A Matter of Life and De'Ath - Organizational Crisis and Changes in the Insurance Company - Case Study Example

A Matter of Life and De’Ath Name Institution Course Date A Matter of Life and De’Ath Introduction After two centuries of operations, the net profits at De’Ath Insurance Company Ltd became stagnant and the industry’s competition increased tremendously was intense. The need for change was attracted to the internet as well as price comparison websites, which had changed how insurance companies operated. Change is an imperative and managing it effectively can enable the companies to improve their capability for overall transformation. More importantly, effective change management can accelerate the implementation process as well as enhance the success probability. For De’Ath to achieve lasting organisational change, the process of change management process should be rooted in the organisation’s strength. Most of the call attenders at De’Ath were demotivated because their work was not only demanding but also stressful. The employees were working under intense pressure and in a noisy environment under high time pressure while being monitored by their team leaders. This has further been exacerbated by poor pay and lack of career advancement opportunities. Discussion The new Chief Operating Officer, Krys exhibited a ‘no nonsense’ attribute and had an achievement-driven mentality. Leaders, according to ‘Great Man Theories’, are unique individuals, destined to lead because they are born with innate qualities. This theory resulted in the Trait Approach, which identifies successful leaders’ key characteristics (Bolden, Gosling, Marturano, & Dennison, 2003). Through trait approach, critical traits of leadership can be isolated and individuals having these traits can be hired and placed into leadership positions. Trait theory had some shortcomings since a number of leaders could have certain traits but failure to see them did not essentially connote that the individual was not a leader. Some of the traits exhibited by Krys include dominance, decisive, persistent, achievement-orientated, ambitious, energetic, and self-confident. Krys had a Type ‘A’ personality since she was a go-getter, very competitive, ambitious, determined, focused and achievement-driven. As mentioned by Darshani (2014), Type As normally watches their employees and they are inclined to react with hostility towards others. More importantly, they like controlling everything and pleasing them is very challenging. People with Type A personalities are inflexible and rigid risk takers. Darshani (2014) posits that the irritability and hostility components attributed to Type behaviour can result in employees’ dissatisfaction. Krys’s Type A demonstrates his autocratic style of leadership since she had total control and authority over decisions made at De’Ath. She controlled the efforts of the employees and monitored them closely. This leadership style was suitable for the company because the conditions were becoming dangerous; therefore, she had to assert rigid rules to make sure employees are focussed. This style of leadership style allows only for one-sided conversation; thus, making employees restrictive while engaging in repetitive work of day-to-day activities. Given that Krys had the authority, she exploited and distorted her employees. Krys dictatorial form of leadership resulted in bad surprises, which consequently led to dissatisfaction amongst the employees. As mentioned by Talukder, Talukder, and Alam (2014) inter-role conflict can result in job dissatisfaction due to heavy obligations at the job, which drain attention, energy, and time far from non-work roles. At De’Ath, the working environment, especially for call attenders was pitiable to the extent that employees could not do their job adequately. Due to lack of sufficient conditions, the level of employee motivation amongst the call attenders reduced leading to job dissatisfaction and poor performance. Herzberg’s (1959) two-factor theory stresses that the motivator-hygiene factors try to demonstrate motivation as well as satisfaction in the organisation. This theory concentrates on outcomes of dissatisfaction and satisfaction (Dugguh & Ayaga, 2014). According to the theory, certain job’s aspects result in satisfaction and motivation while others lead to job dissatisfaction. Job satisfaction as well as dissatisfaction, according to the theory, is the product of hygiene and motivation. In this case, the new organisational policy and poor working conditions are hygiene factors that led to dissatisfaction. De’Ath’s employee situation can also be demonstrated by ‘event theory’ theory, which explains the connections between the internal influences of employees such as mental states and emotions as well as how they react to incidents which happen in their work setting that influence their job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and performance. According to this theory, affective work behaviours are demonstrated by the emotions and moods of the employees while job satisfaction can be predicted effectively by cognitive-based behaviours. Therefore, negative- and positive-inducing emotional incidents at the place of work can be distinguished and they have an enormous psychological impact on the employees’ job satisfaction (Dugguh & Ayaga, 2014). The launching of the new ‘HEROES’ values statement for De’Ath resulted in criticisms and opposition from employees. McKinsey 7s model can highlight how affectively Krys can organise De’Ath, in a holistic manner. This model is based on seven important elements which have to be aligned synergistically together for the company to operate successfully. These elements can be divided into hard (systems, structure, and strategy) and soft elements (staff, skills, style and shared values). More importantly, the model’s pinnacle is the shared values since they create the underpinning culture, performance, effectiveness and strategy. This model can be utilised to understand where there are