An Analysis of Factors That Impact the Change Management Process

Business are facing new threats or opportunities due to globalization, changes in costumers demands, new technologies, new expectations from society. Business change to stay competitive and to survive. It is very important to find the proper change and to manage it effectively. Many researchers, (Lewin, 1951; Kotter, 1996; Peddle et al., 1998; Paton and McCalman, 2000), have developed change models which describe important stages involved in effective change management process. Organizational change can be planned or unplanned. Organizations may change their products, structure, strategy or people. Although, what type of change an organization is undertaking, it had been argued that organizational change will fail without effective communication, appropriate leadership, employee commitment and readiness to change. Managers, know that a change to be successful needs to be managed effectively.<br><br>There are many factors that create effective change management. In this paper we will focus on the impact of leadership, communication and employee commitment to change. Employees implement changes in organization and if they do not have the necessary information why organization needs the change and what is the outcome of proposed change they probably will refuse it. Also, leadership has an important role in change management. Employees need to feel security from their leader that change will improve their organization and will bring benefits to all of them. Employees are very concern to know if organization has the capacity to implement the proposed change.


Introduction
Change is very important for organizations to adopt and survive. Change has become a necessity for businesses and an organization needs to change in order to remain competitive. However, many change initiatives fail [1,2]. Many researchers have developed change models, which describe important stages, involved in the effective change management process. All these stages help to improve employees' acceptance and readiness to organizational change. Organizational change refers to planned or unplanned transformations in the structure, technology and/or people of an organization [3]. Organizations may change their products, also. Organizational changes may affect one part of an organization or the whole organization [4]. Although, what type of change an organization is undertaking, it had been argued that organizational change will fail without effective communication, appropriate leadership, employees' commitment and readiness to change.
Employees are a very strategic asset in organizations. They have to be treated as human beings, who have feelings, needs, expectations [5]. Employees implement changes in an organization and if they do not have the necessary information, why the organization needs the change and what is the outcome of proposed change, they probably will refuse it. Also, leadership has an important role in change management [6]. Employees need to feel security from their leader that change will improve their organization and will bring benefits to all of them. Employees are very concern to know if the organization has the capacity to implement the proposed change.

Factors affecting effective change management.
There are many factors that create effective change management. In this paper we will focus on the impact of leadership, communication and employee commitment to change.

2. Leaders and change management.
Role of leaders is very important in a successful change management process. Many researchers have studied the leadership role in change management [7][8][9]. They argued that leaders have to create change vision. Then, they have to support this vision by strategies. Leadership has to develop effective strategies for organizational change. Also, employees may need new skills, knowledge, ownership to manage change. So, leadership has to empower employees for an effective change management process.

3. Communication and change management.
Communication is also a critical factor on change management [10]. Many researchers stress that communication is used to announce organizational changes and to provide stakeholders with information about the nature, timing, and significance of the change. Change is accompanied with fear, stress, anxiety among employees. This is because change is something unknown that is happening to them. That's why communication is very important during all the process of change management. Leaders have to clear employees on: a) what organizational change is going to implement; b) why the organization needs it, what outcomes will change brings for organizations; c) how will the organization implement the change.
Benefits and costs of change have to be communicated to the employees and this will minimize fear among employees during the change.
Leaders may use different communication strategies to communicate change, depending on employees and situation.

