Change in Planet Air Travel - Case Study Example

A report on Change in Planet Air Travel Introduction Planet Air Travel is an airline based in the United Kingdom andused to specialize in long haul flights flying to different destinations across the world. The airline was highly affected by the recent global recession threatening its operations ( Furner & Supple 2002). Since then, the company has been reporting losses every financial year. As the best solution, the company agreed to adopt a twofold strategy, which supports: a merger with Air Nimble, which operates short haul, flights within the UK and across Europe and joining the Proxima Alliance, a huge global partnership that brings together some of the most reputed airlines in the world. Therefore, this report addresses the key change issues that can have a significant impact on the implementation of its new-developed business strategy. The change context The Internal environment The internal environment entails all events, people and factors that are under the control of the business. The leadership style of the company as well as it mission statement make the internal environment. As such, these factors influence organizational decisions and activities, employee behaviors and attitudes. In short, changes undertaken in the style of leadership, mission and culture can have significant impact on the organization. The External Environment The external environment entails all factors that emanate from outside, but have the potential to cause change within the organization. They are also beyond the control of the company. Some of these factors include competition, customers, political, legal, technology, economy, resources, and social conditions (Goleman 1998). Although they take place outside the company, they have the potential to influence its operations, growth and even the sustainability of the company. The worst mistake the management of a company can do is to overlook the external drivers of change. As such, it is always important that organizational managers continually monitors and adapts to external drivers of change, working appropriately to make the right changes or undertake a reactive approach which can lead to different outcome (Hamstra, Van-Yperen, & Wisse 2014). For the managers to proactively respond to internal and external environments, they must always begin by doing environmental scanning. Environmental scanning simply means being vigilant or monitoring the organizations internal and external environments for earlier signs that a change or transformation may be required, to accommodate the opportunities or threats and undertake or make changes to allow the strengths of the company to combat its weaknesses. The organizational leadership should begin by analyzing the internal environment through specifically looking into inefficiencies occurring inside the organization for corrective decisions. The leadership should as well examine the external environment for forces that are independent of the company (Hodgetts, Luthans & Doh 2006). The environmental scan helps the organizational leadership to employ the knowledge gained during the process to deliberate on the strategic steps or corrective measures to undertake to create or maintain the existing competitive advantage. The nature of change facing the Planet Air Travel According to French (2011), organizational change is something that adjusts the way an organization operates, who its leaders and members are, the form it assumes, or the way it allocates resources. According to theory of change management, the type of change to be undertaken is determined by how management understands change. In the case of the Planet Air Travel, the change is transformational or revolutionary. Transformational change is about entirely changing the organization. In most cases, the revolution or change can be small or it can as well be sweeping. Furthermore, the path of transformational change, whilst not sequential or linear can be made known to all persons inside their company via proper planning and communication. In the case of the Planet Air Travel, the expected change is sweeping, as the merger between the two companies would enable a major restructuring exercise as well as the execution of considerable cost-cutting measures (Hübner 2007). For instance, the merger would generate one of the largest airlines in the world in terms of both fleet size and route network. This is no mean outfit. The resultant company will have to employ different approaches of management different from the previous ones. Furthermore, joining the Proxima Alliance would also make the situation complex, as the companies would become a conglomerate of three companies with each having its own goals in the resultant company. Research indicates that organizations can be trapped in inertia to the point that they require transformational changes to adjust successfully to the changing setting. That is to say, some companies may not be in the position to change in spite of signs or warnings from both the internal and external environment. Planet Air Travel (PAT) is an example of organizations that virtually became irrelevant by continuously pursuing their unimaginative form of doing business, such as, highly compensating employees negating the risks imposed by economic recession as well as the rise of recurrent expenditures (Hübner 2007). Not until this time have they realized or visualized another perspective of doing things. The possible types of employee reactions As the world of business becomes more complex via the development of new methods, technologies and procedures, workers and employees are expected to not only adjust to, but as well embrace change as part and parcel of their working life. Similarly, employees must react to incessant smaller scale changes that take place on an almost day-to-day basis, and discrete large-scale change processes that entirely adjust their way of doing or working. Going beyond organizational processes and outcomes, recent change studies have taken to assessing change in organizations from the viewpoint of the change responses or attitudes of members of the organization. According to Conaway and Laasch (2014), a greater emphasis on the “people side” of change is very vital, as change is particularly executed and experienced by immediate persons who are organizational employees. Empirical studies have established that the reactions of employees to change, as well as perceptions of the process of change are key drivers of change success (Conaway and Laasch 2014). An array of change attitudes by employees to organizational change have been assessed as employee outcomes. Some of the generally researched change attitudes of employees include change acceptance, change readiness, openness to change process, resistance to change, commitment to change and cynicism about change. As it can be seen, these change attitudes feature both positive responses such as change acceptance