Training and Development Process and Organizational Culture Change

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Abstract

This paper presents a case study that examines the connections between the training and development process and organizational culture change in an information technology (IT) division within a higher education institution in the U.S. Findings suggest that the training and development process within the IT division served as a bridge to organizational culture change, from an old organizational culture ("legacy") to a new organizational culture ("a holistic quilt"). The foundation of the bridge was leadership and management.

Introduction

Organizational change is essential for any organization to be successful due to the changing demands and opportunities of dynamic environments (Schermerhorn, Hunt, & Osborn, 1994). Planned change in any organization requires process, leadership, and management. When organizational change occurs through an organization development intervention, this intervention can be directed at the cultural subsystem to allow people to participate in the process. Leadership plays an important role in the process of change because it can influence how the process runs, either formally through a position of authority or informally through special skills or resources that meet the needs of others in the organization (Schermerhorn et al., 1994). Management provides the structure and the process for people to accomplish the desired change goals.

Change based on a process can be one way of accomplishing organizational transformation. Organizational change often drives culture change. Organizational culture change is dynamic and depends on leadership and management. The concepts of organizational change focusing on process, culture change and leadership, and organizational culture change and the learning organization are central to organizational transformation and will be addressed next.

Organizational Change Focusing on Process

A number of authors have suggested the use of a change process methodology to accomplish organizational change. For example, Kettinger, Teng, and Guha (1997) investigated the different methodologies, techniques, and tools used by consulting services for business process change. Their study provides a framework for looking at reengineering strategies, people, management, structure, and technology dimensions of business processes. They consider their framework to be flexible and suggest commonly used techniques and tools as a way to improve business process change practices. The authors recognize that business process reengineering is a continuum of approaches to process change and their framework provides a stage-based approach on how the process should be...