Change Management and Leadership at Café 13

Three months ago, the long-serving manageress of Café 13 retired and was replaced by John Cummings, an experienced caterer who had previously managed other Elia Foods operations. Café 13’s 20-strong staff have not, however, responded well to his appointment. This is partly because he is ten years younger than most of them and partly because of a general resistance to his determination to force the pace of change.

A number of initiatives brought forward by John have met with a poor response from the staff. The introduction of a wider range of dishes, the serving of hot breakfast snacks from 8.00am and the provision of themed menus (e.g. Chinese at Chinese new year) have all been met apathetically by chefs and waiting staff alike. Employees have recently become more hostile towards John following his decisions to abolish the half-hour morning coffee / smoking break and not to replace two members of staff who left to move to other catering operations run by Elia Foods UK.

Because of the poor financial performance of Café 13, Elia Foods UK has now instructed John to reduce the total wage bill by 5% over the next six months. Understandably he is very concerned about how this can be achieved given the current state of employee relations in the restaurant.

Critically evaluate change management theory, strategies and tactical options

Synthesise unplanned and planned change and organisational development approaches

Critically assess the key areas of organisational and individual resistance to change

Understand change within the context of organisational leadership, business strategy and globalisation

With reference to relevant theory, answer 2 of the following questions:

1)Why might 'cultural change' be difficult for John to implement speedily at Café 13?

2)Explain how Café 13 can take a planned approach to change.

3)Advise John on how his leadership style and business strategy should be taken into consideration to enable them to design future successful change initiatives.

For a year Café 13 continued to operate as before – only now serving the new office workers in addition to those employed by the shipping company. In 2016, however, it was sold to a commercial catering company – Elia Foods UK Ltd.  Because of transfer of undertakings regulations all the existing 20 staff were re-employed by Elia Foods on their existing terms and conditions of employment. These were relatively generous, when compared with those existing for other Elia Foods employees, having been negotiated with the shipping company by representatives of the Transport and General Workers Union.