The point of departure of this study is that first-line managers play a pivotal role in the facilitation of change initiatives in organisations world-wide. Resistance to change is one of the primary reasons why change interventions fail or why success is not achieved in the change process. More specific, the inability of first-line managers to deal with resistance to change has been cited as a primary cause for change projects to fail. There is no evidence that any research has been conducted on the competence requirements for first-line managers to deal with resistance to change. The identification of these competencies can enable organisations world-wide to deal with resistance to change at the organisational level that is primarily responsible for products and services. In this literature study the researcher defines first-line managers as those managers responsible for achieving results through and with operational employees to ensure that market needs are met and/or exceeded. The research suggested that first-line managers can be described through a broad spectrum of people and that the nature of organisations in this modern era will place higher demands on first-line managers as the complexity and diversity of tasks to be performed by operational employees will increase. Considering the complexity and diversity of tasks and the importance of first-line managers in ensuring results through and with other people, it is suggested that the appointment of first-line managers be based on careful consideration of the required competencies which will enable the first-line manager to manage those areas where the business is measured on a daily basis. The role of the first-line manager in change is becoming increasingly important. Organisations will benefit from acknowledging the role of first-line managers in change and investing in their development in order to prepare them for the important role that they have to play during change efforts. Research on the competencies required by first-line managers to manage change effectively proved that the ability of first-line managers to deal with resistance to change is of critical importance. Organisation-specific competencies can be used as dynamic factors mediating between the potential capacity of the individual and the requirements of the job in a stable and dynamic environment. Organisation-specific competencies can also be used effectively to develop first-line managers dealing with resistance to change. Change manifests itself in various forms in organisations. Whatever the type of change, first-line managers have a critical role to play in the successful facilitation of change in their respective areas of responsibility. The most difficult aspect of the change effort lies in changing the people. Change invariably leads to resistance. In order to facilitate successful change, first-line managers should be able to deal with resistance to change in an effective and efficient manner. First-line managers should be able to make use of an integrated approach to manage change on their levels. They should also be able to cascade organisational change strategies to their areas of responsibility. This disproves the traditional views that first-line managers are not able to operate on a strategic level in the organisation. Although various models of change management can be used in organisations, there is not one single change model which is necessarily better than another. The researcher favours change management models which recognise the emotions that people experience during change as well as the fact that change objectives need to be achieved. The research highlighted seventeen requirements for successful change. It was evident from each discussion that the first-line manager can perform an integral role in the facilitation of successful change. This suggests that first-line managers can potentially fulfil an integral role in supporting organisational growth and sustainability, with the outcome of roles that impact beyond the traditional roles of first-line managers. Considering the potential roles that first-line managers can perform in facilitating successful organisational change, it can be argued that the selection criteria and competencies required for first-line managers as currently suggested in literature needs to be reviewed. Focusing on the purpose of this research, competent first-line managers can perform an integral role in minimising resistance to change. The primary objective of this research is to determine which specific units of competence will enable first-line managers to deal proactively with resistance to change. To reach the research objective the units of competence dealing with resistance to change, identified by Lombard & Crafford (2003), will be tested empirically. For this study a census group consisting of all first-line managers in Unilever Channel Management, Smollan Sales and Marketing and Tiger Diversified Food Services were used. The total census comprised 194 participants from an organisation in the service industry. The majority of the respondents are white, male with an even distribution of participants younger and older than thirty years. The researcher developed a questionnaire for the purposes of this research. The questionnaire was based on the units of competence formulated by Lombard & Crafford (2003, pp. 46-51). These units of competence formed part of the suggested competence framework required by first-line managers to deal with resistance to change. These competencies were obtained by means of a literature study and the applications of a functional analysis as suggested by Fletcher (1997). The rationale for this approach was to obtain as much as possible data from secondary, documented historical sources. (Burton, 2000, pp. 343 – 345). The questionnaire contained the biographical data required for the research, the instructions to complete the questionnaire, as well as 15 competencies that were simplified into 38 singular questions making use of a Likert-type, 5-point scale. The data set was built from data gathered from the three major business units of Smollan Holdings. The information was gathered by means of supervised groups and through the administration of electronic mail. The information was gathered to determine how important the units of competence are to first-line managers to deal with resistance to change in their work environment