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Journal “Value Addition, Vol ,1, 2010” (ISSN: 0000 - 0000)
Title Page
Research Title:
Leadership and IT-Driven Organizational Change in the Sri Lankan Context
T Suraweera, E P E Rodrigo, H M G L Samarathunga, K D S S Wimalarathna, G D N
Jayasekara and K M M S Somarathne
Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, New Kandy Road, Malabe, Sri Lanka.

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Leadership and IT-Driven Organizational Change in the
Sri Lankan Context
T Suraweera, E P E Rodrigo, H M G L Samarathunga, K D S S Wimalarathna,
G D N Jayasekara, K M M S Somarathne.
Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, New Kandy Road, Malabe, Sri Lanka.
ABASTRACT
This research investigates Information Technology (IT) driven organizational changes in Sri
Lankan organizations by focusing on the leadership aspects. The main objective of this research
is to identify which leadership styles are effective in ensuring the success of change management
processes within IT project implementations. In order to achieve this, firstly the research conducts
an in-depth investigation of the relationship between leadership and change management
practices within organizations. Encapsulating the findings, a model is proposed to pinpoints the
leadership style that should be adopted within the change management process of the
organization.
The research involved qualitative methods. Models by Goalman (2000), Kotter (1996), and
Cooper and Zmud (1990) were consulted to build an initial framework surrounding leadership and
change management practices. Using the Case Study method, in-depth interviews and document
reviews were conducted for six leading Sri Lankan organizations which had undergone IT
change. Analysis of results revealed that organizations are increasingly realizing the value of
employing change management practices when introducing IT change to their organizations. The
attention of leaders was found to be more focused on the culture, behaviours and attitudes of
employees who are part of the change process than on the steps within the change process itself
which are prescribed by change gurus. Eliminating people resistance has been treated with the
highest priority based on the argument that effectiveness of change management processes is
directly linked to winning over the people resource. Leadership styles were found to be practiced
more from a public relations (PR) perspective to win the people over in the short term and
thereby ensuring long term success.
Key words: Leadership, Organizational Change, Information Technology, Change Management
Process, Leadership Styles, Sri Lankan Context, IT Driven Change
INTRODUCTION
John P. Kotter, one of the change management gurus has said that the change is an
unavoidable reality in the business world today. In such a turbulent environment if the
change is not handled properly it can drive them crazy, costs a great deal of money and
will cause a lot of pain. Modern business organizations are turbulent and face dramatic
changes such as strategic changes, technology changes, business process changes,

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mergers and acquisitions. Taking these aspects in to consideration IT driven change plays
a critical role in organizations today. IT driven organizational change is considered to be
the current focus in many business organizations as they introduce or implement new IT
systems nowadays to gain the competitive advantage (Cameron and Green, 2004). If the
organization did not adapt to changes, the organizations could not compete. Managing of
change is important in order to embrace the change and reap its benefits. Leadership
plays a vital role in managing change by involving and supporting throughout the process
to make the change a success. Many studies have highlighted the importance of
leadership in change management. According to Kotter (1996), leadership is very much
related to change and as the velocity of change increases, there is a greater need for
effective leadership.
There are a number of studies on importance of leadership and change management
(Kotter, 1996; Cameron and Green, 2004; Patson and McCalman, 2000; Beerel, 2009).
However leadership styles that should be adopted for managing an effective IT change
process has received lesser attention. Research focus draws the attention towards the
leadership styles to be adopted during change management process when organizations
go through IT driven organizational changes.
No past research has been reported on leadership and change management in Sri Lanka.
It has been identified that for most organizations in Sri Lanka change management is a
new practice. Therefore, this study makes a valuable contribution to the field of
leadership and change management as this research carries a comprehensive study to fill
the knowledge gap in that area.
This paper presents the finding of the first phase of the research. It comprises of five
sections followed by the introduction. In the next section literature review is presented
and the results are given in section four. Paper ends with the discussion of research study
and suggestions for further research.

