Summary: The company had established monopoly in the market for the product,large sliding doors. A single customer accounted for ninety percent of the business of the company. Later on there were new entrants into the market. The company faced major competition from a new player who worked seriously to capture the existing market share of the company and lure the major customer. The company president feared that the new competitor might underbid the company and take away the major customer. The vice president was instructed to cut production costs and increase efficiency. The son of company president had recently become the production manager. The vice president was supposed to help the son adjust himself to the new job. Over a period of time the activities of the production manager caused wide spread resentment among the workers. There was a sudden strike. Some quit their jobs. Workers planned to start a union. The company reported financial losses and was behind schedules in delivery. The president of the company called for a meeting with the vice president to sort out the problems.
Organizational change is all about review and modification of existing hierarchy in management and business practices. To stay clear of competition, companies must devise methods to work with high efficiency and cost effectiveness. Companies that refuse to change disappear from the business landscape. Changes are not easy to implement since this involves changing behavior of the people in the organization. Employees are usually highly skeptical regarding policy changes and put up resistance. This may be due to their past experiences when changes implemented were unsuccessful. For an organizational change to be successful,the top management need to demonstrate leadership capabilities. They need to rationally convince the employees about the benefits of changes,like increase in efficiency of job performance(Basu).
One course of action in the present circumstance is to explore newer business models like outsourcing. Certain critical components in the company's operation can be out sourced to third party vendors. This will definitely help cut down costs and maintain required delivery schedules. Quality of the work however needs an iron clad guarantee when the work is given to others. How this affects affects the company in the long term and short term needs to be analyzed before taking a decision on outsourcing of operations. Another option in the present situation is to convince the employees to accept the changes. They have nothing to lose by accepting the changes. Their wages are unaffected. They benefit in many ways by accepting the changes whole heartedly. Due to misunderstandings the workers were opposing the changes. In the present situation it is safely inferred that the workers are not highly disciplined. They indulged in 'go-slow' tactics during regular working hours and utilized the option of working over time without any supervisor, to get extra money. This kind of indiscipline went unchecked for long. The workers argument that the wages are low is valid. For that they are given the benefit of working over time. However it has been observed that the unskilled workers in the company got bored by the mechanical nature of their work and frequently indulged in gossip at the work place. They also took frequent breaks form their work citing the same reason. The majority of skilled workers who worked over time, hardly worked at night. They also frequently commented on the low pay. Many items from the factory were pilfered by the employees. The issue of low wages never came up for discussion with the top management. Even if it was discussed with the top management, convincing explanations were not given for an increase in wages. A radical method of improving the present situation is to automate all the mechanical kind of work. Robots and other automation equipment would then take over the shop floor area. The unskilled workers would have to be terminated. The skilled workers would however retain their jobs temporarily. During course of time even they would be replaced by machines. This approach may look inhuman and barbaric. But this has already been implemented in many industries. The wages of the skilled workers should be increased with immediately so that they work happily with out feeling frustrated. This results in increasing the efficiency of workers during the day. During the periods of increased demand, over time should be allowed for the skilled workers. The problems faced by unskilled workers is genuine in nature. But unfortunately there is no universal solution. The nature of work demands standing for long hours and doing repetitive tasks. Any one can become fatigued easily. Taking frequent breaks is not the ideal solution to this problem. The workers need to understand this aspect. The process needs improvement in engineering terms. Their work will be carried out by machines in the future. The unskilled workers must undergo training to become skilled and perform skilled work in the near future. Since all workers will not accept the changes proposed easily,they need to be convinced by the management through open discussions. One thing that strikes is, a clear lack of communication existing between the production manager and the vice president. The vice president should have been consulted before policy changes were introduced by the production manager. Every one part of the company needs to follow the hierarchy. One cannot take unilateral decisions affecting hundreds of workers and of course the company itself. The pros and cons with respect to company policy changes needs to be discussed at length with top management before arriving at a correct decision. Also the policy changes were implemented in haste. Normally in these matters, changes are gradually introduced one step at a time. Also initially changes are temporarily implemented on 'pilot basis' to gauge the results. Whether the implemented new changes have brought the required benefits is measured quantitatively and then further decision is taken regarding the continuation of policy changes. If the initial results are encouraging, then policy changes are implemented on full time basis. If expected results are not obtained in the trial run,reasons are ascertained through feedback mechanisms and other types of analysis. After incorporating the required changes trial run is again carried out. Thus a process of iterations is carried out for reasonable number of times to decide the effectiveness of the proposed new policy changes. This is the scientific method used in large organizations. Sudden changes do not obtain the desired results. There is a serious communication gap existing between the production manager and the bottom line workers. The supervisors are communicated in all the matters. They in turn implement decisions in the factory shop floor to obtain the results as expected from the production manager. The production manager must have included representatives of the workers in discussion prior to implementation. Maintaining distance from the workers is not a healthy sign for industrial progress. The very fact that the production manager is the son of the company president does not give any sort of leverage to take independent decisions with out solid scientific basis. The workers were not happy that production manager had been using company facilities like labor and materials for personal use. This act has sent the wrong signals to the workers. If any worker carries home an item belonging to factory for his personal use,he cannot be blamed. The middle level managers must set a good example for the workers to follow. Rules must be the same,whether it is for managers or workers. Then workers will feel a sense of equality and be open to changes in the industrial environment. The company environment needs to be democratic, not dictatorial or authoritarian by nature. A critical analysis of production shop regulations:These are highly damaging to the morale of workers. Wage cut for late reporting: Suppose an worker reports one hour late at the shop floor due to a sudden emergency,he loses the entire day's wages and also a part of the next day's wages. This regulation is not based on any kind of scientific studies carried out in shop floor environment and is totally absurd. No wonder the workers were against this. The second regulation requires the worker to take permission of supervisor before leaving the work station. This provision gives the supervisor complete authority over the workers. If the supervisor is not around,the worker cannot go out, even for drinking water. This has curtailed the freedom of
workers to a large extent,according to them. The third regulation places the worker completely at the supervisor's mercy. There is no guarantee that the supervisor objectively evaluates all the workers. He may have grouse against certain workers and misuse the power and authority vested in him to retaliate against the workers he hates. The personal file may record inaccurate observations by the supervisor that the worker was not working at a particular time. With in no time the personal file will be full of false reports. The worker faces dismissal due to the personal animosity on the part of supervisor. There were no valid reasons to announce a four-day, 10-hour per day workweek. The five day week was good enough for the majority of workers. Here the opinion of majority was not considered at all. In fact, there was no scientific evidence to probe the five day week resulted in higher operating costs to the company. There were no studies to prove that four day week resulted in lowering of operating costs. There were no strong grounds for the introduction of four day week. There were no comparative studies on the efficiency and productivity of workers in a 8 hour shift for 5 days,10 hour shift for four days. The change should have introduced on atrial basis for for a few weeks and the results analyzed. The change should not have been drastic and Scientific studies in consultation with experts needs to be undertaken in all the aspects related to the factory. There must be no bias in the studies. The study should concentrate on identification of wasteful activities,material wastage and how they should be eliminated. The president of the company must be involved in all the affairs related to the company and in association with the vice president manage the company with out granting extraordinary powers to any individual. The workers must be taken into confidence in all matters concerning them. All decisions must be approved by independent board of directors.
References
Basu, Chirantan.. (Year, Month. Day ). In What Is the Meaning of Organizational Change?. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/meaning-organizational-change-35131.html
