Sustainable Change Management A Case Of Telecommunication Contractors

Abstract

Construction firms implement changes within the project or organizational level. The organizational changes are associated with management, technology, and people or cultural and are the focus of our study. This study sought to examine how change management can be executed effectively among the telecommunication contractors in Kenya. The major challenge being the telecommunication industry which has developed in the last two decades has done so within the background of the traditional construction industry, the contractors and the personnel that would therefore form the backbone of the infrastructure development have the knowledge, skills and the cultural values of an already existing system. There is need of a paradigm shift such that organizations willing to participate in a new, evolving and dynamic telecoms industry have to initiate change in order to adapt. The review of literature investigates the concept of change management, the factors and organizational components leading to successful change. In this section the research investigated empirical evidence on change management within the telecommunication and construction sector and identified challenges. The research also examined the theoretical foundations that underpin change management and how they inform the present research. The study adopted the use of both qualitative and quantitative method by sending questionnaires and structured interviews to 48 respondents who are employees of telecommunications contractors based in Nairobi and the findings were converted into ratios or percentage using the likert scale in a way to provide numerical data. The findings indicate that the approach to change adopted local contractors largely deviated from model recommended by Kotter (2007) in his eight stage model. Kotter (2007) model was adopted for benchmarking the local contractors in change management due to his emergent approach on organizations adapting to change, synonymous with the telecommunications industry. The study therefore recommends that organization leadership strategy and structure should be contingent on the nature of the telecommunication industry in terms of the environment, production technology and work tasks. Local contractors should therefore adopt a participative / consultative leadership style and an organic structure.