Chapter 5: Managers’ Perceptions of Organizational Change Skills: Within their Own Organization and Those Sought from Management Consultants

Continuous change has become the norm for many organizations (By, 2005; Hoag, Ritschard, & Cooper, 2002; Rossi, 2006). Often organizational change originates from environmental factors such as new government legislation, globalization, new technologies, customer preferences, and industry and competitive factors (Cawsey, Descza, & Ingols, 2012). Several researchers (e.g., Beer & Nohria, 2000; Higgs & Rowland, 2000; Hirschhorn, 2002; Knodel, 2004; Sirkin, Keenan, & Jackson, 2005) have noted that the majority of change initiatives fail. Various reasons have been cited for these failures, including the absence of change management competence (Griffith, 2002).

The requirement for organizational change skills is a global issue as organizations are facing significant challenges in managing and leading change initiatives, yet, surprisingly, the literature provides little information about what specific change management and change leadership skills are necessary for successful organizational change (Somerville & Whelan-Berry, 2009). Research relating to appropriate skills and competencies of the effective change manager is quite limited (Nikolaou, Gouras, Vakola, & Bourantas, 2007). Further, the literature pays relatively little attention to the identification of specific organizational change skills. For example, while Cawsey et al. (2012) agree that leading through change is a “necessary skill for all managers,” in their chapter entitled “Becoming a Master Change Agent” they identified only three types of organizational change skills: interpersonal, communication, and political skills.