Employees' commitment and change management
Employee commitment to change is defined as employee's attachment to implement new rules, procedures, technologies, etc. Literature offers three types of commitment: 1) affective commitment; 2) normative commitment; 3) continuance commitment. Affective commitment, shows employee's emotional attachment to the organization. It includes four categories: personal characteristics, structural characteristics, job-related characteristics, and work experience. Employees, who are committed in affective way, work hard because they want to be part of organizations.
Continuance commitment, employees are committed because they fear the costs of leaving the organization. Also, continuance commitment is known as instrumental attachment to the organization. Employees are instrumental attached to the organization because they asses economic benefits they gain staying in the organization [11].
Normative commitment, is linked with the feeling of obligation to continue employment in a certain organization. Employees feel that staying in the organization is the proper thing to do, because they feel they have to remain in the organization.
The Fig. 1 shows the key factors that affect the change management process.
Abstract: Business is facing new threats or opportunities due to globalization, changes in costumers' demands, new technologies, new expectations from society. Business changes to stay competitive and to survive. It is very important to find the proper change and to manage it effectively. Many researchers have developed change models, which describe important stages, involved in the effective change management process. Organizational change can be planned or unplanned. Organizations may change their products, structure, strategy or people. Although, what type of change an organization is undertaking, it had been argued that organizational change will fail without effective communication, appropriate leadership, employee commitment and readiness to change. Managers know that a change to be successful needs to be managed effectively. There are many factors that create effective change management. In this paper we will focus on the impact of leadership, communication and employee commitment to change. Employees implement changes in an organization and if they do not have the necessary information, why the organization needs the change and what is the outcome of proposed change, they probably will refuse it. Also, leadership has an important role in change management. Employees need to feel security from their leader that change will improve their organization and will bring benefits to all of them. Employees are very concern to know if the organization has the capacity to implement the proposed change. Keywords: communication, change management, employee commitment, leadership.

BUSINESS, MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTING
The aim of this study is to analyze factors that impact the change management process. This study is a qualitative one.

Methods
We have used secondary data to understand the role of different factors in the change management process. We have reviewed different studies on change management to figure out what is necessary for a change management process to be successful. Based on the literature review, we focused on three key factors such as: 1. Communication -how to communicate change to employees.
2. Leadership -how to lead employees during change.
3. Employee commitment -how employees' commitment impact the readiness to change.

1. Results from literature review
From the literature review we conclude that organizations need to change to remain competitive or to survive. This makes change management a very important process in organizations. Organizations can change their structure, products, strategy or culture.
Many researchers stress the importance of employees in the change management process because employees play a key role on the effectiveness of the change process. They may manifest different attitudes or behaviors to change. So, many researchers have focused their studies on employees' behavior during change. Change success depends on what behaviors or attitudes they show [12]. If employees show positive behavior, change initiative probably may succeed. Also, it is important to know what impact on employees' positive behavior in order to reinforce it.
Many researchers have found that most of change initiatives fail because of lack of communication, employees' commitment or improper leadership. Communication is very important to change management because employees need to know why they need the change; what change are going to implement; how will they implement it and what part of the organization will affect organizational change. On the other hand, leadership plays a key role in the change management process. Leadership has to create vision of change and the strategy to implement it. If employees do not have a clear vision on what change will bring to the organization and to them and how they will achieve it, they probably will not prefer to involve in the change process. Also, there are three types of commitment that impact the employees' readiness to change: affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment. Different studies [13,14] have shown that affective and continuance commitment have more influence on the employees' readiness to change.

Discussion
The purpose of this study was to identify most important factors for an effective change management process. We focused only on the literature review to define these factors. After the literature review we conclude that researchers argued that there are several factors, impacting the change management process. From the information we gathered from literature we founded that the most important factors for an effective change management process are communication, leadership and employee commitment.
Many researchers stress that communication is used to announce organizational changes and to provide stakeholders with information about the nature, timing, and significance of the change. Communication needs time, and sometimes time is limited, for example during crises.
Also, leadership has to empower employees for an effective change management process because employees may need new skills, knowledge or ownership. Sometimes, leadership may refuse to empower employees because they focus on financial expensive training or they may have fear to give employees the opportunity to develop their skills or knowledge because they can become more capable and they may compete with leaders in the future.
Employee commitment to change is defined as employee's attachment to implement new rules, procedures, technologies, etc. Literature offers three types of commitment: affective commitment; normative commitment; continuance commitment. Employee commitment is very important to understand how much effort employees use to implement change. Organizations prefer to have committed employees because these employees are more opened to change and they work harder to achieve objectives.
We agree that these factors are important for an effective change management process in public and private organizations. Managers or public administrators have to pay attention to these factors during the change process.

Conclusions
The aim of this paper was to analyze factors that influence change management effectiveness. We focused on the impact of leadership, communication and employee commitment to change.
Employees implement changes in an organization and if they do not have the necessary information, why the organi-zation needs the change and what is the outcome of proposed change, they probably will refuse it. Also, leadership has an important role in change management. Employees need to feel security from their leader that change will improve their organization and will bring benefits to all of them. Employees are very concern to know if the organization has the capacity to implement the proposed change.