CHANGE MANAGEMENT - CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF ROMANIAN COMPANIES

Based on current management consulting practices and study of change management theories, the paper presents an overview of what are considered the most appropriate change management models for a sustainable development of Romanian companies; these companies are facing challenges generated by adverse market conditions and need for suitable managerial skills. According to several studies published in the past two decades by professionals in the field of organizational change management, most of the change projects fail (approx. 70%); the main responsible factor is represented by resistance to change coming from people involved in the process, employees and managers. There is no similar data available for Romania, where change management initiatives are few and mostly encountered in the private sector. In this view, the paper presents three of the most widely known and used theoretical models for change management: Kotter (1995), Ackerman and Anderson (2010) and Prosci-ADKAR (2006), aiming to provide professionals a starting point for the effective management of organizational change projects. These models approach change management in different ways, but all agree that managing the human side of change is the key to success. The Romanian particularity resides in our aim to identify national industries that could benefit the most from well managed change processes. The model used to meet this goal is based on the extensive research of 37,000 public and private companies from Romania, using their financial performance data from 2008 to 2013 and trying to identify industries /sub-industries with highest variance in performance.