and also to what extent each unit of competence will contribute to their personal effectiveness in dealing with resistance to change in the work environment. The particular statistical procedures were selected for their suitability to test the research hypotheses of the study. These procedures include factor analysis, analysis of variance paired samples t-test, independent samples t-test and multiple comparisons (Post Hoc tests). In respect of factor analysis a procedure developed by Schepers (1992) was followed. This procedure includes first as well as second level factor analysis. The Statistical Consultation Service of Rand Afrikaans University conducted the analyses. All calculations were done by means of the SPSS-Windows programme of SPSS – International. One of the central premises of this research was that first-line managers leading others through their resistance to change do not merely require a singular competence of dealing with resistance to change. Resistance to change requires a holistic and integrated approach. The results of the empirical research clearly support this assertion. The analysis of the results of the samples t-tests indicate that the respondents were of the opinion that all the units of competence are important in enabling first-line managers to deal with resistance to change. The empirical research proved that none of the units of competence of Lombard & Crafford are of limited importance or of no importance in enabling first-line managers to deal with resistance to change. It could be inferred that the units of competence identified by Lombard & Crafford (2003) reflect an integrated and holistic approach to enabling first-line managers to deal with resistance to change. First-line managers who are able to demonstrate the behaviours associated with the fifteen units of competence would be recognised by subordinates, peers and superiors as good role models and effective managers of resistance to change. The secondary objective of the empirical research is to determine whether the units of competence could contribute to the personal effectiveness levels to deal with resistance to change. The outcome of the analysis proved that all the units of competence are important for contributing to the personal competence levels of first-line managers to be able to deal with resistance to change. It can be inferred that not one of the units of competence is viewed as of limited importance or of no importance in contributing to the personal competence levels of first-line managers. The research proved that there is a correlation between the units of competence identified by Lombard and Crafford (2003) and the contribution of the units of competence to the personal competence levels of first-line managers. From a theoretical perspective it is recommended that further research be carried out in the identification of specific elements of competence (for example skills and knowledge) for each unit of competence, the entrepreneurial roles of first-line managers in organisations, and the profile of the modern first-line manager. From a practical perspective it is recommended that an assessment instrument be designed with measurable standards to determine individual development needs of first-line managers for dealing with resistance to change. From a methodological perspective it is suggested that a seven-point Likert-type scale with more specific options of selection on the important and non-important scales to facilitate a more exact reflection of mean scores is designed. It is further suggested that qualitative approaches and methods, including the facilitation of focus groups and interviews should also be included to supplement questionnaire surveys. / Dr. J. Zaaiman

M.Comm. / In our ever-changing, fast paced world, competitive relationships can shift quickly when organizations respond too slowly to increased competition in their industry group. Succeeding in such a competitive and changing environment demands that organizations be reshaped to meet the challenges and competitive realities. The changes organizations are being forced to make merely to stay competitive are so fundamental that they must take root in an organization's culture and be managed. The idea of managing organizational culture is still quite new to most managers - at best they have a vague sense of what it means. They lack insight into the concept organizational culture, the complexity of integrating organizational culture and strategy and the managing of organizational cultural change. The lack of managerial insight can be attributed to the fact that organizational culture wears many cloaks and the fact that various definitions are being used to describe the concept. A clear conceptual understanding of the terminology is essential if the role and influence of organizational culture in the change process is to be understood, therefore various definitions are being focused on. Due to the changes taking place in the environment in which organizations operate, managers will increasingly find that they are confronted with major questions of how to position their organizations in a new business environment and how to change fundamentally the organizational culture. The interaction that takes place between organizational culture and organizational strategy in formulating and implementing organizational strategy is discussed. Whether organizational culture can be changed successfully has led to a debate among researchers. In order to implement strategic change the organization needs to manage cultural change to achieve congruency between culture and strategy. Organizational leadership is a critical factor in the change process and is analysed with reference to the role to be played by management in the creation of shared patterns of beliefs and values. Various managerial systems exist for achieving change within the organizational culture and it is essential that managers use a combination of these systems. Systems such as communication, reward systems and human resource management are discussed to establish their role in the process. The aim of the study is therefore to gain a clear insight in the concept organizational culture, the interaction of organizational culture and strategy and the change of organizational culture in the ever-changing business environment by focusing on various factors which are present in the afore-mentioned processes.

