Index:

01.  Introduction (Mostafa)

02.  The importance of executing sustainable change management for a sustainable
business environment.
03.  Change management framework for SMEs.
04.  SMEs Successful Transformation:
04.01.    3Ps model.
04.02.    Importance of having a strategy.
04.03.    Thinking long term & short term 
04.04.    Continuous improvement approach
05.  Leadership to set the directional change
06.  HR proactive role in change management process  
07.  John Kotter's Eight Steps Change Model
08.  Change management model developed by the researchers.
09.  Implementing the change model
10.  The cost of delaying the change (need more details --Samy or Mostafa)
11.  Business Process re-modeling for sustainable change management
12.  Successful business re-modeling lessons.
Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

Introduction:
Abstract:
Purpose - In a rapidly changing modern business world, a rise of change management
science necessity to deal with the multiple factors which may affect the business
excellence and health of small and medium enterprises specially all over the world.
 Through this research, the researchers would express information, studies and
experiments of how using the relevant implementation tools and techniques might uplift
the performance and continuity of SMEs in middle east countries vide such currents
competitive markets, unique economies’ circumstances and different types of risks.
Approach - This research is an outline of efforts and searching through previous
researches, articles and viewpoints of various authors, approached by group of MBA
students ESLSCA university – Egypt to present deliverables which might assist similar
information seekers and/or business makers to improve the related SMEs management
processes and that would be reflected positively on the economies and countries’
prosperity.

Findings – The research gives insights of how Change can be managed in SMEs’
environments and it recommends that acquiring the proper managerial technical
knowledge, interpersonal, leadership and project management skills are playing a vital role
in achieving excellence which should be a driving gene for every successful manager
and/or entrepreneur.

Value – The research supports the observed gap in SMEs performance, avoiding
deteriorating against expected and unexpected changes.

Keywords – SMEs management, change management, leadership, project management,

talent management, sustainable change, Risk management, strategic management.

Paper type – Research

Acknowledgment: We would like to thank Dr. Adel Sakr for the appropriate efforts and
supervision along with excellent explanation and patience along with the authors and
writers of the references. 

Citation:
Kotter, John P. (1996). Leading Change. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press,
1996. Print.
Appelbaum, S., Profka, E., Depta, A. and Petrynski, B., 2018. Impact of business model
change on organizational success. Industrial and Commercial Training, 50(2), pp.41-54.
K. Vora, M., 2013. Business excellence through sustainable change management. The
TQM Journal, 25(6), pp.625-640.

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

Case Studies | Accipio. Retrieved 13 June 2020, from https://www.accipio.com/case-

studies/

The importance of executing sustainable change management for sustainable

business environment
The business environment is continually changing and it is a challenge to adapt to an
unpredictable future that requires four attributes to be in small and medium organizations:
flexibility, adaptability, agility and anticipatory ability that give SMEs ability to survive
and sustain the business to face rapid change. we can brief these attributes in one-word
Resilience.
 Resilience of SMEs depends on their ability to change concerning the future development.
It is a backbone of the organization's business sustainability in the turbulent environment.
the importance of resilience is developing the culture of organization so management can
adapt perfectly in times of turbulent change (Ates  & Bititci,2011) .
Some organizations after achieving success their business is going down and after long
period it is raising again and this refers to these organizations have the attribute of
Resilience (Hamel & Valkanas,2003)
creating resilience leads to business sustainability and SMEs should realize resilience
capability elements and integrate it in their business to be active at any phase of
unforeseen or critical situations in order to achieve business sustainability. (Chu &
Smyrnios,2019)
But what are the challenges facing SMEs for creating resilience and achieving business
sustainability? figure below is showing the factors that negatively affecting SMEs
resilience:

