Over the past 12 weeks, I learnt lots of knowledge about management change. Change is something that human need to face to all the time, from personal situation to social situation. All chapters in this subject will reflection my life in the future; however, I would like to point out one chapter which I think it may reflect to my life the most, that is Chapter 6 – resistance of change.

Chapter 6 outlined and explain everyone who is involves in the change need to take a great care and discuss about why people may feel like against of change; the strategies to manage when people resistance to change. Everyone like to stay in a good environment, have positive performance and outcomes, however, there must have people dislike changes in their life. The reasons of dislike to change could be it is hard for them to get use to new things, some of them may think that the way they used to be is the best or some of may even do not recognise there are something needed to be change. In chapter 6 mentioned that resistance of change can be a serious problem to a company, it can affect employees’ emotion, drive them to negative feeling and could not make any positive outcome. The result of this will make companies loss their profit. For resistance of change, managers and leaders need to have a suitable leadership style and apply it to suitable employee. For example, for those employees think that change mean their position will be unstable, leaders should let them know that they are part of changes.

I understood that there will be lots of situation that need to face to the change now and even in the future. After I graduated my bachelor of hospitality management, I may in the situation of resistance of change if I could not stay in Australia and need to back to my home country. My dream is be a manager of human resource department in a hotel. The knowledge of chapter 6 will be very useful to me when myself resistance to change or there are resistance to change in my workplace in the future.

In organisational change, the contingency approach to management means that there is no exactly one way to manage because of people, plan and leadership style are always changing all the time in the organisation.

The contingency approach should be work with the open system, it means that members in the organisation should have an open mind about the change and the size of desired change (Andrews, Cameron & Harris 2008). However, this is not a common approach for change strategy because sometimes good in theory does not means that it is easy to apply on organisation (Palmer, Dunford & Akin 2009).

There are five change styles in the contingency approach:

The first one is developmental transitions, this means refer to the situation which there is constant change as a result of the organisation adapting itself to external and environment changes. The second style is task-focused transition, leaders of the change process would help company’s members to find out compliance and re-organise the suitable organisational operates in different areas. The third style is charismatic transformation, members notice that the company is outdated with the environment and they think that there is a need for radical and revolutionary change. Different with charismatic transformation, the fourth style is turnarounds are aims at frame-breaking changes, leaders tends to use their power to force required changes through the organisation. The last one is Taylorism, it is associated with fine-tuning and paternalistic approaches to managing change.

According to Thang & Buyens (2008) research mentioned that to find a suitable leadership style is very important to contingency approach, right leadership style can match to the scale of required change, also can help to reduce cost of the change processes.

Many company managers do not like contingency approach as they found it is less attractive than other approaches. However, if they have enough skills to apply suitable leadership style in different areas depends on the requirements of organisational change. The contingency approach could be one of the best approaches to measure the needs of changes of the organisation.

Reference
Andrews J, Cameron H & Harris M 2008, “All Change? Managers’ experience of organisational change in theory and practice”, Journal of Organisational Change Management, Vol.21, no. 3, pp.300-314 (Online Emerald).

Palmer I, Dunford R & Akin G 2009, Managing Organisational Change 2nd edn, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York.

Thang NN & Buyens D 2008, “Training Organisational Strategy & Firm Performance”, Business Review, Vol. 11, Iss. 2, pp.176 (Online Proquest).

All organizations have the time that they need to make some changes to improve the outcome. However, before decide the methods of change; companies should have some detail plans and measure. Organization development means well-plan for change to increase organization’s efficiency and effectively. Wendell pointed out the aim of organization development is to combine strategies to change values, attitudes, beliefs and structure of organizations so that they can make out new market, challenges and technologies (Wendell 1973).

In DuPont Case Study, organization development approach did a big help in the company. At the beginning of change in DuPont, the manufacturing operation had been shut down and equipment sent to China. Base on the organization development approach, the company develop new technology to improve the efficiency that means DuPont adopted new approach in their technology parts. According to Palmer, Dunford & Akin theory, organization development approach is to identify problems so that people could find out the problem as soon as they can and recover it (Palmer, Dunford & Akin 2008). DuPont used a new strategy between the organization and employees, this strategy could help leader to watch closer within the company and problems could be addressed straight away. In DuPont’s view, even problem could not been solve, but the new strategy can turn it become less troubles. Another point that organization development approach helped in DuPont case study which was it make all staff, both employers and employees become more motivates. Because the company understood more the opinions from staff since adopted the organization development approach and got feedback frequently from all people who involved in DuPont.

Companies always need to have a change to make their performance become better. Organization development (OD) approach is exactly the approach to help organization to become more efficiently and effectively so that DuPont was turn into the positive performance base on this approach.

Reference

Wendell L & Bell C1973, Organization development: behavioral science interventions for organization improvement. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

Palmer I, Dunford R & Akin G 2008, Managing organizational change: a multiple perspectives approach 2nd edn, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York.

Resistance to change is one the most serious problem which has a big affect in an organization. Everyone from the top chairman to the lowest levels’ employee involve in an organization. When a company decided to make some change, means that it tries to improve the internal of the business to gain competitive advantages. However, not all people think in the same way, especially for those employees who work in the company for long time (Waddell & Sohal 1998).

