impact on performance of Unga group ltd

Abstract

Economic and social forces such as globalization, social/cultural, political/legal, competition, technology, liberalisation, deregulation, unstable financial markets, and advances in information and communication technologies are among the many business environmental factors driving the escalating pace of change evident within organizations today. Discerning the need for change early enough and pulling together the resources required, be they human, technological, financial, and information, on time to implement the change, is usually seen as a differentiating core competence for competitive companies and the only way out for organisations to survive the onslaught of a changing environment. Seeing the need for change and having the resources to implement it is one thing but the process of implementing the change which is change management, is what determines the eventual outcome of the whole change process. Therefore it is becoming evident that to leverage strategic change in a volatile environment, good change management practices must be adopted. This case study sought to explore strategic change management and how change has be managed from a local perspective at Unga Group Ltd based on an extensive review of the literature on change management and the skills and competencies necessary to manage change successfully in order to achieve the set objectives of the change strategy and the resultant influence of the foresaid on performance. An interview guide with open ended questions was used to collect the data and further research data was obtained from secondary data. The research findings show that there was change management process adopted by Unga Group Ltd when implementing their strategic changes from 1990 to 2005. Before 1997, there were no change management processes adopted to manage change but from 1997 change management processes were adopted to manage change and some positive results and achievements made although the change process was stopped and the change manager sacked before the full benefits of the process were realised. A major lesson from this research is that for an organisation to start on implementing change strategy it has to count the cost. That is, how the change process will be impacted by and how it will VB impact on Issues such as the corporate culture, organisational culture, financial, communication, productivity, performance and the future outlook of the organisation.