Blog 6: Personal reflection

Today’s highly competitive business environment has resulted in changes in the workplaces more suddenly and frequently than ever before. Mergers, acquisitions, new technology, restructuring and downsizing can be considered as all factors that contribute to an increasing changes in organizations. As such, the ability to adapt to changing work conditions is the key for not only individual but also organization’s survival. Unfortunately, very often, people are commonly not comfortable and favourable with changes and thus they resist to those changes as a defence mechanism. Importantly, “resistance to change” has been identified as one of the key contributors to the failure of many efforts to initiate change within an organization.

As such, understanding reasons for resistance to change, identify signs of resistance, as well as learning to manage change resistance is critical. In this sense, for me reflecting on the learning over the last 12 weeks, chapter 6 – resistance to change has most resonated with me.  Indeed, “resistance to change” chapter has helped me considerably in terms of understanding human factor in managing change. For instance, understanding why do people resist to change, recognize signs of resistance and how to manage those changes would helped me, to a some extent, effectively deal with them in the future in the workplace as well as in personal life.

Despite the fact that in reality, things are different and more challenging than in theories, understanding resistance to change, in my view, is a very important step in becoming an effective and successful manager. For instance, if the company implement necessary changes and the manager is being aware of employees are resisting changing by showing their sabotaging, blaming or accusing (this may result from either employee’s discomfort with uncertainty or lack of conviction that change is needed. In this situation, an effective manager then can implement a number of techniques such as inform those people as to the rationale for the change; communicate and provide them information, offer technical and emotional resources, play a supportive role, or even offering them incentives (Palmer et al, 2009).

It can be concluded that change plays an important role in achieving organizational success. However, changes are, quite often; result in resistances among employees. Therefore, understanding why do people resist changing, recognizing signs of those resistances as well as utilize techniques to address them is the key and thus can be considered as one of the most important factors in effective managing change.

References

Palmer, I, Dunford, R and Akin, G 2009, Managing Organizational Change: a multiple perspectives approach, 2nd edn, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York.



Blog 5: Contingency approach to Change

In today highly competitive, yet rapidly changing business environment, contemporary organizations are facing the fact that: in order to remain competitive, they have no choices but effectively manage changes when they occur. It is suggested that while there is no best way of manage change, it is possible to identify the most appropriate organizational form to fit the context in which the organization has to operate in. In other words, organizations can employ the contingency approach if they are to effectively manage change.

Contingency approach to change is based on the ideas that because each organization is unique and change over time and thus there is no one best way to manage change. In other words, the scale of organizational change may vary, and in doing so, require differences in the styles of change management. For instance, as an organization grows in size, management style must be changed often for the organization to survive; or as environmental conditions faced by each organization can quickly and radically change, managers have to come up with new contingency plans and strategies and sometimes they have to make tough decision in the face of unpredictable events that occur in their organization’s environment (Davidson et al, 2006).

According to Dunphy & Stace (1990), to effectively manage change, the style of change (collaborative, consultative, directive, and coercive) and the scale of change (fine-turning, incremental adjustment, modular, or corporate transformation) has to be matched to the needs of the organization (Palmer et al, 2009). For instance, when an organization wants to improve and redefine methods, policies and procedures (fine turning), then the leadership style should be collaborative. For example: widespread employee involvement in key decision that affects the organization’s future. Similarly, when the organization needs to distinct modifications to strategies, structures, and management processes (incremental adjustment), the organization’s management style then should be consultative. By contrast, if the organization needs to implement radical realignment or restructuring parts of the organization (modular transformation) then directive should become the organization’s leadership style. Likewise, if revolutionary changes throughout the organization, to structures, systems and procedures (corporate transformation) are necessary, the leadership style then should become coercive (forcing or imposing change to the organization).

From a contingency approach perspective, it can be said that, to effectively manage change, the strategy for managing change should depend on the degree of change that is required to bring an organization back into fit with the environment and on the leadership required.

References

Davidson, P, Simon, A, Gottschalk, L, Hunt, J, Wood, G, & Griffin, R 2006, Management: core Concepts and Skills, Australian edn, John Wiley & Sons, Milton QLD, Australia.

Palmer, I, Dunford, R and Akin, G 2009, Managing Organizational Change: a multiple perspectives approach, 2nd edn, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York.

Menkhoff, T & Wah, CY 2005, Change Leadership in Small Enterprises: Evidence from Singapore, viewed 22 September 2009, https://mercury.smu.edu.sg/rsrchpubupload/5958/ChangeLeadershipApproachesinSMEs(Finalversion)29Sept053.pdf

Blog 4: Organizational Development Approach to Change

It is believed that organizations evolve through various life cycles just as people progress through different stages of their lives. Without this evolution, organizations would be unable to develop and grow. However, organization evolvement also means they will undergo various changes and thus those changes may have significant impact on both the employees and the organization. As such effectively implement changes is one of the most important aspects of change management. In order to achieve this, it is suggested that management should employ a number of approaches such as organization development (OD).

