The main purpose of this thesis has been to study the change agent’s role in accelerating sustainability in the construction sector. A case study was conducted in a large construction company (~9000 employees) with an ambitious sustainability profile. The research started by obtaining an understanding of organizational change, the change agents’ role and how change agents can be organized. The research then proceeded by studying whether there are practices among change agents leading to sustainable transition and how. Data was collected in a single case study through semi- structured interviews with four change agents, their director and one receiver of the change efforts.  How do change agents in a construction company, organized in a dual operating system, overcome change resistance in the line organization to accelerate sustainability?  The answers to the research question where that the change agents are the key persons of driving the transformational change effort in the studied company. They operate differently depending on situation and task, with no formal job description, requiring a high grade of personal strive. They have no formal responsibilities and few recourses, resulting in an importance of ability to influence others to take necessary decisions to change towards sustainability. They focus on building and maintaining relations with key persons in the line organization and prefer to be involved early in the projects. They spend time to train and engage in sustainability questions. They use their colleagues and fellow experts in the parallel organization to share competence, expertise and experience.  This study shows that change agents’ working in a dual operating system has been implemented with success in Company X. A successful dual operating system should include a larger unit of agents that gives them support and help from each other in their strive for change in any area of choice. When implementing the dual operating system, it should be considered that if the role definition is wide, creativity is stimulated among the change agents, making them develop new methods for implementing sustainable change. Furthermore, these best practices identified could be used for future change agent role definitions.  Even though change resistance exists in different forms, proactive prevention of resistance as have been done in Company X, seems to facilitate the change effort. As a result, the interviewees did not particularly experience change resistance. For future research, the case study could be expanded to include more respondents to study each area deeper and be able to confirm the best practices and the main challenges. It would be of interest to identify a company in a different sector that has implemented change agents and a dual operating system and perform a similar case study to identify any sector-specific differences. Some interviewees at Company X described there was an ongoing process on the job descriptions of the change agents. After the implementation of the updated job descriptions, it could be of interest to study changes in volunteerism and creativity among the change agents. Another aspect for further studies would be company size. Smaller companies with less management recourses probably must operate different and those differences would be interesting to understand further. Lastly, future research could study outcome of change effort using change agents in a dual operating system compared to change agents in the original organization.

The diploma thesis deals with the issue of risk management in project management. It focuses on a project that describes a change in the holiday process and introduces a motivation system for employees. The thesis is divided into three parts. The first part describes the theoretical basis based on professional literature. The analytical part describes the current state of the process, the company and identifies the risks. The draft section proposes measures to reduce the risks in the project, and recommendations are made to increase the likelihood of adopting the proposed changes.

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Global merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions exceeded $4.7 trillion in 2015, yet more than 70% of M&As fail to meet postmerger performance expectations with unsuccessful organizational integration cited as the primary source of failure. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore organizational integration strategies some business leaders use to achieve anticipated postmerger performance and growth expectations. The study population consisted of 10 executive and midlevel business leaders in 2 privately held companies, domiciled in Arizona and Iowa, who have contributed to successful organizational integration in M&A transactions in the last 5 years. The tenets of organizational change management composed the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected by semistructured interviews, reviews of internal documents, and publicly available information. Data were analyzed using inductive analysis to identify patterns and themes. The themes identified were organizational planning, communications, performance and growth, culture, and leadership and management. The study findings can assist business leaders in understanding the importance of organizational integration planning in the earliest phases of M&A transactions to improve M&A successes. The study findings contribute to positive social change by enhancing business leaders' knowledge to improve M&A postmerger performance, which can stabilize current employment, create new employment opportunities, and generate positive economic improvements for the broader stakeholder group.

Most organizational change initiatives fail because managers lack effective change management strategies. The purpose of this single case study was to explore change management strategies that outpatient care facility managers used to positively affect process improvements. The population consisted of 6 managers who completed change initiatives at a military, outpatient medical facility in Texas and 6 of their team members. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and organization documents, then analyzed based on the conceptual framework of Lewin’s change theory. Rowley’s 4-step process for analysis—organizing; getting acquainted with; classifying; coding and interpreting; and presenting and writing up the data—was used to identify 4 major themes through data saturation. From the data analysis, the following strategy themes emerged: building effective teams, establishing the foundation for the change, communicating throughout the change process, and solidifying the change. Managers in the healthcare industry can use the findings of this study as a guide to improve the outcomes of their process improvement initiatives by implementing the strategies provided by the manager participants. Thus, the findings of this study may be used to affect positive social change to improve patients’ quality of healthcare and community healthcare outreach programs through increased efficiencies and reduced expenditures.

