Managing change, Qatar Telecommunications - OOREDOO - Case Study Example

Managing change, "Qatar Telecommunications - OOREDOO" case study Introduction Ooredoo is a leading telecommunications provider in Qatar. The company has grown in provision of mobile services, wireless services and other content services to both locally and in the international market (Ooredoo, 2014). The company was operating on a monopolistic basis until 2006 when a law restructuring ICT sector was enacted. Its main competitors include Vodafone, Telenor, and Zain. However, Ooredoo, has been experiencing stiff competition especially from Vodafone and Telenor in regard to mobile phone services. Some a few years back, only a few people could have afforded SIM card and airtime for calls. This has drastically changed as a result of competition that has seen the stead drop of prices for both the SIM cards and calling rates. According to Todnem (2005), these are some of the changes that calls for organisations to have change management that would help them cope with ever evolving changes. As businesses continue to experience growth, the contemporary businesses world continue to become complex as new and old businesses develop new competitive strategies that triggers change in the way business is conducted. For instance, since the law of controlling monopoly was enacted, ooredoo has been facing stiff competition from other plays in the market. Vodafone has, for example, been gaining grounds slowly as customers start to focus on a wide range of factors that are favourable to them. Low prices have been the main focus for customers since the market has been preoccupied by high calling rates. In this regard, ooredoo has no option other than change management to cope with the new challenges for it to continue being at the top as it used to be during monopolistic time. Rationale for the need of change management Although many people would argue that ooredoo did not have change management in its earlier years when it used to operate on monopoly basis, it is arguable that the company employed organisational strategy to provide ever changing dynamics of business in regard to emergence of new products and services. However, the change for strategy in the recent years is what has triggered more physical changes especially on pricing that has made people think that the company just begun change management concept due to competition. Customer needs has been argued to be a major trigger for the need of change of management. Ian (2000) argued that an organisation that has to develop and maintain competitive advantage has to have clear mission of where it want to lead and develop strategies that would help it achieve its objectives including ways of managing changes require in achieving the objectives. The need for change management is supported the view of Hussey (2000) in that change is unpredictable and reactive may at times leads to organisational crisis if not managed. With the rise of Vodafone, business operations in the telecommunication sector changed as the company devised strategic ways of doing business and which enabled it capture a chunk of the market. Ooredoo did not see it coming until when it realised that Vodafone was slowly taking over the market. This led to Ooredoo in adapting to the reality of high competition and devised its own competitive strategies. Ooredoo is advantaged in that even before the rise of Vodafone, Ooredoo had already commanded a larger part of the market. Besides, Ooredoo is backed by the government as the major shareholder (Ooredoo, 2014). In this regard, Ooredoo introduced significant changes especially on post-paid Shahry plans for mobile phones (Ooredoo, 2014). In addition, data allowances have also been increased for all plans. The plan to also have monthly charge for 4G services is seen as a strategy of retaining and attracting new customers. The strategy was aimed at counteracting the new low rates introduced by Vodafone and which was seen to advantage many subscribers. With such deliberations, it is indispensable to argue that Ooredoo’s need for change management has helped it stay in the course. Thus, improved services have been witnessed with the level of quality improving equally. Change in the systems perspective Ian, (2000) argued that organisational change is equated to system perspective either as an organic or a cybernetic model. In regard to organic model, change is viewed as a systematic adaptive response by the system to maintain its balance especially when subjected to a shifting environment. However, this model is viewed as a negative feedback by the system as it tries to strike a balance between the actual and desired conditions and the efforts put in reducing the disparity are critical for the maintenance of the balance of the system. In light of this, organisations can be viewed as systems in the organic model especially when confronted by situations that are not considered as desired situations, but in the actual sense, they are actual situations. For instance, it would have been the desire of Ooredoo to remain the monopolistic company and continue to reap the best out of the market without any competition. However, things changed and competition was inevitable with the new competitors looming and taking over the market systematically. The response by Ooredoo was that the company had to change its ways of operations in order to catch up with the new rivals and still remain competitive. However, the end result of the change of operations is viewed as a negative feedback to Ooredoo as most of its strategies are considered desperate measures geared towards maintaining competitive advantage. In average, Ooredoo pricing strategy is twice lower than it used to be before competition