Figure: conceptual framework for negative impact that prevent SMEs’ resilience

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

It seems insufficient planning, weak management skills and limited orientation to staff
create a negative culture of organization that prevent SMEs’ resilience and thus lack of
business sustainability.
If top management of SMEs are not concerned about business sustainability, the normal
staff cannot do much. They must include the concept of sustainability when they set a
vision for the organization, and publish that vision for lower levels of management
(people). in addition to engage people with the change process to commit to sustainability
initiatives.
If organization is applying effective communication with fruitful cooperation along with
commitment between Top management and lower levels staff based on business
sustainability’s vision, we can create a positive climate for change in organization and
reduce or eliminate forces of change resistance. Thus, high levels of willingness will be
there for successful change. Also, SMEs need to hire leaders who has strong overview
about sustainability as their decisions will be able to drive transformational change.
(Mahajan & Bose,2018).
Change management framework and principles:
     There is no doubt that the main aim to apply change is to achieve a certain level of
business improvement, through searching for a consolidated Framework of Change
management that can be applied accurately on SMEs , it is found that Baldrige
Performance Excellence Framework ( A Systems Perspective (2013-204), where it
presents that successful change might be achieved by addressing Seven main categories as
shown in Fig. 01 , they are :
The existence of Leadership: to set up the direction of Change.
Strategic planning: to plan the change as per the requirements.
Customer Focus: Change should be managed via customer needs’ orientation.
Measurement, Analysis and knowledge management:
As every process object has to be SMART, reviewed in frequent iterations and the 
organizational knowledge might be stored in organization repositories for continuous
process improvements, we believe that this is the crucial process of the framework
as it is responsible for parallel assessments for every step through the change plan.
Workforce focus: Organization focuses on the internal human resources abilities and
Acceptance to listen to the voice of change.
Operations focus: Organizational operations are being monitored to ensure the alignment
with the strategic plans and modify it if necessary.
Results: Strategic planning process defines the planned results and its measurements; the
entire change management processes are Agile and progressively elaborated to reach the
desired outcome.

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 Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

  However, the researchers recommend through this research to involve the eighth category
and its “Project Management Technical Focus” to choose from the management style
required for the Change management as per SME environment.

Organizational Profile, Environment, Relationships and

Strategic Situation

2 5
Strategic Workforce
Planning Focus

Project
1
Management 7
Leadership
Technical Focus Results

3 6
Customer Operation
Focus Focus

4
Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management

Figure 1: Baldrige Performance Excellence Framework

Modified adding Project management Technical Focus as an affecting factor

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 Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

SMEs Successful Transformation:

To speak about change management and successful transformation we should take in
consideration the integration between 3 elements that affect the process in any SMEs and
these elements
3Ps Model
People (organization’s staff) it’s the foremost vital element of the change process in SMEs
as people in organization include top/middle/frontline managers who are making decisions
and set plans to create achievement in each stage of the change process.
Policies (company’s plan and strategy) that includes plans/strategies/guidelines which
need to be revised to be sure it meets a new organization’s goals.
Processes (operation and procedures) that include operation and procedures that some
have to be modified and others should be kept as it is hard to stop old processes suddenly
to proceed change management process in order to find the easiest method of proceeding
work (BlokDijk,2008).

In every organization there are two aspects: hard aspect refers to operation (policies &
processes) and soft aspect refers to people (organization’s staff) and here at Figure1 shows
conceptual framework of existence of organizational coherence for organization A and
illustrates that there is an organizational coherence between two aspects as organization’s
management creates a balance through focusing on both sides operation and people that
creates competency during proceed change process. Figure 2 shows conceptual framework
of absence of organizational coherence at organization B and illustrates that organization’s
management focuses on operation more than people and that creates incoherence between
both sides which limits the ability of SMEs to change efficiently and effectively.

Figure 1: existence of organizational coherence at organization Figure 2: absence of organizational coherence at organization B
A

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

So, the first factor SMEs has to consider is “organizational coherence” in order to achieve
their vision and mission that includes the concept of change as part of it. Second factor is
empowering people as this principle makes them motivated and be responsible of
achieving successful transition.
Importance of a strategy for SMEs * Strategic thinking (Andy Bruce & ken Langdon)
Strategy is not a privilege to implement in SMEs, Strategy encourages everyone in the
firm to work as a team to achieve a common objectives, also to align the day to day work
with the organization objectives, moreover to involve the employees to identify their role
and what is expected from them to help to achieve the goals and to promote their skills to
align with these goals, without strategy today’s decisions can have negative impact on
future results. 
Many SMEs: Fail to align change efforts to the strategic goals of the organization, which
can be eliminated through:
- Team empowerment
- building healthy relationships with all stockholders
- communicate the strategy by free flow of information, which keeps the SME alive.
 
Thinking short & long term * Strategic thinking (Andy Bruce & ken Langdon)
Most small companies plan very well for the day to day activities, neglecting the future
status with a wrong imagination that the future will be the same which is not true.
Companies have to keep a balance between short- and long-term planning.
Strategy is a continuous process even when your plan become operational, you cannot
neglect future planning, most of successful firms keep at least half a day weekly for
strategic
Goals they listen to the customers, review the rules for the team, even they can adjust the
plan if needed to keep it a life and keep all the team focused & committed.
04.        Thinking long term & short term 
05.        Continuous improvement approach:
06.        Continuing Change management Process improvement is a vital role to avoid
the failure
07.        As in SMEs' cultural environment usually organizations would not be agile
enough to resist failure due to teams’ scale and financial capabilities.
08.        It is highly recommended to follow the Deming Cycle (PDCA: Plan, Do,
Check, Act) for organizational improvement.

