Tesco - Reflective Journal - Managing Change - Essay Example

Changes were felt immediately as Tesco’s shares fell on the stock market immediately following the announcement of Leahy’s retirement. In addition, Tesco’s announced that Leahy’s office would be filled by Phillip Clarke, the then head of Tesco’s international operations and was especially connected to Tesco in Europe and Asia (English, 2010). It was immediately speculated that Tesco would focus on its overseas operations with Leahy’s exit (English, 2010). In reality, Clarke, with significant international experience took over Tesco’s domestic operations once he took office.

Upon his assumption of responsibilities, Richard Brasher who was head of domestic operations and took much of the blame for a drop in sales at Tesco’s domestic locations, announced that he would be leaving. In addition, Tesco’s public relations department announced that a shake-up would follow to restore Tesco’s profit margins (Brown & Jefferies, 2012). Changes commenced once Clarke took office and Clarke announced a 2 billion pound plan to restore the profits, that Tesco had a long and comfortable history of generating.

Clarke announced that the company would hire 8,000 new employees and would work toward improving quality and reducing prices so that they were consistent with the income of the average household. Clarke also announced that Tesco would open more stores, make them larger and focus on the acquisition and sale of fresh foods (Cunliffe, 2013). In changing the organizational culture, a number of experts in managing different departments and operations such as multichannel managers, former managers from Sainsbury’s and Marks and Spencer and an executive from Facebook were hired.

In addition, 50 current managers from Tesco’s headquarters and offices were let go (Butler, 2013). In other words, since 2010, Tesco has undergone significant changes in management for the purpose of turning the business around. The changes that Tesco have experienced and is currently experienced will be analysed by reference to change management theory as reported in the literature. Schneider, B.; Brief, A.P. and Guzzo, R.A. Spring 1996. ‘Creating a Climate and Culture for Sustainable Organizational Change.

’ Organizational Dynamics, 7-19. Schneider, Brief and Guzzo (1996) discuss total organizational change (TOC), what it means and how it should be implemented for optimal results. More importantly, Schneider, et al.(1996) compare TOC with the silver bullet approach. The latter appears to be the approach taken by Tesco. The article also provides valuable insights on why change in an organization is important and how and why organizational change can become complicated exercises and can be poorly implementing, setting the organization back.

In general, Schneider, et al. (1996) caution that organizations typically fail to implement organizational change successfully because they are ill-prepared for resistance from workers to organizational change. In addition, when there is a failure to properly contemplate the consequences of changes made, managers find themselves making more changes which only complicates the change process (Schneider, et al., 1996). It would appear that in Tesco’s case, changes in the organization have occurred at the top in that two high ranking mangers resigned from the organization within a year and a year later 50 managers were