Management of Organisational Change at WMC - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Management of Organisational Change at WMC. Answer: Introduction: The case study on WMC presents several appropriate leadership approaches and competencies during implementation of organisational changes in the company. Sofea founded the business as sole proprietorship where she showed her leadership competencies of leading human and financial resources to towards earning profits. Hayes (2014) Chapter 9 mentions that the apex management needs to initiate organisational changes. He points out those organisational changes help organisations to adapt to market conditions. These changes ensure that organisations can restructure their resources like human resources and capital structure according to the new conditions. Further, Battilana, Gilmartin, Sengul, Pache and Alexander (2010) implementation organisational changes call for two types of leadership approaches namely, task oriented skills and person-oriented skills. Task oriented skills of leadership approach according to them relate to the organisational structure, designing and control of resource s like the top managers and the junior employees. The leaders following this leadership approach emphasises on motivating and supporting their teams (Battilana et al. 2010). They interact with their subordinates and managers about the necessity to bring about organisational changes to adapt to the market situations. An analysis of the case of WMC shows that in initial stage the customers purchasing cotton and woollen fabric were satisfied with the strategy of providing high quality products at high prices. However, in the later stage during the leadership of Ryan and Mira the market situation changed due to entry of foreign producers of woollen and cotton producers who offered these products at low prices and compromised on their quality (Stoppa and Chiolerio 2014). The demand of the customers also changed and they were more concerned about obtaining low priced products of inferior quality. In fact, some of the firms were public limited companies like Walmart who were financially ve ry strong and could offer products at low price. WMC required to change its organisational model to compete with these low cost suppliers. However, the case study does not bear any evidence of Ryan and Mira communicating and motivating the managers about the need to change the model. Here it can be said they exhibit authoritative leadership styles because they wanted to bring about organisational changes without seeking cooperation from the employees. They expected the employees including the directors to cooperate with them without caring for their fear and insecurity regarding the change. Thus, it can be inferred that the leaders Ryan and Mira did not exhibit task oriented leadership skills of planning the organisational change and engaging their employees (Mohajeryami, Schwarz and Baboli 2015). Person oriented leadership skills comprise of the ability to establish a transparent communication with the stakeholders like employees in order to create an organisational climate supportive to the organisational changes. However, it can be pointed that in the case study of WMC, the owners Hana, Ryan and Mira do not exhibit these competencies. The case bears evidences, which show that these leaders consulted with the directors while they were planning to introduce large scale batch production process to export cotton and woollen products to China, Japan and Indonesia as well as to the other parts of the world (Nahavandi 2016). The case also points out that they did not consult with the directors regarding the needs to change the business models or discuss about ways to bring about those changes in the organisation. This lack of implementing change process and gaining employee support resulted in insecurity among the directors as they were uncertain about the future impacts of the ch anges. Moreover, the firm was suffering from insufficient human resources management and adoption of the new high technology sustainable production was supposed to render more employees jobless. This shows that Ryan and Mira lacked task oriented and person oriented skills to drive organisational changes (Lawrence and Weber 2014). Implementation of organisational changes and effectively using task and person oriented leadership approaches require certain competencies from the leaders. The first competency leaders should possess to drive changes in their organisations is the ability to communicate the need to bring about the changes to the employees. The leaders having this attribute consult with their employees to know about their fears and insecurities regarding the changes in the organisation (Franks et al. 2014). The case however does not bear any testimony showing Ryan and Mira holding meetings with their employees to discuss about the process of the change and the effect of it on employees. In fact it can be pointed that the employees feared losing their jobs due to adoption of sustainable and highly advanced techniques of production. This shows that Ryan and Mira lacked the leadership competency of communicating with employees to deal with their fears and motivate them to embrace the change. The next com petency the leaders are expected to have in order to drive the changes is the power to mobilise the resources including employees and capital to bring about the change (Palmer and Stoll 2014). The WMC case study shows that Ryan and Mira were successful to mobilise capital resources to acquire highly advanced sustainable production plants. However, they failed to mobilise the employees to embrace the change and in fact took no initiative to evaluate and address their fears. Thus, it can be said that Ryan and Mira were partly success in showing evaluation and mobilisation when it came to capital but failed to mobilise employees to implement the change (Azapagic et al. 2016). Hayes 2014 Chapter 16 describes that the apex management bodies of the organisation require to intervene to bring about organisational change effectively. The case study of WMC reveals that certain interventions are required to implement the organisational to sustainable large scale production. The following are the interventions needed to assist Ryan and Mira improve the effectiveness of the organisation: Listing on a stock exchange: The case study of WMC shows that at the later stage during the leadership of Ryan and Mira, the company started being threatened by the entry of companies like Walmart and Nike which are public limited company. These companies are public companies, which were able to acquire huge amount capital from the market by floating shares (Mohajeryami, Schwarz and Baboli 2015). This huge capital accounts for their mass production and selling of products, which allow them to reduce their cost of production. As a result, they can enter foreign markets like Malaysia and offer goods at low prices, thus giving the resident companies tough competition (Ahnet et al. 2014). The case study does not bear any evidence of WMC being listed and it appears it remains a sole proprietorship company with limited financial resources compared to Walmart. Thus, this sole proprietorship format of WMC should be intervened with a public limited company format and the company should get listed on a stock exchange (Pal mer and Stoll 2014). It appears from