Assignment Sample on Management Report
Introduction
The business environment and world is rapidly changing at a faster pace and thus, companies are required to operate as per the trends (Worley and Mohrman, 2014).Change is needed to adopt to be in the industry and per the market standards. Change management is a methodology that allows the company to cooperate with the transition of the organization. The current assignment is concerned with organizational restructuring that Sainsbury is going through. Sainsbury is a leading retail supermarket chain of the United Kingdom.
Critical reflection on a change process
Restructuring of the business organization is a model that transforms the business for betterment. Changes can be in any form including legal, ownership, processes, etc.
Sainsbury is restructuring its organization due to several reasons including changing business environment, adopting new methods of operations, taking the business a different direction and many more. The market environment is quite dynamic and business gets affected to it very soon. As per the views of Cameron and Green (2019) organizational restructuring is done to reduce the costs, incorporating new technologies and better using company’s talent. On the other hand, Galli (2018) argues that the reason behind restructuring is improving competitive advantages and decreasing the debt.
Restructuring of Sainsbury must undergo the following steps of change process. The first and foremost step is to determine the area that is required to restructure. In the context of the citedcompany, cost cutting is the restructuring and the affected areas are operations and administration department. Further, the next step is to identifying the weaknesses of the areas. After that with the help of creating a detailed short term and long term plan, such weak areas can be restructured and corrected.
In order to make employees understand about this process the management is required to make and implement short term corrective measures. After that, calculating funding is done and restructuring continues with it (Kuipers et.al. 2014). Cost reduction is a process of reducing the expenses of the company in order to increase the profits. Although, most companies do not provide very much time for planning of restructuring but Sainsbury emphasizes time taking as it is a critical process and various key persons get influence because of it such as consumers, employees, stockholders, etc. Al-Ali (2017) opines that cost reduction is a complicated process and involves of various aspects like how much, where, and maintaining. This can be further explained that the first step is to set the target regarding how much cost or target is to be reduced and in which areas. The targets can be derived from the organizational strategies. There are various advantages associated with cost reduction and these are increase in profit margin, it will save money for welfare schemes and help the consumer get goods and product at much cheaper price. Sainsbury is focused towards cost reduction because of various reasons. This will help the business organization in dealing with competition in an effective manner and the saved funding can be utilized in research and development department of the company that will help in develop innovation.
Moreover, there are several disadvantages concerned with the cost reduction like quality can be sacrificed of the offering which can create an adverse impact on the consumers (Cummings et.al. 2016). Moreover, cost reduction techniques are difficult for the employees to accept as it is not a hidden fact that employees resists change. Generally, employees do not accept change. Also, there can be conflicts between the individual objectives and organizational goals (Al-Haddad and Kotnour, 2015). This can be illustrated that the head of a specific department can follow the practices that will decrease the cost of his team and department but it is possibility that it may lead to an increase in the overall organization as a whole.
Recommendations on lessons learned for future change
For the future, there are certain strategies and approaches that can be taken into account by Sainsbury. Usually, employees are the one in the organization who resists change.
- It is recommended that at first it is important to understand the workforce and then applying any change management process. Restructuring in any way is not easily acceptable by the employees, they resist this as they are comfortable with whatever is going in the business for years. It is hard for them to get out of the comfort zone and adopt new strategies and work techniques. Thus, it can create a job dissatisfaction too. Employees must be made understand regarding the purpose of the cited restructuring so that they cannot react harshly and adverse to it (Fuchs and Prouska, 2014). Management or the leader should call a meeting of the selected organization and make employees aware regarding the need of the cost reduction and layoffs.
- The next step that should be taken in the future context is to listening to the feedback and opinions of the employees. Just stating the need and point of view of the company’s perspective is not enough, it is also required to listen and review the employee’sviews and suggestions. This will make them calm and provide an opportunity to understand the company’s perspective regarding the restructuring.
- Then after it is suggested that Sainsbury should explain the reason in detail about the happenings that are going to take place within the company. Employees are the main assets of the cited company and their trust and confidence in the organization for years must be respected. Clarity and transparency are very significant in order to make employees adopt the change and proceed with this.
