ABSTRACT
This study took a critical look at the activities of manufacturing organizations in the
area of Teams Approach to the Management of Change in Nigerian
manufacturing organizations, with three manufacturing organizations from
southern part of Nigeria as the focal point for the study. The study determined
if team approach to change management would bring about an increase in
productivity, and attempted to ascertain if there was a significant relationship
between team approach to management of change and organizational ability to
survive.
The study also sought to ascertain the strategies, challenges and
prospects of team approach to change management and to ascertain if
managerial roles to team approach to change management compared
favourably with Mintzberg’s model on managerial roles. The study was
carried out using survey design. Both primary and secondary data were
utilized for the study. A sample size of 389 was used for the study. The
research instruments employed was structured questionnaire and an interview.
The descriptive statistics of simple percentage, tables, means, frequencies
and standard deviation were employed to analyze the data, while the
inferential statistics of Z-test was used to test the first, second, third, fourth
and sixth hypotheses, while the fifth hypothesis was tested with Spearman’s
Rank correlation coefficient at alpha level set at 0.05. The findings of the
study among others revealed that the manufacturing organizations studied
agreed that team approach to change management brought about increased in
productivity in the sampled organizations. This was true with a calculated Z
value of 15.933 which was greater than the table Z value of 1.645 and that
there was a high positive relationship between the organizational ability to
survive and team approach. This was true at a sample mean of 4.420, sample
standard deviation of 0.944 and calculated Z score of 29.346. It was found out
among others that the strategies adopted to change management were building
self-managed teams/human resources strategy, cost reduction strategy. The
finding also revealed that team approach ushers good prospects in the area of
improved performance/productivity, coordination of department, plans and
polices. It was recommended that the strategic managers of the manufacturing
organizations should share their perception, knowledge and objectives with
those affected by change. This can involve a major and expensive programme
of training, communication, and motivation and should give priority to the role
of building effective teams and this should be backed by policy. Conclusively,
every business needs to have a strategy and this strategy must be related to
changing environmental conditions in order to survive and maintain growth,
and be ready to take maximum advantage of the challenges and opportunities
presented. Two models were developed. One on pressure for change showing
forces of change in manufacturing organizations, and the other on team
approach processes to change management indicating processes to be adopted
in change management.
