Managing Organisational Change: The Case Of Omega Industries

Current problems faced by Business Service

Technology has become one of the most vital aspects of today’s societies and its role in our lives keeps getting complex (Cameron and Green, 2015). The case study of Omega Industries will be considered under this report for the purpose of managing the change in the organization. The “Change Management” is one of the essential managerial techniques to attain the aims of the organization (Paton and McCalman, 2008). It is processes that incorporate the organizational tools that can be used to facilitate individuals make successful personal transitions resulting in the adoption and realization of change. The current challenges of the company will be presented under this research. Along with that, the contextual environment regarding the issues will be described for making better understating about the issues. The recommendations will be provided in the context of bringing change within the organization.  At last, the consultancy model will be proposed for the situation for the reason.

a) Current problems faced by Business Service

Omega Industries is a subsidiary of a huge multi-national American Corporation, with approximately 3000 employees that had shown a healthy profit in the 1990s and early 2000s. On the other hand, in the term of the global economic downturn, the performance of the company had slipped. The Company had faced issues regarding quality of the product, profit of the company and the employee turnover. Moreover, specific issues have been faced by the organization, like the forecasts made by the marketing group concerning expected demand for photocopiers per period were imprecise, with the outcome that the company faced a critical problem of overstocking (Anderson and Anderson, 2010).

The major problem had recognized in Omega Industries were poor product superiority, incapability to meet project conclusion dates, supervisors who had lost control of the workforce, and high labor turnover. Felix Benjamin, Director of Operations Control (DOC) of Omega Industries initiated unemployment programme at the company, with taking help of the HR department not only local but also head office level. This unemployment programme has been focused on managerial, professional and administrative staff. This activity has made 372 staff outmoded. The company is currently dealt with in manufacturing a range of office reprographic equipment, varying from small moveable photocopiers to the latest, huge, complicated electronic photocopiers. The company had wasted time in updating the technology instead of investing in new technology. The company was produced similar products for the past seven years and the newly appointed CEO was aware that company needed to change their strategy due to change demands of customers. However, company did not have enough time to make amendments as they faced continuous loss for many years. The root concern of the management is that the parent company has the least interest in reprographic equipment, as it had expanded considerably into other fields. It has been found that the parent company is handling a number of businesses separately as it is not really sympathetic if any of those businesses did not perform to expectation.

The symptoms can be observed through a case study that there is no good relationship between business services and operational controls and these two components are keeping wide importance for the business. Lack of cooperation with engineering support services and the new appointments have been found in the OI. The employees of the company were not qualified that is why they committed a mistake in the context of satisfying the customers which bring the company into the tough situation. It is apparent after analyzing the case study that the engineering support service department was not trained and they overspent on the budget, especially on the warranty claims, in relation of mechanical errors happening on reprographic units less than two years of age and compensation was not paid to the customer that is the cause of losing customers and decreasing profits.  

b) Contextual environment relating to these issues

The contextual environment is an environment that entails the set of features that impact the design processes of the organization. The contextual environment relating to these issues are described below:

Organizational Size

The organizational size is deemed as a critical factor that influence the degree of flexibility and large organization lean to have an upper level of flexibility for productively employing the transform attempts because of the diversity of their assets and area of expertises and the superior acceptance capacity results from more available resources Han, n.d.). The organizational size of OI is broad and the company is a subsidiary of a large multinational American corporation in which more than 3000 employees are working. The organizational size entails the physical capacity, personnel available, organizational inputs or outputs and discretionary resources. The size of the organization is the major factor of contextual environment and regarding these issues, it can be considered that the size of the organization was not determined as per the evaluation of the customer demands. The organization need to focus on the structure of the company and bring flexibility in their work because flexibility is the degree to which an organization has a multiplicity of managerial potentials and the speed at which they can be activated, to boost the manage competence of management and progress the controllability of the organization.