intensified. Although the end result of such a strategy is to stay in the course, it is considered as a desperate measure that the organisation has to adopt to remain relevant in the market due to the shifting environment created by the rivals (Todnem, 2005). On the other hand, cybernetic model denotes control of communication mechanisms, which are organized hierarchically in the system. In addition, the model articulates on environmental scanning function which helps the system develop ways of changing the way the system functions. However, although the change in this model is seen as being subtle, it is still considered as reactions geared towards maintaining or increasing order in the system. In this regard, Ooredoo could be argued not to conform to this model since most of its changes in its operations were triggered by the intensified competition. Little evidence is present to show that Ooredoo’s change in its operations have been proactive rather than reactive. All of its new strategies are arguable reactive as denoted by the continued change of its pricing strategies, which are seen to be as a result of high competition from its main competitor Vodafone. Organisational change: implications for theory According to Lindsay (2003), the impact of the change intervention can only be determined by focusing on the situation before and after the intervention. Recent articulation of fundamental aspect of change has shifted gear and more focus is on the management of the change. Theory of organisational change has according to the recent studies changed its focus of static models to dynamic models which are denoted by the continued organisational change. The argument has been that change cannot be relied upon to occur at a steady state rather there are some situations that warrant a different dimensioned approach to be used when dealing with the changes. Burnes (2009), however, termed dynamic change as a focus of fine tuning the static change to cope with the prevailing circumstances. It is a way of dealing with uncertainty while strengthening the current strategies in allowing for the new change management. Lindsay (2003) terms change as a learning tool for organisations. The wakeup call for organisations to respond to change is simply a natural response to external and internal conditions. In regard to Ooredoo, even with the coming of new entrants in the market, the company has developed new strategies that have helped it cling to the top position. It would have been expected that high competition would have kicked out the company out of the market, but the challenging competition acted as a learning tool for the company, something that has made the company continue to use different strategies of counteracting the shifting environment. Jung (2013) pointed out that failure by organisations to change the structure of their management can lead to crisis as some of the new changes that take place are as dangerous as eliminating the organisation out of the market. For instance, telecommunications customers in Qatar has for a long time suffered the effects of monopoly by Ooredoo, and which made them yearn for companies that would bring in competition for the services to be affordable. In this regard, if Ooredoo was reluctant in coming to terms with such a fact, the new rivals would have taken over the market and pulled it to the bottom of the competition. Strategic management of corporate change Dunphy & Stace (1993) are of the view that although there are universal approaches that can be used by organisations to deal with changes that occur in their operations, the approach is inadequate especially in special circumstances. Turbulent times calls for different responses far much different from the universal responses. In fact, this is in line with what Singh & Waddell (2004) advocated for terming the appropriate model as the one that would be “situational” or contingency model. The model advocates for change of tactics used to achieve optimum fit depending with the changing environment. The model stipulates that organisations have to develop a scale of change that enables organizations fit the shifting environments and apply appropriate leadership indispensable for in bringing out the desired change. Ooredoo’s leadership has focused on strategically designing was of managing change. The leadership of Ooredoo has been driving strategy execution where executives make case for change and reinforce strategic priorities while ensuring that well articulated strategy exist. In fact, office of strategy management as established to solidify leadership strategies that would help take care of the change management. This is considered by Dunphy & Stace (1993) as an ideal leadership step towards ensuring successful change management. With continued restructuring of the leadership of the company, the company has been able to withstand the ranging storms of the high competition from its rivals. Leadership has been documented as an essential element in the organisational performance and which helps organisations understand and develop ways of coming up with strategies of dealing with situational change. The case of new entrants in the market can be solved by using universal strategies that are well documented in many literatures. However, this is not the case to Ooredoo because even if the new entrants can be considered as any other situations to other sectors, the new entrants entered the market and started to slowly take over and this was a challenge to Ooredoo and had to move in quickly and look for means of coping with the situation and bring about the most indispensable change management. Changing leadership Unlike in the past years where leadership was seen as a way of adapting to situations to cope, the