Change Management of Whirlpool Company - Case Study Example

Lecturer: Change Management: A Case of Whirlpool Company Introduction Change and change management are two critical aspects of a company that must be done concisely for a progressive reason. Many situations arise in the operation of companies that need change for an improved operation. Change may be brought about by a collection of issues and conflict on existing procedures can be one of the most important causes of the need for change. The case as presented at the whirlpool company requires a collection of analytical views pertaining the relationship between a successful change and the quality of the change process. The prossecual narrative is therefore relevant to the change process as it integrates a collection of factors that need to be developed as well as taking to account others so that the change process is successful. This approach is relevant because it integrates a collection of factors from the historical perspective and brings them to view in understanding the situation that can be used to make the change process more successful than before. Procession Approach and situation at Whirlpool Procession approaches seek more than just profit maximization in organization production and in entirety, the operations. This is a process that seeks to include all stakeholders in strategy change so that they too feel as part of the organization. The problem has always been the strategic roles of each of the employees involved in the process. What functions are they to perform when there is a bottom-up strategy? Stages of change are hardly clear, especially where everybody is concerned. They are confusing unless a very strong strategy is put in place. Once again, there is no strategy that is satisfactory to every person in the organization. In reference to the issue of Whirlpool Corporation, there is an insight of a need for more innovation that goes beyond profit maximization. There is an element of customer satisfaction in the use of its products. The example given where a fridge from GE would act as one from the company is reason enough to believe that there was need for a difference in innovation in the products produced. Buchanan further states that the change process is largely ethnographic where every process is viewed from a deep examination perspective so that the right dynamics of change are identified and applied. There is a lot of identification of issues from a cultural perspective in the Whirlpool case. There is a dilemma about whether to choose a change process that fits the operations at management level and ask the junior employees to follow or involve all the employees at the company. In this regard, the company hires a collection of consultancy firms to oversee the change process and at the end; the ideas of the Whitlam and Snyder are primarily at a reasonable conventional agreement with the proposals of Strategos Consultants Company. In essence, the two top managers had the ideas of the entire culture of the company represented in their ideas. They sought to find companies that would have a number of employees in innovation. Finding very few, Whitwam sought the help of external advisors to help unveil the right process of initiating innovation as a change process. This deep taking of issues is reliant on the fact that the company took to consider different views from different stakeholders; the other companies, internal employees and lastly, the incorporation of consultants. Another aspect of processual change is that it considers historical, contextual and other external issues that would affect the change process. This is not as a result of these being part of the change but how they would practically affect the entire change process. The case study produces an excellent view where there is a reference to the early innovations. These innovations take to account the likes of The Inspired Chef and Gladiator Garage Works. In the Inspired Chef, was an idea of the I-team that produced a host of ideas as well as the product. This was a basis upon which the next generation innovations would be based on. There was need to compare the performances of the different products as related to their performance on introduction to the market . In the Gladiator Garage Works, former warehouse manager Todd Starr started serving as an I-consultant where he taught skills to other people in innovation. Marketing and sales teams sought to understand the preferences of the consumers in the market and diversify their products. From a historical perspective, they learned that consumer were now spending more on their homes as opposed to previous times and the diversity of the products is also changing. The garage was diminishing and there was need to establish ways of making it more presentable as the change was going to affect the garage section of the company. This is an aspect of the processual ideas that take to mind the ideas that history must be attached to the current change considerations so that the right procedure is taken and involve the right stakeholders . The other important aspect of the processual approach is that human actions are shaped by the context in which the organization operates. In the context of Whirlpool, there are conditions that can work while others cannot. To approve of this issue, the management seeks internal ideas on the change in innovation of the company. The corporate manager and the CEO come up with ideas in conflicting ways. Each however is applicable to the institution. They seek the operation of the competitors and find that the correlation between employees and innovation in these companies does not apply to Whirlpool situation and employees. On hiring a collection of consultant firms, only one comes up with ideas and proposals related to the situation at the company. This is in relation to the human actions that had been developed at the company and are applicable only to the situations at the company and nowhere else . In this case, the company develops a training rapport with Strategicos Company in which case there was a collection of training in different sections but all was in relation to Whirlpool’s way of operation. At the end, three important aspects of change are initiated in relation to the human resource at the company. These were in view of resource allocation, innovation and knowledge management and related efforts. All these changes were in view of conflicting ideas that marred the requirement for any change strategy at the company. Application of Relevant Model: The Congruent Model Source: Nadler and Tushman From the relevance of the appraised case of Whirlpool Company, there is a direct connection to this congruent model. This has been effectively used to initiate the change that was so desired amid a collection of conflicting ideas at the company. In this model, the input stage has the environment, the resources and the historical concepts of the required change. History of the required change has already been discussed in the analytical section above. The environment in which the change was to take place is both internal and external. Internal had the conflicting aspects of the employees along the vertical lineage. In this case, there was the top management involved with the corporate manager and the CEO active about the required change in innovation. Junior employees and other branch managers are put into context as well as all the management teams from all over the four continents are brought together to develop issues related to their different environments. From the perspective of the organization, there were enough resources. Financial resources are made available to anyone who is ready to invent and come up with a practical and useful innovation. The strategic perspective taken is the issue of the company taking to account the fact that it needs to look for the best way of initiating this change. That is why there is hiring of the most comprehensive consultants firm that oversees the change process through rampant training of the staff of