Role of Organizational Culture in Creating Readiness for Change Project

Given the dynamic and unpredictable nature of modern business environment, organizations need to always be ready for change. It is essential for employees to be able to accept change initiatives at workplace and contribute to them constructively. The authors of this research suggest that due to the similarities in the nature of their implementation process, projects are the most appropriate vehicle for implementing change initiatives. Change initiatives implemented through projects take characteristics of planned change and exclude emergent changes from the scope the scope of this research. The initiating phase of a change project is devoted to creating readiness for change, which is the main focus of the research. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of organizational culture in creating readiness for a change project. The research looks at the process of creating change readiness. This provides a ground for identifying the importance of organizational culture and its interconnection with change management efforts. Further, the dimensions of organizational culture are identified in the relation to change readiness. The literature suggests that these dimensions create change readiness. If organizational culture does not incorporate the identified dimensions of organizational culture, change management efforts should be applied to reinforce or create them. Eight interviews were conducted with change leaders/ project managers. Each interview was conducted in the context of a change project experienced by the interviewee, in order to gain an insight in to the influence of organizational culture on creating change readiness. The study finds organizational culture as being pivotal in creating change readiness. The insight taken from the empirical data allows differentiating between organizational culture as a whole and organizational culture created within the project context by change management efforts. It was found that organizational culture in its exclusivity, does not lead to readiness for a change project. Organizational culture rather builds a foundation for implementing change and creates readiness for a change project through mediation of change management efforts.