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Journal “Value Addition, Vol ,1, 2010” (ISSN: 0000 - 0000)

Title Page

Research Title:

Leadership and IT-Driven Organizational Change in the Sri Lankan Context

T Suraweera, E P E Rodrigo, H M G L Samarathunga, K D S S Wimalarathna, G D N

Jayasekara and K M M S Somarathne

Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, New Kandy Road, Malabe, Sri Lanka.

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Leadership and IT-Driven Organizational Change in the

Sri Lankan Context

T Suraweera, E P E Rodrigo, H M G L Samarathunga, K D S S Wimalarathna,

G D N Jayasekara, K M M S Somarathne.

Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, New Kandy Road, Malabe, Sri Lanka.

ABASTRACT

This research investigates Information Technology (IT) driven organizational changes in Sri Lankan organizations by focusing on the leadership aspects. The main objective of this research is to identify which leadership styles are effective in ensuring the success of change management processes within IT project implementations. In order to achieve this, firstly the research conducts an in-depth investigation of the relationship between leadership and change management practices within organizations. Encapsulating the findings, a model is proposed to pinpoints the leadership style that should be adopted within the change management process of the organization. The research involved qualitative methods. Models by Goalman (2000), Kotter (1996), and Cooper and Zmud (1990) were consulted to build an initial framework surrounding leadership and change management practices. Using the Case Study method, in-depth interviews and document reviews were conducted for six leading Sri Lankan organizations which had undergone IT change. Analysis of results revealed that organizations are increasingly realizing the value of employing change management practices when introducing IT change to their organizations. The attention of leaders was found to be more focused on the culture, behaviours and attitudes of employees who are part of the change process than on the steps within the change process itself which are prescribed by change gurus. Eliminating people resistance has been treated with the highest priority based on the argument that effectiveness of change management processes is directly linked to winning over the people resource. Leadership styles were found to be practiced more from a public relations (PR) perspective to win the people over in the short term and thereby ensuring long term success. Key words: Leadership, Organizational Change, Information Technology, Change Management Process, Leadership Styles, Sri Lankan Context, IT Driven Change

INTRODUCTION

John P. Kotter, one of the change management gurus has said that the change is an

unavoidable reality in the business world today. In such a turbulent environment if the

change is not handled properly it can drive them crazy, costs a great deal of money and

will cause a lot of pain. Modern business organizations are turbulent and face dramatic

changes such as strategic changes, technology changes, business process changes,

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mergers and acquisitions. Taking these aspects in to consideration IT driven change plays

a critical role in organizations today. IT driven organizational change is considered to be

the current focus in many business organizations as they introduce or implement new IT

systems nowadays to gain the competitive advantage (Cameron and Green, 2004). If the

organization did not adapt to changes, the organizations could not compete. Managing of

change is important in order to embrace the change and reap its benefits. Leadership

plays a vital role in managing change by involving and supporting throughout the process

to make the change a success. Many studies have highlighted the importance of

leadership in change management. According to Kotter (1996), leadership is very much

related to change and as the velocity of change increases, there is a greater need for

effective leadership.

There are a number of studies on importance of leadership and change management

(Kotter, 1996; Cameron and Green, 2004; Patson and McCalman, 2000; Beerel, 2009).

However leadership styles that should be adopted for managing an effective IT change

process has received lesser attention. Research focus draws the attention towards the

leadership styles to be adopted during change management process when organizations

go through IT driven organizational changes.

No past research has been reported on leadership and change management in Sri Lanka.

It has been identified that for most organizations in Sri Lanka change management is a

new practice. Therefore, this study makes a valuable contribution to the field of

leadership and change management as this research carries a comprehensive study to fill

the knowledge gap in that area.

This paper presents the finding of the first phase of the research. It comprises of five

sections followed by the introduction. In the next section literature review is presented

and the results are given in section four. Paper ends with the discussion of research study

and suggestions for further research.

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LITERATURE REVIEW

As a background to the study this section briefs on the leadership and leadership styles,

IT implementation process and change management processes and IT driven change

management. The relevance of leadership and management of IT driven organizational

change is examined here.

