These days, organizations are facing rapid, often unforeseen changes in their external environments. This transition that the organization experiences to cope with external disturbances is termed as "Environmental Shock". Environmental shocks resulting from major shifts in technology, economic forces, political regimes, or, in some cases, from natural disasters, can create substantial uncertainty in an organization. Environmental shocks can create conditions of uncertainty and affect mind-sets and strategies of the organization. As the speed of change in external environment continues to increase, leveraging skills and talents of the employee is the fundamental competency needed by managers, supervisors, human resources staff, and organization leaders. To leverage human capital, it is of utmost importance to make people and organization, as a whole, accept the "environmental shock'. Employee acceptance of environmental shock is increased by organizational commitment, a harmonious industrial relations (IR) climate, education, job motivation, job satisfaction, job security and positive affectivity.
Need to Understand People
A study found that
(a) Employee's psychological capital (a core factor consisting of hope, efficacy, optimism, and resilience) was related to their positive emotions that in turn were related to their attitudes (engagement and cynicism) and behaviors (organizational citizenship and deviance) relevant to organizational change;
(b) Mindfulness (i.e., heightened awareness) interacted with psychological capital in predicting positive emotions; and
(c) Positive emotions generally mediated the relationship between psychological capital and attitudes and behaviors.
Whether the environmental shock takes the form of a merger, acquisition, outsourcing, downsizing, streamlining or restructuring, an organization cannot successfully achieve its business and financial objectives until a critical mass of employees have completed their individual transitions.
All changing organizations struggle with people related issues. Most attention is usually given to the organization in terms of structure, processes, tools, measurements, policies and procedures, but for the transition to be successful, people need to "buy in" and be committed. Their individual interests, values and competencies must be effectively aligned with the organization's vision, culture and capabilities.
Transition within an organization typically becomes mis-aligned from the combination of two variables:
Different Function Realities: Senior managers often have access to information soon and, therefore, have a "jump" on moving through the transaction from the previous organizational state to a desired state. They also tend to be the drivers of the change and have more control than middle managers and other employees. Middle managers, although intellectually on board with senior management, need more time for their emotional transition than the senior executives expects.