Change Management And Resistance For Ford Motors: Factors And Implications

Why Changes are Resisted and Why Resistance is Problematic

Discuss about the Change Management and Resistance for Ford Motors.

Change is common in most of the areas of any firm and expecting the correspondence to resistance in the most baffling and challenging prospect (Anderson, 2011). The resistance further may take a number of forms such as an increase in “quit” leading to employee turnover, generation of negative emotion, a persistent reduction in the output, negotiation for transfer from responsibilities, and expression of much pseudological reasons why change with not work (Beer & Nohria, 2000). The present report is thus focused on the elucidation of factors that are mainly responsible for demonising the resistance to change, with take case reference from companies like Google, Ford Motors, Coca cola, and Australian Government (Health Department). In addition to this, the scope of managerial function and their ethical implication in conjunction with resistance and organisational culture is also discussed in this report.

According to Dent et al. (1999), there are various sources responsible for the resistance to change, which is needed to be evaluated in order to build a strategic framework for the change implementation (management) plan. The most common factor among these is the lack of communication or inappropriate clarity in the message, as a result of which the employees fails to understand the importance of change prospect (Burnes & Todnem, 2011). Likewise, lack of visionary objective by the leader or owners also lead to the development of misleading perspective. In a report by Karnani et al. (2014), it was discussed that often the need for the change is misunderstood when the reason for the change is unclear, which is reflective in coca cola company. The company faces strong opposition from customers during 1996, and thereby CEO of company Mr. Gouizetta, manages change by acting as an inspirational leader. He framed several groups within the employee segment, clearly advocated the requirement of change in the procedural and production line; which in turn made the company able to achieve market competitiveness.   

This resistance situation is frequently reflective by those who have used the current way of doing things for years, and they believe that it works well. This working attitude is also referred to as stereotypic nature or fear from learning newer procedures. According to Cameron et al. (2009), employees tends to develop emotional attachment and connection with the former way of doing things, and as a result of which negotiation seems to be easier rather than learning and adopting newer ways. An example of such resistance to change can be found in Australian health care sector where adoption of electronic record system was presumed to be a beneficial change over the traditional paper based record management (Nguyen, Bellucci & Nguyen, 2014).

Relationship of Power and Resistance in Organisational Change

Taking a case reference of Google, the resistance among employees is mainly shown due to frequently changing of computer codes and that the group leaders insist on preparing newer programs, suitable according to customer needs (Erkama, 2010). In this case, the reason for the resistance is linked to the condition of uninformed implementation of change, which mainly has a beneficial aspect for company’s finance or for the concerned stakeholders. In other words, the lack of consideration for the employees, tactical HR policies that lack benefits for employees and neglect their need are likely to be resisted by employees (Linstead, Fulop & Lilley, 2009). The rationale behind the discussion of this issue is that such perspective attitude among employees will fail to bring sustainability in the implementation course of change management process. Such situation can only be managed with proper motivation, encouraging employees to bring change, and defining their role in terms of achieving customer satisfaction. According to a report by Jabri et al. (2012), even when the benefits and positive rewards after making the change are not recognisable as compared to the trouble involved, the situation is likely to create dissatisfaction for the change among the people. Reversely, Google adopts this measure of rewarding and acknowledging the contribution of their employees, as a result of which today Google have 5% annual employee turnover, and according to a recent survey, 87% of employees shows positive attitude and satisfaction for their job at Goole (Steiber & Alänge, 2013). 

According to Piderit et al. (2000), power is directly linked with organisational politics because, associated members have varying interest, experiences, and perspectives. The resistance to any organisational change is linked with power, is further dictated with below-mentioned theories.

According to the theory by Kotler, change is good as it brings newer techniques for effective work management (Kotter, J. P., & Schlesinger, 1979). The role of managers and change agents is to implement best practices that are based on empirical and measurable data. On the other hand, the resistance reflective by employees is considered to be bad, because often it leads to failing implementation of good measures into the organisational culture. Likewise, resistance is also referred to as coercion if employees tends to quiet their job, negotiate with manipulation, and demands more sanctioning that put extra cost to firm. According to Karnani et al. (2014), Coca Cola company faces such resistance among employees, where they demand to be resistance against changed procedure. In this regard, the company faces 8% of employee turnover in Georgia, during year 2010, which reflects how change can be referred to as coercion. According to Shaw et al. (2009), change implementation in an organisation involves the power usage and influential tactics by CEOs, change managers, work councils, line managers, consultants, employees, and another group of interests for effective change management and influencing change process. 

