Creating a climate and culture for sustainable organisational change

Abstract

Rapid changes in the business landscape, increased . competition and higher customer expectations mean that businesses today have to find ways to establish and keep a competitive advantage. One way businesses can remain competitive is by becoming learning organisations. Organisations need to use their human resources optimally. But organisations do not only need to change into learning organisations but its people need to apply their learning in more creative ways to stay ahead of the competition. An important ingredient of the success of organisational learning is teamwork. Teams allow for innovative problem solving and for the development of synergy either to apply collective knowledge and skills to problems or to develop new or innovative ideas. In the study Standard Bank is identified as an example of an organisation that is attempting to change into a learning organisation. Standard Bank has recently launched a program called "Ordinary-To-Innovative (021)" and "Winning Ways", a process where teams of people work together to find innovative solutions to problems and share ideas. The research attempts to show the relationship between the leadership skills of team leaders and the willingness of team members to change. The change that is referred to is the willingness of team members to become more innovative, to interact in the teams, to learn through this interaction with the purpose of creating value for the organisation. In terms of the effect of either transformational or transactional leadership on willingness to change and creating a climate and culture for innovative change, the research results show that transformational change shows higher frequency, and in a sense better correlations but transactio_nal leadership is quite strong as well. The literature suggests that if an organisation like Standard Bank wants to make the paradigm shift to being more creative and innovative they should train their leaders in transformational leadership skills. These transformational team leaders will assist Standard Bank in creating a climate and culture for sustainable organisational change.