The Role of Change Communication in the
Change Management Process within Bayer

von: Michael Rockel

Table of contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Basics 2

2.1 Change Management 2
2.2 Change Communication 4

3 Models for Change 6

3.1 Lewin’s Change Model 6
3.2 Change Process Models 7
3.3 Combined Change Process Models 8

4 Change Communication in the Transformation of Bayer 9

4.1 The Company 9
4.2 The change process 11
4.3 Corporate Communication at Bayer 12

5 Change Communication Process 14

5.1 The logo, giving the change process an identity 14
5.2 Phases in the change process 14

6 Evaluation of the Change Communication Process & Conclusion 20

6.1 The Strategic Employee Communication Model 20
6.2 Conclusion 23

Appendix V

Bibliography VI
 

1 Introduction

The globalisation of our economies and the evolvement of new technologies affect businesses all over the world. The changes companies have to face are of growing speed and affect companies in an ever increasing intensity. To survive in today’s turbulent environments, where change has become a constant process, it is crucial to use manpower, processes and information technologies with a maximum efficiency, in order to stay successful (Doppler 2001, 18). As the relevance of time is increasing, it is a crucial success factor to respond to those ever changing conditions in the environment with maximum possible speed. This need for an optimised realignment of resources, change management lead to the fast growing relevance of change management for today’s businesses.
Especially as success rates of change management processes were much higher, than those of the former business processes reengineering, which was usually handled in a less professional, short-sighted and theoretical way. Over the last years, the high importance of communication in change processes has been realised and more and more studies and scientists are addressing this topic. Change Communication as a tool of the management uses communication to coordinate and manage processes within the organisation. It involves steering, communication and controlling functions to transfer and guide the employees during the change process from the old into the new structures. This assignment will address the main aspects of change management and subsequently analyse the change communication within the change process which took place within the Bayer Corporation in 2001/2002.

2 Basics

2.1 Change Management

Change management involves all measures that are used for an efficient implementation of new strategies, structures, systems and behaviour in order to adapt companies to changed environments (Liebermann 1997, 7).
It evolved, as the business process engineering did not generate the desired results, as it was mainly focussing on the state to be and not on the transformation-process itself (Al-Ani 2000, 13). The transformation process is the main focus of change management.

2.1.1 Reasons and Forms of Change

There are two main types of change that can be identified, planned and unplanned forms. Where the planned forms of change are expected and the organisation can prepare and react to them, unplanned change impacts the whole company which is then unprepared to react to those changes.
Planned Forms of Change Unplanned Forms of Change
• System can prepare for the upcoming changes
• Changes can be addressed out of an existing order
• There is enough time to supervise and control the change process professionally
• Most of those processes can be addressed successfully • Impacts the system without foresight
• Existing systems are hit in a unplanned and chaotic manner
• The degree of control decreases as the system has to act reactive to the existing situation
• High risk, that the change which cannot be controlled affects the whole system
Figure 1: Forms of Change (Osterhold 2002, 11), (Du-Mont 1999, 28)
There are different causes that encourage change processes and those causes vary from business to business. A recent study in 111 companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland identified the following reasons that are mainly internal reasons.

Figure 2: Reasons for change processes (ILOI-Institute 1999, 3) [Abbildung in der Downloaddatei vorhanden]

2.1.2 Target Groups of Change Management

As change management is used to modify existing structures it affects many shareholders of a company. Analysing and ranking the degree of which the different groups are affected by the change processes helps to address these groups within the change processes in an adequate way (Anderson 2001). This minimises errors that significantly affect the success of the overall process. The shareholder groups, and the degree of which they are affected in most of the change processes that took place within the Bayer Corporation is illustrated in the following figure.

Figure 3: Shareholders, affected by change processes (own figure) [Abbildung in der Downloaddatei vorhanden]

2.2 Change Communication

There are several models available that discuss and analyse communication processes. Those theories cover all areas, from the simple theory of a message and how it is transmitted over to different aspects and elements of communication and interpersonal relations. Describing those theories that are the base of change communication would exceed the scope of this work.
Therefore change communication will be defined as all measures of communication and information exchange that are used to enable change management. As it is described in the following image, change communication is made up of the three following areas: information, leadership and motivation. It illustrates how those three elements help to contribute to the success of the change management (Brenner 2002). Only the combination of those three factors can guarantee a successful contribution of the change communication to change management.

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