Ethics of Managerial and Resistant Position in the Change-Making Process

The resistance is mainly an outcome of psychological state, that associates employee attitudes and emotions. One example in this regard can be found from Australian Government Health Department, where employees resist to adopt electronic record management system, due to fear of learning computer literacy, anxiety for poor performance, and individual capacity lacking. In a report by Burr et al. (2015), resistance is natural according to social perspective and that such resistance is possible to manage into fruitful direction with social interaction. Thus, it is of high requirement that managers must create effective environment to offer motivation, easy learning, and supportive training environment to foster the change (Amagoh, 2008).

Power and resistance is thus linked with the fact that the authoritative agents force employees to do, which they would not otherwise do. It should be noted that the relationship between power and resistance is not fixed but are flexible, which is manifested with negotiations of meanings (Thomas & Hardy, 2011). In this consideration, the resistance is inherent that depends on personal attitude and their understanding to the change requirement. While power is concerned with certain organisational member’s capacity to make changes and that certain authoritative have constrained power.  The most effective procedure of using power to overcome resistance can be learned from Ford Motors, which involves the use of power through agents, and they influence each other’s attitude through open discussion, democratic dialogue and another power process. The change cases in Ford motor is a clear example of such management, in which the managers are require to include the employees and customers into direct framework of change. The objective of such framework is to make the product more acceptable by customers and thereby achieving the competitive advantage (Samuel, Found & Williams, 2015).

The ethics of managerial and resistant positions in context to organisational change is dependent on the organisational behaviour; which includes the values and principles of individuals (Beer & Nohria, 2000). The ethics of managerial position towards change management also depicts their completeness and appropriate actions. Certain managers do not change for the sake of competitiveness (cost effective measures or aligning with the technological drift), rather they believe that change is needed to enhance the organisational performance. They play the role of a good initiator, change agent, leader, and sponsor for effective change management, which is reflective with managerial practices at Ford Motors. As a result of such practices, the company received number of awards such as Ethisphere Institute in 2015 and World’s most ethical companies award in 2016 (Samuel, Found & Williams, 2015).

However, the resistant position in the organisational change has been evolved because of the loss of feelings of status, power, career, relationships and opportunities, which can be found in Australian Health Sector during the period of 2011-2014 (Nguyen, Bellucci & Nguyen, 2014). It is needed that the administrator (or HR quality levels) that is responsible for the change in the value system of the organisation should act in an ethical manner. For example, Australian Government introduces the procedural requirement of training and education. Likewise, the change in the strategic framework in major hospitals should include all the stakeholders (including employees and customers) into a decision-making framework to bring electronic archetypes in the data/information management. These measures are effective as they tend to reduce the overall risk associated with the implementation plan and hence are likely to lessen the extent of resistance (Nguyen, Bellucci & Nguyen, 2014). 

Achieving the change management through effective programmes is a complex process which differs according to different organisational needs. Taking account of the organisational needs and individual aspects, different approaches should be adopted to manage the change (Hirsch, 2014). These strategies further should be based on the external environment and the objectives associated with the “change”; the preceding examples are explained with case study of implementing change of EHR system into Australian Health sector. At first for building successful management programmes, it is necessary to design the case for the change which will be giving a foundation for the overall change process. This mainly includes a collection of evidence and success framework, which can be presented to policy makers, stakeholders, and to board members of Australian Government (health department) and major hospitals and clinics. Secondly, there should be effective leadership (by physician and nursing health and allied health professional’s head) from the managerial position ensuring that the managers are capable enough to manage the implementation (Nguyen, Bellucci & Nguyen, 2014). Likewise, in order to forester the changed procedure into best practices, it is also critical to arrange training program for the employee, for example computer literacy, using e-mail for communication, and updating the records into the Information Technology (IT) portals. Apart from this, a clear and open communication is required from both the leaders and resistant positions to implement the change without any resistance. This in simpler terms is also referred to as two-way communication, and the same brings into the procedure of feedback and opinion collection for managing future changes (Dolan & Bao, 2012). In all the mentioned steps requisite for the change management programme, the view of the employees should be taken so as to implement motivation level as well as to involve them in the strategic decision-making process actively (Fleming & Spicer, 2006). Note that it is the responsibility of both the managers and employees to share their vision and values of changed and current way of doing thing respectively to derive the final objective for the necessity of change.

Conclusion

In summary, the present report is based on managerial actions (ethics, power, and attitude) and the resistance from an employee in conjunction to implement change procedures within any firm. Poor communication or miscommunication is realised to be a primary cause for the resistance towards change and creates a problem in terms of generating negative emotions, reducing outputs, and facilitating employee turnovers. Based on the analysis, it can be thus concluded that for effective change management within an organisation, the power of higher administration and resistance from the employees are equally linked with each other. Resistance to change management process is the outcome of authority exercised by the managerial positions, with the intention to achieve power or to escape from it. It is, therefore, the responsibility of the change managers to avoid conflict in the change process by making active participation of all the group in decision-making.  

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