Technology

Technology is another factor of contextual environment that shows technological interdependence which describes the interrelatedness of the various technical elements of the organization. It has been found in the context of the issues of the company that the president of the company was involved in the new ZB35 machine. The ZB35 is the latest technology in reprographic technology which is manufactured and designed in the USA. It is the design that awarded by the Science Society as a top design price. The company wanted to be technologically advanced by adopting the latest technology and in such context, the president of the company had decided to include this technology within the operation department. The major issue regarding the conceptual factor is that the employees of the company were not aware of this technology and without having any master plan for this technology, the president announced to implement this technology within the operation (Doppelt, 2017).

Contextual environment relating to these issues

The strategy and the goals are the main factor of the contextual environment that express if the company maintains established strategy and the goal of the company as per the demand of the customers and the capability of the organization; it would help the company to attain the competitive advantages in extreme level (Hamel, 2008). In the context of OI, it has been observed that there is no perfection in the strategy and the goals which brought a wide range of issues and difficulties within the operation of the company. Co-ordination is linked with trust and performance because co-ordination generates performance, because it creates the necessary trust required for attaining performance by networking.  Due to lack of cooperation, the manager of the company did not focus on making new changes within the company by making a strategy for the purpose of attaining the goals Han, n.d.).  

Environment

The environment of the workplace has kept great significance as it can influence the performance of the company. It is required for the company to maintain room to create a cushion to execute strategic amendments so as to respond to changing demands of the environment. In addition, it can be stated that the organizations that have slack resources can be able to meet the expense of the cost of a mismatch between environments and organizational structure. The working environment of OI was not justifiable as employees did not have a better understanding about dealing with customers. Top authorities were not aware of what is going on inside the company with managers and employee and how the performance of the company got influenced due to lack of understanding.
 c) Potential obstacles to implement change in this case and overcome techniques
Potential obstacles

The company can face various potential obstacles in case of bringing change within the organization. These issues are described below:

Lack of executive support and active sponsorship

The largest obstacle is lack of supportive and active executive sponsorship in which the participants of the organization can find the gaps as well as difficulties in recognizing and leveraging their executive sponsor because of the amendments in a leader.

Inadequate change management buy-in and resourcing

Change management cannot be considered as the activity rather it expresses a firm bonding between effective resourcing for change management activities and meeting project objectives. It can be the potential obstacle for OI in implementing change within the organization.

Resistance and lack of support for the specific solution

Resistance to change leads a company to a lower level of flexibility and makes the organization become less competent of responding to revolutionize in relation of moving in new directions. It is not necessary that everyone in the company is agreed with the implementation of the change, the resistance to change can be the potential obstacle to implement change in the organization. In order to reduce the chance of resistance to change, organization should apply efforts to the re-structure of their individual behaviour and processes (Han, n.d.). Building buy-in to altering is a major step in any victorious change management proposal and has been a supporter of the Prosci methodology from its commencement (Brinckmann, Grichnik and Kapsa, 2010).

Change-resistant culture and organizational structure

It has been found that the because of the complex nature and typical organizational culture may foster resistance to change as well as change management.
Overcome techniques

The change management model can be implemented within the organization at the time of proposing change which can be worked as the overcome technique. Lewin’s change management model can be implemented in the organization as it entails three steps of unfreezing, changing and refreezing. As per this model, the procedure of change includes building the opinion that a change is required, then moving towards the new, desired level of behavior and at last, freezing that new behavior as the norm. The change can be executed within OI by applying this model in which the first step, organization come to know that what things need to be changed for improving the productivity of the employee and the environment of the company (Crandall, Preacher, Bovaird, Card and Little, 2012). It has been recognized by Lewin that change is the procedure where the organization should transition into the new state of being. In the second step, changes should be implemented with an explanation of why changing are occurred. In the third refreezing step to be particularly significant to make certain that people do not revert back to their old ways of philosophy or doing prior to the functioning of the change (Whiteneck and Dijkers, 2009). This model will be helpful for the organization to understand the needs of change and implementation of the change management.

d) Recommendations for the CEO

It has been recommended to the CEO of the company to focus on the organizational structure as due to typical structure of the company, employees are unable to reach them in case of any requirements. The recommendations for the CEO for the purpose of moving forwards are mentioned below:

· It has been recommended to the CEO of the company to do not make decisions quickly as it has been found that the implementation of the ZB35 machine has been announced without analyzing the requirement of change and capability of the employees.

