Factors impacting and restricting success of organisational changes

Abstract

Social, economic and technological changes constantly change business landscape and raise an array of challenges to organisations. Organizations have to adapt to the environmental changes and maintain competitiveness and flexibility. Thus, changes aim to transform current state of organisations, to increase productivity and competitive advantage in the market. On the other hand, a number of investigations confirm that majority of organisational changes fail and do not produce an expected performance. Scientific literature suggests various management methods and links these methods to the desirable outcomes. Considering the fact that organisations are unique systems, some change management models do not capture such aspects as exceptional experience, culture, intuition of managers, etc. These issues lead to the restricted application of majority of models or methods. The opinions of scholars about definition and measurement of success diverge. The paper aims to investigate the factors impacting and restricting organisational changes. Particular emphasis is put on the success as the desirable outcome of all initiatives. The investigation is based on analysis and synthesis of scientific literature. A case of service providing company is presented. The paper integrates the main researches in the field and provides insights and recommendations into future investigations.