current business world requires change leadership that aims at innovating ideas that would help organisations grow. Since leadership is an essential part of initiating innovation, leaders and managers are therefore required to implement change rather than controlling work. Caldwell (2003) noted that leadership of any organisations has to embrace change oriented attributes that will help in coping with uncertainty and become innovators and risk takers. Since 2006, Ooredoo appreciated the fact that innovations are at the core of success of their competitors. Instead of accepting that fact, the leadership of the company had to come up with ideas that helped in taking risks to bring in changes that helped in coping with changes (Paton, & McCalman, 2008). Cutting down prices to almost half was a courageous move by Ooredoo just to stay at the top of the competition. There were risks associated with such a move, but the company had to work out on its modalities of bringing in changes of handling the new environment created by the rivals. Innovation has also been at the heart of the company as denoted by various services to its customers. The company led in introducing 4G network services it its subscribers. This made the company continue to thriving in the market as customers are looking for companies with latest versions of innovations. Having a weak leadership would have made the company lose focus thus being overtaken by its rivals. Introduction of new products and services with reduced prices shows how dedicated the leadership of Ooredoo has been to deal with the change brought about by competition from its rivals. Conclusion Ooredoo had been operating on a monopolistic basis until 2006 when a law restructuring ICT sector was enacted. Since the law of controlling monopoly was enacted, ooredoo has been facing stiff competition from other plays in the market. In this regard, ooredoo has no option other than change management to cope with the new challenges for it to continue being at the top as it used to be during monopolistic time. Change is unpredictable and reactive may at times leads to organisational crisis if not managed. Ooredoo introduced significant changes especially on post-paid Shahry plans for mobile phones. Ooredoo’s need for change management has helped it stay in the course. Organisational change is equated to system perspective either as an organic or a cybernetic model. Organic model is viewed as a negative feedback by the system as it tries to strike a balance between the actual and desired conditions and the efforts put in reducing the disparity are critical for the maintenance of the balance of the system. After the law on monopoly was changed, things changed for Ooredoo and competition was inevitable with the new competitors looming and taking over the market systematically. Cybernetic model denotes control of communication mechanisms, which are organized hierarchically in the system. Although the change in this model is seen as being subtle, it is still considered as reactions geared towards maintaining or increasing order in the system. the impact of the change intervention can only be determined by focusing on the situation before and after the intervention. Dynamic change management is a way of dealing with uncertainty while strengthening the current strategies in allowing for the new change management. Change in other dimensions has been termed as wakeup call for organisations to respond to change is simply a natural response to external and internal conditions. The challenging competition for Ooredoo acted as a learning tool for the company, something that has made the company continue to use different strategies of counteracting the shifting environment. If Ooredoo was reluctant in coming to terms with such a fact, the new rivals would have taken over the market and pulled it to the bottom of the competition. Although there are universal approaches that can be used by organisations to deal with changes that occur in their operations, the approach is inadequate especially in special circumstances. Contingency model advocates for change of tactics used to achieve optimum fit depending with the changing environment. The leadership of Ooredoo has been driving strategy execution where executives make case for change and reinforce strategic priorities while ensuring that well articulated strategy exist. Reference list: Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Top of Form Burnes, B. (2009). Managing change: A strategic approach to organisational dynamics. Harlow, England: Prentice Hall/Financial Times. Caldwell, R. (2003). Change leaders and change managers: different or complementary? Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 24 (5), 285-293. Dunphy, D. & Stace, D. (1993). The Strategic Management of Corporate Change. Human relations, 46 (8), 905-920. Hussey, D. E. (2000). How to manage organisational change. London, Angleterre: Kogan Page. Ian, B. D. (2000). Emergence and accomplishment in organizational change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 13 (2), 178 - 189. Jung, C. (2013). Importance of change management in organisations. S.l.: Grin Verlag. Lindsay, N. (2003). A case study in organisational change: implications for theory. The Learning Organization, 10 (1), 18 - 30. Ooredoo website. (2014). Retrieved on 15th Dec 2014 from: http://www.ooredoo.qa/en/home. Paton, R. A., & McCalman, J. (2008). Change Management: A Guide to Effective Implementation. London: Sage Publications. Singh, M., & Waddell, D. (2004). E-business innovation and change management. Hershey, Pa. [u.a.: Idea Group Publ. Todnem, R. (2005). Organisational Change Management: A Critical Review. Journal of Change Management, 5 (4), 369–380. Bottom of Form Read More