Change Strategy And Implementation Plan For Bow Valley Manufacturing After Acquisition Of Elbow River Manufacturing

A manufacturing firm Bow Valley Manufacturing has recently acquired competitor Elbow River Manufacturing. Senior Management have commissioned you and your colleagues, as part of a consultancy team, to assist the company as they want business to proceed smoothly following the acquisition. Senior Management have asked you to produce a change strategy, implementation plan and presentation that will demonstrate how you will ensure a successful transition.

Present to senior management how you suggest the company proceeds with this change:

i. Using Kotter’s model, describe a strategy of how to implement this change.

ii. Prepare a Gantt chart showing the timeline for implementation.

iii. Discuss how employees and management will be notified of the change and what the key messages should be.

iv. Explain how you suggest the company addresses the three issues stated below.

1. Senior management is planning to restructure the organization. Currently, the organization is decentralized around geographic areas so that the executive responsible for each area has considerable autonomy over manufacturing and sales. The new structure will transfer power to the executives responsible for different product groups; the executives responsible for each geographic area will no longer be responsible for manufacturing in their area but will retain control over sales activities. Describe two types of resistance senior management might encounter from this organizational change and how you might address these.
2. Conflict among managers emerged soon after Bow Valley Manufacturing acquired Elbow River Manufacturing. The Elbow River perceived the Bow Valley management as hierarchical and arrogant, whereas Bow Valley thought Elbow Valley managers were naive, cautious, and lacking an achievement orientation. Identify the source(s) that best explain this conflict, and describe ways to reduce dysfunctional conflict in this situation. ?
3. The CEO wants everyone to support the organization’s dominant culture of lean efficiency and hard work. The CEO has introduced a new reward system to reinforce this culture and personally interviews all professional and managerial applicants to ensure that they bring similar values to the organization. Some employees who criticized these values had their careers sidelined until they left. Two midlevel managers were fired for supporting contrary values, such as work–life balance. Based on your knowledge of organizational subcultures, what potential problems is the CEO creating and how could they be resolved.

A manufacturing firm named Bow Valley Manufacturing has acquired it competitor named Elbow River manufacturing. The senior management has commissioned me and my colleagues who are a part of consultancy team for assisting the company in order to help the business to proceed smoothly following the acquisition (Miner, 2015). The senior management has requested me to produce a particular change strategy and an implementation plan of the strategy.

1. The strategy of implementing a plan would be done with the help of Kotter’s model. The main focus of this study is to evaluate various factors which have been successful in the particular process and the ways that can be undertaken in order to improve the working principles of the company (Pinder, 2014). A qualitative study would be conducted in order to observe the implementation of Kotter process for carrying out the strategies.

The Kotter’s process of change consists of 8 steps, these processes summarizes steps that are crucial for the successful change implementation (Luthans, Luthans & Luthans, 2015). The steps are as follows

• Creating the sense of urgency
• Building a guiding coalition
• Form a vision which has a particular strategy and initiatives are taken accordingly
• Enlist a volunteer army
• Take actions with the help of avoiding barriers
• Short term wins should be generated
• Sustain the acceleration
• Apply changes

Figure: 1

Source: Author

The employees and management would get notified regarding the changes with the help of numerous ways. The ways are as follows.

• The organization should be clear and honest regarding the changes that are made in the company and why these changes are being made (Wagner III & Hollenbeck, (2014). This would help the employees to know the reason of the changes as well as understand the changes which would also help them in working efficiently.
• Employees should be told what changes have been done in facilities provided to them.
• The ways by which the change is been undertaken should be explained to the employees as well as management.
• The employees should be explained their roles regarding the changes.
• Two way communication channels should be open.

1. The two types of resistance the senior management might encounter as a result of the change are confusion and competitive nature of the company (Robbins & Judge, 2014). Confusion might be an issue in changing the functions of people. People who were assigned for a particular task and now their work have been changed because of the changes brought about in the organization. This might result in confusion among the employees because they might mix up their previous responsibilities with the present one. The second resistance faced by the management is competitive nature of the company. The employees of the company might take some time in coping up with their present working principles and this would affect the competitive nature of the company (Becker et al., 2016). It might face some problems in competing with its competitor companies.

Figure 1: sources of individual resistance to change

(Source: Wagner III & Hollenbeck, 2014, p. 65)

Figure 2: sources of organizational resistance to change

(Source: Luthans, Luthans & Luthans, 2015)

Figure 3: stages of resistance to change

Source: (Miner, 2015, p. 98)

2. The sources which best explain the conflict that took place among the companies is communication and cultural challenges.

