Research Paper

Leadership in Organizational Change

Author’s Details:
Rushal Chaudhari (MBA HR)
Gayatri Mahajan (MBA HR)
Abstract:
This paper is based on the role of leadership in organizational change. An organizational process is changed effectively
by a leader who works as a change agent. Change is today’s demand and required to survive in the industry. Now a days,
Organizations prepare themselves to adopt not only the current but also for future trends to get long term success as they
understand the importance of the change. Different research show that 70 percent of organizational change fails to
acquire their objectives just because of poor leadership style as they play a central role in an organization. So, the
process of change demands an effective and highly skilled leadership that can perceive the most desirable feature and
address the issues in a most appropriate manner.

INTRODUCTION
In this competitive world, the organizations are facing strong and a fast moving environment such as the technological
trends, social changes, growing changes in demands, globalization, and economic changes.

So, this competitive world has forced the businesses to adopt the changes and to change the processes of businesses, to
stay ongoing in this business world. Without change, businesses would likely lose their competitive edge and cannot
easily be thrived.

Change is implemented at three different levels, i.e., individual, group and organization.

There are different styles of leadership requires in different situations. At every level of change, leadership plays different
role as it’s the duty of a leader to manage the people and make their efforts to be at their best in favor of change for an
organization. Leaders with a clear vision and ability to implement it can increase the motivation level, morale, and
performance. Therefore, the leadership role is very critical when considering the change in organization.

Many leaderships related theories and styles that have been presented by several scholars onhow to handle different
organizational situations. Different authors also mentioned some important characteristics that the leader must possess to
address the components of organizational change successfully. Moreover, some describes the importance of organizational
change in different manner and accept it for long term business survival and success.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Nowadays businesses are adapting changes in organizations because of competitive environment. Planning about new
opportunities and innovation is easy, but to implement this is very tough and challenging. Therefore, for constructing the
change efficiently and smoothly the organizations need to recognize the important role of leadership in this way.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
• To explore the importance of leadership in an organization.
• To analyze the role of leadership for successful organizational change.
• To identify the leadership qualities and styles that should be adopted for an effective organizational change.

01
 Research Paper

HYPOTHESIS
H0: There is no any relationship between successful organizational change and leadership.

HA: There is a relationship between successful organizational change and leadership.

LITERATURE REVIEW
“Management consists of controlling a group or a set of entities to accomplish a goal. Leadership refers to an
individual’s ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward organizational success. Inspiration
separates leaders from managers, not power and control.”

34–Vineet Nayar, V (2013 August 2) “Three Differences Between Managers and Leaders.” HBR

Innovative approach of leaders can help to introduce innovative culture within an organization. For this, the visionary,
democratic and transformational leadership is necessary to adopt. Likewise only having vision is not sufficient for
leadership for the growth of an organization, as it contributes only 10 % and the rest is its implementation (Jick,
2001).Effective leadership is one of the most essential contributors to the whole organizational performance and change. It
is also true, that change process mostly facesvarious resistances here a leader who manage this resistance and implement
changes successful means he/she should be logical and rational.

The word change is considered in a very generalmanner but according to Sansom and Reid Oxford Dictionary (1994:195),
change is a Latin word whichmeans “to better”(Vander Merwe 1991). Simply, change means to alter or to make
something different in a better way from existing one by adding or excluding some values.

Now days, leadership and its role are most highlighted problems for the business and organizations. So, the “Leaders” are
those who give directions, gain commitment and then motivate them to attain the outcomes (Conger, 1992, p18). This
term can be regardedover multiple angles and concepts. Recent research describes leadership as “a process whereby a
person influences a group of individuals to attain a shared goal (Northouse 2004).In short, leader is a person who is in
charge and has authorities to take decision with powers to implement decisions about organization, personnel in such a
way to increase their ability.

There are several theories about leadership characteristicsthat were presented by different scholars. According to “Path
Goal Theory”, successful leader is one who keeps their workforce motivated and provides a clear track along with their
vision. Robert R. Blake and Anne Adams explained the “Theory of Leadership Grid” in which leaders performaccording
to thecustomers demand by keeping their teams motivated and flexible to realize whether the change is required or not
(Blake R and Anne Adams 1991).“Leaders Style Theory” emphasizes on quality decisions that are acceptable by both
employees and leaders and also provide guidelines to find the ways and totake part in decision making processes (Vroom
and Yetton 1973).“The transformational leadership” means to transform or change, to win the trust of subordinates that
can raise the output of their work which further can help to attain the organizational goal in a better ways. a

The term organization is very comprehensive and can be defined in several ways. Traditionally an organization is
considered as social unit that consists of a group of people or a team who jointly work on a continuous basis to attain
organizational goals or targets. Such as, schools, hospitals, churches, retail stores, and candy striper organizations etc. are
the manufacturing and service firms (Hatch 1997).

