Change Management and Risk Assessment in IT Industry

Organizations adopt change to enhance their overall performance. To compete and survive in the ever increasing and changing market need, organizations need to be innovative for which adoption to change is required. Due to unique organizational change, the people within the organization may face a unique risk and their responses affect the objectives during change implementation process. The study is based upon qualitative and quantitative analysis for identifying and assessing the risk factors of change management process using Change Risk Assessment Model (CRAM), hierarchical model approach. The interviews are conducted for identification of top change risk factors from top professionals of IT industry and an optimal sample of 82 IT companies registered with Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) is selected. For qualitative analysis, the weights are assigned to each risk factor using CRAM questionnaire and for quantitative analysis, the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) is used to assess the influence of each risk factor on the change. The present study not only focusses on the discussion of risk factors but also describes the risk mitigation strategies for ensuringsuccess. The empirical results suggest that leadership is the key change risk factor followed by communication and training while user acceptance and security is found to be least important ones among the considered risk factors.