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

Continuous improvement approach:

Continuing Change management Process improvement is a vital role to avoid the failure
, as in SMEs cultural environment, usually organizations would not be agile enough to
resist failure due to teams’ scale and financial capabilities.
 
It is highly recommended to follow the Deming Cycle (PDCA: Plan, Do, Check, Act) for
organizational improvement.
 
Leadership to set directions and influence the organization (Leadership Guidance).
 
Senior management has a great responsibility in emphasizing
Three leadership changes levels: 

Low level Moderate level High level

Development skills and Transitional change like Transformational change
improvement in the design and implement the is complete change and
performance changes shift in the process like
Traditional old bank
become electronic bank

Change management in organizations especially SMEs.

SMEs are by nature goes with smaller groups of employees.
That type of workforces is manageable to transmit a change plan for a leader with vision
and people management skills; however, the change starts with a spark of an influencing
leader. In this particular part the researchers present how initial is the leadership direction
to applying to manage a change nowadays in such modern changing business life.
Per H.V. MacArthur – a contributor who writes about the workplace’s management
environment for forbes.com, mentioned in her article published May 28, 2019 about “How
to lead change management in the modern workplace.”. The researchers might consider
Her professional advice for leaders to lead a change move.
No doubt that the entire article is useful, but it could be summarized as:
- Believing in your change vision for the future; leaders have to be daydreamers
And have the ability to visualize the future need for change.

- Frame out the collaboration importance; Leaders should involve managers to

Embrace the change vision, according they would transmit it to others without
mixed messages

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 Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

- Listen to others’ voice, pushback and disagreement; giving orders and waiting
For obeying an old school style specially in changing, in modern business life
leaders should be pleased regarding others’ disagreement and criticism to test
his vision.

- Create freedom of giving feedback and asking questions; Leader has to check that
his vision is being properly applied and if it is good for business or not, therefore
getting feedback from employees is an essential activity to look at problems and fix
them in real-time.

- Storytelling is a good tool; employees would need to know what is going around to
understand and feel confident, communicating with them the change targets and
needs and showing them past similar cases would help a lot and it also preferred to
Record the lessons learned from previous experiences to present while speeches.
 
 
HR proactive role in change management process 
The traditional role for HR is considered as a reactive role, however for effective change
HR needs to be proactive and take the lead of management and development of the people.
Moreover, to secure successful outcomes from the people, HR should develop and
maintain strong partnership with the stakeholders specially the employees.
Moreover, HR should reduce the team resistance to the change through the following points :
-          Individual should know that change will help for improved organization (involving the
team)
-          Formal and informal leaders consider the personal perceptions.
-          Allocate resources during the change in the right location and clear the scope
As SMEs operate in a dynamic market HR must know that there is always a gap between
SME organization chart and reality, so the charts should be regularly reviewed, refined and
alerted to meet the continuous change occurring within every organization. Ambiguous
areas should be clarified. Overlapping areas should be eliminated

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

John Kotter's Eight Steps Change Model

    MR. John Kotter, is a professor of Leadership and change management at Harvard
Business School and he presented through a book in 1995 a model of 8 steps Change
Model.
And focused on certain steps that ignore any of them that might fail the entire change
process.
01.       Create Urgency.
02.       Establish a strong Coalition.
03.       Evolve a vision of the change.
04.       Communicate the change vision.
05.       Remove obstacles and empower employees.
06.       Create short-term wins. (Agile).
07.       Cement the gains and improve the change.
08.       Fix the change in the corporate culture.
 
Model of a sustainable change developed by the researchers * - Assessing current
capabilities. W.C. Anderson.
-           Planning for change. Goodwin Watson & Edward m. Glaser 

E
Evaluate
current
S
State the
needs for
L
Locate &
expand
S
Secure & Gain
C
Control &
Communicate
A
Award & keep
commitement promises
situation change objectives the cahnge

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 Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

ESLSCA Model of Change developed by the Author

-          Evaluate current situation

SMEs should assess its current situation by answering four questions: what are our
capabilities, what are our opportunities, what are we doing and what should we do.
 
 
-          State the need for change
SMEs should clarify the needs for change for particular reasons like achieving growth,
adapt with the market conditions or new regulations.

-          Locate & expand objectives

SMEs should locate & state its strategic objectives to be achieved through the change. 

-          Secure & Gain commitment

SMEs should gain the commitment for change by involving the stakeholders so they can
support the outcome of the change and adapt with the plan, also employees should feel that
they are a part of the change and they have the right to participate & modify the plan if
needed, Moreover they have to be free to implement that change the way they feel it will
achieve the strategic goals.

