Critical Analysis of Organizational Change - British Airways - Assignment Example

Critical Analysis of Organizational Change Name Course Professor’s Name University Name City, State Date of Submission Critical Analysis of Organizational Change British Airways Case Question 1A. The British Airways strategic move to change the military and bureaucratic culture of customer service and customer responsive culture was achieved through a program referred to as ‘putting people first’ in a two day seminar. It had three pillars that were to put people first, performance appraisal for managers and paying for performance. The understanding laid was that the three strategies would be implemented at the same time. In the transformation process, the HR professionals were trained on the value of consultation and guide on how they would approach the stakeholders in the entire workforce to enhance attractive customer relations. Question 2A Effective communication is critical in a business environment. There are a number of factors that impeded the effectiveness of communication in BA. These impeding factors originate from mobile phones, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, video conferencing and brogs and Skype communication. They hider effective communication in an organization. Question 3A There are four stages of group implementation. In forming, there are uncertainties associated with the purpose, structure and leadership of the group that need clarification. Storming involves a number of conflict and confrontation in redefining of the objective. Norming involves corporation and collaborations where the groups are ready for performance. Question 4A. Personal guilt and changes threatening job of an employee are two main causes of job related stress that cause poor performance and sometimes suicidal where one lose jobs. Organizations can take actions to cater to their employees through acknowledgement, empathy and listening about their grievances, communicate key information to them and accommodate legitimate concerns. Question 5A French and Raven demonstrated a five structure model that emphasizes on expert, referent, reward, coercive, and legitimate. It creates an environment that ensures leadership ethics are considered in achieving the organization’s goals. In fact, organizations as a social structure emphasizes on the importance moral adherence to the autonomy of their members. Question 6A Big Five Personality Model theory is applied since it relates directly to employee satisfaction. Satisfied employees are likely to be more productive, effective and efficient in the organization. Stimulation of employees has been found to cause positive yields to their performance. It also promotes good working relations with their supervisors. Motivation Issues Raised In Starbucks Question (i) Maslow’s hierarchy of needs In the model presented by Koontz (2010) about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the lowest elements are the physiological needs such as food, water, pay and job security. At his suggestion, Abraham Maslow fulfil these needs by giving the employees a break to ensure they fulfil the hunger needs. He also pays a steady pay rate for the employees to the permanent employees being paid salaries for those on a part-time basis being paid on an hourly basis. The second element in the motivation of Starbucks that is relevant is the Safety Needs. The employees’ safety is guaranteed by provision of friendly environment that is safe to their emotional, social and health matters. In addition, the employees enjoy health related benefits such as medical insurance, dental and optical care, mental health examination, short and long term disability, health care and life insurance that caters for their personal health care in the organization. Thirdly, employees’ social needs are of critical concern to the organization. It relates to their welfare as well as that of their family. These ranges from affection, from employers to very attractive and friendly rapport and respect from their colleagues and managers in the organization. They are normally titled as partners instead of workers that is a sign of respect to them. Furthermore, teamwork is highly emphasized in the organization. It promotes the cohesive relationship between the employees and their seniors in the management. The Barista’s who show outstanding performance in the organization are rewarded through ways such as promotion. It ensures that individual employees are able to move from one stage to another where they are able to upgrade from Barista to Store manager positions. They later move to District Manager positions. Finally, the last stage of the pyramid is the Self- Actualization. That level is also witnessed in the operations of Starbucks. Individuals have mastered their skills in the operations and can be able to formulate a sense of achievement in their desired job profiles. The company organizes a number of training sessions that are aimed at helping them in their career choices Adams’s Equity Theory On the theory described by Adams, there is an emphasis on the balance between the employee input and their output in an organization. Considering the case of Starbucks, the employees are rewarded according to their input in the organization. The compensation plan is indiscriminate. In addition, communication at all levels of management is controlled effectively. The opinion of every employee is of importance to the organization. The organization has planned indiscriminative compensation plan that is all inclusive and merit based. Each employee is treated fairly in their compensation plan that complies with the international labor standards. Such measures have ensured good cooperation between the human resource department and the employees. Herzberg’s two factor theory Motivators and Hygiene factors are key in this theory. The motivators are classified as an achievement, recognition and responsibility. Starbuck has a well-structured team of mentors who coach and encourage the employees. Every employee is under the care and concern of their supervisor in case of difficulty in their services in the organization. On the other hand, the hygiene needs relate to the company policy, the relationship with the employer, working conditions, and relationship with colleagues. These factors together contribute to the satisfaction of employees in their service delivery within the organization. Developing talents and creativity is an essential practice that promotes effectiveness and efficiency of services the company delivers. The overall team created does has power to outdo all other competitors in the production process. Question (ii) In order to meet the objectives of the organization, teamwork in the workforce is crucial. It ensures that they are available to meet their target due to uprightness in the emotional, social and psychological states. All together, the effectiveness of the employee in the workplace is key to any organization that plans to meet its objectives efficiently. Such understanding increases the competitive advantage of the firm. Question 2B Attribution Theory Drawing from Harvey & Mark (1995, pp. 147-168), attribution refers to the causal explanation given to act or behavior in an individual. For example, when a nurse realizes that a colleague is performing an incorrect procedure, that nurse will form an attributive act to explain to the perpetrator of that act wrong act. In the theory, it is argued that all individuals have a psychological understanding of the causes of certain behavioral outcome. The Attribution of these behaviors and outcomes will normally shape behavioral and emotional responses to a given act. First, the attribution may be classified on the basis of locus of causalities where they describe the attribution on internal and external basis. In addition, it can be emphasized