Typically, OD is concerned with changing attitudes, perceptions, behaviours and expectations. Specifically, OD is an effort that is planned, organization wide, and managed from the top to increase organizational effectiveness (Davidson et al, 2006). Yet, according to Beckhard (2009), OD has a number of characteristics. Firstly, it is planned and involves a systematic diagnosis of the whole organization system; it is action-oriented and aimed at improving the organization’s effectiveness in the long term. Secondly, changing attitudes and behaviour is the focus of the change effort; experiment-based learning is very important as it helps to identify current behaviours and modifications needed. And finally, the top management is committed to the change process as well as groups and teams should be formed to effectively implement change.

For instance, in the DuPont case, when implementing change, top management has proved the commitment to the change process. For example, in an effort to improve overall organization effectiveness, the plant manager (Tom) came to the University of Virginia and asked professor Gib Akin for providing DuPont’s employees new perspectives on their work as well as their organization to help them develop and improve continually. At the same time, to effectively change employees’ attitudes and behaviours, the work culture has been built. In this culture, the local model of teamwork was organized around the southern stock-car racing metaphor, which was not only used to explain teamwork but was also the pattern for accomplishing it. Similarly, illumination of the local meaning of effective supervision, high performance, and what constituted a good day at work gave those with leadership roles constructs to work with for making improvement. Importantly, members of the so-called Leadership Core Team were instructed to introduce change as an experiment – something to be tried and watched closely, and after a designated time, if it is not working as hoped it can be stopped.

As such , it can be said that to some extent DuPont’s management has effectively implement changes by providing commitment, diagnose the organization systematically, planned for long-term, formed groups and teams as well as learning based on experiment.

 References

Palmer, I, Dunford, R and Akin, G 2009, Managing Organizational Change: a multiple perspectives approach, 2nd edn, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York.

Davidson, P, Simon, A, Gottschalk, L, Hunt, J, Wood, G, & Griffin, R 2006, Management: core Concepts and Skills, Australian edn, John Wiley & Sons, Milton QLD, Australia.

Blog 3: Resistance to Change

In today highly competitive business environment, to some extent, changes have become an everyday part of organizational dynamics. Importantly, employee resistance has been identified as a critically important contributor to the failure of many well-intend and well-conceived efforts to initiate change within the organization. As such, being able to recognize resistance to change and effectively deal with it can be considered as an important aspect of change management.

Basically, resistance to change is the action taken by individuals or groups when they perceive that a change that is occurring as a threat to them. From a change management perspective, resistance to change can be viewed as a result of a wide range of reasons. According to Palmer et al (2009), employees resist changing because they discomfort with uncertainty, lack of conviction that change is needed, perceived negative effects on interests, believe that the timing is wrong, or simply they dislike of change. Although resistance to change can be effectively managed either by communication and participation, facilitation and supports, negotiation and agreement (Palmer et al, 2009), some of the resistances may become more challenging to manage, especially when there is not enough conviction that changes are necessary.

This is due to the fact that if people are not properly informed, or the purpose and benefits of the change are not explained to them, they are likely to view the current situation as satisfactory and affords to change as useless and unsatisfactory. Consequently, not being convinced that change is needed would result in uncertainty, which is considered as one of the biggest cause of employees’ resistance to change (Davidson et al, 2006). They may become anxious and nervous, they may worry about their ability to meet new job demands, and they may think that their job security is threatened, and so on. Very often it is lack of information about organizational changes leads to rumours and dysfunctional activities. For instance, when stockholders voted to merge the mining company BHP and Billiton, various unions protested the meeting. For weeks in the lead-up to the vote they campaigned against the merger and yet there was no indication that any job would be affected (Davidson et al, 2006). In this case, it is evident that the resistance was driven by uncertainty because nobody really knew what the new company would do in terms of employment numbers or conditions.

As such, it can be said that to some extent, lack of conviction that change can be quite challenging to manage. Thus organization would take these factors into consideration if they are to manage change effectively.

References

Davidson, P, Simon, A, Gottschalk, L, Hunt, J, Wood, G, & Griffin, R 2006, Management: core Concepts and Skills, Australian edn, John Wiley & Sons, Milton QLD, Australia.

Palmer, I, Dunford, R and Akin, G 2009, Managing Organizational Change: a multiple perspectives approach, 2nd edn, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York.

Bolognese, A 2008, Employee Resistance to Organizational Change, New Foundations, 12 December, viewed 28 August 2009, http://www.newfoundations.com/OrgTheory/Bolognese721.html

Blog 2: Diagnosis for change – the Boeing case

In today rapidly changing business environment, changes within an organization, to some extent, is an inevitable process because organizations continually need to keep pace with the changing business environment in which they operate. However, to effectively manage changes, organizations should carefully analyse their organization in order to identify what, where and how changes are needed. In order to achieve this, organizations can apply a number of diagnostic model such as 7-S Framework model, Star model, or Congruence model. For instance, in the Boeing case, the congruence model can be applied in order to identify a wide range of issues.