and negative responses such as resistance. Several researchers, in recent years have claimed that perceptions towards change, such as commitment and resistance are multi-dimensional in nature. Particularly, that change perceptions have affective, cognitive and behavioral elements. This line of reasoning emanates from evidence of dissimilarity between the behaviors and thoughts of individuals connected to change. This therefore suggests that in order to develop champions of change, variables of the change process must appeal to employees affectively, behaviorally and cognitively (Foster 2014). Similarly, researchers have established that change perceptions, whether negative or positive are considerably influenced by the attempt of the organization to influence the behaviors and attitudes of employees in reference to the anticipated change. This therefore brings us to the Planet Air Travel. The change being undertaken is good for the company, but might have unenthusiastic consequences to the employees (Samovar & Porter 2014). In fact, they conditioned employees to reject their decision when the management unilaterally adopted the change strategy which would change the existing terms and conditions of employment without giving them audience or negotiations. In short, in this case, employee would attempt to embrace and resist the anticipated change at the same time. This is evident in the way the top management was faced with the challenging task of detailing and implementing their newly developed strategy to the union. The union’s reaction was one that combined approval and anger: approval of the multiple benefits that the merger could bring to the company and anger at the proposed levels of compulsory job cuts and changes in terms and conditions of employment. Recommendations as to how management should plan and execute the proposed change so as to ensure its successful implementation Participation in the Change Process Researchers have argued that participation in the change process is critical for increasing acceptance of change and minimizing resistance and uncertainty. For instance, in the action research model of implementing change, employees are considered as important collaborators in the process of change. In his research, Burnes (2013) established that employees who took part in the process of change reported higher beliefs in the benefits associated with it. In fact, one explanation for the impact of taking part on perceptions of change is that participation imparts a motivational impact on change participants, by strengthening individual self-efficacy connected to the process of change. In short, the opportunity for taking part in change can generate a sense of control particularly on the part of workers and result in higher commitment to an activity or goal. Employees who are offered the opportunity to take part and give input feel much in control, and therefore, less doubtful about impending changes. In the case of Planet Air Travel, employees were not involved in the transformational change that is why they are resisting it through their workers union. Change Communication Researchers have established that employees would instead have any information than stay in the dark about an organizational change (Tahir, Abdullah & Ali 2014). In fact, the message of change is thought to be very important to the resistance or support of a given paradigm shift. Furthermore, proof of a need or requirement for change is essential for creating preparedness. Clampett (2000) holds that identification of gaps particularly between the desired and current states of the business, as well as the effective presentation of positive expectations for change can increase change readiness. Both of these goals can be accomplished via effective change communication. Furthermore, process models of change show that if individuals within an organization are insufficiently prepared for a change, because of poor training or communication, resistance and denial to the anticipated shift are likely to occur (Clampett 2000). In this perspective, the quality and amount of information provided in relation to the change can fundamentally affect the way individuals respond to change. This is the situation in Planet Air Travel where employees were ignored by the when management when adopting the two fold strategy and is on this basis that employees have been resisting the change. Although to some extent they accept it because it will bring a lot of success to the company. Transition and Transitional Phenomena The process of change is all about moving from the present way of carrying out business to a new as well as different way of executing things (Kirkpatrick 2001 as quoted in Capps 2008, p. 10). According to Clampitt, Dekoch and Thomas (2000), it is not the real change that people within an organization resists, but the transition that must be adopted to accommodate the anticipated change. As Ford et al 2002 indicates transition is not another term for change (Ford et al 2002as quoted in Hübner 2007). Normally, change is situational, which means that there is a new site involved, the new boss is involved, the new team roles are designed and finally the new policy. On the other hand, transition is the psychological aspect or process people go through whenever they encounter a new situation (Kirkpatrick 2001). Therefore, unless transition takes place, change will not work. According to McNamara and Paton (2006), understanding of the transitional phenomenal theory would offer valuable intuition into organizational change, as well as why it might be confronted with resistance from employees. In short, this theory holds that change will take place extemporaneously only when people are ready to give up what they love for the purposes of acquiring new things. Therefore, it may be necessary for PAT to create transitional phenomena. As such, it would assist in relinquishing the current way and adopting the new way of executing things. Conclusion It is true that Planet Air Travel is confronted with a challenging situation that threatens its operations and continued being in business. The best solution to save the competitive advantage of the business is by adopting two-fold strategy, which involves entering into a merger with Air Nimble to help curve its operations in short haul flights within the UK and across Europe. In addition, the Proxima Alliance would help the company enhance its operations globally. However, these reforms are transformative in nature and needs the participation of all stakeholders to succeed. List of References Burnes, B., 2013. Kurt Lewin and Complexity theories back to the future. Joumal of Change management, 4(4), p.309-325. Capps, P., 2008. The use of Kirk patricks four levels of evaluation by performance improvement practitioners. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University. Clampitt, P., Dekoch, R., & Thomas, C., 2000. 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