Leadership's Response to Change and the Influence Their Actions and Behaviors Have on Employees Throughout an Organizational Restructure: Utilizing Transformational Leadership Practices

Introduction

In the medical education industry today, doctors may be more efficient than any previous generation of medical practitioners in the number of tasks they can accomplish at a given time. However, distractions can lead to lack of follow through on certain components and poor patient care, which too often causes medical errors (American Medical Association, 2021; Densen, 2011; McLearney, 2006; Stewart & Hocking, 2020). For doctors to act in their personal and their patients’ best interests, they need to be able to focus on specific tasks at hand rather than give into distractions such as technological delay, staffing shortages, or inefficient workflows (Sawney & Niven-Jenkins, 2007). Thus, they need to have systems in place that allow them to focus on practicing medicine or doing medical research (Shah & Sharer, 2021) with a level of adeptness and willingness to make necessary changes to the administrative medical practices, advance research laboratories, and enhance medical education (American Medical Association, 2021; Bucknor et al., 2018; Sawney & Niven-Jenkins, 2007). Restructures are one such tool that organizations can utilize to transform their business into the sort of organization that enables physicians to eliminate unnecessary distractions and achieve the levels of efficiency required of their position (Endrejat et al., 2021; Schwarz et al., 2021; Turgut & Neuhaus, 2020).

Change is omnipresent, and organizations are unlikely to see that shifting anytime soon. Technology, globalization, the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and pressure to meet social responsibility targets are examples of recent phenomenon that have forced organizations to make adjustments to stay relevant and in line with their industry and consumer needs (Gierszewska & Seretny, 2019). As medical education organizations try to adapt to the demands of global trends and of their student population, resistance to change is one issue facing medical education today (Densen, 2011). Medical education organizational restructures that occur without the consideration of human nature and how humans react to change create resistance to change that impacts leadership effectiveness, employee morale, and company success (Stewart & Hocking, 2020). As resistance increases, the company’s chances at successfully completing the reorganization decrease (Muluneh, n.d.). Additionally, as fears about change take seed throughout the workplace during a restructure, peers and/or superiors can have great influence over fellow employees creating an environment of mistrust, lack of motivation, and decreases in morale (Belschak et al., 2020; Kunze et al., 2013).

A strong association exists between successfully launching change or restructuring initiatives and leadership’s attitudes and approaches to that change (Barasade, 2002; Ewenstein et al., 2015; Kemp, 2006; Pennington, n.d.; Purcell & Chahine, 2019). Companies can better prepare for restructures when they expand their understanding of the behaviors among their leadership that signal resistance among all employees, such as refusing to be compliant, having an absent level of support for the proposed transitions, or encouraging others to be defiant (Fullan, 2008; Grant, 2021). Organizations or departments, particularly in medical education, do have the ability to create strong, informed plans on how to best address resistance ahead of time. Moreover, a strong plan builds in safeguards to assure employees that the restructuring takes into consideration personal employment capabilities. Examining leadership’s responses to change leads to a reduction in tension created within an organization as restructuring occurs.