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LITERATURE REVIEW
As a background to the study this section briefs on the leadership and leadership styles,
IT implementation process and change management processes and IT driven change
management. The relevance of leadership and management of IT driven organizational
change is examined here.
Information Technology plays a significant role in organizations‟ business processes
today. IT has triggered many changes forcing organizations to embrace changes which
happen due to IT implementations. Many researchers have introduced different IT
implementation process models (Rogers, 1983 ; Kwon and Zmud, 1987; Gerwin 1988).
Basically all models are based on three main processes namely: initiation,
implementation and naturalization. These researchers have identified that implementation
of IT changes should be well planed and should be carry out systematically in order to
gain the real benefits of change. Failing to manage the change effectively will end up in
poor implementations (Patson and McCalman, 2000).
Researchers argue that proper framework should be adopted to carry out the IT
implementation as well as to manage the IT driven change simultaneously. Past
researchers have developed a number of models to explore as change management
processes. Three step change model (Lewin, 1951), eight steps model (Kotter, 1995) and
ADKAR model (Prosci, 1996) can be cited as examples. All these models address the
change management in general, and still no comprehensive model has been developed to
depict IT driven change management process. Kotter‟s (1996) eight steps model targets
large scale organizational change and gives a comprehensive elaboration about the
change management process and as it directly establishes a relationship with the

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leadership and organizational change process, which is the underlying concept of this
study. Hence, Kotter‟s change model is used as the base of study in the research.
Number of researchers have highlighted that leaders should manage the change in order
to achieve effective organizational change (Kotter,1996 ; Lewin, 1951; Jicks,1991). In
the context of change management Kotter (2002) defines leadership as:
What the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and
inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles (Kotter, 1996:25.)
This research focuses on leadership styles. Studies have highlighted that leadership styles
play a vital role in organizational change. Goleman (2000) have mentioned that
organizational climate is influenced by leadership style. Number of leadership styles are
experimented, researched and have found by the contributors such as Lewin (1939);
Likert (1967) and Goleman (2000). These contributors argue that leaders do not rely on
just one leadership but it can change according to the scenario (Goleman, 2000).
Conceptualization
A high level conceptual view of relationship between leadership and IT driven change is
shown in Fig.1.
As shown in Fig.1 the change management process need to be practised inside the IT
implementation process. The effectiveness of this practice is directly affected by
leadership styles. To examine this framework, models as shown in Table 1 are used.
In summary, the following inferences have been made from the literature review:
 Leadership is critical for an effective change management.
 From leadership aspect, leadership styles will have a higher influence on the
effectiveness of the change management.

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 Steps follows in change management process will become critical success factors for
the IT change process.
 Organizations must give all the three aspects (IT implementation, Change
management and leadership styles) their focus when IT driven change is taking
place.
 The final framework for the research can be built as in Fig.1.
 Organizations must follow change management process within their IT change
process. (As shown in Fig1 )
 For the real world case scenario analysis purpose three models namely, Kotter
(1996) eight step model, Cooper and Zmud (1900) IT Diffusion model and Goleman
(2000) Six leadership Styles model can be adopted to the research framework.
METHODOLOGY
This study focuses on real-life scenarios and explores “How” and “Why” questions.
Hence, we adopted the case study approach. Case study approach is a method used to
narrow down a very broad field of research into one easily researchable topic. According
to Shuttleworth (2008), case study method attempts to test a theory with a typical case or
a specific topic. Thereby using the case studies we will be able to develop and practically
test the research findings from literature as well as see the practical aspects of the
scenario.
In this study, the framework which was synthesised from the literature survey is used to
develop interview protocols and for the case analysis. Semi-structured interviews in six
organizations were conducted which has undergone IT changes. Case study data was
collected by our research authors using interviews of approximately one hour duration