• Communication challenges: communication with employees, creating a culture for them where they can thrive and empowering them are some fundamental parts that help in integration (Miner, 2015). During merges as well as acquisitions management and employees usually feel helpless. Lack of the answers and fear deter the higher authority of management from giving the data which employees require to apply in their actions in the new company that has been merged. Employees face numerous queries like “why is the organization merging”, “how will the merger affect their work” and many more (Blader, Patil & Packer, 2017). The lack of communication during merging creates distrust as well as uncertainty in a workplace which leads to engagement levels of lower employees.
• Cultural changes: when merges as well as acquisitions occur, they bring about some changes in the management strategies and practices which might result in negative effects on people present in the organization (Sadatrasool et al., 2015). A sudden shift in such practices brings about disruption as well as unease to the company that has been merged recently and creates more problems for it.

The ways to reduce this dysfunctional conflict in this situation is that the professionals who make decisions should take various intangible factors into account. During merges it is very difficult in quantifying the human side, and they are neglected most of the times (Lazaroiu, 2015). Usually CEOs overlook this factor because of the pressure of rehiring the employees as well as managers. In the long run it is very deter mental to the result of the organization that has been merged. In order to understand the extent to which the merge has affected the company the CEO, management and other employees should figure out a culture strategy. Collecting feedbacks regularly from the employees would help the management and CEO to understand the concerns of employees as well as issues before they prove to be a threat for the company. With the help of such strategy, the company would understand the areas which face cultural differences engage the employees throughout the period of merging (Aziz et al., 2017). It would also help the organization to carry out a culture shift if necessary.

3. In this organization, the CEO expects the employees to stay hand in hand with the dominant culture of lean efficiency as well as hard work. The CEO also wants people to support the values and cultures going on in the organization and if they do so, they would be rewarded (Robbins & Judge 2014). In case the employees put forward their views or suggestions that are against the principles of the company they would be fired or penalized seriously. This would create a huge problem for the organization. the problems are as follows

• Unwanted: employees would feel unwanted in such kind of working environment. If the company fires an employee only on the basis of putting forward his thoughts, he would feel that the company does not respect him or needs him (Blader, Patil & Packer, 2017). This would create a negative impact on people regarding the company and people would not like to join the company easily.
• Unemployment: the strict working environment would make employees leave the company if they do not like its working principles. They would not speak about the problems faced by them because they would feel that no one would prioritize their problems and act upon it.
• Dominated: in such working environment the employees would feel like they are being treated like slaves and they would not have job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is very important for every employee (Huning., 2015). If the CEO wants the employees to follow and support the dominant culture of the company, the employees would not be allowed enough freedom that they usually require. This would lead in making them unhappy regarding the job and finally leave the job.

References

Aziz, K., Shahzadi, I., Awais, M., Hasnain, S. S. U., & Rahat, Q. (2017). Does Abusive Supervision Influence Organizational Citizenship Behavior? Testing the Mediation Effects of Organizational Cynicism. International Journal of Management Excellence, 9(3), 1146-1154.

Becker, T. E., Atinc, G., Breaugh, J. A., Carlson, K. D., Edwards, J. R., & Spector, P. E. (2016). Statistical control in correlational studies: 10 essential recommendations for organizational researchers. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 37(2), 157-167.

Blader, S. L., Patil, S., & Packer, D. J. (2017). Organizational identification and workplace behavior: More than meets the eye. Research in Organizational Behavior.

Huning, T. M., Bryant, P. C., & Holt, M. K. (2015). Informal social networks in organizations: propositions regarding their role in organizational behavior outcomes. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, 14(1).

Lazaroiu, G. (2015). Work motivation and organizational behavior. Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice, 7(2), 66.

Luthans, F., Luthans, B. C., & Luthans, K. W. (2015). Organizational Behavior: An EvidenceBased Approach. IAP.

Miner, J. B. (2015). Organizational behavior 1: Essential theories of motivation and leadership. Routledge.

Miner, J. B. (2015). Organizational behavior 4: From theory to practice. Routledge.

Pinder, C. C. (2014). Work motivation in organizational behavior. Psychology Press.

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. (2014). Essentials of organizational behavior. Pearson,.

Sadatrasool, M., Bozorgi-Amiri, A., & Yousefi-Babadi, A. (2016). Project manager selection based on project manager competency model: PCA–MCDM Approach. Journal of Project Management, 1(1), 7-20.

Wagner III, J. A., & Hollenbeck, J. R. (2014). Organizational behavior: Securing competitive advantage. Routledge.