· The organization should focus on training and development program as it would increase the productivity of the employee and bring the systematic working environment with full of understanding.

· The organization should invest in more resources for the purpose of revising existing operational procedures, developing interactive structure and changing the way of thinking and behaviours of employee of the organization.

· Achieving an upper level of performance is often considered as the primary objective of organizations and it is required for the company to focus on asset specificity to be successful in the presence of uncertainty.

· Lack of cooperation has been found as the largest issue within the operation which is the major cause of decreasing value of the company. The business service department and operational control department do not have proper collaboration by which the employees have to face issues (Cohen-Cole and Fletcher, 2008). There should be the proper structure for dealing with employees and efficient strategy of change management so that they can perform in more efficient way.

· The bonus and salary of the employees should not be deducted without any reason as they are valuable assets for the company and their satisfaction has kept significant value as they are the major component for the growth of the company (Heller and Zavaleta, 2009).

· It has been analyzed that the root concern of the management is that the parent company has the least interest in reprographic equipment, as it had expanded considerably into other fields (Schüz, et. al., 2012). There should be proper file and reports of last five years regarding the growth of the company which should be sent to the parent company with potential outcomes so that they can aware about what is going on inside the business.

e) Consultancy model

The consultancy model would be helpful for the organization to make changes in an appropriate manner. A significant distinction between the process model and emergent model is that previous is basically based on the solving issues, along with the focused on the past to future state. On the other hand, an ‘emergent model’ is determined on an evolving and open process of describing the discovery and shaping that finding on an ongoing basis in real time situation (Esain, Williams and Massey, 2008). Emergence model is dependent on the shaping of constant forms through internal as well as external influencers. This consultancy model has embraced two theories such as Chaos theory and complex adaptive systems (Assudani and Kloppenborg, 2010).

Chaos theory is considered as the subset of more chaos theory that entails principles of quantum mechanics and shows them in a complex systems environment (Robertson and Combs, 2014). This theory would be helpful for the organization to manage the confusion in the management. This theory suggests that initially, the management need to concern about the issues and focus on gathering them in an appropriate manner (Powell, Bernhard and Graf, 2012). Along with that, it facilitates to understand the behavior of dynamic systems that are considered as the highly sensitive to starting conditions, consequences which are commonly referred to as the butterfly effect. On the other hand, the complex adaptive system is another part of the emergent model that helps in making a decision regarding the change management (Pryor and Bright, 2011). Emergence is considered as the production of global patterns of behavior through agents in a complex system interacting as per their own local rules of behavior, without proposing the Global patterns of behavior that come about (Hill, 2011).

The purpose behind choosing of this theory is the efficiency of this theory to understand the need for the change within the organization. It will be helpful for the organizations who implement the change by considering each aspect of the organization such as employees’ point of view, organizational environment and the area where changes are required.=

Strategy and Goals

Conclusion

It can be concluded that the worldwide economy has been transformed radically and with the unique advancement of technologies, specifically the communication as well as information technology, the global economy has been transformed from resource-based system, where information and better understanding have kept significant importance as the most important resources for the organizations. It has been analyzed that the Omega Industries had a bundle of issues that being the major cause of decline in profits. The lack of cooperation with engineering support services and the new appointments has been found in the Omega Industries. The root cause has been found the understanding issues and lack of problem-solving skills in both managers of the company as they did not focus on the improvement of the company. The contextual environment has been described in an efficient manner with entailing organizational size, environment, technology and strategy and goals. The recommendations have been provided in the context of making changes within the organization. The discussion has been made on consultancy model for the purpose of bringing change in the organization in which the emergent model has been emphasized as it is an efficient model that helps in making a better understanding about the changes.

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