the case study that the organisational culture of WMC was not strong because there was marked lack of communication and understanding between the owners Ryan and Mira and the directors. The competition from the foreign low cost fabric producers had already resulted in reduction in the number of employees at WMC (Mohajeryami, Schwarz and Baboli 2015). The adoption of highly advanced and sustainable large-scale production technology created panic among the employees to lose jobs. This shows that though the firm had stable business relationship with its clients, its relationship with the employees had been breached. The employees were suffering from fear and insecurity due to the organisational change. Ryan and Mira did not involve the directors in all decision making activities related the business (Martins et al. 2016). This resulted in lack of cooperation from the directors towards the outcome of the change. Ryan and Mira should concentrate on mentoring and counsellin g the employees and assure them of job security due to the organisational change. They should establish a smooth flow of communication with the employees. This will strengthen the organisational culture and help the employees deal with their insecurities and fear regarding the change. This would enable the two owners to gain employee support to introduce the change in the organisation (Mohajeryami, Schwarz and Baboli 2015). Strengthening and expansion of supply chain: The case study points out that the firm, WMC was solely dependent on Australian suppliers to provide it with high quality wool and cotton. This dependence on Australia solely led to high cost of importing raw materials from the country. The owners of WMC, Ryan and Mira should expand their supply chain management and import wool and cotton from other countries as well (Ahnet et al. 2014). This expansion of supply chain would enable them to acquire raw materials from the producers offering them at the most economic rates. This would help them to lower their cost of production and allow them to offer the goods at lower prices. This, would result in enhanced competitiveness in the market against strong low cost producers like Nike (Monczka et al. 2015). Hayes (2014) Chapter 27 describes that organisations require forming strategies to sustain changes in them. The author states that the apex management and middle level managers should gain support from the lower level managers and executives. This would help them to enforce the changes more effectively in the organisations. WMC can sustain change by obtaining employee engagement to bring about the organisational change. The owners of the firm Ryan and Mire can follow the following steps to sustain the change in production process towards sustainability: Ryan and Mira should arrange for training the employees to train them to embrace the change. The change in WMC was related to adoption of highly advanced and sustainable production process. They should train the employees to operate the advanced production process. This will have two positive outcomes. First, the employees would be trained and become more efficient in using the modern technology which lead to increase in production. Secondly, it would prevent the employees from losing their jobs which would help the two owners to deal with employee insecurity (Morin et al. 2016). Motivating and communicating with the employees: The two owners Ryan and Mira should communicate with the employees about the need to embrace highly advanced technology in order to gain competitiveness in the market. They should communicate to the employees the positive outcomes of the change like increase in production and profitability. This would help the employees to get rid of their fears and insecurities. They would be motivated to participate in bring about the change and this would minimise the chances of conflict between the owners and employees. The owners should motivate the employees to work harder and reassure them about their job security(Cullen et al. 2014). This would have two long term positive outcomes. First, the providing job security to the employees would motivate the employees to achieve higher levels of productivity. This would result in higher production, which would allow the firm to lower its cost of production. Secondly, it owners would be able to form business strategies well in advance and allocate the employees according to those strategies. Thirdly, decrease in termination of employees would reduce employee turnover. This would help the company to save excess costs to acquire new human resources from the market and allocate more financial resources towards adoption of the sustainable technology and mass productivity facilities (Ahnet et al. 2014). The owners of WMC should identify the strategies and counter the problems like decrease of competitive advantage in the market by obtaining support from the important stakeholders like directors and employees. First, they should make the strategies to counteract the market capturing of strong competitors like Walmart from WMC. They should involve the directors and the top managers in making the strategies to increase the current level of production like motivating the employees and making them feel secure. Secondly, it appears from the case study that WMC did not emphasise on marketing its products aggressively and depended on its existing brand value to attract suppliers and distributors. The firm should form aggressive marketing strategies to attract new suppliers and distributors (Hornstein 2015). This would enable it to counteract the problem of limited supply and distribution chains. The first strategy would help the firm to enhance its production capacity. The second strategy w ould help the firm to choose from a large numbers of suppliers and purchase raw materials from the suppliers offering them at economic rates. The combined effect of these two strategies would enable the firm to lower its cost of production and yet maintain its high quality parameters (Hayes 2014). Large-scale marketing would allow the firms to acquire new customers, which would allow it to earn more profit. The third strategy would be acquiring more human resources and retaining its present employees. This would help the company to retaliate the problem of employee shortages which resulted in fall in productivity (Ahnet et al. 2014). The acquisition of advanced technology would lead to expansion in the production capacities of the employees. Retaining its existing human resources and acquiring more talent would allow the company to allocate its human resources to the new production facilities in advanced. This would result in low cost production due to increased productivity. It wou ld also help the firm to achieve sustainability and cost effectiveness (Kiboss 2015). It can reiterated that the owners Ryan and Mira should obtain support of the directors and the employees to successfully form and implement these strategies and counteract threats from powerful competitors like Walmart. References: Ahn, H.J., Cai, J., Hamao, Y. and Melvin, M., 2014. Little guys, liquidity, and the informational efficiency of price: Evidence from the Tokyo Stock Exchange on the effects of small investor participation.Pacific-Basin Finance Journal,29, pp.163-181. Azapagic, A., Stamford, L., Youds, L. and Barteczko-Hibbert, C., 2016. 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