gaps that create imbalance and what business areas to improve and align in order to improve performance. The model can be utilised as a tool in various corporate situations, such as creating fundamental and strategic culture change. Structured and organisational change can be understood well through Lewin’s Change Management Model. The model includes three main stages: unfreeze (preparing for the change), change (real transition) and refreeze (things start going back to their routine and normal pace). As pointed out by Ravanfar (2015), organisational structure is the manner in which power and responsibility allocated and how work procedures are performed by members of the organisation. Ravanfar (2015) posits that the nature of organisational structure can be differentiated as organic versus mechanistic (inorganic). In this case, the mechanistic paradigm is considered suitable for companies that are experiencing a high level of certainty and where employees are considered as a resource. McKinsey 7s model key point is that all the seven elements are interconnected and changing one area would create a need for changing the rest of a firm for effective functioning. With the view to Edgar Schein model, organisational culture cannot be adopted in one day because it is formed progressively as the employees experience different changes, solve problems as well as adapt to the external environment. The model posits that workers gain from their previous experiences and begin practising it day after day; therefore, creating a workplace culture. According to Schein, organisation culture have three levels; artefacts (the organisation characteristics that can be felt, heard and viewed easily by individuals collectively); values (values of the employees); and assumed values (certain facts and beliefs that stay hidden but have no effect on the organisation’s culture). As mentioned by van der Voet (2014), leadership is one of the main drivers of organisational change implementation. Transformational leadership is the main leadership theory which stresses on organisational change. According to the theory, when effective leaders offer individualised support, promote group goals acceptance, and articulate a vision, they change their followers’ basic attitudes, beliefs, and values to enable them to perform better. Transformational leadership is inclined to be effective during organisational change. Transformational leaders normally convince their followers to go after a higher level of achievement and higher ethical and moral standards (Bolden, Gosling, Marturano, & Dennison, 2003). Still, change cannot be successful at De’Ath without managing the existing conflict. The Dual Concern Model states that assertiveness and empathy are two underlying dimensions that facilitate effective handling of the conflict. The first dimension, assertiveness concentrates on the extent to which a person focuses on satisfying one’s own interests as well as needs. On the other hand, the empathy dimension concentrates on the level to which a person is concerned with satisfying the other party’s interests and needs.  The best conflict style for De’Ath situation is accommodating, which minimises assertiveness and maximises empathy.  This style of conflict management would derive satisfaction and would lead to good relationship building skills. Organisational change success depends on change acceptance by employees. According to Kubler-Ross (1973), every person undergoes five stages of ‘grief’ (acceptance, anger, denial, depression and bargaining) when facing a change or loss (Goksoy, 2015). This model can be utilised to help guide support and communication at the time of change. For instance, after delivering the news of change, employees must be offered adequate information to manage their denial. Conclusion In conclusion, change at De’Ath was unpredictable and was caused by a situation of organisational crisis. At De’Ath, the working environment was not deplorable to the level that employees could not do their job satisfactorily. As a result, the level of employee motivation amongst the call attenders reduced leading to job dissatisfaction and poor performance. Krys personality made her inflexible, unaccommodating and rigid risk takers. Her irritability and hostility resulted in employee’s dissatisfaction and increased number of customer complaints. Recommendations Recommendation one: Improve communication and employee engagement Krys should identify both the relationship and task implications of the change when communicating with employees. The change process cannot be successful devoid of engaging the employees and this can be enhancing through effective communication. Effective communication will enable Krys to utilise internal facilitators by tapping into the organisation’s strengths. Recommendation Two: Provide career advancement opportunities Presently, employee training at De’Ath is minimal; therefore, Krys can improve employees’ job satisfaction by introducing training and development programmes that would enable employees to advance their careers. When there is an opportunity for advancement, employees will have much to work for since they will not be working a dead-end job. Therefore, De’Ath’s employees should be motivated by providing training which would offer them the needed skills to climb their career ladder. References Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Marturano, A., & Dennison, P. (2003). A Review of Leadership Theory and Competency Frameworks. University of Exeter. Exeter: Centre for Leadership Studie. Croidieu, S., Charbotel, B., Vohito, M., Renaud, L., Jaussaud, J., Bourboul, C., . . . Bergeret, A. (2008). Call-handlers’ working conditions and their subjective experience of work: a transversal study. 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The effectiveness and specificity of change management in a public organisation: Transformational leadership and a bureaucratic organisational structure. European Management Journal, 32(3), 373-382. Read More