Free Essays - Business Essays
Business Management
Major changes regarding community based faith services and the challenges faced in terms of parish management by the Catholic Church require organisational changes in relation to both the organisation’s structure and its human resource management. Thus this paper focuses on the changes in the Catholic Church in terms of its structure in service provision, priest recruitment problems as well as the actions taken to respond to these changes. From this perspective the report is based on detailing an action research program which was designed to assist the Catholic Church in managing changes effectively. Organisational change has been studied extensively within management literature and a key function of understanding this is examining the internal elements within organisations and understanding the forces involved in causing and mediating organisational changes. This is true as they wrestle with managing both evolutionary and more radical revolutionary changes. Here a public organisation is the principal focus and as such its organisational structure, its relationships among community members, their perception of what its purpose is are vital issues involved in managing change successfully.
The parish meeting is used as a major method of providing brief documents concerning the Catholic Church’s operations and management information. This had the effect of also providing initial horizon scanning in terms of the challenges faced and suggested responses to such challenges which could be made. In addition to this three focus groups were used to discuss these preliminarily identified issues in greater detail. It also assisted in the provision of a more formal initial summary and report about findings from the data generated during these exploratory stages. Interviews exploring occurrences and impacts of prior interventions to deal with challenges both served as a guide for what had worked and failed as well as providing more in-depth contextual information concerning the parish and the services provided by the Church.
It is critical to draw attention to the organisation’s internal environmental contexts such as those formed as a result of the historical background of the Catholic Church. This is helpful as it allows for a deeper understanding of the natures of the changes and the natures of the impacts resulting from these changes. Historical contexts can be detected in debates towards the church of which three are arguably notably concerning the problems faced by the parish. As Jonas (1995) points out due to the strict hierarchical structure employed by the Catholic Church there is an acceptance of the inherent lack of democracy when individuals accede to their faith as priests or laity. This is contrast for example to the concept of becoming ‘Protestants’ which generally exhibits a more inclusive approach to practising religion between clergy and laity. The problems with this can be clear seen in the dramatic impacts on service provision for Catholic parishes when no priests are present to provide faith related services.
However researchers such as American (1990) and Maguire (2003) argue that the church has begun to adopt its political structure in order to respond to the changes in the external environment. The principal reason for this as discussed above is the significant recruitment problems currently faced by the Church in terms of finding priests. As such there has been a trend for more organisational structures seeking to include non-clergy in assisting with the day-to-day functions of parishes. However others argue that over the decades this inclusiveness and participative decision making has been a significant part of the Catholic Church but that these structures need to be more explicitly defined and related to broader societal trends and concerns, (Appley, 1996, Haras and Sepulveda 2002).
As a non-profit organisation it is essential to view the changes related to the Catholic Church from a an organisationally minded point of view. Psychologists believe that learning as a human behaviour can be defined as relatively permanent changes in actions as a result of experience or practice, (Baars, 1986). In applying this concept in analysing an organisation it is essential to look at organisational change from a historical perspective as organizations learn from their own experiences. In line with Greiner’s (1972) theory each of the organisational elements and forms are shaped by an organisation’s choices which may be explicit and conscious within the history of the organisation itself. Therefore the obvious features of an organization can be defined in terms of organisational structure, organisational system and organisational culture, (Salaman & Asch, 2003). Thus according to Perlmutter and Gummer (1994) fundamental changes might come from functions such as an organisation’s mission, structure, legitimacy, technology or leadership. In addition external elements like changing social values also have major influences in shaping organizational behaviour. With these details in mind it becomes clearer as to what organisational structures the Catholic Church exhibits and the type of constraints it has faced in successfully responding to these changes. With a long historical heritage based on acceptance and the community and the development of rigid hierarchical structures the current recruitment problems have been matched with a decline in church going attendance.
Additionally as Alexander (2000) and Durst and Newell (2001) argue both external business’ and ‘government’ parties also have effects on organisation such as that of the Catholic Church in terms of its operations. However changes which are both fundamental and radical at all levels of an organisation with strong experiential and historical features exhibit numerous difficulties in managing and controlling these changes. Of importance then is the need to be aware of the organisational change process. For example Kurt Lewin’s model which is widely used in describing organisational behaviour views organisational change as a process of unfreezing the balance of structure within an organisation and then refreezing at a new equilibrium relative to the changed contexts and environments the organisation finds itself operating in, (Schein, 2002). Therefore numerous organisations which engage in a change processes face the possibility of demise or eventual disappearance, (Greiner & Cummings, 2004). However a strategic consideration of the role of evolutionary and revolutionary change in organisations is still vital in analyzing organisational growth.
The first important finding of relevance is the shortage of priests and their recruitment faced by the Catholic Church. In addition in relation to the hierarchy of the Catholic Church it was found that parishes in areas of high social deprivation would benefit more than those in affluent areas. As a result research demonstrated that the capacity to be able to provide various services at a sufficient level was questionable in terms of human resources available. As a result of this the Archibishop’s motivation for a strategy of change within the parish was identified as willingness and ability to perform and control the impacts which the parish would feel as a result of the general and specific changes. Since the parish element is an integral part of the Catholic Church and is bound up in the history of the Church’s development the change process is to a large extent affected by its own history as well as organisational culture. Also the impacts at parish level can be said to be symptomatic of how these impacts would affect the Church at higher levels. As such despite rational planning the success of any radical change process can be debated and in this case was also heavily determined by the subsequent tensions detected and observed between traditionalist and reformist attitudes and values towards change.
Linked with human resource problems and also of concern were the inefficient hierarchical structures which can be said to have resulted in the failure in adapting and responding to change in the Catholic Church. According to Perlmutter and Gummer’s (1994) the most important factors for change are structure, mission, legitimacy and societal values. In the case of the Church significant major changes have occurred in each of these and generally have occurred significantly over quite a short period of time meaning the slow response time of the Church’s hierarchy to dealing with such changes has been a major part of responses having failed. A critical perspective then is the fact that change has reflected changing sets of values relative to the Church in the external environment it operates in. These changes in for example the emergence of more secularised societies are often in a conflict position with tradition and the values the Church which constitute its mission. Also for example continued questioning of the legitimacy of the Church has caused major tensions in the way in which the organisational mission of the Church is carried out and to whom it reaches. These tensions and conflicts are it can be said also related to inefficiency in dealing with the problems and challenges faced in undergoing organisational change.
According to Lewin’s model as discussed previously best practice in relation to organisational change occurs when stakeholders tackle and benefit from the changes involved and proposed. Thus although Kotter’s (1995) suggests that the change might not have been successful because it was proposed with an insufficient degree of immanency, in this case the visiting priest’s authority was superior to that of the laity his actions were not over-ridden by the superior power of the Archbishop. To conclude the nature of change in the Catholic Church reflects sentiments expressed in theories of non-profit organisational behaviour but also mirror its own historical background, its unique hierarchy and its broader relationship with society and cultural forces. The parish and the members of its community are part of a hierarchical structure thus the internal value system and motivation involved and expressed by members of the community have vital effects on the organisational behaviour generally and to a large extent can be said to determine successfully implementing changes in response to the challenges faced by the Catholic Church.
Business Essays - Find your free business essays...
We have a large assortment of free business essays available to use as research material. Visit our business essays from our free essays section.
All of the essays in the free essays section were written by students and then submitted to us to display and help others. Thanks to all the students who have submitted their essays to us. You should not hand in our essays as your own. We do not condone plagiarism!