- It is recommended to the business organization to clear state the purpose of the restructuring to the staff and the strategies that are going to implement in the company to achieve that. Clear roles and responsibilities and taking accountability for the same as per the strategy is to be communicated properly (Deneen and Boud, 2014). Everyone must be aware of their roles and tasks they have to perform to eliminate further miscommunication and errors. Sainsbury is customer oriented organization and the restructuring of the company should not hamper the services delivered to the consumers. In any way, buyers must not affected in a negative manner with the change that is occurring in the company. Employee should be communicated this aspect with clarity.
- Motivating employees is also a strategy advised to the chosen company. Staff members should feel that the management cares for them and want them to get involved in the process completely. Therefore, their views has to be taken into consideration with an immediate effect if required (Klonek al.2014). They are the one in the organization who gets directly affected and has to deal with the problem emerged because of change or restricting. Hence, they must feel motivated and this can be done by the company management by motivating them and providing trainings if required.
Critical review of relevant theories & paradigms
Change management theories delivers in depth knowledge regarding the organizational change. These acts as a guiding tool, navigation and transforming practices that enables accepting change.
Lewin’s change management model is a three phase model that aims at categorizing a big change into small parts and these are unfreeze, change and refreeze.
Unfreezing of the current or existing process is essential to in order to apply the new one. In the transition process, employees are guided regarding the change and new process and then apply the concept of refreezing. As per this theory, change requires a strong top management support.
Another theory is McKinsey 7-S that identifies as strategy, structure, system, shared values, style, staff and skills (Worley and Mohrman, 2014). This is a quite complex model but it is necessary when the change is also complicated. The three S i.e. structure, system and strategy are the most hard components of the model and the rest four elements are considered as soft. This approach is useful in determining any misalignments of the business.
ADKAR change management model emphasizes on employees and thus reduces the level of resistance. The meaning can be defined as awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. Awareness represents the need of the change, desire is the willingness of individuals to participate in the change management process and supporting it and knowledge reflects the process of how to implement the change (Cameron and Green, 2019). Further, ability is the competency and skills to adopt and execute the change and reinforcement in sustaining the change. This is a people centric methodology.
In a nutshell, there are some another models too like nudge theory, bridges transition model, etc. that can be applied before implementing change to ease the process.
Conclusion
From the overall study, it can be summarized that change is an inseparable and continuous part of the business world. Business organizations are required to adopt and making understand the significance of change to the employees is a complex activity. In general terms, employees at first resists change as they do not want to step out from their existing process. Thus, in this scenario, it is the responsibility of the top management to effectively implement the change within the company.
References
Al-Haddad, S. and Kotnour, T., 2015. Integrating the organizational change literature: a model for successful change. Journal of organizational change management.
Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2019. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Cummings, S., Bridgman, T. and Brown, K.G., 2016. Unfreezing change as three steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s legacy for change management. Human relations, 69(1), pp.33-60.
Deneen, C. and Boud, D., 2014. Patterns of resistance in managing assessment change. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 39(5), pp.577-591.
Fuchs, S. and Prouska, R., 2014. Creating positive employee change evaluation: The role of different levels of organizational support and change participation. Journal of change management, 14(3), pp.361-383.
Galli, B.J., 2018. Change management models: A comparative analysis and concerns. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 46(3), pp.124-132.
Klonek, F.E., Lehmann-Willenbrock, N. and Kauffeld, S., 2014. Dynamics of resistance to change: A sequential analysis of change agents in action. Journal of change management, 14(3), pp.334-360.
Kuipers, B.S., Higgs, M., Kickert, W., Tummers, L., Grandia, J. and Van der Voet, J., 2014. The management of change in public organizations: A literature review. Public administration, 92(1), pp.1-20.
Worley, C.G. and Mohrman, S.A., 2014. Is change management obsolete?. Organizational Dynamics, 43(3), pp.214-224.
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