Introduction Change is theorised as being inevitable and constant, yet it can be managed either proactively or reactively. It can occur incrementally as a process, or drastically and radically; this invariably affects the systems and sub-system. Most managers in the Public Service (PS), officials, consultants and practitioners conceptualise change management with minimal strategies of how to deal with it, especially when it occurs in an organisation. Change management needs key role players with respective roles to manage change within an organisation. Change management in this study is in the context of organisational strategic change, where human resource (HR) and line managers are regarded as key stakeholders in dealing with change, particularly strategic change, in the PS. Failed change efforts are due to inadequate change management competence, which ultimately demands effective change management solutions, tailor-made programmes and specific actions, including skills and roles that need to be applied. If change is not managed in an organisation, it creates resistance that is associated with negative emotions where individuals and collectives experience fear, anxiety, insecurity, loss of control, constant routines, traditions, lack of support, confidence and trust. At an organisational level it can result in inadequate performance due to unclear goals and affected employees not being involved in the planning of change, as well as poor management style and political dynamics within the organisation. The PS is in flux and is affected by the rapid pace of social, political and technological change. Change should be managed by HR and line managers in the PS. Research Purpose The aim of this study was to determine the different roles that HR and line managers play during various phases of strategic change in the context of the PS and to further explore if they actually fulfil those theoretically determined roles. Motivation for the Study The PS has undergone tremendous change, mainly to adapt its service delivery machinery to government’s broadened mandate to serve all of the people of South Africa. Therefore, the motivation of this study is based on the lack of success in the PS in delivering services as required. This necessitates change efforts to improve service delivery. The failure of change efforts due to insufficient change solutions by management in the PS creates a gap in knowledge about change management solutions in the PS. This knowledge gap exists as result of the fact that there has been no research that has explored, in any detail, specifically how HR and line managers go about managing change on a day-to-day basis. This indicates that there is a scarcity of prior empirical studies exploring how change should be managed in organisations, including the PS. Leaders and managers in the PS do not understand the complexities they are facing when dealing with change due to the lack of capacity in terms of roles in leading and managing the change process. Hence the motivation of the study seeks to determine change management solutions through key stakeholders, by exploring the roles of HR and line managers in managing and leading change in the Public Service. / Dissertation (MPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Human Resource Management / MPhil / Unrestricted

Las pequeñas y medianas empresas del sector textil y de la confección encuentran un problema de exceso de desperdicios, lo que tiene un impacto negativo en la rentabilidad de estas empresas. Por ello, se realiza un análisis de diagnóstico en una pequeña empresa utilizando el diagrama de Ishikawa con la finalidad de identificar las causas raíz y medirlas mediante indicadores. En base a estos resultados, se propone un modelo de gestión de cambios, que consiste en la implementación de herramientas de Lean Manufacturing, componentes del sistema de producción durante la aplicación piloto de 30 días. Luego, cada indicador se vuelve a evaluar para verificar la viabilidad de la propuesta Umbrella Model. Los resultados muestran que este modelo redujo la cantidad de residuos en un 81,21%. / Excess waste problem is encountered by small and medium-sized companies in the textile and clothing sector, which has a negative impact on the profitability of these companies. Herein, a diagnosis analysis is performed in a small company using the Ishikawa diagram to identify the root causes and they are measured using indicators. Based on these results, a change management model is proposed, which supports the implementation of lean manufacturing tools and production system components during the 30-day pilot application. Then, each indicator is reassessed to verify the feasibility of the proposed umbrella model. Results show that this model reduced the amount of waste by 81.21%. / Tesis

The general concert towards environmental sustainability has grown over the last few years. Pressure on firms from lawmakers request conformity with new regulations to ensure environmentally sustainable business operations. This study researches the implementation process of environmental sustainability regulations and the influencing factors in the automotive industry with two exploratory case studies on firms in Germany and Croatia. This research reveals the influencing power firms’ have on the policymakers in their regulations design leading to information inequality among competitors. Also, firms’ different management involvement and structure of the implementation process does not indicate the firms’ sustainability strategy. Environmental sustainability strategy can lead to long term benefits, however requires short-term investments, whereas the industry and competition pressurizes the firms on costs, leading to firms facing a choice between short term competitiveness and environmental sustainability. In order to conform with regulations, firms implement change through modifications and adaptation of products through new technologies.

In my thesis I deal with the topic relating to prenatal preparation of women and men in the Thomayer Hospital in Prague. The thesis is divided into theoretical and empirical part. In the theoretical part I deal with education in the prenatal preparation. Importance of education as such is characterized there, thus education not only in the prenatal preparation but also in other branches of medicine. It is one of basic elements to improve quality of health care in the Czech Republic. This part of the thesis also provides possibilities of prenatal preparation in the Czech Republic. It describes several topics of the classes of the "psychoprophylactic preparation". Change management is another topic of my thesis since it is just the change that results in quality improvement. Quality improvement was endeavored for also at innovation of the prenatal preparation in the Thomayer Hospital. Last chapter of the theoretical part is marketing in health care. This chapter describes several definitions, under individual authors. This part deals among others also with marketing of health services and medical supplies, marketing mix and marketing communication. Empirical part provides results of survey via questionnaires, thus results of quantitative research. These will serve for evaluation of satisfaction of...

A robust enterprise system will enable companies to simplify their business process to achieve thespeed, efficiency and flexibility that are so fundamental for market survival. But implementations ofsuch enterprise system and their assimilation into the organizations seems to be very tricky and veryoften unsuccessful. The reasons are many, because it is not just the system that is new, but also theprocesses, collaboration patterns and job roles. However it is safe to say that the failures are not justdue to the technology, but also due to the inappropriate change management in connection with anintroduction of a new enterprise system.This bachelor thesis is aiming to identify, describe and explain the conditions contribution to asuccessful change management triggered by an enterprise system implementation process. This thesisis based on a case study in a large global pharmaceutical company that has embarked on a journey totransform their business processesThe most important conclusions resulted from this case study are that change management isabsolutely essential for successful assimilation of an enterprise system by the organization and thecase company is very well aware of it. The conditions that indicate the successful change managementare increased efficiency, simplified business processes, improved cross-functional collaboration, andhigh user satisfaction.