M.Comm. / Business process reengineering seeks radical rather than merely continuous improvement. escalates the efforts of just-in-time and total quality management to aUkI e process orientation a strategic tool and a core co petence of the organisation. Business process reengineering concentrates on core business processes. To quote Michael ammer, "The job of business reengineering is to rip the guts out of an organisation and reassemble them in the context of today's changing business worl 99 (An ews, 1994:1). Correctly implemented, business process reengineering should considerably improve profits, as well as strengthen and revitalise an organisation. Business process ree gineering is the fundamental) re-design of business processes to achieve dramatic improvement. Reengineering is about finding or inventing better ways to give customers what they want while simultaneously achieving huge gains in performance and productivity. The focus is on finding the best, most effacient way to deliver to customers what they want - and this focus lands squarely on core processes. Core processes create a product or service of value to external customers d are a key source of competitive advantage. Reaping the benefits of massive reengineering efforts are not easy. Successfully challenging and changing existing paradigms take skilful leadership which focuses on two entwined aspects of reengineering - the technical side and the human side. The technical side addresses the steps to reinvent the process. The human side addresses the creation of an organisation in which the reinvented process ca i thrive. ecause of the drastic nature of change in reengineering efforts, the human side is particularly important. A successful reengineering project requires the perfect marriage of the technical and the human elements. this study, the concept of business process reengineering, with reference to the different stages and the human side of the process, are dealt with

D.Phil. / One of the principal reasons people form organisations is to focus attention and energy on a selected goal - this goal being the provisioning of products and/or services to clients. Due to forces demanding change, organisations are required to change to be able to continue their existence, making change unavoidable and part of the organisation's life cycle. The premise is that if change is unavoidable, it needs to be managed to serve the best interests of the organisation, thus the need for change management. Research indicates that 50 to 75% of all major corporate change efforts fail and that resistance is the "little-recognised but critically important contributor'' to the failure of change efforts, and central to the change problem. Also, central to the change problem and successful change management lie the following factors: • The reality that people tend to resist change. • The issue of measurement for change management intervention purposes. Research Objectives The objectives of this study are divided into literature and empirical research objectives, each posing primary and secondary objectives. The primary literature review objective is to create a theoretical frame of reference for the interrelated concepts of change, change management and barriers-to-change. The primary empirical research objective is to apply Barriers-to-Change Questionnaire (BCQ), developed in meeting the literature review objectives, to a Governmental service delivery type organisation with the purpose of determining which barriers-to-change is evident in such an environment. Literature Research A review of the literature revealed that there is no integrated view on change and barriers-to-change, but it also revealed that the concept of barriers-to-change has been prominent in organisational and management literature for quite some time. However, no evidence could be found of a measuring instrument focused on measuring barriers-to-change as a whole. During the literature research the concepts of organisational development, organisational change, change management, resistance to change and barriers-tochange were investigated, clarified and reported upon. The above-mentioned concepts were integrated into a theoretical frame of reference called the SCM, which served the purposes of providing a framework from where barriers-to-change can be understood, explained and managed as well as providing a firm base from where the BCQ was developed to measure barriers-to-change in a specific environment. It was concluded, for the purposes of this study, that barriers-to-change can be grouped into two types of barriers, being hard and soft. It was also concluded that there are four causes (or groupings) of barriers-to-change, being barriers inherent to the change project, people barriers, organisational barriers and barriers from the environment, each with specific sub-dimensions. Each sub dimension is supported by an appropriate number of questionnaire items, contained in the BCQ, which were administered to the target organisation.

