Ethical Issues When Implementing Organizational Change

Ethical Issues When Implementing Organizational Change

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Ethical Issues When Implementing Organizational Change

        In a world full of changing demands and evolving technology, organizational change is inevitable. The main aim for implementing change is to elevate the current state of events and bolster performance. Nonetheless, change may present some negative impacts to a section of the organization. Organizations face a range of ethical issues during change, which necessitates an analysis of the ethical issues surrounding organizational change.

        Jean (1996) identifies two main areas that pertains ethical issues in change management – “the role of change agents [and] the ethical outcomes of the unfreeze-change-refreeze process” (Jean, 1996). Change agents are assigned the duty of effecting organizational change. There are minimum ethical standards that the change agent must observe. Such standards include commitment to confidentiality, avoidance of coercion of stakeholders to get information; and the agents should not promise their clients unrealistic results (Jean, 1996). Nonetheless, studies indicate that the change agents are never preoccupied with the minimum ethical standards. Jean (1996) cites a case study ServiceCo, in which the change agent contravened almost all of the minimum standards: “commitments to confidentiality were broken and individuals were coerced into divulging information about themselves.” Prior to change, the change agent carries out an investigative study to unravel the possible shortcomings in the structure and processes of the organization. In the process, flouting of individuals rights to freedom, self-esteem, and privacy is almost unavoidable in order to identify individual weaknesses.

        The stages of unfreeze-change-refreeze present ethical issues. The unfreezing stages entails the realization of system ineffectiveness. “Two sets of ethical issues arise: who defines what is wrong, and who decides what is needed?” (Jean, 1996). Jean (1996) notes the implicit assumption that top managers and external consultants are better placed to contact a GAP and SWOT analyses to determine the state of affairs. The analyses may be characterized with false scientific methodologies and “naïve pragmatism.” Change may be necessary for the organization but the external consultants may not be well versed with the state of events to establish a plausible change strategy. The junior staff, who might be well informed of the system and process shortcomings are likely to be left out in the change process. For instance, senior management of ServiceCo defined the desired change formula for the company but gave considerable freedom to the external consultant to design the unfreezing stage (Jean, 1996). This was on assumption that the external consultant is an expert in organization change. The result was an ultimate failure of the change.