-          Control & communicate the change

SMEs should communicate the change through sharing the objectives to be achieved and
make sure that all team members understand their role to achieve the goals, clear the scope
for every employee and give then the freedom to implement by their way, agree for
milestones to check the progress, modify the plan if needed.

-          Award & keep promises

SMEs should award after achieving the goals, to make sure the sustainability of the change
and encourage the team to do more, without awarding team will lose the trust for the firm,
moreover they will resist the new changes. 

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

-          We inducted the below interview with three different candidates at the same
SME filed with almost the same department budget that conducted the change. As
the three of them conducted recently the same change to move from on-premises
network solution to cloud base solution
 
-          We found that the result was different when we compared the approaches that
was taken at each SME company with ESLSCA model
 
-          Evaluate current situation
-          State the need for change
-          Locate & expand objectives
-          Secure & Gain commitment
-          Control & communicate the change
-          Award & keep promises
 
Candidate 1
The candidate followed almost the same model to migrate his old system to the newer one
and the main factors for his change to check the reduction of the cost related to
maintaining the current solutions.

EEvaluate
current
situation S
State the
needs for
change L
Locate &
expand
objectives S
Secure & Gain
commitement C A
Control &
Communicate
the cahnge
Award &
keep
promises

√ √ √ X X √

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

-          Evaluate the current situation and his efficiency with the business for the time
being and for the next three years and he found the company will to replace the
current up and running system with an upgraded or at least similar one as the
current is out of date.
 
-          State the need for change as the company could expand soon with the high
number of employees so it will be better to go for the change now and if the new
employee hired soon, they will engage with the new system directly and no need to
do a double work to teach them the old system then the new one
 
 
 
-          Locate & expand objectives the company will change the current system soon
the company needs to reduce the cost and dependency as the new solution will
reduce the cost of electricity and increase the uptime and availability.
 
 
-          Control & communicate the change  the company the time plane of the change
stopped for almost a three month as the other department didn’t approve any down
time as it was the sales season and now time to teach the employee the procedures
of the replacement which prove that all the stockholder need to be highlighted and
communicated with the proceed and the impact of the change.
 
 
-           Award & keep promises after the solution migration the cost factor is reduced
compared to the cost of the old system with 15 % at the first year 20 % and second
year and 28 % at the third year of the migration.
 

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

Candidate 2

For the recent change was done at the company the whole change was done by a
consultant which is hired by the main branch HQ company,

E Evaluate
current
situation S
State the
needs for
change L
Locate &
expand
objectives S
Secure & Gain
commitement C A
Control &
Communicate
the cahnge
Award &
keep
promises

√ √ √ √ √ ꓫ

-          Evaluate current situation the consultant evaluated the current status for the branch
and also the remote branches which gave a consolidated overview about the current state.

- State the need for change as the main goal of the change to keep the employee
connected whenever and where ever.

-          Locate & expand objectives the main objective for all branches to act as one
unit when all systems migrate to one which will give all employees the flexibility
to work from remote locations if needed and avoid distortion could happen to the
system specially during the working hours.

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

-          Secure & Gain commitment to secure the change all the stockholders aligned
before proceeding with any step including all the branches also the full plan a
process communicated and explained by the induction session to avoid any
obstacles could be faced.
 
 
-          Control & communicate the change to all the people by creating a dedicated
scoop for each department and each team members
 
-          Award & keep promises  As a result of that process the change was reached
successfully and caused that the company production raised by 12% at the first and
reduced to 11% at the second year and raised up to 18% at the third year and to
explain the degradation at the second year, because the company didn’t award the
employee in spit they adapted for the new system which consumed a lot of efforts
from there side so some of the employee left the company after the first year.
 

Chart Title
Number of employees per bracnh Precentage of fininshed tasks per year %

18
12

11

11
10

Fi r st Year Sec o n d Year Th i r d Year

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

Cost of delaying the change – need more explanation (samy or Mostafa)

Business Process re-modeling for sustainable change management

 
Adhering to change management policy in SMEs calls sustainability which gives
reliability
And motivation to the organization, however most of changes initiates a process re-
engineering which might contact each part of the SMEs operation.
 
There are not official published statistics to monitor the percentage of SMEs failed to
implement change through their systems, while Beer and Nohira (2000) assumed that 67%
of change initiative fail, whilst Hilley et al (2009) turned to Burnes (2004) and Cope
(2003) who claims that the rate could reach up to 90%.
 