D.Comm. / The successful implementation of organisational change is the theme of this study. It has been found that the majority of change initiatives fail, mainly due to poor conceptualisation and planning, and the lack of proper integration of the people and business dimensions of change (which will be referred to respectively as the systematic and interactive aspects). This leads to change resistance and increases the chance of failure. Little practical guidance is available on how to overcome this and to integrate the two aspects of change across the organisation(s), throughout the entire change process, from conceptualisation through to change completion. The purpose of the study is to develop a practical model for implementing a successful change program. The model will be designed using a combination of readily available skills and techniques, and is intended to be sufficiently generic to enable its use across all change projects and types of organisations. Accordingly the objectives of the study are: • To capture the challenges faced by organisations in integrating the systematic aspect of change management (such as system design) and the interactive aspect (such as people empowerment, buy-in). • To develop and test the Facilitative Project Management Model for Integrated Change, over three case studies. The model draws upon the disciplines of project management, which provides a structured "no surprises" approach to the management of change. This mostly addresses the systematic aspect of change. To properly incorporate the critical interactive aspect of change the project management discipline is combined with the powerful techniques of neutral facilitation, which provides a psychologically safe environment for team participation and ownership. This combination forms a model which through the case studies is shown to support an integrated change effort and aid successful change outcomes.

M.Comm. (Industrial Psychology) / A substantial number of factors play a role in an individual’s acceptance of organisational change. Individuals experience a personal transition process when organisational change occurs, and as part of that process they react to organisational change in different ways. Individuals also form perceptions based on the factors that influence the acceptance of organisational change. This study focused on the manner in which organisational change is communicated to employees. Specific attention was paid to the level of detail versus the vagueness of the communication, and the reactions and perceptions as a result were explored. The sample population consisted of 36 Call Centre Consultants, selected from a Financial Institution, who were divided into three groups. Participant views on organisational change, the communication thereof and their emotional stance were assessed, after which two treatment groups received a written change announcement varying in specificity of information. Following, the views concerning the organisational change described in the written memorandum and emotional responses, as a result of the announcement were assessed. The study found that the specificity vs. ambiguity of a change communication does impact employees and influence their perceptions and emotional experience of the change. However, the nature of the change communication is not necessarily the only contributor to the employees’ acceptance of change. Further research is necessary to facilitate understanding of the contribution by other factors and the extent of each contribution.

Factors such as globalisation, intense competition and ever-changing rules make change a must. What used to be traditional markets have been eroded and competitors have flooded most of the markets. This brings new challenges. Organisations that seek growth and survival keep up with the changing environment. Organisations that ignore the changing environment choose to do so at the risk of failure because what works today is not guaranteed to work in future. For an organisation to achieve its objectives, everyone in that organisation needs to contribute and pull in the same direction. As such, leaders and employees are important to the change process. Management’s understanding of where the organisation must go and how it could get there is crucial to take the whole organisation through the change process. Managers have to learn new skills as operational skills are often not enough when it comes to leading people. Leaders have a critical role to play to ensure effective change management. The study is aimed at establishing how the change process is managed at Eskom. This is explored through finding out the leadership style applied at Eskom in effecting change. Quantitative research was done within Eskom by means of e-mail survey to a random sample of employees at middle management. 980 questionnaires were sent out with a response rate of 21.5%. Having identified issues affecting effective leadership and change management in the organisation certain deficiencies or areas of possible improvement will be identified. Recommendations will be made on addressing leadership and change management process to create an environment for facilitation of change efficiently given the stress, discomfort and dislocation associated with change. “Change is a very fickle mistress. No sooner has one fresh new idea swept through the business world, than other better way of doing things is hot on its heels”. Anonymous / Mr. T.F.J. Oosthuizen