the company. The change strategy is to include all the stakeholders to the company in terms of the employees from the bottom to the top and vice versa. The strategy cannot work without culture of the company being put to practice. As indicated in the processual approach, culture is an integration of the life at the company. In the context of the congruence model, culture takes to account five factors; The organization The people(employees) Processes Technology The informal systems The organization includes the entire company plus all the stakeholders associated with it (Kutzavitch). In this case, everybody seems concerned with the required change in which case there are conflicts coming up. The people involved are all the employees in which case there are senior and junior employees used to initiate the change. Different aspects are used on these people so that a strategic situational change is achieved. As indicated in the processual approach on people, they are used to shape and describe the context of an organization. In this case, the people are highly determining the change process that is taking place. The process involves a need for change in technology . The innovation at the company is seen as out-dated and although there is no need for a complete overhaul of the company procedures and technology, there is an exquisite need for change at the company. That has become the primary situation illustrated by the case. At the end of the whole process, there is supposed to be a change that is initiated at individual and group level which must impact the organization positively. According to the CEO of Whirlpool Company, in 2001, the process to change in innovation is seen as an incomplete process. It took a very good start but the end was far from being the best that was required. The whole issue was being washed away by recession and other external factors as well other unexplained factors inside the company. Therefore, procesural approach has been widely used but the final process has turned out to be unnecessarily changed due to internal factors. Use of the Path-Goal Theory and Contingency Re-Engineering The path goal theory as developed indicates that the behaviour of the leader is contingent to the motivation, satisfaction and performance of the employees (Whitney, 2007). The behaviours of the leaders in an organization complement the employees in the organization. In the case of Whirlpool Company, it can be realised that the leadership showed character from the beginning by identifying that there was a problem which needed to be worked on. They then went ahead to involve all stakeholders from the lowest echelons of administration as well as combining them in the training by Strategicos consultants company. This was the motivating factor to the employees who worked hard to oversee the change. Although this change was not fully fruitful, there was a show of competent culture and ability to lead by example on the contingent issues that had been identified. Source: Whitney, 2007 From the structure of the contingency theory above, it is developed that there are four factors that would be used as change management initiatives; behaviour of the leaders, the employee contingencies, environmental contingencies and effectiveness of the leaders. In the case of Whirlpool, the CEO Whitwam leads an achievement oriented and supportive initiative where the participation is based on all senior management teams taking part. The introduction of Strategos Consultants seems to be a step endeared towards seeking a centre of harmony so that the strategic objectives can be achieved. The employee contingencies are handled at their vertical qualification levels. The top management teams are taken to task to develop and understanding of the procedures developed by the consultants where there would be change expected. This is in consideration of the fact that the skills and experiences differ at the given different levels. The task structures and team dynamics are highly introduced at the training levels. These are encouraged inside the company where every employee has the responsibility of participating in the company change progress. What is seen at the end of the training by Strategos is a staff that comes back to work with a different view of how they perform their duties. The approaches have changed and this is seen when there is a trial to inculcate the procedures taught during the training. The CEO had started the process where the core action was to enlist the support of the key leaders in the management positions. That is why those in the lower management positions are able to easily comply within their respective teams. On the other hand, contingency planning is all about best business practices and processes (Hendricks, Hora, & Menor, 2012). A look at the whirlpool situation indicates a situation where a situation had been identified and required change processes equivalent to the strength of the problem. The issues of concern were processes, service levels, customer recovery thresholds and right priorities. These were realised through selection of the best consultant group, Strategicos Company which came up with a plan equivalent to the situation at the company. Recommendations It is quite evident from the case that the company took a lot of effort to make a change to its innovation. However, there are highly recommended processes that need to be taken to task. The first recommendation according to the management requirements is that there is supposed to be a pilot study to oversee the exact starting position for the company change process. The case indicates that the change process was initiated by the CEO talking to the corporate manager and together they started the process. Was there need for the change? How was the process to be primarily undertaken? These are conditions that need to be addressed before the process sets up. Secondly, not all members of the organization need to be involved in the change process. Other subjects being involved too much as was done sparks a very long process to no place of objectivity. This is what happened in this case. The above conclusions stand by way of practically seeing that there are so many steps that were taken by the company to initiate the change that never however worked efficiently for the organization. When there are plans put in place but there is no effective implementation, then there stands to develop a fact that although processes are good, the way they are implemented also matters a lot. That is why whirlpool had a collection of excellent plans that do not entirely change the organization as per the objectives at the beginning. Conclusion This paper has appraised the case study related to Whirlpool Company change process. In every sense, change is supposed to be a strategic process to progressive growth. The use of processual change management style develops a procedure that takes to account all the requirements for a change. The paper has therefore used the processual approach to generate an understanding of conflicting ideas in the change management process at the company. In explaining the same, there was application of the congruent model which highlighted the different sections of an organization that needs to be used in a change process. The recommendations are based on the initiated change process not being very fruitful and they are based on the comparison between the processual method, the congruent model and the situation at the company. References Buchanan, Professor David and Professor Alan Bryman. The Sage Handbook of Organizational Research Methods. New York: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009. Hendricks, K., Hora, M., & Menor, L. (2012). Adoption of the Balanced Scorecard, A Contingency Variables Analysis. Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, 29(2), 112. Whitney, C. M. (2007). The Application of Path Goal Theory of Leadership to Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance, An Investigation Within Small Public Corporations. London : ProQuest. Read More