Ensuring the Effectiveness of an Organizational Change

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

One of the foremost preconditions for ensuring the effectiveness of an organizational change has traditionally been considered managers’ awareness of what accounts for such change’s dialectics (Ford & Ford, 1994).

In other words, it is not only that, in order to be able to design an appropriate strategy for organizational change managers must understand what needs to be done, in technical sense of this word, but also what amounts to the objective prerequisites for such change to be embarked upon, in the first place.

In its turn, this usually implies that, prior to designing change-related strategy; managers need to conduct PEST analysis of the whole spectrum of external and internal factors that affect the functioning of an organization.

The information, in regards to the challenges currently faced by Flairtex Fashions, contained in the case study, allows us to identify a number of internal and external forces that presuppose the eventual prospect of company’s organizational restructuring:

Economic force – from the case study, it appears that the current decrease in Flairtex’s profits has been predetermined by downturn of a domestic textile market and by an increased competition from the East.
Technological force – given the fact that, as it appears from the case study, Flairtex has not been particularly enthusiastic about making investments into ensuring the technological adequacy of utilized equipment, it is not particularly surprising that, during the course of last six months, the amount of downtime due to maintenance has been increased by 15%. This resulted in undermining the extent of company’s competitiveness and consequently, established an additional precondition for organizational change to take place.
Socio-cultural force – the reading of the case study leaves few doubts as to the fact that the normal functioning of Flairtex Fashions is being negatively affected by a so-called ‘conflict of generations’ between Adrian Thwaite and Hilary James, on one hand, and Pat Robertson, Jamie Wright and Hari Rana, on another.
Political force – it is quite clear from the case study that, the UNITE union is preparing to adopt a particularly active stance in negotiating compensation for employers’ grievances. In its turn, this creates an additional obstacle on the way of managers striving to maintain Flairtex’s competitiveness.

Thus, there can be few doubts as to essentially emergent nature of organizational change (Wilson, 1992), which Flairtex is about to undergo.

The validity of this suggestion can be easily illustrated in regards to what represents the foremost principle of open thermodynamic system’s functioning, with just about any commercial organization representing the classical example of such a system (Checkland, 1972; McAleer, 1982; von Bertanlanfy, 1971).

Given the fact that, while being affected by the continuous inflow of energy (the incoming investments, the influx of new employees, etc.), organization/system’s structural elements never cease undergoing qualitative transformation, it is always just a matter of time before this transformation would lead to system’s qualitative restructuring, as a whole.

In its turn, this explains why the impending organizational change, in relation to Flairtex, is best discussed in terms of necessity rather than in terms of eventuality.

Within the context of Force Field Analysis (Lewin, 1948), the earlier outlined forces can be conceptualized as the ‘driving forces of change’. In their turn, these forces are being counterbalanced by what Lewin refers to as ‘restraining forces of change’, which in regards to the case study can be formulated as follows:

Employees’ subtly expressed resistance to change – as the case study indicates, there is a growing discontent among Flairtex’s workers, regarding to what they sense accounts for the foremost danger of an impending change – namely, the relocation of a production site out of the town, which will result in the layoffs among employees.
Thwaite and James’ subtle sabotage of change-related initiatives – from the case study, it appears that, due to these directors’ perceptional inflexibility (which largely accounts to their old age), they are being quite incapable of realizing a simple fact that undergoing organizational change for Flairtex is not an option.
The lack of technological awareness, on the part of Jamie Wright – even though this particular director has proven himself quite open to the idea of change, he nevertheless refuses to believe that computerizing presently utilized equipment should be thought of as an integral part of such a change.

Thus, in order for Flairtex to undergo organizational change and to consequently succeed with maintaining its commercial efficiency, the restraining forces of change must be weakened considerably (Hannan, Pólos & Carroll, 2003).