The congruence model based on the assumption that the effectiveness of an organization is determined by the consistency (congruence) between the various elements such as environment, resources, history, and strategies of the organization that are developed and evolve over time (Palmer et al, 2009). This is to say that, in order to effectively identify an organization’s critical problems, when analysing an organization, a number of factors in regards to environment, resources, history and strategy need to be taken into considerations. More specifically, several key questions should be addressed. For example, what demands does the environment put on the organization; to what extent are resources fixed rather than flexible in their configuration; what have been the major stages of the organization’s development, what is current impact of such a historical factors; or how has the organization defined its core mission, and so on. For instance, when market demand increased, Boeing’s management attempted to change capabilities instantaneously to meet the market needs. Unfortunately, this change has resulted in manufacturing crisis which affected corporate reputation of Boeing.

Similarly, in terms of resources, when Boeing adopted lean manufacturing principles, the process of automating the production line has caused some problems, and the lack of collaboration in regard to product procurement meant that the same product could be manufactured by Boeing for one aircraft but subcontracted for another.

Yet, from history perspective, Boeing’s diversifying out of the traditional airline industry into information services and the space industry has caused demoralizing for employees, and indeed, Boeing’s employee morale was at a low level.

Finally, in terms of strategy, the acquisition of McDonnell Douglas in 1997 has caused Boeing difficulties in the way of cultural synthesis. McDonnell Douglas’s strong culture combined with Boeing’s family-oriented culture has resulted in integration issues. As well, strategic decision made in 2001 to move the headquarters of Boeing’s operations is believed to be the factor that significantly disturbed the culture of Boeing.

As such, it can be concluded that, apart from other diagnostic tools, the congruence model appears to be the suitable tool because the history of Boeing plays a significant role in its current position.

 

References

Palmer, I, Dunford, R and Akin, G 2009, Managing Organizational Change: a multiple perspectives approach, 2nd edn, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York.

Nadler, A and Tushman, L n.d., Managing Organizations – Readings and Cases, viewed 24 August 2009, http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/pi/ppf/Congruence-Model.pdf

Wyman, O n.d., The Congruence Model – A Roadmap for Understanding Organizational Performance, viewed 27 August 2009, http://www.oliverwyman.com/ow/pdf_files/Congruence_Model_INS.pdf

Blog 1: Organizational change – General Motors (GM)

In today’s competitive industry, companies should be willing and able to change their practice model as quickly as the situation changes if they are to remain competitive. Without the ability to transform in today’s industry a company would be failed in their lack of knowledge and adaptability. However, organizational change, to some extent, has also impacts on a number of aspects of the organization such as reputation or credibility.  General Motors (GM) is an example. GM is a corporation that has transformed its organizational model from a traditional model because they have learned that in order to survive in the current turbulent business environment, they have to change.

Traditional organization models consist of a hierarchical structure with a president or executive at the top, vice presidents or senior managers, then lower management below, and the majority of the employees on the bottom. In traditional organizational models, jobs are grouped by function into departments; this was the case at GM. GM was divided into different independent automakers: Buick, Cadillac, Oldsmobile, Chevrolet, and Pontiac. Each independent automaker was operated differently and competing with each other.

The transformed organizational model is centralized and unified; a team versus several individuals working towards common goals. A transformed organizational model does not have several departments, all performing different tasks and with different needs.

It took several years for GM to transform into a more centralized organization using the transformed organizational model. This transformation significantly changed the diverse workforce at GM. The staff, including management, at GM had to learn a central set of skills. GM engineers also had to centralize and learn each other’s methods of design and engineering. Staff needed to learn to communicate and work as a team not as individuals.

Importantly, because GM is a large corporation therefore when this transition took place several groups of people were affected. Two of the external stakeholders that were affected were customers and local communities where GM’s factories were built. Some of GM’s vehicle brands were discontinued making upgrading or servicing particular vehicle models for customers. Customers are traditional loyal to particular brands so when those brands are no longer available they look for something new. As a result, this not only caused GM losing some of their customer base but also affected GM’s reputation.

Yet, during the transition some of GM’s factories were closed in order to streamline production. When large corporations in towns close their factories, entities such as, restaurants, gas stations, the real-estate market, and grocery stores suffer financially. Therefore, this causes a downturn in the community’s financial well-belling. This type of financial suffering causes a chain reaction in the community; less money coming into the community causes unemployment, large budgets cuts, and police and fire departments are downsized. When this type of downsizing occurs, people tend to move out of the town causing the cycle to start over.

Therefore, it can be said that, to some extent, GM were not be able to avoid damage to their reputation. This is because as GM implemented changes, some of their customer base has been lost as well as the local communities were considerably affected.