on the basis of stability dimension. Across different situations, the stable causes are the ones that influences behavior and outcome in such state. Unstable causes are generally viewed as those that require effort in the implementation phase. At that point, there are five techniques applicable to managers that can increase the motivation of their employees. These techniques include Screening for Resilience With the early formation of resilience levels in a person, they influence the functionality of a person in the working environment. There is, for the organizations to ensure that there is a high level of resilience from their employees. For example, with the hospitals bearing stressful and emotionally disturbing working environments that require intervention by the organization. In such state, if the employees develop a hostile or pessimistic attribution to that state, there is always a probability of motivational challenges being experienced. Organizations will, therefore, identify chances to employ high resilient individuals. Even though managers have high proximity of impacting the employees with these skills, they should ensure that they hire employees who have experience. Attribution Training Although resilience does not necessarily change the personal characteristics, there is a need for the management of the organization to ensure they offer training to their employees. Formulating an existing assessment device that determines the employee’s attribution styles is important. Through such assessment, they are prone to identifying employee’s business and discuss it with them to correct the situation. This ensures that employees develop a cognitive behavioral change that increases their ability to form accurate attribution. The second form of attribution training involves a discussion on the employees’ success and failures in the long run organizational operations. Most importantly, the methods opens the mental understanding of the employees to think in all round. Immunization The immunization strategy involves elimination of demotivation attributions in an organization. It is achieved through the enhancement of the success of an employee success at an early stage in life. When an employee fails to achieve the desired goals in an organization, then they are assigned another duty, they may feel unfit to be in that organization. Through immunization, such an employee may gain the optimistic attribution that may increase their chances of success. Increasing Psychological Closeness Management’s inaccurate attribution tendencies may impact the individuals negatively. The management feedback to the employees may yield good results to the performance of an employee. When the employees acquire a negative attribute from the feedback of the managers, they might develop an accepting mentality that they are poor and inaccurate which might not be the case. Increasing the psychological closeness between the employee and the manager may enhance improvement to the quality of service the employee contributes to the firm. Multiple Raters of Performance When more than one performance rater is used in the firm, the possibility of a biased judgment by the manager is minimized. It has been proved from the 360-degrees evaluation strategy that shows positive results from the exercise. Through multiple sources, the information and evaluation demonstrated has higher chances of accuracy in the long run. Such measures are applicable to all organizations in rating performance of individual employees with the intention of promoting better performance from them. Organizational Change Implementation at British Airway Organization change has several guidelines in achieving it successfully. Flexibility of the employees and management is key when planning for an organizational change. It should be motivated by strategies that drive the organization to growth and development in all dimensions of it is operations. An organization that does not change with the business environment may collapse. For the process to be effective, the company management should device strategies to fasten the rate of change and adaptability by the employees. Factors that resist to change should be identified and solved amicably. The analysis of the British Airways changing environment can be explained using the ten commandments of change model. The transformation of the British Airways was aimed at ensuring that the image of the airline was cleaned from that of “bloody awful” to “bloody awesome” during the time it was changing ownership and management. The privatization process was engineered by the desire to enhance good customer relations and profit maximization at a time the airways were turning to bankruptcy. The change in the organization can be summarized by the ten commandments of change in an organization. The organization change strategies should identify its strengths and weaknesses. Such analysis helps in identifying its customers and competitors, the organizational systems and structures and its operation in the environment should be considered in change strategies. In the British Airways, there were poor customer relations, poor economic control, low competitiveness within the air market and weaknesses due to its economic state of bankruptcy. It proved that there was emphasis for change in its setting. It changed through changes in the human resource department that became appreciating to the customers through improvement of their approach strategies. The formulation of the ‘putting people first model’ was the approach the company had in the initial change process. It extrapolated on the stand to protect the interest of the customers. The employees were also motivated and well compensated after the freezing of some of the employees. In addition, of the employees was another important step in the change process. It increased competition in the industry, helping BA to experiences competitive advantage over their competitors. The embankment on the pillars of bias for action, customer focus, entrepreneurship and productivity through people. Such methodologies enhanced the confidence of customers and users of the airline. Such interventions lead to increased profits and productivity of the employees. The workforce was engaged in training and induction workforce that was rewarding to their experience as well as improve on their productivity. Well motivated and compensated workforce maximizes their productivity in the industry by expressing their talents, creativity and capabilities to meet the organization's organizational goal. Teamwork and good leadership qualities formulated a critical path in the industrial revolution for the BA. Team work ensured that there is a sharing of a common vision and direction among the employees. Effectiveness is enhanced when the management and workforce share a common goal and objective. It ensures that there are no instances their mindset is diverted to unnecessary goals. In addition, it helps in doing things differently if the vision is to be achieved. The move to freeze some of the employees improved the delivery of service since it is easier to manage smaller groups within the organization. There was absolute need for urgency due to the economic state of the airways. BA was getting to a bankrupt state that required a state of emergency in the implementation of the strategies. These measures transformed a dying industry to a globally competitive airline today. Strong management and leadership skills transformed the airline initially experiencing loss to an award winning one. These strategic approaches are applicable in other business, organizational setting in the public and private ownership. Daily intervention in the management is always presented as new research in the industry. As the business environment changes, the managerial exercises are not left behind. Bibliography Read More