Role of leadership is very crucial in this competitive era where businesses facing changing trends. So today, most of
organizations require strategic leadership that are capable to predict the necessary alterations for change and create

02
 Research Paper

extremely suitable atmosphere for personnel’s to understand and adopt those changes successfully (Bass, 1990; Burke &
Cooper, 2004) because businessescan not be able to survive in long term without a strategic role of leaders.

To survive, in this era of globalization, the organizations and businesses have to understand the requirement of innovative
approach and innovations in their strategies and business models for theirsuperiority and sustainability in their business by
revolving their innovative concepts into realism (Carneiro.A 2008). As only having dreams and ideas is not enough
although imaginations can play an important role but without execution it has no worth. Organizations who do not adopt
the changes cannot stay booming long in market (Boston.MA, 2000). As change offersseveral benefits i.e. it improves
competitiveness, financial presentation, enhances employees and customer satisfaction and mainly it leads the
organization in the direction of continuous development.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Methodology aims to show the approaches and methods of collecting the data for the research, which is
primarily and qualitative in nature. The study used case study to support the research. For this research we used secondary
data as the source of data collection, that is research papers and articles etc. Through the use of case studies and articles
about change management, leadership qualities and innovation strategies and that helped us in identifying the link
between the leadership qualities and organizational change.

RESEARCH FINDINGS
(A) It describes organizational change and the role of leadership in bringing the change in the Organization. On the basis
of literature review we postulate that the changes without a clear vision or new ideas can lead to the lower level of
success and the performance of an Organization will not increase.

Leadership

Organizational Change

LowestHighest Improved Organizational Performance

(B) The innovative approach of Leadership and the Organizational Change. This scenario describes that the leaders need
to pursue innovative approach and they must use their innovative thinking for successful Organizational change. Leaders
need to have new ideas about services, products, work process and procedure. So we hypothesize that such change
resulted in Organization’s success and the high level of performance.

03
 Research Paper

Leadership

 Innovative Approach

Organizational Change

Lowest Highest
Improved Organizational Performance

(C) It is about the different leadership styles on which the Organizational change is based. On the basis of literature
review we conclude that the leader’s vision along with democratic and transformational style is very essential that brings
higher level of success. So it highlights the importance of vision of a leader regarding organizational change.

Leadership

 Transformational
 Democratic
 Vision

Lowest Improved Organizational Performance

Highest
Organizational Change

(D) In the model is a combination of innovative approach of leadership, leadership styles i.e. vision, democratic and
transformational and the Organizational change. It describes that the successful Organizational change is dependent on the
leadership style and the innovative approach of a leader.

04
 Research Paper

 Leadership styles
(Vision, democratic,
transformational)

 Innovative Approach

Lowest Improved Organizational Performance

Highest
Organizational
Change

Many authors concluded that, leaders having a clear vision and ability to implement it with innovative approach may have
a greater ability to execute the change successfully and it is just because of their unique or new way of managing, thinking
and acting.

As a result, we concluded that organizational change which is based on the vision of a leader and thereby his or her
innovative approach to obtain this vision by using transformational and democratic style has a closer and strong relation
with the organizational performance that leads to improved Organizational performance.

CONCLUSION
According to our research study, we have concluded that there is a significant role of leadership while bringing change in
Organization. Today’s business environment makes the organizational change more demanding and common. Therefore,
the Organization tends to adopt the change to effectively respond the current or future trends, technological, economic and
social changes. But to implement the change in Organization is very challenging and complex. At this time leadership can
play a central role in managing Organizational change. Through this study, we have perceived that the leaders must have
different qualities, characteristics and styles that should be adopted by them in order to make successful Organization
change.

Our research work may also encourage and inspire entire businesses to think about the role of leader as a change agent and
to think about the leader’s qualities of “Vision and Innovative” Approach , which may lead to bring the chances of success
for them by better managing the organizational process of change.

REFRENCES
https://www.academia.edu

05
 Research Paper

https://www.modus-group.com

https://www.ccl.org

https://change2020.com/case-studies

06