African Journal of Business Management Vol. 6(50), pp. 11916-11922, 19 December, 2012 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJBM DOI: 10.5897/AJBM12.1439 ISSN 1993-8233©2012 Academic Journals Review An inclusive approach to structural transformation in organisational restructuring Johan van Graan 1 and Wilfred I. Ukpere 2 * 1 Department of Police Practice, 403 F-Block, Florida Campus University of South Africa, South Africa. 2 Department of Industrial Psychology and People Management, Faculty of Management, University of Johannesburg, South Africa. Accepted 12 December, 2012 Within the current global economy, experts appear to agree that the current unpredictable business environment requires management to discover innovative ways of organising their activities. Organisational restructuring is therefore used by management as a strategy to improve their efficiency. However, it is only advisable for organisations to restructure if there is a guarantee that it will lead to optimal performance. When members of an organisation do not understand the reason for restructuring, they may disregard the importance of the process. Hence, it is imperative for the management of an organisation to motivate the need for a change, as well as strengthen efforts towards making the difficult terrain of restructuring a success. Key words: Communication; Organisational change; Implementation; Restructuring; and Transformation INTRODUCTION Change in any organisation is unavoidable. Organi- sations worldwide are increasingly confronted with several challenges within a complex business environ- ment. Consequently, these organisations are forced to review and adapt their organisational structure in order to address these challenges and to meet up with the needs of the communities they serve (Ogbonna and Harris, 2003). As the organisational environment becomes increasingly complex and more subjected to frequent changes, a need to change the organisation‟s structure and adjust elements of the existing structure becomes imperative. Managers are thus challenged with the demand to introduce various changes during the trans- formation of their organisations‟ structures (Robbin and Judge, 2009). The design of an organisational structure capable of withstanding the needs of modern businesses has been one of the most challenging issues facing modern organi- sations and their managers. Over the past two decades, organisational structural change has become one of the most topical issues in management discourse. As a result, recent research interest has moved away from *Corresponding author. E-mail: wiukpere@uj.ac.za. the evaluation of merits and problems of traditional forms of organising to the investigation of new ways of restructuring organisations. Academics and practitioners appear to agree that the current unpredictable business environment requires management to discover innovative ways of organising their activities, in order to maintain a competitive advantage within a global context (Ogbonna and Harris, 2003:512). According to Bergh and Ngah-Kiing (2008:594), most research to date has described restructuring as a purposeful reaction to governance, strategy and industrial pressure. Some authors, including Kaplan and Weisbach (1992:107) argue that organi- sational restructuring is implemented to improve efficiency. Others have argued that a shift from weak to strong internal governance is behind most restructuring efforts, in order to refocus corporate strategies (Chatterjee et al., 2003:87-96). Research problem Modern organisations are buffeted with several challen- ges within a complex global business environment. Due to these complexities, organisations are always prompted to review and adapt their organisational structure to