PolyProds Manufacturing and Distribution Division - Assignment Example

Organizational Change: PolyProd’s Manufacturing and Distribution Division as Case Study The concerned case study is about PolyProd which is a manufacturing corporation of high technology products for both industry and domestic purposes. Roberta Jackson who is the project manager of the company’s manufacturing and distribution Division (M&D Div.) believes that the existing process of information management is not well developed and therefore can be financially disastrous for the company with possibility of decline in the price of shares in the market. Since this Division supports the manufacturing organization, therefore the need is to develop new and more efficient process of documentation. The goal is to speed up the process. Since this means a change in the functional techniques, therefore the first thing to do is to convince the management of the viability of the project (Cummings & Worley, 2013, p.241). For proper analysis of the current scenario, the need is to conduct it on individual basis. It is traditionally believed that individuals are not prone towards any kind of change. This is because people tend to remain committed to their old beliefs and methods. In order to bring change within the organization, it is important first to study the factors that influence an employee’s motivation level, personality development and approach towards work. Any kind of change in the individual level is reflected in an employee’s performance standard, motivation level and knowledge about the job (Woodman & Dewett, 2004, p.33). Since individuals are generally reluctant to change their old ways of job, so to overcome resistance to change it is necessary to duly motivate the employees. Motivated employees feel themselves as part of the organization and therefore will agree to adopt any kind of changes, like learning new technologies, which will benefit the company. Therefore, before initiating the concerned project of PolyProd the employees should be efficiently motivated to acknowledge the need of changes to be made in documentation processes and procedures (Gupta, 2010, p.203). 2. PolyProd’s headquarter is in the United States; however its manufacturing and distribution divisions are found also in Canada, Asia, Africa and Europe. Each unit is given the power to make decisions. M&D Div.’s functioning process has increasingly become complex due to the increased speed of the automated manufacturing process. Since PolyProd manufactures and distributes high technology products, therefore it is priority for the M&D Div. to ensure that quality is maintained since low quality products can destroy the reputation of the company. To achieve this, M&D Div. maintains high volume manufacturing processes. The functioning of M&D Div. includes loads of documentation in order to keep records of interim results. All documents are maintained in electronic form that can be accessed through computer networks. Therefore M&D Div. has major responsibility and any error, however minor, can disrupt the entire manufacturing and distribution process resulting in multimillion dollar disasters. In order to bring about any change the first thing to do is to identify a change owner who will be responsible for assembling all services and materials that will be needed to implement the changes. The change owner will also manage the entire process along with dealing with any kind of resistance from any stakeholders like staff members and departmental managers. The second step is to prepare the organization for the changes by identifying key stakeholders who will gain most from the changes. It is also needed to study before initiating any kind of changes the impact of such changes on the organizational culture and morale of the employees. Also, it is important to know the impact on existing technological framework and resources (Hefley & Loesche, 2010, pp.186-187). To identify the interested stakeholders, interviews can be conducted or questionnaires can be distributed. The questions should focus on asking who will be most affected by the changes. Also, observations need to be made to see which group of stakeholders holds the maximum power and how much influence one group has on the other, and also who has the most capacity to deal with any potential problems from the changes. 3. Every organization has an internal political ladder that differentiates groups of stakeholders with varying goals and interests. While employees will desire promotions and increase in salaries, top level executives will demand expansion of business, manufacturers will want more efficient technologies to produce quality goods, and marketing managers will demand product innovations (Cummings & Worley, 2013, p.171). When any kind of changes are to be initiated, undisputed perceptions are a rare scenario since conflict of opinion is common between different power bases. For change agents, it takes a lot of skill to tackle resistance from different groups (Buchanan & Badham, 2008, p.xvii,xi). Resistance to change is an inherent part of organizational psychology and is “a natural reaction of individuals and social systems, originating from the need for a relatively stable situation” (Gravenhorst, 2008, p.320). In this case study, the documentation process in the M&D Div. of PolyProd is considered as inefficient in spite of heavy investments “in the human resources, tools, and time needed to create and maintain the documentation process” (Cummings & Worley, 2013, p.244). The level of dissatisfaction and the relevant reasons for grudge among different groups of