BUSI 335 Week 7 Discussion Board Forum 4 Thread Example

Discussion Board Forum 4 Thread: Sustaining Organizational Change

BUSI 335 Leading Change, Discussion Board Forum 4 Thread

Thread by [Student Name]

The forum prompt and the call center example are composites; the textbook and research cited are real, and the thread is written in the third person as the guide requires.

Many organizational changes succeed at first and then quietly fade. New procedures are followed for a few months, results improve, and then old habits return. Palmer et al. (2016) treat this problem of sustaining change as a distinct challenge, arguing that sustainability depends on decisions made throughout a change, not only at its end.

Buchanan et al. (2005) pulled together studies of whether changes last and concluded that many influences work on sustainability at once and shape one another. They grouped them into categories: substantive factors, such as how central and visible the change is; individual factors, such as commitment and skills; managerial and leadership factors; financial factors; organizational and cultural factors; political factors; processual factors, such as how the change was implemented; and contextual factors, such as external pressures. They also cautioned that sustaining a change is not always desirable, since a change that becomes fixed can block later improvement. Change rarely collapses in one dramatic moment; it erodes when the reasons people adopted it quietly disappear.

A composite call center illustrates decay. Management introduced a new quality program in which agents resolved problems on the first call rather than transferring them. For six months, first-call resolution rose sharply. Within a year it had fallen back. Tracing the decline through the review's categories reveals several causes. Managerially, the supervisor who championed the program was promoted, and the successor focused on call volume. Organizationally, agents were still evaluated mainly on handle time, which rewarded short calls rather than resolutions. Individually, new hires were trained on the old system because the training materials were never updated. Financially, the bonus tied to first-call resolution ended after the pilot.

These causes point to specific remedies. The call center could make first-call resolution a permanent part of agents' evaluations, update training so new hires learn the new approach, assign ownership of the program to a role rather than a person, and keep leaders reviewing the measure monthly after the launch period. Each step embeds the change in the organization's routine structures.

The wider point for any manager is to design for permanence on the first day of a change. A change that depends on a champion's enthusiasm or a temporary bonus is likely to fade; a change built into roles, measures and routines has a far better chance of lasting.

The review's warning about sustaining the wrong change also applies to the call center. If customer needs shift, for example toward chat support, a first-call resolution measure built rigidly into every evaluation could itself become a restraining force. Sustaining a change therefore includes deciding in advance when it will be reviewed.

References

Buchanan, D., Fitzgerald, L., Ketley, D., Gollop, R., Jones, J. L., Lamont, S. S., Neath, A., & Whitby, E. (2005). No going back: A review of the literature on sustaining organizational change. International Journal of Management Reviews, 7(3), 189-205. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2370.2005.00111.x

Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Buchanan, D. A. (2016). Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.