implications of an increasingly dynamic business environment on change management requirements in german organisations

Abstract

Under today's circumstances, conventional change management approaches, which are mostly based on stability and controllability, seem to be reaching their limits. Even the near future is quite unpredictable, the dynamics in the business environment are high and change cycles are becoming shorter. Against this background, the paper aims to define the requirements for change management in a dynamic business environment. For this purpose, an online survey with employees in Germany was conducted. 321 valid data sets of respondents from mainly hierarchical and agile organisations in various industries were obtained. The gained data was primarily evaluated quantitatively with the methods of frequency and correlation analysis to test the previously-formulated hypotheses. The results show that employees perceive that change management itself needs to evolve fundamentally to continue to have a significant impact. According to the research, successful handling of organisational change in a dynamic business environment primarily requires a high degree of transparency and open communication, an appropriate culture and mindset as well as holistic collaboration. Among other factors, high speed and flexibility in the change management approach also play an important role. In this context, experimentation and step-by-step adaptation are furthermore crucial.