SMEs decision and policy makers should get themselves away from the comfort zones and
stick to a usual business process remodeling and they are responsible for addressing the
right benchmarking, culture change and measurements which are required for such re-
modeling.
 
The researchers suggest Business process re-modelling could be over two majors
internally and externally:
 

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

Internally by innovate new techniques if producing products and train the human resources
to different processes and jobs, off-course this type of change might cause
Negative Psychological impacts over the employees, yet we may deal with it by following
Various motivation and team management techniques.
 
Externally, by recreating on usual basis the image of the SME fronting the market
stakeholders (Customers, partners and competitors) by offering different or more products,
serving more offers or going in partnerships with other organizations to open new markets
or increase the market shares.
 
The main aim of changes over both sides are getting the best case of business movement,
along with continuous process improvement, remembering that the best case would last for
a certain frame of time because the market is changing for different reasons as well.
 
Due to the lack of resources and references. The researchers would present case studies for
Large firms as lessons learned which could be applied to SMEs cases as the researchers
believe that it is scalable enough.

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

Successful business re-modeling lessons:  

 
Organization: Bharti Airtel – India (https://www.airtel.in/)
Process remodeling type: Outsourcing Core business.
 
Bharti Airtel – one the leading telecommunications providers in India and Africa decided
to outsource a core business process and shift into a global partnering model ( Giesen et
al.,2010). The company decided to focus internally on managing people, customers,
innovation, branding, finance and regulations.
 
Giesen et al. (2010) said “Bharti was very clear about its core focus in five areas: customer
management, people management and innovation, brand management, financing and
regulation.”
 
The company clearly mentioned before all “the key success factors for the growth and
development of the organization have been the internalizing of talent management as a
process and not restricting it to a few people in the organization” (Anand, 2011).
 
Bharati focused on improving its employees’ mind-sets and prepare them for leading
Future challenges and used different techniques similarly to the famous innovative of that
Apple and Google.
 
As a result, Bharati managed to grow through the 2008 economic crisis. “even at the
height of the economic crisis in 2008, Bharti was able to grow revenue by 37 percent, with
net income up 26 percent” stated (Giesen et al., 2010).
 
Till date Bharati is remembers as a “company created novel business models to gain
competitive advantage and as a result achieved superior profit” (Purkayastha and Sharma,
2016)
 
Bharati was an example for an innovative company that remodeled its business processes
Externally by outsourcing core business processes in global partnership and internally by
focusing on people improvement, customer management, branding, regulations and
finance operations as a change vision to gain strategic advantages.

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Impacts of Change management application on SMEs Business Excellence

References:
 Kotter, John P. (1996). Leading Change. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School
Press, 1996. Print.

 Appelbaum, S., Profka, E., Depta, A. and Petrynski, B., 2018. Impact of business
model change on organizational success. Industrial and Commercial Training,
50(2), pp.41-54.

 K. Vora, M., 2013. Business excellence through sustainable change management.

The TQM Journal, 25(6), pp.625-640.

 Case Studies | Accipio. Retrieved 13 June 2020, from

https://www.accipio.com/case-studies/

 Adler, P.S. (1992), Technology and the Future of Work (New York: Oxford
University Press). Autor, D., F. Levy and R. Murnane (2003), ‘The Skill Content of
Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration’, Quarterly Journal of
Economics 118, 4, 1279–1334.

 Belanger, J. (2006), ‘Technology and Work’, in M. Korczynski, R. Hodson and P.

Edwards (eds), Social Theory at Work (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp.
325–355.

 Brown, C. and B. Campbell (2002), ‘The Impact of Technological Change on

Work and Wages’, Industrial Relations 41, 1–33.

 Interview with Engineer Ashraf Refaat IT manager at Shell Egypt email

Ashraf.refaat@shelleg.com

 Interview with Engineer Amir Elserogy the service delivery manager at silicon 21
Email Amir.Elsorgy@silicon21.com

 Interview with Engineer Mazen Baloul the Information technology manager at

Gulf trading Email Mazen.Baloul@gig.com.qa

 Blokdijk, G. (2008). Change Management 100 Success Secrets. Newstead:

Emereo Pty Ltd.

 hamel, g., & Välikangas, l. (2003). The Quest for Resilience. Retrieved 14 June
2020, from https://hbr.org/2003/09/the-quest-for-resilience

 Ates, A., & Bititci, U. (2011). Change process: a key enabler for building
resilient SMEs. International Journal Of Production Research, 49(18), 5601-
5618. doi: 10.1080/00207543.2011.563825

 Chu, Yiu, & Smyrnios, Kosmas . (2019). How small-to-medium enterprises

thrive and survive in turbulent times.

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