Workforce Management: Employement Relationships in Changing Organizations

Fall 2005

Wichita – success of the change initiative

Problems:

- High maintenance, fixed and operating costs.
- Razor-thin margins and low productivity (the facility consistently underperformed).

Reasons of the success of the initiative: the change was done through the right model and dimensions.

- Blocks to change: there is no block to change in Wichita. All employees were not resistant to change, instead they were willing and ready to change. Thus, there were no organizational inertia and no anticipated consequences of the change. This is because Jimenez integrated successfully the change initiative with key human resource practices, here is Keller.

- Model of change: the change initiative follows Tichy and Anne model in which there are 3 stages of changes: recognizing the need for change by generating a feeling of need to change and overcoming the cultural resistance to change in Wichita; creating a new vision by diagnosing the problem and mobilizing commitment of employees; managing the change. The role of Keller as a leader of change is a key for the success of the initiative. He extolled the importance of the initiative in the mind of his colleagues and acted consistently to involve and engage them in the process of change so that they were motivated to change.

- Dimensions of change: the four dimensions of the change initiative are incremental, continuous, bottom-up and emergent. Scope of change: the change efforts were incremental, being local in Wichita and involving in modifying its culture to one that values being more open about problems rather than hide them. Pace of change: the change is continuous by proceeding over time and one change leads to another. Source of change: the change is bottom-up. Even though the change is first driven by the CEO but it is broader, located farther down Wichita and is done by its employees. Process of change: the change is emergent because it started with no explicit maps (beginning with the meetings of the “problem chart”) but developed well over time and one change leads to another. Therefore, Wichita’s employees were socialized together as a unit, were willing to change continuously and thus the initiative was successful.

Lubbock

Problems: Lubbock has the same problems ad Wichita

- High maintenance, fixed and operating costs.
- Low productivity low productivity (the plant rarely met the production’s goal).

Reasons why the initiative was not successful: the change was done through the wrong model and dimensions.

- Blocks to change: there are serious blocks to change in Lubbock. All employees were strongly resistant and reluctant to change because of the human nature, organizational inertia and increasing forces from the management (Jimenez and her team) that block the change. Thus, anticipated consequences of the change occurred when implementing the initiative.

- Model of change: the change initiative follows Beckhard and Harris model in which the change focuses mostly in the future state. Jimenez and her team made erroneous assumptions about how Lubbock currently operates and about what groups and sub-units will be the most affected by the change. They ignored to think about the present stage to understand Lubbock’s managers and its employees’ attitude toward the change and its capacity to make the proposed changes in the proposed time frame. They also did not think about the transitional stage when Lubbock’s people are leaving the old system and learning how to make the new system work. Rather they focused only on the future stage with wrong assumptions. Furthermore, they could not integrate the change initiative with key human resource practices who can act as a leader to involve and engage employees to participate in the process of change like Keller at Wichita.

- Dimensions of change: the four dimensions of the change initiative are the inversion of those applied at Wichita: radical, punctuated, top-down and planned. Scope of change: the change efforts were radical - the change involved in fundamental changes inside Lubbock. Pace of change: the change is punctuated - having a clear beginning and an end as scheduled by the team. Source of change: the change is top-down. Unlike Wichita, the meetings of “the problem chart” are compulsory and set by the team. Process of change: the change is carefully planned - the team diagnosed the fundamental problems of Lubbock and applied the model of change that was already very successful at Wichita.

Jimenez thought that she could succeed in applying the change model in Wichita to Lubbock. However, the above analyses show that in fact she had modified this model before implementing it at Lubbock. Therefore, the change initiative was not successful.