Socio-economic aspects of organizational change management

Radical changes faced by human society in the second half of the twentieth century had their repercussions on enterprises, imposing a new business philosophy of organizational behaviour and action as an imperative for success. The strategic approach in change management and human resource (HR) management has taken the place of the dominant management paradigm. It emphasizes the importance of the active attitude of the enterprises towards changes, which implies the processes of anticipating, initiating, creating, and introducing new changes in the daily business life of the enterprises. The organizational changes represent constant challenges for HR managers, too. Acceptance and active participation in changes significantly affects the business success of the enterprises and society as a whole. In addition to a positive attitude towards change, employees feel and show a negative attitude in the form of resistance to the organizational change. Therefore, managers face a very serious problem on a daily basis, how to overcome various resistances to changes in employees. The basic assumption that is made when implementing the process of change management and HR management in modern enterprises is that the human resources of the enterprises are the most important intangible business resources which have strategic importance for achieving competitive advantages. Based on this knowledge, the paper analyses the process of change management and the relationship to change. The attitude towards change is analysed both from the perspective of the enterprises, HR managers, and from the perspective of employees. For that purpose, relevant theoretical material was used, as well as adequate scientifically based methodology in the form of methods of analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, comparative and historical methods. Based on the conducted research, it can be concluded that HR managers play a key role in managing organizational change and overcoming various employee resistances to change. That is the reason why they must be able to recognize and understand the basic tendencies of change and potential resistance of employees in order to generate and mobilize the available potentials for initiating and realizing future changes.