The Importance of a Communication Strategy to the HR Practitioner Essay

The Importance of a Communication Strategy to the HR Practitioner Planning And Manging Organisational Change - Essay Example Human Resource Development professionals play a central role in the accomplishment of organisational culture change. This is reflected in the five steps to cultural change suggested by Ulrich (1997). These include defining and clarifying the concept of culture change; articulation of the reasons for culture change being central to business success; defining a process for assessing the current culture, the desired future culture, and the gap between the two; identifying alternative approaches to creating culture change; and building an action plan that combines several approaches to organisational culture change. The critical success factors necessary for building an action plan for implementing culture change consist of the following measures: leading change by the organisation first identifying a sponsor for the culture change effort, creating a shared need among the employees by explaining the requirement for organisational change, shaping a vision by communicating the desired outc omes of the culture change, mobilizing commitment by identifying key stakeholders to support the desired culture change, transforming organisational systems and frameworks, monitoring progress, and making the change last through reinforcement techniques (Ulrich, 1997). Beer and Nohria (2000) argue that the two opposing theories of organisational change are Theory E based on the creation of economic value and Theory O pertaining to the building of organisational capabilities for the long term. The two theories strengths and weaknesses are related to every dimension of the change process, including motivation, leadership, and compensation issues. The...This paper has critically reviewed the transforming of organisational culture, and the importance of communication strategies in the management of organisational change and culture by human resource development personnel. Several relevant models and theories were examined. Theory E of economic value and theory O pertaining to the buildi ng of organisational capabilities for the long term were found to be best utilized in an integrated form. The Social Identity Theory believes that individuals develop an identity within their organisation, which is comparable in its characteristics and influence to identification with other social groups. The Communication Accommodation theory developed to clarify the relationship between identity, context and communicative behaviour, helps to explain organisational communication within and between groups in the firm. Lewin’s model related to unfreezing, moving, and refreezing, as three steps in organisational change was found to be an effective technique which continues to be popular. Cameron and Quinn’s theory of Competing Values Framework states that the best way to communicate the future organisational culture is by the change leaders explaining illustrative cases to employees of the organisation. This article makes a conclusion that a strong conceptual and empirical understanding of organisational change was based on two communication theories: Programmatic and Participatory.