This, however, will require company’s management to adopt a systemic outlook on what represents dialectically predetermined phases of such a change, which in turn presupposes managers’ endowment with an understanding of what should be thought of as the foremost keys to ensuring organizational change’s success:

organizational change can only serve one purpose – enhancing organization’s effectiveness,
the process of organizational restructuring must to be as short as possible,
organizational change must be complex/systemic (Barnett & Carroll, 1995).

As it appears from the case study, the organizational model of Flairflex Fashions is best defined as the ‘bureaucracy with senior management team’ (Senior & Flemming, 2006).

The foremost advantage of this particular model is that does ensure a comparative adequacy of managerial decision-making, in regards to continuously transforming operational challenges, faced by the company (Staudenmayer, Tyre & Perlow, 2002). However, its utilization can hardly be considered appropriate in time when company is about to become affected by change-related turbulations.

The reason for this is simple – this model is being only moderately authoritarian; whereas, the successfulness of an organizational change largely depends on the promptness of its implementation, which in turn presupposes such implementation being the subject of an unquestionable authority (Weber, 1947).

As it was implied earlier, the factor of Flairtex employees’ resistance to change constitutes one of the major obstacles on the way of such change’s implementation. And, if not properly addressed, employees’ subtle sabotage of change-related managerial initiatives will undermine change’s effectiveness rather severely, at best (Alvesson, 1993).

From the reading of the case study, it appears that dealing with Flairtex workers’ explicitly and implicitly expressed unacceptance of an impending change will probably be the most challengeable issue for the managers to tackle.

Nevertheless, there are good reasons to believe that, for as long as managers never cease being aware of what accounts for the proper strategy of making employees comfortable with the idea of organizational change, they will succeed. In its turn, such strategy revolves around three fundamental key-concepts: empathy, communication and participation (Fossum & Crisp, 1989).

Given the fact that Flairtex employees’ professional behavior seems to be greatly affected by their exposure to a number of unofficially circulating rumors, as to what company’s management has in plans for them, it will only be logical to assume that company’s middle-level managers have failed at communicating reasons behind the intended change to workers.

One of the reasons why most Flairtex employees were not utterly enthusiastic about the appointment of Anton Duval as Assistant Production Manager, which sublimated in their subtle sabotage of his executive decisions, is that they felt that their opinion, in regards to this appointment (they favored Geoff Dicks), mattered very little to company’s top-officials.

In other words, the continuing deterioration of the strength of employees’ professional commitment can be partially explained by their realization of the fact that Flairtex’s officials are being ignorant of their opinions, in regards to the important aspects of company’s functioning.

Apparently, workers sensed the lack of empathy towards themselves, on the part of managers, which is why it does not come as a particular surprise that, following the appointment of Anton Duval, they have grown even more uncooperative (Huy, 2002).

To amend the situation, managers would have to be provided with incentives to never cease indulging in close interaction with company’s employees, in professional and social senses of this word (Dawson, 2002).

The incidences with marketing executive articulating her hysterical complaints as to what she considered an ‘unfair treatment’ and with Elaine Cooper overhearing one of company’s managers subjecting female employee to verbal abuse, highlight another ‘restraining force’ – specifically, managers’ lessened understanding of the sheer importance of taking active part in addressing just about all of employees’ job-related concerns, as the ultimate instrument of making workers feel empowered (Labianca, Gray & Brass, 2000).

And yet, only psychologically empowered employees can act as organizational change’s active participants. Therefore, I would recommend to the Board of Directors to assign middle-level managers with an additional duty of providing weekly reports on the state of their subordinates’ emotional well-being.

At the same time, given the fact that it is specifically the recent qualitative dynamics within Fairtex’s workforce, which appear potentially capable of hampering the implementation of an intended organizational change, it would be equally important for company’s top and mid-level managers to be capable of enforcing their executive decisions upon the subordinates (March & Sutton, 1997).

The validity of this statement appears especially self-evident in the light of case study’s provisions. After all, the recent deterioration of relationship between Flairtex’s employees and managers cannot be solely attributed to the lack of professional adequacy, on the part of company’s subdivisional authority figures.

