Do People’s Perceptions of Change have an Influence on the Status of Change? Lessons from the Department of Correctional Services of South Africa

Abstract

Organisational change is one of the most critical challenges that leaders in organizations have to contend with. There is an urgent need for change strategists, change implementers, and change recipients to be assisted with new or updated knowledge on change and organisational change. There is a high failure rate in the implementation of organisational change interventions and this points to the fact that there is a problem with the current organisational change management methodologies. The starting point in reversing the trend of high failure rate in the implementation of organisational change interventions is to create a deeper understanding of organisational change (Puplampu, 2005; Smollan. 2006; Van Tonder, 2008, 2009). This new understanding should focus, amongst other things, on how change is perceived at individual level, and how perceptions influence the status of change in terms of success or failure (Judge, Thoresen, Pucik & Welbourne, 1999; George & Jones, 2001; Van Tonder, 2004b, 2005, 2006, 2009). This is what this study sought to do – to investigate, establish, explore and understand the extent to which peoples’ perceptions are related to the status of change in terms of success or failure. Empirical studies that seek to validate the claim of relatedness of people’s perceptions of change to the status of change are somehow limited. The researchers conducted a literature study in order to contextualise the relatedness of perceptions of change to the status of change within the offender correctional environment in the Department of Correctional Services of South Africa. Two survey questionnaires, one for correctional officials and the other for offenders, were utilised for purposes of collecting data. The results of the study revealed that perceptions of change are related to the status of change.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n4p32