1.1 Background
In this study, we primarily focus on the relationship and impact of communication on change management. Communication management is an important knowledge area in the project environment. PMI (2017) provides detailed information about communication management where it addresses how to plan, manage, and control communications. On the other side, the best definition of change management is a planned method to move or transit a firm, team, and individuals from existing or current state to the desired future state (Tamilarasu, 2012).
Waldersee and Griffiths (2004) conducted a study that examines the implementation process of many changes. The results were failures of the implementation processes due to many reasons. We believe that the communication aspects are the main reason for those failures. Some change management models consider communication as a step for a successful change. Case in point, the procedure of change management should allow communication between people who are involved in the change (Tamilarasu, 2012). Kotter’s eight steps model which focused on how to lead a change considered communication as a step in the model (Tamilarasu, 2012). However, other models of change do not include communication as a step. For example, McKinsey’s 7s model does not include communication as step in the model. Thus, Singh (2013) conducted a study that explains the importance of communication in implementing the McKinsey’s 7s model.
1.2 Objective and Originality
Project management substantially needs to deal with communication management and change management to meet the customer needs as well as the organization’s main goals. In recent decades, numerous studies have been performed to understand communication management in different areas but not related to the change management concept. However, this study focuses on new approach where it identifies the relationship and impact of communication on change management, especially by finding the best types of communication channels that could be used in change management models in project environment.
1.3 Contribution
Understanding the relation and impact of communication on change management will help the firms to minimize misunderstanding and team conflict. This study will contribute to establishing baseline in how to choose and improve communication channels in change management processes or models.
The rest of this study is structured as follows. The second section provides prior literature about the study; the third section outlines the methodology utilized; the fourth section presents the results; the fifth section gives the discussion of the result and finally, conclusions, limitation and further research directions of this study are presented.