Information Technology plays a significant role in organizations‟ business processes

today. IT has triggered many changes forcing organizations to embrace changes which

happen due to IT implementations. Many researchers have introduced different IT

implementation process models (Rogers, 1983 ; Kwon and Zmud, 1987; Gerwin 1988).

Basically all models are based on three main processes namely: initiation,

implementation and naturalization. These researchers have identified that implementation

of IT changes should be well planed and should be carry out systematically in order to

gain the real benefits of change. Failing to manage the change effectively will end up in

poor implementations (Patson and McCalman, 2000).

Researchers argue that proper framework should be adopted to carry out the IT

implementation as well as to manage the IT driven change simultaneously. Past

researchers have developed a number of models to explore as change management

processes. Three step change model (Lewin, 1951), eight steps model (Kotter, 1995) and

ADKAR model (Prosci, 1996) can be cited as examples. All these models address the

change management in general, and still no comprehensive model has been developed to

depict IT driven change management process. Kotter‟s (1996) eight steps model targets

large scale organizational change and gives a comprehensive elaboration about the

change management process and as it directly establishes a relationship with the

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leadership and organizational change process, which is the underlying concept of this

study. Hence, Kotter‟s change model is used as the base of study in the research.

Number of researchers have highlighted that leaders should manage the change in order

to achieve effective organizational change (Kotter,1996 ; Lewin, 1951; Jicks,1991). In

the context of change management Kotter (2002) defines leadership as:

What the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and

inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles (Kotter, 1996:25.)

This research focuses on leadership styles. Studies have highlighted that leadership styles

play a vital role in organizational change. Goleman (2000) have mentioned that

organizational climate is influenced by leadership style. Number of leadership styles are

experimented, researched and have found by the contributors such as Lewin (1939);

Likert (1967) and Goleman (2000). These contributors argue that leaders do not rely on

just one leadership but it can change according to the scenario (Goleman, 2000).

Conceptualization

A high level conceptual view of relationship between leadership and IT driven change is

shown in Fig.1.

As shown in Fig.1 the change management process need to be practised inside the IT

implementation process. The effectiveness of this practice is directly affected by

leadership styles. To examine this framework, models as shown in Table 1 are used.

In summary, the following inferences have been made from the literature review:

Leadership is critical for an effective change management.

From leadership aspect, leadership styles will have a higher influence on the

effectiveness of the change management.

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Steps follows in change management process will become critical success factors for

the IT change process.

Organizations must give all the three aspects (IT implementation, Change

management and leadership styles) their focus when IT driven change is taking

place.

The final framework for the research can be built as in Fig.1.

Organizations must follow change management process within their IT change

process. (As shown in Fig1 )

For the real world case scenario analysis purpose three models namely, Kotter

(1996) eight step model, Cooper and Zmud (1900) IT Diffusion model and Goleman

(2000) Six leadership Styles model can be adopted to the research framework.

METHODOLOGY

This study focuses on real-life scenarios and explores “How” and “Why” questions.

Hence, we adopted the case study approach. Case study approach is a method used to

narrow down a very broad field of research into one easily researchable topic. According

to Shuttleworth (2008), case study method attempts to test a theory with a typical case or

a specific topic. Thereby using the case studies we will be able to develop and practically

test the research findings from literature as well as see the practical aspects of the

scenario.

In this study, the framework which was synthesised from the literature survey is used to

develop interview protocols and for the case analysis. Semi-structured interviews in six

organizations were conducted which has undergone IT changes. Case study data was

collected by our research authors using interviews of approximately one hour duration

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and based on the same interview protocol. Top IT executives in leading Sri Lankan

organizations were interviewed including who have contributed in large IT

implementations. Table 1 presents profiles of the cases which have been studied in this

research.

RESULTS

Table 2 presents the summery of the findings. From the case study investigation it is

evident that most organizations do not use a formal approach towards change

management. However they have adopted certain processes associated with change

management, without a conscious application of them.

The complex IT changes in most organizations were associated with implementing

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. When the IT change had been triggered by

ERP system it has lead them to realise the importance of managing the change.