There are three main signs of resistance of change which may be difficult to manage:

Lack of conviction that change is needed: this is the sign that I think is the most difficult to manage because the people who have this sign may react negative and lack of motivation within the company. Some employees do not feel that there should have any change when an organization decided to make some change. The most common question they like to ask are always “What is the problem?” especially when the company announce that “We must change”,
Basically, this type of employees is easy to satisfy the environment of their workplace, they do not like challenges as long as they are on the right track in their work (Palmer, Dunford, Akin, 2006).

Dislike of change: this sign is the most common sign of resistance of change especially when an employee knew there will have some change which he/she needed to be involved. This always happens on some employees when change is coming while those employees are satisfied about their job. Also, elder employees who worked in the company for long time may increase the chance to tend to be more dislike of change, because this can mean that they need to spend more time to learn something new such as computing system.

Another sign of resistance is belief that the timing is wrong. Sometimes people understand the purposes of change, they accepted the ideas, however, they belief that the timing is wrong (Maurer 1996). There is good point which is most of them are easily accept the facts of change even they may have negative reaction for a short period.

It is very important to manage the resistance well in an organization as everyone involved in it. If resistance can be managed well, the organization can make a better improvement as soon as possible.

Reference

Waddell, D, Sohal, A, 1998, Resistance: A constructive tool for change management: Journal Management Decision, Vol. 36, no, 8, pp. 543-548, Emerald.

Palmer, I, Dunford, R, Akin, Gib 2006: Managing Organizational Change; a multiple perspectives approach, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York.

Maurer 1996, Beyond the walls of resistance, Austin, TX: Bard Books.

Using the Boeing case study (P.153) as a framework, choose one of the diagnostic tools presented in Chapter 5 and discuss how you feel this tool would help identify issues at Boeing.

Almost all the organisations have the time that they need to make a change for their better performance. However, it is not east to have a better change. Suitable diagnostic tools can help a company to analysis the best options on the organisational changes’ decision. Diagnostic tools can simplifies the complex situation by categories the different areas, also it can help the company to identifies the first priorities in those problems (Palmer, Dunford & Akin 2008).

In the Boeing’ case study, there was a lot of areas in the company needed to change. Boeing understood that changes would be the only to make the company to have a better further while he found that the stock price had decreased by 6.5% and the competitive pressure was getting higher and higher. In different types of diagnostic tools, the star model would be the best for Boeing’s business.Galbraith’s theory mentioned about an organisation could be most effective when it has the five major components of organisation design which are strategy, structure, processes and lateral capability (Galbraith, Downey & Kates 2002). Firstly, Boeing found out that there had a problem with the technology system as it was outdated. So he decided to update their technology systems and over 400 systems started to meet the needs. Moreover, the star model can help Boeing to found out the better way of processes to automated the production line after the company was turned into the worse reputation in manufacturing. About the structure, Boeing changed the operation system, built up some suitable channels as the communication tools, so that the company could have a closer relationship between employees, employers and suppliers; A web-based procurement system that allow suppliers to monitor stock levels and replenish suppliers when they dipped below a predetermined levels.

To use the star model as the suitable diagnostic tool, Boeing’s company labelled the best five major component of organisation design. It helped the company to find out the different changing points of strategy, structure, processes and lateral capability. After Boeing analysis the company by used the star model, the company started to have a positive outcome.

References
Palmer, Dunford & Akin 2008, Managing orgnaisational change: a multiple perspectives approach, 2nd edn, MaGraw-Hill Irwin, New York.

Galbraith, Downey & Kates 2002, Designing dynamic organisations, New York, AMACOM.

Reputation and credibility are very important for a business, good reputation and credibility of the business can attract more customers and increase profit. However, the negative reputation and credibility can make the business collapse. Actually is very hard for a business to keep their reputation, reputation can drop easily if the business had just made a little mistake.

Starbucks Coffee Company is a coffee café started in 1971, today Starbucks has nearly 16,000 stores and more than 170,000 employees in 44 countries, and it is the premier roaster and retailer of specialty coffee in the world. However, on 2005, people found out that the relationship between the company and employees were not very well. Starbucks Coffee Company had the systematic problem with low wages, irregular hours of work and only 42% of Starbucks workers were cover by the company’s health plan (Herbst 2007).
Other then the relationship with employees, customers’ expectation also decreased because of the customer services. Some customers felt that the stores could not match their needs and facilities are not enough.

Starbucks Coffee Company had to have some organisatinal change to against the reputation and credibility pressures. The company create more capacity for the field team, so that the company leaders can be closer to the customers and employees. As the leaders have a closer communication with employees, then the company can understand the employees; needs as quick as they can.

As the expectations from customers are getting higher and higher, Starbucks Coffee Company decided to make some change to increase their reputation, they started to provide WIFI for both customers and employees from beginning in the Spring 2008, but they also discontinue to warmed breakfast sandwiches in U.S stores by the end of 2008,

To make those decisions to grow back the reputation, because of Starbucks Coffee Company can see the market needs, technology is the first things the company need to improve for both customers and employees but they also can see warm breakfast service was not as important as before already.
After Starbucks Coffee Company made some change to against the reputation and credibility pressure. Their reputation grow again on 2009.

References
Herbst 2007, ‘Starbicks: A Baristas Union?’, Labour Relations.
Available at August 17, 2007
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/aug2007/db20070817_127354.htm

Seattle 2008, Starbucks’ Organisational change.
Available at February 21, 2008
http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/pressdese.asp?id=831