stakeholders have been listed below : - Majority of employees and management They are confident that documents have been inefficiently stored and managed; therefore they doubt the accuracy especially in the design department. Quality department Since there is lack of confidence in the design department, any errors in designs take long time to be rectified and updated which in turn delays the functioning of the quality department. Technical writers They often have to rely on standard templates or designs for their documents. This restricts their creativity since word processors and graphic programs remain for general use. Therefore, these technologies more often than not remain unavailable for the technical writers. Headquarters document control supervisors and technical-writing supervisors Their workload has reached unprecedented heights since they have to deliver additional staff to manage the increasing number of documents in the M&D Div. Moreover, they can only hire temporary staff as highly qualified employees are not easily available. As such, the temporarily hired staff gain knowledge and experience in PolyProd and then they leave after their stipulated time. The production sites They remain frustrated since correct documents take a long time to arrive. Also, they have to give time to convert unusual files and also have to translate them for local users. (Cummings & Worley, 2013, p.244) 4. After assessing the problem, the next step is to find out whether the organization is politically prepared to implement the changes. Without cooperation from interested divisions, it is not ethical to use the resources since success will not be guaranteed, and also reputations of change agents will be at stake (McLean, 2005, p.49). Once an organization is ready, small changes can be implemented which will soon grow into large-scale solutions (Jones & Brazzel, 2012, Ch.27). The project manager, Roberta Jackson conducted interviews and personal observations to assess the documentation problems in M&D Div. It is apparent that the organization is not ready to implement the change. In high level management, there was small initiative taken which soon sizzled due to lack of positive approach. This gave the message that documentation changes are not important which brought relief to those people for whom such tasks are nothing but extra workload. Consequently, efficiency in storing and updating documentation began to deteriorate resulting in lack of coordination between the locations. Then there are integral problems like lack of communication between different departments that conduct different stages of documentation. With no incentives for efficiency, the departments produce conflicting results. After talking with all concerned people, Jackson concluded that each unit was concerned with their own interests and there was no sense of “shared pain”. Most importantly, the upper management is not aware of the problem’s gravity. Although each location attempts to adopt solutions based on local factors, there is no effort for large-scale solution. 5. Before initiating any changes, it is important to prepare the organization in order to eliminate all kinds of resistance. The second important step is to convince people to adapt the changes which can be done by persuasive communication and encouraging affected people to become involved in the change process (Michalenko, 2010, p.281). A strategic approach is needed to implement changes. First, I will hold a discussion with M&D Div.’s executive to know the impact such changes will have on the organization. Moreover, I will keep this in mind that bringing about large scale changes will also disturb the existing cultural environment of the organization. Therefore, change management will be executed in a rational and distinct manner to avoid confusion. Finally, any plan I will be making will be done by understanding the fact that M&D Div. has little power to convince different locations to adopt the changes. Also, there will be no positive result by approaching the top level management. This is because even though top managers have the “power to command all organizations” (Cummings & Worley, 2013, p.246), they are most often detached from the problem and will therefore remain disinterested unless they can be convinced that such changes will have dynamic effect on the organization. References Buchanan, D. & Badham, R. (2008) Power, Politics, and Organizational Change, 2nd ed., SAGE Publications Cummings, TG. & Worley, C.G. (2013) Organization Development & Change, Cengage Learning Gravenhorst, K.B. (2008) Power and Collaboration: Methodologies for working together in change, pp.317-342, In Boonstra, J. (ed.) Dynamics of Organizational Change and Learning, John Wiley & Sons Gupta, C.B. (2010) Business Studies, 6th ed., Tata McGraw-Hill Education Hefley, B. & Loesche, E.A. (2010) eSourcing Capability Model for Client Organizations, Van Haren Jones, B. & Brazzel, M. (2012) The NTL Handbook of Organization Development and Change: Principles, Practices, and Perspectives, John Wiley & Sons McLean, G. (2005) Organization Development: Principles, Processes, Performance, Berrett-Koehler Publishers Michalenko, P. (2010) The impact of trust on the organizational merger process, pp.279-314, In Pasmore, W.A., Shani, A.B. & R.W. Woodman (eds.) Research in Organizational Change and Development, Vol.18, Emerald Group Publishing Woodman, R.W. & Dewett, T. (2004), Organizationally Relevant Journeys in Individual Change, pp.32-49, In Poole, M.S. & A.H. Van de Ven (eds.) Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation, Oxford Univ. Press Read More