You have been hired as a change management consultant for a manufacturing compan

Question

You have been hired as a change management consultant for a manufacturing company. The leadership of the company currently uses a top-down management approach. The organizational structure is a hierarchy (pyramid type). Employees are not encouraged to be creative or make suggestions or decisions. They are also not encouraged to experiment and come up with new solutions to problems.The company has grown rapidly over the past decade, from generating $1 million in sales to $100 million. In the past year, the company expanded its business internationally and now has 500 employees worldwide. Due to the rapid growth of the company, the organization has not invested in training and development opportunities for its employees to drive innovation and process improvements. Additionally, the company’s processes and software systems for inventory management have become antiquated.

I need help with these questions related to the company
Discuss the need for change for the company in the scenario using either the systems contingency model or the organizational life cycle model.

Identify which stage of Woolner’s 5-stage model the company is currently in and why it is in the identified stage.

Explain how the company from the scenario would use Senge’s 5 disciplines to become a learning organization.

Explanation / Answer

Growth of this manufacturing company is excellent, and aim of any business organization should be sustainable growth. As this company grown in spite of adopting top-down approach, decision making and strategic planning of top management team must be strong but decision making and strategic planning only by top management team is possible only at initial and growing stage of any organization, as it grows monitoring and control over all activities by specific team becomes very difficult hence to keep such growth sustainable and for further business expansion they have to adopt change management models such as systems contingency model or the organizational life cycle model.

Principles of Systems Contingency Model helpful for this management:

Key theorists of systems contingency model are Joan Woodward, Danial Katz & Robert Louis Kahn, Fred Fielder, Robert House. This model emphases on

1) Environmental Contingency Factors: such as task structure, formal authority system and work group.

2) Leadership Behaviour: Leadership should be directive, supportive, participative and achievement oriented.

3) Outcomes: Performance and satisfaction

4) Subordinate Contingency Factors: Locus of control, experience, perceived ability.

This company has to work on point no. 2, company leadership should delegate responsibilities with proper directives in terms of standard operating procedures if top management does not want to change procedure of operating certain activities, it can be drafted, approved and circulated to relevant staff so that uniform system to be adopted by all and only monitoring of implementation approved management procedures to be done by top management. Top management should support decisions taken by subordinates, team leaders should participate in actual implementation of SOPs in order to understand loop holes if any in drafted systems and problems faced by actual operators of system. Encouraging team for better performance and guiding them accordingly not only improves performance but creates healthy and enthusiastic work environment.

In short, as a rapidly developing organization, company should delegate responsibilities to capable employees, give them training on SOPs and support and encourage them for best performance.

In Woolners 5 stage model, this company is at 3rd stage, with rapid growth in last one decade this organization is mature and they need to start information exchange in appropriate manner to get participation of all stages of human resource and need to develop new software systems and inventory management systems for better control and management. As this company has increased human resource as per requirement, now they need to facilitate all these employees with proper task allocation, supporting their decision making and developing appropriate learning methodologies in order to achieve continoues improvement in performance of employees and growth of organization.

Use of Senge's 5 Disciplines:

Lets discuss how Senge's 5 disciplines can be used by this company as a learning organization.

1) System Thinking: This can be achieved by defining management and operating systems in written for all employees with encouragement & training from all team leaders to follow working systems at all stages of their work.

2) Personal Mastery: Personal mastery can be achieved if any individual has clear vision of his goal combined with accurate perception of reality. If vision of employee is clear decision making and problem solving ability improves. This also emphases on training subconscious minds to tackle stress and problems in reality.

3) Mental Models: Employees must identify values of company and what the business is all about. Organizations has to be flexible in adopting changes and continual improvement in management as well as operating practices.

4) Building Shared Vision: Top management of company need to share vision of company to all employees, bysharing vision employees perform perticular task because they wanted to do instead of told by someone to do, such mindset matters a lot.

5) Team Learning: Building a team, sharing vision with them, training, supporting and treating each team member as equal is most important. It is important for workforce to consider colleagues as team members instead of rivals.

All these approaches has to be adopted by company in order to make better work environment, sustainable growth, better control and management over system.

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