Introduction
Change is a structural approach to transitioning individual, teams and organizations from a current state to a desired future state Change is instilling new values, attitudes, norm and behaviours in people and organizations.
The economy is an ever changing place and it is up to the people in the economy most especially those in organizations to cope with any changes that may occur. Though there are different aspect to this, but much depends upon whether the changes are foreseen or not. (Dorton and Smith, 1998).
Foreseeable change: These are changes that can be anticipated, with this foreseeable change, people (management) will be able to plan for expected event and implement procedures that to cope with change.
Unforeseeable change: This type of change cannot be predicted, they are obviously very problematic in the economy e.g. Recession. Only those who cope the best with this sort of upheavals that will survival and prosper.
One constant across Economies is change. Change could be planned (discontinuous) or unplanned (continuous). It can be driven by many factors including: mergers, outsourcing, off-shoring, technology, clients, strategy and compliance. Transformation is difficult because Redesigning and applying new processes is hard without an easily understood, structured approach.
Employees feel overloaded with change driven from multiple, seemingly disconnected initiatives.
The remaining part of the study will include the background to change that exist in today's economy, organisation structure, the definition of bureaucracy, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of a bureaucratic organisation and lastly the definition of organisational development and its alternative forms.
Task 1 :
The background to Change affecting current organisation:
Why most people readily accept change, the journey that they see and fear brings about a mixture of apprehension and confusion. The literature of change by several researchers tends to fall into several categories that emphasizes on Globalization, Social, Political, Demographic and Economic changes.
Organizational change is an empirical observation in an economy entity of variation in shape, Quality or state overtime. (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995), after the deliberate introduction of new ways of thinking, acting and operating (Schalk .et al, 1998).
The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon, if anything competition in most organization will probably speed up even more in the next few decades. (John. P.Kotters, 1996).
The general aim of change in an economy or organisations, is adaption to the environment. (Child and Smith, 1987).
Change is not applicable to any type. Change is change. Either changing from bad to good or moving from the bottom to the top. But some changes are easy while some are difficult. (Peter de Jager).
The ways an economy changes does not follow a single pattern. The specific form of institutions which came into view and the relations between social and demographic characteristics and change will not be the same for different economy
According to chirot,(1994).Other factors influencing change ,which can result in different outcomes includes technology and weber,1986. Included geography as another factor that influences change.
Globalization
Globalization is a situation where no economy can be an island to herself and has to depend on other country. There is therefore a situation where one country has to rely on another for their needs. It is like coming together of countries for the World for economic, political and socials reasons.
Guillen, (2001), provides an excellent overview of current research on globalization. He saw it as "the rapid increase in cross-border economic, social, technological and cultural exchange". He saw globalization as far "from a uniform, irreversible and inexorable trend. Rather it is a fragmented, incomplete, discontinuous, contingent, and in many ways contradictory and puzzling process".
Barhan and Heimer (1998), Saw Globalization as going international, being multinational, and being globally connected. Globalization represent a new global age, industries are becoming more global as globalization drivers increase.
Globalization brought about very big companies that are referred to as Transnational or Multinational companies.(companies that produce goods and service in more than one country.eg.Kodak, Coca-cola, Cadbury, etc.).
Economic Changes
Maddison, (2001), showed long term economic growth, including growth over the past century. Total output showed a many fold increase in the 1990's for the world and most regions, with most of the growth in the 1950s and 1970s except Asia(excluding Japan) experiencing its main growth in most recent years.
In terms of Economics, international trade is higher than ever before leading to greater interrelationships among economies. And "social protection and the welfare state play an important role in ameliorating the impact of structural change arising from trade.
Kuznets (1989), wrote that a source of growth is "a high rate of accumulation of useful knowledge and of technological innovations derived from it" (p.8). This knowledge and technology, though can only be used along with the appropriate conditions, such as financial and legal systems which allow mobilization of savings and investment and with a stable government, which can handle social or economic disruptions that may occur during periods of change.
Technological Change:
A critical component of many firm's investment policies is a strategy for the adoption of technological innovations. The pace of technological change is having a major impact on the process of new product development. There are several aspects regarding the impact of pace of technological change on new product development. The first is that in many industries product life cycles are shortening. This then creates a vicious circle in as much as the marketer must increasingly be looking for new product to replace the outdated ones. A second reason is that with pace of technological change, there is now a premium of being able to develop and launch new products quickly. (E.J. McCarthy, 1963).
The introduction of technology of communication has contributed a lot to globalization with the help of mobile phones and computers (internet). Which now make people see the world as a global village'? This also makes collection of business easier.