As it appears from the case study, within the body of Flairtex’s workforce, there are individuals who actively oppose themselves against the values of company’s corporate culture.

This explains the reports of some employees being subjected to racial jokes. It is needless to mention, of course, that such state of affairs can hardly be referred to as tolerable, because the ultimate consequence of employees finding themselves at liberty to utilize racial slur is an overall undermining of company’s corporate culture, as a whole (Winterdyk & Antonopoulos, 2008).

And, once employees become alienated from the values of corporate culture, it is only the matter of time before they begin acting as the active agents of resistance to change, even when it happens despite their conscious will.

Therefore, I would recommend the representatives of Quality Control department to investigate this issue thoroughly, in order to identify workers with little understanding of what the concept of corporate culture strands for, so that they could be laid off.

To conclude this presentation, it must be reinstated again that the implementing organizational change for Flairtex Fashions is not the matter of an option.

The very essence of post-industrial living, associated with the process of international and domestic markets becoming increasingly dynamic, technology-friendly and diversified and with the fact that today’s consumers grow progressively more comfortable with paying money for ‘perceived’ rather than for ‘factual’ value of goods and services (Goodman, 1995), substantiates the soundness of an earlier articulated suggestion.

Apparently, undergoing organizational change for Flairtex is the crucial precondition for its survival, in the long run. And, the sooner company’s officials decide to embark on it – the better.

References

Alvesson, M 1993, Cultural perspectives on organizations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Barnett, W & Carroll, G 1995, ‘Modeling internal organizational change’, Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 217-236.

Checkland, P 1972, ‘Towards a systems based methodology for real world problem solving’, Journal of Systems Engineering, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 87-116.

Dawson, P 2002, Understanding organizational change: The contemporary experience of people at work, SAGE Publications Ltd., London.

Ford, J & Ford, L 1994, ‘Logics of identity, contradiction, and attraction in change’, The Academy of Management Review, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 756-785.

Fossum, L & Crisp, M 1989, Understanding organizational change: Converting theory into practice. Boston, Course Technology Crisp.

Goodman, M 1995, Creative management. Prentice Hall, Hempstead.

Hage, J 1999, ‘Organizational innovation and organizational change’, Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 597-622.

Hannan, M, Pólos, L & Carroll, G 2003, ‘Cascading organizational change’, Organization Science, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. 463-482.

Huy, N 2002, ‘Emotional balancing of organizational continuity and radical change: The contribution of middle managers’, Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 31-69.

Labianca, G, Gray, B & Brass, D 2000, ‘A grounded model of organizational schema change during empowerment’, Organization Science, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 235-257.

Lewin, K 1948, Resolving social conflicts: Selected papers on group dynamics, Harper and Brothers, New York.

March, J & Sutton, R 1997, ‘Organizational performance as a dependent variable’, Organization Science, vol. 8, no. 6, pp. 698-706.

McAleer, W 1982, ‘Systems: a concept for business and management’, Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, vol.9, no. 5, pp. 99-129.

Senior, B & Flemming, J 2006, Organizational change, 3^rd ed. Prentice Hall, London.

Staudenmayer, N, Tyre, M & Perlow, L 2002, ‘Time to change: Temporal shifts as enablers of organizational change’, Organization Science, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 583-597.

Von Bertanlanfy, L 1971, General systems theory, Penguin, Harmondsworth. Weber, M 1947, ‘The Theory of Social and Economic Organization’, in A Henderson & T Parsons (eds), 1990, Organization theory: Selected readings, Penguin, Harmondsworth.

Wilson, D 1992, A Strategy of change, Routledge, New York. Winterdyk, J & Antonopoulos, G 2008, Racist victimization: International reflections and perspectives, Ashgate Publishing Group, Abingdon.

Click Here To Order Now!

Ensuring the Effectiveness of an Organizational Change

Do you need this or any other assignment done for you from scratch?

We have qualified writers to help you.

We assure you a quality paper that is 100% free from plagiarism and AI.

You can choose either format of your choice ( Apa, Mla, Havard, Chicago, or any other)