Success or Failure in the Organizational Change Process
Success or Failure in the Organizational Change Process
With the current state of the economy today many organizations are faced with the task of implementing organizational change. The change that needs to occur can be either very successful or a complete failure if attention to the details of the change is not explored. The Concord Bookstore is an independent store that faced these challenges during a time of urgency for businesses to restructure in order to achieve a successful strategic renewal. When reflecting on the varying approaches an organization can take in order to form a strategic renewal, there were a few critical steps that the Concord Bookstore ignored. These important steps may have been what contributed to the failure of their organizational change. The Concord Bookstore is one small business that is facing economic hardship similar to what many other organizations of all shapes and sizes are. The need for restructuring was self-evident, but the manner in which the restructuring occurred led to employee and customer resistance alike. The first example I would like to address involves the history of the business as an independently owned entity that survived for 64 years. Upon tallying the staff’s time with the company collectively it outdid the existence of the company itself averaging 73 years of experience. This detail leads one to believe that it is this experience which has made the business so successful in the community for so long. When the owner of the company announced the need for organizational change, Spector (2010) noted this change as a “precipitating event [that] was a surprise announcement last month…”(p.2 ) This description alone illustrates a disjointed business in which decisions were made from the upper level corporate management straight to the community with no intermediate involvement from the managers and the employees of the business. When they chose to take this approach, it led to much resistance from
With the current state of the economy today many organizations are faced with the task of implementing organizational change. The change that needs to occur can be either very successful or a complete failure if attention to the details of the change is not explored. The Concord Bookstore is an independent store that faced these challenges during a time of urgency for businesses to restructure in order to achieve a successful strategic renewal. When reflecting on the varying approaches an organization can take in order to form a strategic renewal, there were a few critical steps that the Concord Bookstore ignored. These important steps may have been what contributed to the failure of their organizational change. The Concord Bookstore is one small business that is facing economic hardship similar to what many other organizations of all shapes and sizes are. The need for restructuring was self-evident, but the manner in which the restructuring occurred led to employee and customer resistance alike. The first example I would like to address involves the history of the business as an independently owned entity that survived for 64 years. Upon tallying the staff’s time with the company collectively it outdid the existence of the company itself averaging 73 years of experience. This detail leads one to believe that it is this experience which has made the business so successful in the community for so long. When the owner of the company announced the need for organizational change, Spector (2010) noted this change as a “precipitating event [that] was a surprise announcement last month…”(p.2 ) This description alone illustrates a disjointed business in which decisions were made from the upper level corporate management straight to the community with no intermediate involvement from the managers and the employees of the business. When they chose to take this approach, it led to much resistance from
References: Burrows, P., “The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit”, Business Week, May 8, 2008, p. 36 Denison, D. R., (1990). Corporate Culture and Organizational Effectiveness. New York, NY: Wiley. Spector, B. (2010). Implementing Organizational Change: Theory Into Practice (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall