Following the radical changes in technology, organizations in the world today try to adjust to the existing environment to coexist with others.Changes in an organization are highly valued and are in most cases affected by the culture surrounding a given organization. There exist different influential factors that inhibit or promote change in an organization depending on the specific cultures of that particular region where an organization hails. For instance, the organization’s behavior surrounding organizations in the United States is different from those surrounding the organizations in the Arabic countries i.e., Saudi Arabia.

Organizations behavior and culture are different in every organization and greatly impact how organizations respond to change (Bertram et al., 2015). A change is sometimes rejected or accepted depending on the view of the management or the employees. In most cases, the employees are seen to object any incoming change due to fear of change in the working environment. Objection to a change in an organization should not always be viewed on the negative side but rather, it should be viewed positively since the management can gain knowledge on where to adjust to improve the change.

This paper aims to address the cultural and organization behaviors surrounding and the people involved in influencing change in an organization. This paperhasdemonstrated the concept of organizational culture and the impact of leaders in impacting change to an organization. For us to understand this topic from a broader perspective, we will focus on the effect of leadership behaviors on the process of change in healthcare organizations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Background

The goal of every healthcare organization in the world is to enhance quality patient care to the sick members of society. Healthcare centers indistinctly, work collectively to ensure patients are attended by qualified physicians and that the value for their money is directly proportional to the quality they receive. The healthcare system is undergoing enormous changes as a quest to provide quality and affordable care to patients. The impact of these changes has been eminent in Saudi Arabia where the government has established an agenda to improve healthcare services provided in the vision 2030 program (Jordan et al., 2015).

Healthcare Change Program in Saudi Arabia

This ambitious program was launched in Sadia Arabia in 2016 that was intended to change the operations of the healthcare sector in the country.The government of Saudi Arabia intended to transform the economic sector of the country by promoting change. As a result, an interim development plan was devised in the process to establish the strategic changes to influence the ambitious changes.

The healthcare plan was to ensure that the healthcare system is strengthened, that communicable and non-communicablediseases are controlled, that healthcare partnership is enhanced and that there is an overall improvement in the quality of healthcare in the country. The government policy outlined above will ensure that the healthcare sector is changed in the way the organizations are managed and programmed. A lot of changes were projected in the healthcare system including the incorporation of patient-friendly systems that will be used by the government to monitor the quality of service offered by the healthcare sector.

Thecomplex changes in the healthcare sector resulted in a massive change in how the organization work. The healthcare sector had to device new roles in the management to address the changes in the whole system.To manage changes in the healthcare sector is more difficult to achieve due to the many entities involved including administrators, doctors, physicians, nurses, and pharmacists who have competing interests in the sector. Managing change in this sectorbecomes a huge problem due to differences in interests, behavior, and culture of the organization (Carter et al., 2013).

An organization change confidently brings about stress before implantation, during the implementation, and way after the implementation (Imran et al., 2016). In most cases, change viewed to cause conflict, discomfort, and resistance in an organization. These conflicts also apply in cases where the change is seen as positive. The reason behind these conflicts is because a change requires the organization including the employees to adapt to unknown situations which causes chaos and the whole process becomes dramatic.

For organizations to manage the changes that are intended to be applied in their way of operation, the management must employ different skills to help the organization face the changing effect. The management and administrators should sacrifice their efforts ate the beginning of the change to ensure that the organization meets its objectives by implementing the change. Although different managers have different approaches to management, they should adopt crucial holistic managerial skills enhance to promote change and motivate the workers and other stakeholders in the organization by leading through an example.

Leadership Behaviour

Leadership behavior is among the contributing factors affectingthe change in an organization (Osland et al., 2015). In the healthcare system, the leaders holding various positions influence how the organization will respond to changes. In the Saudi Arabia healthcare system, the government is the key stakeholder in the healthcare sector where most changes are advocated by the government taking the vision 203 programs as an example.

The behavior of leaders in an organization dictates how specific organizations will adjust to changes fostered by the government.In most organizations, the management team plays a vital role in change acceptance whereby some leaders have different views on the impact of change.

The concepts behind accepting change can be summarized by the following category of leaders:

• Innovators: These are the leaders who engineers changes to be implemented in an organization.
• Early adopters: these are the type of leaders who become the first people to accept the changes devised by the innovators.
• Early majority: these are the leaders who accept change under the influence of the early adopters.
• Late majority: these are the group of people who only accept change in the organization after seeing the impact of the change to other organizations that implemented the changes.
• Laggards: these types of people are those who will wait for a long period to adopt the changes. At some point, the laggards will be passed with the technology and end up not adopting the changes.

The management is thus a key entity in enhancing organization change. In Saudi Arabia, the culture surrounding the organization is very constrictive in leadership whereby the leaders are the key decision-makers in the organization. The management follows a chain of command model of leadership thus giving the top management a huge influence in enhancing change. This type of leadership implies that the decisions of the top management are final cannot, in any event, be questioned by the junior staff members.

The healthcare sector is influenced by several entities in making noble decisions especially in accepting changes that affect the whole sector. To enable the organization,accept changes in the ay of operations, the culture of specific organizations should be adjusted to address these changes. The management has the role to constitute their leadership skills and influence to advocate for the necessary changes in the organization.

Strategies to Put in Place to Enhance Organization Change

Having learned and understood the impact of organizational culture and leadership behavior that affect change initiative in the organization, the following strategies have been devised to ensure that changes occur in an organization without possibilities of conflicts, drama, or rejection.

Employee Training and Awareness

The management should ensure that the employees of an organization are well informed of the new changes to be improvised. Training of employees will create awareness thus enabling them to prepare the incoming changes.In many organizations, resistance to change is normally caused by a lack of training to the employees where most of them fear to work using a new system that they know little about.

Superlative Decision Making

The management is the key decision-makers in all sectors that require critical decisions. In Saudi Arabia, the power distance in an organization is very high which means that the employs accept and expect unequal power-sharing in the organization.The management should, therefore, allow other staff to provide their views before advocating for change in an organization.

Though the culture surrounding the organizations in the KSA advocates for the separation of power follows a chain of command in the making key decisions, the employees should as well be considered in the cases of making new changes. The participation of employees in the change process is specifically to create awareness and training so that there will be no form of rejection and chaos in the long run.

Conclusion

Organization culture and leadership behavior are key factors that affect the change in an organization. In Saudi Arabia, organization culture and behavior are articulated in the form of leadership that places the managers and administrators as the key decision-makers in the management. As such, the organization’s decisions to adopt changes are specifically determined by the top managers.

The power distance in organizations in KSA is very high meaning that the employees or junior workers are not considered in change decisions concerning organization change. To manage employee acceptance to change, the management should ensure that the employees take part in change by providing training and creating awareness on the intended changes.

References

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Imran, M. K., Rehman, C. A., Aslam, U., & Bilal, A. R. (2016). What’s the organization’s knowledge management strategy for successful change implementation?. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 29(7), 1097-1117

Osland, J., Devine, K., & Turner, M. (2015). Organizational behavior. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, 1-5

Jordan, P. J., Werner, A., & Venter, D. (2015). Achieving excellence in private intensive care units: The effect of transformational leadership and organizational culture on organizational change outcomes. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 13(1), 10

Carter, M. Z., Armenakis, A. A., Feild, H. S., &Mossholder, K. W. (2013). Transformational leadership, relationship quality, and employee performance during continuous incremental organizational change. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 34(7), 942-958