The effectiveness and specificity of change management in a public

Organization: Transformational leadership and a bureaucratic

Organizational structure.
By : Joris van der Voet
Introduction:
As the title show change management in public organization in the context of leadership and
bureaucratic structure .This article has two aims of study; first, this study aims to identify those
factors contribute which to the organizational change in the public sector. Secondly, this study
aims to examine to what extent the nature of public organizations makes the implementation of
organizational change specific.
The first objective of this study is to assess to what extent leadership and different change
management approaches contribute to willingness to change in a public organization. Because
support of employees is very important for the successful implementation of organizational
change. Metselaar (1997:42) defines willingness to change as a positive behavioral intention
towards the implementation and modifications in an organizations structure, or work and
administrative processes, resulting in efforts from the organization members side to support or
enhance the change process. There are different approaches, strategies, through which
change can be implemented .In change management of public organization we use planned
and emergent process of change. Planned Occurs through a systematic process of wellmanaged events and is monitored through regular progress survey. The emergent approach to
change is a more devolved and bottom-up way to implement change.
Leadership is one of the important factor in the implementation of organizational change
because leadership results in the motivation and influences of employees both in public and
private sector organizations.
In organizational change we prefer the theory of transformational leadership, which states that
by articulating a vision, fostering the acceptance of group goals, and providing individualized
support, effective leaders change the basic values, beliefs, and attitudes of followers so that
they are willing to perform beyond the minimum levels specified by the organization (Podsakoff,
MacKenzie, & Bommer, 1996, p. 260). So transformational leadership make effective
contribution in change through the formulation of challenging objectives and the stimulation of
new ways of thinking. Although leadership works in both planned and emergent process of
change, but it increases the effectiveness of planned process of change and not as much
effective in the emergent process of change.
The second research objective is to examine that how these relationships are affected by
bureaucratic organizational structure. Bureaucratic structure is centralized, rule based, rigid and
formalize structure of an organization. In this study, a bureaucratic organizational structure is
defined as a high degree of centralization, formalization and red tape. Centralization is an act of
consolidating power under a central control. Formalization is the act of making formal (as by
stating formal rules governing classes of expressions) and red tape is a needlessly time
consuming procedure.
According to literature, in highly bureaucratic structure, planned change approach would result
in effective change in organization, while in the case of non-bureaucratic organization, emergent
change approach would be effective. In a way that, the more the bureaucratic structure the
more employees positively influenced by planned process of change and on other side the less
bureaucratic structure employee willingness in positively influenced by emergent process of
change.

After the analysis and discussion results shows that in planned change process high degree of
transformational leadership is no longer present in changing the willingness of employees, and
when we see the relationship between emergent change process and transformational
leadership, both are positively related in the case of low bureaucracy model which means that in
highly emergent processes of change, a high degree of transformational leadership behavior
significantly increases the effectiveness of an emergent process of change. And the absence of
transformational leadership in this situation decreases the effectiveness of an emergent change
process. Without a transformational leadership role of direct supervisors, an emergent change
approach is negatively related to employee willingness to change. The presence of
transformational leadership behavior results in a positive relationship between an emergent
change approach and the willingness of employees to implement change. While the planned
change approaches rely on the leadership of senior managers and appropriate for highly
bureaucratic organization .Some authors indicate that combination of both planned and
emergent change may be an effective approach to organization change in public organization.
And in low bureaucracy model emergent change would only be an effective approach to change
when combined with transformational leadership style.
Methodology: Scientific method was used to interpret the results of the article, and for the
collection of data the author use Quantitative approach. For this purpose author select an
organization name as Dutch public organization as a case for this study.
In ontology nominalism approach is followed by author and falls in interpretive approach.
Critical Analysis: A first shortcoming or criticism is that existing literature has little attention for
the effectiveness of leadership and different approaches to change in public sector organization.
Because there are many change approaches, ways, strategies and actions through which
change can be implemented, but in this literature the author dominate planned and emergent
process of change.
A second criticism or shortcoming is the lack of empirical evidences about the specificity of
organizational change in public organization. Although large literature available on specific
character of public organization, but little research has empirically addressed the specific or
distinct about the change in public organization , and what make the change management
specific in public organization.
Third one is that this study is based on case-based design using quantitative approach,
therefore it is questionable because the items does not include the full concepts of planned and
emergent change.
Recommendations: The combined application of qualitative and quantitative research methods
may contribute to the formulation of quantitative measures, therefore mixed method research
may thus result in the creation of better more informed quantitative measures and more
resonance between qualitative and quantitative research on change management.
Because this study is based on a case-based design, the studys results may not be statistically
generalized beyond the case that was studied, so change management in public organizations
should thus emphasize analytical rather than statistical generalization (Yin, 2009).
Another recommendation for future research is therefore to devote more attention to the
research of contextual factors influencing the effectiveness and appropriateness of different
approaches to change.
References:
Burhan Aykac (2012). The future of public organizations. Social and Behavioral Sciences
Journal, 62 (2012) 468 472

Keith Leslie, S. (2010). Leadership at all levels: Leading public sector

Organisations in an age of austerity. European Management Journal (2010) 28, 297 305.