Technology can be coincidental factor or part of a systematic process. E.g. technological innovation, in form of ability to event a heavy blow and the leather straps of horses made it possible to efficiently turn the heavy soil of north western Europe which allow a faster population growth.(Chariot, 1994, 2000).
Political Changes:
Gidden, (2000). Defines democracy as "a system involving effective competition between political parties for position of power. In a democracy, there are regular and fair elections, in which all members of the population may take part. These right to democratic participation goes along with civil liberties-freedom of expression and discussion, together with the freedom of form and join political associations".
In research related to democratization, the freedom house (2000) describes change in political freedom over time, base on political rights and liberties. Many countries in their data show fair stability over time. A few such as Gambia, Bhutan and Antigua show changes towards less freedom and a few others. For example, Romania, Bolivia and Uruguay showed large improvements.
Deregulation:
This is the removal or simplification of government rules and regulations that constrain the operations of market forces. To reduce government control of how business is carried out, thereby moving towards a more free market which then raises the level of competitiveness, higher productivity, more efficiency and low price overall. All these were as a result of change.
Task 2
Develop systems for understanding and involving others in the process of change:
Introduction:
As McDonalds is a Multinational company and has its branch's all over the world is a structured as below.
McDonald is structured along functional lines. Their Chief Executive oversees five major areas of activity
· Operations (equipment and franchising)
· Development (property and construction)
· Finance (supply chain and new product development)
· Marketing (sales marketing)
· Human Resources (customer services, personnel, hygiene and safety)
Systems to involve stakeholders in the introduction of change:
Stakeholders are groups of people who have an interest in a business organization they can be seen as being either external to the organization or internal but some may be both.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Stakeholder_%28en%29.png
Internal stakeholders are those who are 'members' of the business or organisation, which are directly, concerned with the operation of business or organisation for example owner of the business, shareholders, managers, and staff of business these are directly concerned with the actual operation of the business.
When we talk about external stakeholders of the organisation in which those people are involved which are indirectly concerned with the business operation for example customers, government, supplier, community and creditors these are the persons who indirectly involved in the business operation. These are called external stakeholders.
Introduction of change in McDonald:
As working for McDonald I have observe lot of changes that may be necessary to improve the efficiency of the company but one of the most appropriate changes which I realize and want to implement by involving stakeholders is the "feedback system" of the McDonald. Feedback is very important in each and every process of the organisation. To develop the feedback system we maintain a feedback book. This book will contain all those questions which can improve our services this will be really helpful for the organisation. This book will be for both the internal and external stakeholders.
The purpose of this book is getting a feed back of the internal and external stakeholders e.g. for internal stakeholders every day we will pick up some of the orders which we delivered and asking the customers to give us the feedback that how is our service and product they receive, the person whom ordered, was he friendly and any thing for us to improve. Whereas for the external stakeholders e.g. how our suppliers behaviour, our customers ideas and how it will affect our community.
Now I want to implement this change in my organisation for this purpose I have to consider all the stakeholders because they will be mainly affected by this change. Stakeholder as we discussed above they can be of two type's internal and external stakeholders.
Involving internal stakeholders in change:
To implement this change in my organisation first of all I involve the internal stakeholders that are managers of my department. I arrange a meeting with my manager to discuss about the change that I want to bring in the organisation. I have discussed with my managers and told them everything about this book the advantages and disadvantages and start working on it.
My second step will be to involve my staff or employee's because without them I cannot bring this change because they have to implement this change with me so they must know what this change is about, I arrange the meeting and explain them, train them and get their ideas about this change.
The third step will be to get ideas of the employees and make improvements in the plan that is formulated to implement the change in the organisation.
External stakeholders:
External stakeholders as mentioned above are customers, suppliers and community. To involve external stakeholders we call a meeting of suppliers, shareholders, and customers to introduce them about this change.
Secondly we pick some of the addresses every day and give them a call and allow them know about this change and have their opinion. Same thing we will be doing with our suppliers we will call them and inform them and have their opinion by asking them some questions, which we have in our feedback book. As far as community is concerned it has the same importance because we are located there and we should have strong relationship with them.
Analyse and evaluate the change:
We have defined criteria to analyse and evaluate current use of system in McDonald. This criteria has been identified by reviewing literature and focus on the effectiveness of this system. After implementing the change in few months I have analysed
Usefulness
Check whether feedback system is more useful for decision-making.
Quality of Results
Check whether the system has the quality of results or not. With quality we mean the accuracy of results.
Performance
Access the performance of the systems against while it is performing the activities in a best way.