According to a top IT executive many organizations in Sri Lanka are not aware of change

management.

Unfortunately I doubt that they know not John P. Kotter but the area

he contributed (Case C).

Most IT changes the case study organizations went through were successful according to

their own judgement. However it was evident from the investigation that most of the

projects have taken longer time than they planned for. Certain organizations suffer from

the problem of not utilizing their system fully. However without practicing a formal

change management approach, these organizations managed to be successful in there

change may be merely due to a proper leadership. Generally these organizations highly

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focussed on Step 4, 7 and 8. These steps require complete support from the leader.

Therefore leadership involvement and the support to the change can be considered as

high.

According to six cases generally they followed Affiliative style, Authoritative style and

Democratic style out of all six leadership styles during the change. These leadership

styles were identified from the characteristics (Goleman 2000) they possessed. Choosing

the leadership style was situation oriented. In general during the initiation of change they

practised Authoritative then Democratic and in the latter part of change the focus was

towards Affiliative style.

In exceptional cases organizations had used Coercive Style apart from those styles.

According to an IT executive during the ERP implementation their motto was:

SAP able or Sack able (Case B).

Facing an ERP implementation was the common situation to those organizations which

used Coercive. This situation caused them go through dramatic changes for the first time

and face higher people resistance. According to the IT executives‟ perceptions, lack of a

proper organizational culture was the cause for people resistance. Therefore the situation

have forced these organizations adopt Coercive style but they shifted to Affiliative style

ones people got adapted to the change. According to the Case F and Case E they follow

people oriented leadership style:

We do not insist people to do it instead we ask shall we do it (Case F).

I think people are more part of the organization than earlier (Case E.)

Therefore from the case study analysis it is evident that leadership style strongly effected

on orgnization to be successful in change. Without any formal approch to change

managemnet case organizations leadership was the force to drive the change. Therefore

during the change process they followed people oriented leadership styles such as

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Authoritaive, Democratic ,Affiliative styles. Use of this people oriented leadership

approach made them successful in thier change.

DISCUSSION

This research revealed another dimention of change mangement other than change

managemnet process and leadership. Cases revealed „people resistance‟ is another

dimention that should be foucsed during change management.

People resist. It is not a very simple thing. The change is very tuff for

people (Case A).

Dramtetic change lead them to face remarkable situations of people resistance. In some

cases problem of people resistance lead them to adopt rigid methods to avoid it which

lead to unsatisfaction of emplyees. However in these situations change have been

accepeted by emplyees for the fear of losing thier jobs.

Not having a proper people focussed change management approach and lack of a change

supprotive culture must have lead to people resistance. However these organizations have

used several methods to deal with people resistance. Proper communication of change ,

higher support and invlovement from leadership, adopting people oriented leadership

styles, use of feedback mechanism and proper trainning are some of methods used.

In the effort of eliminating people resistance case organizations have focused on

recreating their culture. Having a change suppritive culture is considered to be the key

element for avoiding people resistance.

In summary, this research has focussed on leadership and change management aspect in

an IT driven organizational change in the context of Sri Lanka. This research confirms

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that leadership plays a critical role in change management. It is evident that a proper

leadership can lead the change to a success and use of people oriented leadership styles

can avoid people resistance. Finally this research have identified Authoritative,

Democratic and Affiliative leadership styles are the considered to be best leadership style

to be adopted during the change management process to making a change a success.

However this study suggests that the organizations should follow a formal change

management process when dealing with IT –driven change and they should use people

oriented leadership styles to make the change a success.

The knowledge gap in the area of change management in the Sri Lankan context should

be filled as the proper awareness and knowledge on this area carries a higher value for

the business organizations. This research focussed on identifying the appropriate

leadership styles and the process to be used in managing the change. Still there is a

knowledge gap in the cultural aspect of change management area. Therefore

investigating on the proper culture which is supportive to change could be another area

for future research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors wish to thank the case study organizations and the IT executives who kindly

provided information to carry out this research. Due to the confidential nature these

details are not disclosed. The support of Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology,

Malabe is sincerely acknowledged.

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