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and based on the same interview protocol. Top IT executives in leading Sri Lankan
organizations were interviewed including who have contributed in large IT
implementations. Table 1 presents profiles of the cases which have been studied in this
research.
RESULTS
Table 2 presents the summery of the findings. From the case study investigation it is
evident that most organizations do not use a formal approach towards change
management. However they have adopted certain processes associated with change
management, without a conscious application of them.
The complex IT changes in most organizations were associated with implementing
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. When the IT change had been triggered by
ERP system it has lead them to realise the importance of managing the change.
According to a top IT executive many organizations in Sri Lanka are not aware of change
management.
Unfortunately I doubt that they know not John P. Kotter but the area
he contributed (Case C).
Most IT changes the case study organizations went through were successful according to
their own judgement. However it was evident from the investigation that most of the
projects have taken longer time than they planned for. Certain organizations suffer from
the problem of not utilizing their system fully. However without practicing a formal
change management approach, these organizations managed to be successful in there
change may be merely due to a proper leadership. Generally these organizations highly

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focussed on Step 4, 7 and 8. These steps require complete support from the leader.
Therefore leadership involvement and the support to the change can be considered as
high.
According to six cases generally they followed Affiliative style, Authoritative style and
Democratic style out of all six leadership styles during the change. These leadership
styles were identified from the characteristics (Goleman 2000) they possessed. Choosing
the leadership style was situation oriented. In general during the initiation of change they
practised Authoritative then Democratic and in the latter part of change the focus was
towards Affiliative style.
In exceptional cases organizations had used Coercive Style apart from those styles.
According to an IT executive during the ERP implementation their motto was:
SAP able or Sack able (Case B).
Facing an ERP implementation was the common situation to those organizations which
used Coercive. This situation caused them go through dramatic changes for the first time
and face higher people resistance. According to the IT executives‟ perceptions, lack of a
proper organizational culture was the cause for people resistance. Therefore the situation
have forced these organizations adopt Coercive style but they shifted to Affiliative style
ones people got adapted to the change. According to the Case F and Case E they follow
people oriented leadership style:
We do not insist people to do it instead we ask shall we do it (Case F).
I think people are more part of the organization than earlier (Case E.)
Therefore from the case study analysis it is evident that leadership style strongly effected
on orgnization to be successful in change. Without any formal approch to change
managemnet case organizations leadership was the force to drive the change. Therefore
during the change process they followed people oriented leadership styles such as

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Authoritaive, Democratic ,Affiliative styles. Use of this people oriented leadership
approach made them successful in thier change.
DISCUSSION
This research revealed another dimention of change mangement other than change
managemnet process and leadership. Cases revealed „people resistance‟ is another
dimention that should be foucsed during change management.
People resist. It is not a very simple thing. The change is very tuff for
people (Case A).
Dramtetic change lead them to face remarkable situations of people resistance. In some
cases problem of people resistance lead them to adopt rigid methods to avoid it which
lead to unsatisfaction of emplyees. However in these situations change have been
accepeted by emplyees for the fear of losing thier jobs.
Not having a proper people focussed change management approach and lack of a change
supprotive culture must have lead to people resistance. However these organizations have
used several methods to deal with people resistance. Proper communication of change ,
higher support and invlovement from leadership, adopting people oriented leadership
styles, use of feedback mechanism and proper trainning are some of methods used.
In the effort of eliminating people resistance case organizations have focused on
recreating their culture. Having a change suppritive culture is considered to be the key
element for avoiding people resistance.
In summary, this research has focussed on leadership and change management aspect in
an IT driven organizational change in the context of Sri Lanka. This research confirms

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that leadership plays a critical role in change management. It is evident that a proper
leadership can lead the change to a success and use of people oriented leadership styles
can avoid people resistance. Finally this research have identified Authoritative,
Democratic and Affiliative leadership styles are the considered to be best leadership style
to be adopted during the change management process to making a change a success.
However this study suggests that the organizations should follow a formal change
management process when dealing with IT –driven change and they should use people
oriented leadership styles to make the change a success.
The knowledge gap in the area of change management in the Sri Lankan context should
be filled as the proper awareness and knowledge on this area carries a higher value for
the business organizations. This research focussed on identifying the appropriate
leadership styles and the process to be used in managing the change. Still there is a
knowledge gap in the cultural aspect of change management area. Therefore
investigating on the proper culture which is supportive to change could be another area
for future research.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors wish to thank the case study organizations and the IT executives who kindly
provided information to carry out this research. Due to the confidential nature these
details are not disclosed. The support of Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology,
Malabe is sincerely acknowledged.
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