By Okechukwu, Elizabeth Uzoamaka
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.