D.Com. / Traditional strategic management thinking is no longer appropriate within a prevailing context of discontinuous and rapid environmental change. A swiftly changing environment necessitates the need for a new approach to strategic management. Executives frequently experiences great difficulty. in managing strategic and organizational change. Managing strategic change requires a new way of dealing with the future, one often requiring executives to go against practice anchored in experience and traditional theory, frequently acquired within a less volatile context. A dynamic unpredictable and swiftly changing context provides impetus for challenging and researching the underlying assumptions on which the tradi tional strategic management paradigm is based. This study is thus directed at acquiring an understanding of the complexities and dynamics involved in managing strategic change, within a turbulent context. In this study an endeavour is made to gain an understanding of strategic and organizational change, from a theoretical and a practical perspective. A central premises of this study is that in order to understand the management of strategic change a clear understanding must be attained, as regards the dynamics of environmental change. Privatisation and deregulation, as environmental determinants, will in all probability have a profound impact on organizations in the public sector and they thus serve as an ideal frame of reference for researching the management of strategic and corporate change. An analytic-descriptive research approach is followed. The study is based on two fundamental foundations, namely acquiring a sound theoretical understanding of the concepts and processes involved in managing strategic change within a turbulent context and substantiating these insights acquired, by means of interviews conducted with management practitioners from selected organizations in both the public and the private sector. The former organizations in particular have been subjected to a traumatic period of micro- and macro-environmental change, stimulated by the privatisation process. It is concluded from this study that the future can no longer be extrapolated in terms of historical trends or events, as the future rarely resembles the past. Visionary leadership, incorporating the unknown in a dynamic context, is identified as being a vital dimension in managing strategic change. Management must in particular note that an established organizational culture can generate resistance to change, resulting in stagnation, thus preventing the organization from realizing its vision and strategic objectives. In conclusion it is affirmed that a holistic management approach is vital for contending with corporate and strategic change in a dynamic future milieu.

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Business Administration, Business Studies Unit, Durban University of Technology, 2008. / Telkom SA, over the last decade and a half, has undergone major change in terms of the manner in which it does business. From being a state-owned company to becoming a para-statal, to being run by foreigners and, finally, being run by local leaders within the company, Telkom SA has transformed as a company. The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of change implementation on staff turnover in Telkom SA by reviewing the following key issues: The implementation of change within Telkom SA, benchmarked against international best practices; the communication of change/re-structuring initiatives by management in Telkom SA; the effect of change implementation on staff turnover; and the effect of change implementation on employee morale and retention. The rationale of this study is to allow Telkom SA management to review their current implementation strategy of change management initiatives in Telkom SA. Thereafter, it will provide guidelines for improvements in change implementation for the management of Telkom SA. Staff turnover and employee morale can negatively impact service delivery and financial performance of a company, so these recommendations are aimed at improving service delivery and financial performance. The study was descriptive, cross sectional and quantitative, involving the application of a questionnaire, via e-mail and personal interviews, with a sample of staff from the core planning section in the Network Infrastructure Provisioning division, where a high staff turnover rate existed. The questionnaire focused on assessing the impact of the implementation of change management processes on staff turnover at Telkom SA and was developed from the literature review. Data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 15 for both descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings show that a significant percentage of respondents were v vi dissatisfied with the way management had handled issues related to change implementation, communication, turnover, morale and retention. With this in mind, recommendations on ways to reduce the impact of the key issues on the organisation were made. These included the recommendation of lean methodology in order to deal with the first three key issues, namely, implementation, communication, and turnover. Thereafter the ‘four cores of credibility’ model was recommended to improve employee morale. Finally recommendations were made on ways to improve employee retention. The overarching issue that has come to light is that although management is, to a degree, communicating change implementation, there is a noticeable lack of engagement with employees. The onus, therefore, lies with leadership to lift the levels of engagement with employees, thereby reducing the impact of change implementation on the organisation by increasing the level of transparency in the organisation. Improving communication would lead to improved trust, which would then result in improved employee morale, ultimately leading to a reduction in the staff turnover rate.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration