
Commentaries | Jun 12,2021
Oct 16 , 2020
By Halima Abate (MD) ( Halima Abate (MD) is a public health professional with over a decade of experience. She can be reached at halimabate@gmail.com. )
In the sphere of administration and leadership, creating clear concepts, establishing efficiency as a guiding principle, and knowing how various actions might lead to efficiency keep the organisation dynamic and stable. No less important is focusing on decision-making processes that create activity.
However, a series of vested interests might challenge the momentum. We see this in almost every challenge that is out there. This has led to a lack of organisational entrepreneurship. The impact of this has been a major hurdle, making itself felt across industries and sectors. It has led to a lack of market confidence reflected in reluctance to embark on bold financial investments in the face of future volatility, uncertainty and lack of accountability.
Concurrently, there is also a serious concern regarding leadership, in which organisation leaders are being pressured to do more with less. They are also being tempted to change the ways in which structural arrangements, rules, standard operating procedures and relations with key stakeholders coalesce as a synergy. The question of how to reform the existing organisation has assumed greater urgency.
Efforts to change the organisational performance and maintain the existing strong dynamics reveals the fact that adjustment is a complex process involving a multitude of forces and agents. The role of organisational actors in this is crucial. The notion of organisational entrepreneurship - ranging from the emergence of such entrepreneurs to the implementation and possible institutionalisation of the changes they initiate – is an alternative model to follow. Actors who initiate changes that contribute to transforming the existing status quo - organisational entrepreneurs - contribute to changing the institution despite pressures toward stasis.
Transforming organisational arrangements to rational bureaucracy, leveraging resources to effectively change behaviours at both macro and micro levels and, on some occasions, reinventing the “rules of the game” are the most important approaches. Entrepreneur actors will use their position as an enabling environment for the organisation with an array of quality services that promote legitimacy and ability to enhance diverse stakeholders’ involvement.
This is easier said than done. The inertia that the average organisation is faced with are multidimensional. This can come from the burden placed by way of a lack of resources. It can be a company culture that disincentivises innovation and solidarity among members. It takes nothing less than a whole new way of thinking for the entrepreneurs across the organisation to forge ahead with significant innovative solutions to pending problems that, on the whole, are capable of changing the internal fabric of the organisations.
The entrepreneurs should build on optimistic and inspirational thoughts and pass that vision in a comprehensive way down the hierarchy. Working with imagination, insight and confidence are necessary requirements. But perhaps the most relevant talent an organisation can hope for is creating a common sense of purpose with the employees. Interconnectedness and working harmony between the leader and the team, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, is the surest way of keeping the desired vision alive throughout the entire creative process.
The case for Ethiopia is urgent. We need organisational entrepreneurs that initiate and actively participate in the implementation and exercise of changes that diverge from the existing practice, change the institutional environment, and ascertain whether the changes were successfully implemented. Such changes might be initiated within the boundaries of an organisation or within the broader institutional context, within which the actors are embedded and can create a new venture.
In a country where institutions are built around the person of - usually - the owner, this could be hard. Changing culture requires a great deal of interpersonal renegotiation, and hard choices will need to be made. Where survival is the issue, indeed, this should not be an obstacle.
PUBLISHED ON
Oct 16,2020 [ VOL
21 , NO
1068]
Commentaries | Jun 12,2021
Radar | Jan 07,2023
My Opinion | Aug 08,2020
Radar | Aug 10,2019
Sunday with Eden | Dec 07,2019
Radar | Apr 20,2019
Fortune News | Apr 12,2020
Radar | Jan 16,2021
Fortune News | Oct 19,2019
Commentaries | Oct 31,2020
Photo Gallery | 77714 Views | May 06,2019
Photo Gallery | 69731 Views | Apr 26,2019
Fortune News | 56157 Views | Jul 18,2020
Fineline | 55297 Views | Oct 03,2020
Dec 24 , 2022
Biniam Mikru heads the department of cabinet affairs under Mayor Adanech Abiebie. But...
Jul 2 , 2022 . By RUTH TAYE
On a rainy afternoon last week, a coffee processing facility in the capital's Akaki-Qality District was abuzz with activ...
Nov 27 , 2021
Against my will, I have witnessed the most terrible defeat of reason and the most sa...
Nov 13 , 2021
Plans and reality do not always gel. They rarely do in a fast-moving world. Every act...
Sep 30 , 2023
The recent gathering by the leadership - and the rank and file - of the Prosperity Pa...
Sep 23 , 2023
Ethiopia's contemporary political leaders and the policy wonks under their command ha...
Sep 16 , 2023
The Ethiopian economic narrative oscillates between pockets of resilience and signifi...
Sep 10 , 2023
Earlier this Ethiopian fiscal year, the heralding of a peace deal became synonymous w...
Sep 30 , 2023
A staple vegetable's price is ringing alarm bells. Onion prices have skyrocketed, with a kilo costing up to 120 Br on certain days. For man...
Sep 30 , 2023 . By BERSABEH GEBRE
A vital shift is on the horizon for Ethiopia's manufacturers, who once thrived on exports braced by the A...
Sep 30 , 2023 . By BERSABEH GEBRE
In a move rattling the coffee industry, officials of the Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Authority have impose...
Sep 30 , 2023 . By MUNIR SHEMSU
Applying advanced reproductive biotechnology to dairy cattle is indicated as a way to rectify the underwh...