Employee Adaptation to Strategic Organizational Change at the Business Market Department of Telecom Kenya
Abstract
Employee adaptation to strategic change is a critical component when coming up with
strategic change implementation strategies. Many change programs fail due to the fact
that the affected people do not fully adapt to the new dispensations that emerge as a result
of planned strategic organizational changes. The study sought to determine the extent to
which employees have adapted to strategic organizational change within the Business
Market department of Telkom Kenya. This study was based on a theoretical framework
that identifies three key constructs used to study the level of employee adaptation to
strategic change. The constructs include communication of timely and useful changerelated
information, meaning-making resources, that is, psychological resources that help
individuals cope with ambiguous situations during strategic organizational change, and
individual willingness to change. The motivation for the proposed study was founded on
the need to determine the extent to which employees adapt to organizational strategic
change, based on the appreciation of the fact that the people component is pivotal in
implementing successful change programs, a research area that is not widely explored,
yet very critical. The context of study was within the very dynamic telecommunications
sector in Kenya with a specific focus on Telkom Kenya, an organization that is
undergoing continuous strategic change that has touched on acquisition, restructuring,
modification to business processes, and modernization of network infrastructure through
the adoption of new technologies. Literature relevant to the study was reviewed as a
build-up to the actual collection and analysis of information. The study adopted a
descriptive research design for exploration, and to gather and summarize information,
present and interpret data. From the findings of the study, it was established that the
employees of Telkom Kenya had, to a great extent, adapted to the strategic organizational
change. It was also concluded that adaptation was made possible due to the enabling
existence of organization-based resources, that is, change-related information
communicated using channels of communication internal to the organization, and
personal resources, which helps those affected by challenging and ambiguous situations
like change processes. From the findings, the study also concluded that a small but
significant portion of the target population (about 14%) had not adapted well to the
changes. It can be concluded that this lot exists because some of the respondents found
some of the new roles difficult to adapt to. This could also be attributed to what some
respondents indicated as change information provided not adequately answering their
questions about the changes. The study recommended that Telkom Kenya improves the
effectiveness in communicating information related to planned strategic organizational
changes to ensure that the affected persons get to understand and appreciate the need to
implement changes in structure, network or business processes, and match their new roles
to their key competencies for increased adaptivity to change. This study also
recommended that further studies be conducted on the factors that influence willingness
to accept and embrace planned strategic organizational changes.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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