Organizational Change: Pros & Cons, Ways to Manage Report

Own analysis of the situation

The case scenario, contained in the assignment, provides us with insight on what can be considered pros and cons, within the context of implementing organizational change. Given the described situation, the associated pros can be outlined as follows:

1. Reducing the rate of employees’ turnover,
2. Increasing the extent of employees’ professional effectiveness,
3. Increasing the extent of the company’s overall rate of commercial competitiveness.

At the same time, there are a number of drawbacks to the proposed organizational change, such as

1. The factor of employees’ psychological resistance to change,
2. The risk for the extent of company’s competitiveness to be undermined, if the process of restructuring takes too long,
3. The fact that, while being provided with additional professional responsibilities, the employees are very likely to experience the sensation of strong emotional distress,
4. The probability for the selected employees to prove themselves professionally inadequate while performing tasks associated with gathering business intelligence information and reaching out the end-customers.

Nevertheless, due to the fact that, as it appears from the case scenario, there was a good reason for the company to consider implementing organizational change (as the mean of reducing the number of seasonal layoffs); such implementation could hardly be considered optional. Therefore, it represents a matter of crucial importance for managers to have a good understanding of what should be considered keys to ensuring the success of organizational restructuring. The approaches to enhancing the effectiveness of organizational change, recommended for utilization by managers, could be outlined as follows:

1. Communication – managers should never overlook the importance of explaining to employees the actual motivations behind the intended change and such change’s actual objectives.¹ Employees must be able to feel that they actively participate in the process of change. This will empower them in their own eyes and will bring the element of psychological comfort into the ordeal.
2. Facilitation and support – this approach to helping employees to overcome their fear of change is being concerned with managers’ ability to understand the fact that people are quite capable of accepting unavoidable, once it has been made clear to them that there are no alternatives,
3. Negotiation and agreement – this particular strategy, aimed at helping employees to adapt to organizational change, maybe most effectively deployed in companies with highly trained employees, such as the one described in assignment’s case scenario.

The earlier outlined strategies to managing organizational change provide us with a clue on how managers may proceed with addressing the situation, described in the assignment’s case scenario. First of all, they would have to make it clear to the workers that assigning them with additional duties is in their best interests, as being employed on a full-time basis will not only eliminate the factor of job-related uncertainty out of employees’ lives but will also provide them with the prospect of career-building. Second of all, employees must be put in a position of perceiving the intended change as truly ‘empowering’. Third of all, the subtle sabotage of a change that is being implemented, on the part of some intellectually inflexible employees, must be dealt with in a rather decisive manner.²

Team analysis of the situation

Despite the fact that the provided case scenario does not specify whether employees are being adequately trained to be given the task of gathering relevant business information or communicating with end-consumers, we can assume that they will be able to address this task rather effectively. The reason for this is simple – the possession of a university or college diploma on one’s part (the context of the provided case scenario leaves very few doubts that it is indeed being the case with company’s employees), usually presupposes such an individual’s possession of interactive skills.

Therefore, it will only be logical to expect that, after having been asked to consider expanding the scope of their professional duties, the majority of rationally-minded workers would be quite comfortable with the idea, especially after having realized that this is being the foremost precondition for their continued employment with the company.

This, however, also means that upon being exposed to the perspective of having to deal with what they may perceive as an ‘additional workload’, some employees will be naturally inclined to adopt a skeptical attitude towards managers’ initiative. Nevertheless, given the fact that the provided case scenario makes an explicit point in referring to the company’s workforce as such that consists of highly trained professionals, we can safely assume that this problem could be successfully resolved, for as long as managers find proper performance-boosting incentives, the exposure to which will increase the extent of every individual employee’s professional enthusiasm.

For example, in order to ensure the unwavering professional enthusiasm, on the part of ‘perfectionist’ type workers, it may prove sufficient enough for the managers to convince them to perceive their newly emerged responsibilities as an indication of their increased professional value. Family-oriented employees, on the other hand, may very well be stimulated to consider assuming additional duties as the consequence of being presented with such a work-stimulating incentive as the company’s offer to provide a dental insurance plan.

There is a variety of different ways to implement the intended change. For example, while taking care of their primary responsibilities, during the course of a high season, employees may be prompted to stay at work for an extra hour longer, so that they would be able to attain practical skills in gathering business information or in communicating with end-customers. Another way to address the issue is encouraging workers to attend communication/cognition-enhancing courses, in time when seasonal demand for their presence at the office is being particularly low. What represents the matter of crucial importance for managers, in this respect, is to make sure that employees perceive the process of becoming qualified in additional professional fields as something that has a practical rather than purely theoretical significance.

It is needless to mention, of course, that requiring employees to perform additional job-related tasks may result in undermining the efficiency of how they would go about taking care of their primary work duties. Managers, however, should not think of this as an unmanageable obstacle on the way of implementing organizational change. After all, the sheer beneficence of not having to resort to seasonal layoff, as the method of ensuring the company’s commercial competitiveness, overweighs the apparent disadvantage of burdening workers with an additional workload. That is, of course, if non-unionized workers are being concerned.

And, as the context of a provided case scenario implies, this is being exactly the case – otherwise, the company’s managers would not be able to justify employees’ seasonal layoffs by seasonal fluctuations within the supply/demand ratio on the market. In any case, given the fact that today’s markets are being highly dynamic/competitive, it does not provide managers with many choices as to how the effectiveness of the company’s functioning can be enhanced. What it means is that, as soon as the necessity for organizational change emerges, managers should preoccupy themselves with creating objective preconditions for such change to occur as smoothly and quickly as possible.

References

Diamond, Arlyne “Managing Organizational Change”. InfoBayArea.Com. (2006). Web.

Durant, Michael “Managing Organizational Change”. Credit Research Foundation Online. (2000). Web.

McShane, Steven & Von Glinow, Mary. Organizational Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2008.

Footnotes

1. M. Durant (2000).
2. A. Diamond (2006).