Information Access
Check whether the system provide information access to stakeholders of the organization.
Consistency
Check the consistency of results from the stakeholders.
Applying the Evaluation Criteria of feedback system:
Usefulness:
The use of this system is focused on the top-level management of an organisation. The McDonald feedback system is helping to make decisions on all levels of the organisation. So McDonald feedback system is more useful and all decisions are based on analysis of stakeholders. This is improving the overall performance of McDonald.
Quality of Results:
The McDonald feedback system is helping to retrieve more recent data for analysis which ensures and improves the quality (accuracy) of results and hence the quality of decisions.
Performance:
There is lot of emphasis on performance in feedback system solutions. It is clear that there is decrease in performance of the system affect on decision making of the organisation. End users want data result within no time and McDonald feedback system is meeting these requirements.
Information Access:
The information access is increased, as fresh data in Operational systems as well as historic data is available for analysis-based decision-making. Whenever fresh data is needed, it will be extracted from feedback Systems.
Consistency:
McDonald feedback system is producing consistent data results, which is very important. Inconsistent data results will decrease the confidence of end users. As information is being retrieved by several data sources, data need to be accurat. Consistency is maintained in all these process.
Task 3
Plan To Implement Models for ensuring ongoing change :
BPR and Conflict Handling
I am going to implement 2 Models of change namely Business process re-engineering and Conflict Handling under Kurt Lewins theory of Planned change which deal with Unfreezing , Moving and Refreezing .
In order to fit with the current environment, the company has to think of ways to adapt to the change. That means, the company must transform from "Mass Production" to "Mass Customisation". A solution to this is Business Process Reengineering (BPR). According to Hammer and Champy (1993), BPR is "the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed." It can help the company to achieve dramatic improvements in product, quality, customer satisfaction, and job satisfaction. That is, it can help the company to survive in today's business environment.
Reengineering is about rejecting the conventional wisdom and the assumptions of the past. It is about inventing new approaches to process structure that bear little or no resemblance to those of previous eras.
In the real world, organizations have some misunderstanding about BPR. If correct understanding is gained, the success of BPR can be assured
BPR (Business Process Re-engineering ) to start of which will be to redesign the Queuing System in every McDonald Store .
Conflict Handing will be to reduce stress exerted on the customer care assistant and the customers due to the communication gap in a cosmopolitan city like London .
Self Queue System (Unfreezing) Plan& Implementation
According to BPR I will first approach my Store manager with a Project Report and then will explain to him that once the Self Queue system will be Introduced, the customers will benefit as they will be served faster as the Queues will be sorted out on their own .
Secondly I will meet the Crew members and the assistant mangers and explain to them that they all can meet their individual targets as once the Queue is distributed equally the chances are more for every Till Member to take the equal number of orders and also serve the customers faster. I will also take their opinion and a feed back about this new concept.
Self Queue System Plan& Implementation
The third thing that I will do is to circulate a survey form explaining the introduction of this buzzer device to all the customers who are in the restaurant and then get a feed back from them.
After collecting the data I will request through my store manager for a appointment to be fixed for me to meet the Operations head of McDonalds in the UK and then put forward my proposal of introducing this system.
Self Queue System (Moving) Plan& Implementation
Once this system is installed its in the moving and transition phase, according to conflict handling, this system will be very beneficial as many a times there are customers who are not able to follow what is being said to them when a request is made for them to use the shortest Queue, has they are not able to follow the accent of the customer care assistant and it results in stress for both the customers as well has the customer care assistant.
Self Queue System Outcomes (Refreezing)
Three various outcomes of the self Queue system are as below.
Aesthetic manner in which the Queues operate.
Faster Service.
Efficient service as the work load is distributed equally.
Customer are able to understand the prompt from the buzzer device as it is in a neutral accent and the same will reduce the stress for both the customers and the customer care assistant.
Every Till Member is kept busy.
Till Member is able to meet his or her target regardless of which till they use and they are all happy.
Recommendation and Conclusion :
Recommendation :
· Change is part of life, so therefore, recognise personal needs, values and motivations within the organisation.
· Consult to gain from everyone's organisation knowledge, experience and expertise.
· Manage the ongoing change process by reassessing and mark out the scale along the way. Ask for and give support as well.
· Enjoy the process of Change.
Conclusion :
Stakeholders are those effecting change in the community and those affected by it. These may include government agencies, private land owners and developers, community and other interest groups, non-government organizations, and citizens. The list of stakeholders will depend on the project, conflict, or issues to be addressed. It should be as inclusive as possible, and stakeholders can be added as time goes on
