Readines of Change Management in the Malaysian Public Organization

Abstract

In order to make a transition from its current state to some desired future states, organisational change must be carried out in minimising employee resistance and cost to the organization while simultaneously maximising the effectiveness of the change effort. This paper aims to assess the value of the change management of organisation in the Malaysian public organisation with its three objectives of (1) identifying the attributes of change management in the Malaysian public organisation; (2) investigating the current practice of organisation and employees in the Malaysian public organisation towards change management and (3) assessing the factors influencing readiness of organisation and employees in the Malaysian public organisation towards change management. It is found that change management is a structured approach for ensuring that changes are thoroughly and smoothly implemented to transitioning individuals, teams, and organisations to a desired future state by focusing on the wider impacts of change, particularly on people, where change does not happen in isolation thus impacts the whole organisation. Furthermore, based on literature content analysis, questionnaires survey and Relative Important Index (RII), it is found that current practice of organisation and employees in the organisation towards change management involved three main factors, namely trust in management, communication and organisational commitment; with the factor for trust in management is the positive vision for the future by management team, meanwhile for communication, it is found that there is good communication between supervisors and employees about the organisation’s policy toward the changes. The factor found in organisational commitment is employees enjoying discussing about their organisation with outsiders. The findings of this paper provide a positive impact on change management planning, which ultimately help in ensuring more effective change programme implementation in the public organisation in Malaysia.