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Define and compare the change management concept with the contingency approach. Drawing from this weeks lecture and readings, provide a specific example for either the change management concept or the contingency approach.

Change Management is the organized method and application of knowledge, tools and resources to deal with and administer change. It involves identifying, defining, and incorporating new corporate strategies, structures, procedures, policies and technologies to handle these changes in the business realm. As one of the most widely used and recognized contributors to the change management concept, John Kotter's 8 Steps Model first published in 1996 serves as a company's blueprint to follow when they plan a change initiative. Each step draws upon the importance and relavance of the previous step in the process. Leaders who choose to use this method must have a through understanding of each step in order to correctly implement this model. Kotter updated the original version of the 8 steps to more closely relate to modern business strategies for change in his 2014 book Accelerate. According to (Lastage, 2015), the new approach to the 8 steps model focuses on how organizations need to become agile in order to make changes rapidly in the fast paced business world of today.

Contingency approaches are those that focus on the non-standard but agile approaches to change management. As noted by Dawson and Andriopoulos (2014), there is no one single best method in handling change management. There are four main contingency approaches. Where to start?, the change leadership styles continuum, the Stace-Dunphy contingency matrix, and the Hope Hailey-Balogun change kaleidoscope (Palmer et al, 2017). In contingency approach models the core element is that change is dependant or contingent upon other factors such as what is the desired outcome, who is involved, and most importantly what needs to be changed. As a whole most people do not adapt to change easily or very well usually from a previously poor experience with an implemented change. For example, my company is currently using the Zoom application to conduct interviews. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic the decision was made to no longer conduct in-person interviews to help curve the spread of the corona virus. With this change came great resistance by many of the production managers, most of which did not use much technology in the first place. Rather than force feeding the new interviewing method to the plant supervisors the decision was made to have 1:1 training sessions for any manager who did not feel comfortable using the application. This way the less tech savvy managers were able to have a private tutoring session versus a group meeting where they might have felt embarrassed by their lack of tech skills.

How might cultural barriers and communication constraints affect the change process?

Acknowledging the various personal cultures of employees is as important to the successful implementation of change initiative as the actual changes to be made. Understanding how something is said, the tone used, the use of eye contact all play a role in how cultural barriers can be mitigated with proper planning. For example, some countries feel that sending written confirmation is a form of mistrust and is considered offensive (Maurer, 2014). It is critical to the successful presentation of the forthcoming changes that cultural awareness play a major factor in how this change(s) are diseminated to the other staff members