Managing Corporate Change

Introduction:

As the society develops, every corporation has to fit for the diversified and changeable market. The political policies have even suggested to start the economical revolution. Development is the topic for the corporation to face, no matter from the corporation itself, or the big environment. In this essay, the author tends to introduce the casino’s changing process as an example and the marketing manager tends to play a special leading role in the process. Change can be studied in terms of its effects and the individual, group, organization, society, national or international level. And especially at the corporate level, however, Improvisational change can be initiated deliberately by managers, it can be imposed by specific changes in internal policy or procedures or it can arise through external pressures. During the development of the main local casino, the marketing manager has seen and anticipated in several parts of the organizational changes to adapt for the transformation of the society and tends to turn the temporary efforts into sustainable strength. The casino company he works in is a primarily founded entertainment for the local citizens and the foreign friends. It has its headquarters in the downtown and the services inclde the cards play, the gambling, the VIP principles has attrated many business clients. On the other hand, more programs have been set up to adapt to the environment. The company has the history of about 20 years and develops from a small workshop into a large and comprehensive entertainment.

Firstly, the organizational change has its own necessity. The competitive environment around the globe is becoming increasingly challenging for managers as modern economies have witnessed tremendous changes over the last decades. The local economy has experienced its own history in the recent several decades, the market of the casino has expanded with the booming development of the whole economy and the service industry, however, it also is exposed to more risks such as the new technology, the government policies, the social and cultural values and so on. Especially as the marketing manager, he has to observe the advantage and the disadvantage of the casino accurately. The competitors’ strategies, the new arrivals, and the position in the international economic environment has forced them to change their attitudes and management methods in the practice of expanding the company as a better group to exist.

On the other hand, globalization, deregulation, economic recession, and the emergence of new economies have created both threats and opportunities for incumbent firms who now have to adapt more effectively to the rapidly changing global environment or suffer damage by new entrants and risk extinction. Many of these forces will give rise to opportunities and a company may happily engage with change. Also, some other forces may exert threats on the organization and make the change inescapable or even impossible. Mergers, acquisitions, re-structuring, downsizing, expansion, re-engineering, and innovation may all be factors for bringing or requiring corporate change. Facing different problems, the manager must often make quick decisions that have long-term impact, corporate change happens for a number of reasons and in a number of ways. Macau (Macau) is a Special Administrative Region of The People's Republic of China, one of two located in the west of the Pearl River Delta in southeast China coast, by the Macao Peninsula, Taipa Island and Coloane and Cotai four parts, the total area of 29.2 square kilometers more than 50 million people lived, which makes Macau became the world's most densely populated areas. The north of Macao, Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province, Gongbei connection; West and belong to the Wan Chai and HENGQIN Zhuhai look right. The east with another Special Administrative Region - Hong Kong, 60 kilometers apart, separated by the middle of the Pearl River Mouth.

Secondly, the organizational change has its unique impact on the corporation. The need for change often makes necessary the formulation of new strategies and even the change of the mission itself. As the new product and service design innovations go on, and the problems will be overcome continuously, such as the low performance and morale, high stress and staff turnover, the conflicts between old and new management team and so on. Especially for the marketing department, inadequate skills and knowledge base, triggering training programs. Innovations in the manufacturing process and new ideas about how to deliver services to customers can be made out during the changing process. Office and factory relocation may be closer to suppliers and markets and recognition of problems triggers reallocation of responsibilities. Also, long-term strategies that go wrong often make necessary reformulating strategies towards changing the company direction.

Organizations are inertial and change is infrequent, discontinuous, intentional. Organizations are emergent and self organizing, and change is constant, evolving, cumulative. Change is an occasional interruption or divergence from equilibrium. It tends to be dramatic and it is driven externally. In the example of the casino, the organizational change starts through the observation from the marketing department, because mostly, they know more about the target to gain the satisfaction of the clients and do the co-operations with other department, the observation may decide the planning about the distribution of other departments. So, the manager would like to make statistics about the numbers and the comparison periodically to reflect the planning of the change.

Aligned with the trend of casino industry development in world market, the company has defined its position and set a goal to build a centennial club. And the products have been updated to meet the needs of the market. In the trend of the globalization, the promotion and the evaluation of the market become very important. So the marketing manager is set to have the goal to obtain the exploration of the market and to gain the sustainable profit, which seems to be the essential for the operation of the company on the whole. Change is a pattern of endless modifications in work processes and social practice. It is driven by organizational instability and alert reactions to daily contingencies. As the first step, the marketing manager has reported to the leaders. Then the strategies will be carried out to react to the market and to improve the service from different aspects with the efforts of the technology, the social training, the products improving and the profits calculation. They are separated from the leader to the managers, and then then managers recommend the employees to fulfill their own duty in their position. Numerous small accommodations cumulate and amplify in management, cultural building, leading relationship, enterprise disciplines and other changing process.

Analysis:

Through the organizational change, the company has put out some measures, and the marketing manager has taken some approaches to make them into practice as one of the change agents. In the essay, the author tends to analyses the change and the crucial point in management.

First of all, the type of change held by the marketing manager is from three levels, they are individual level change, group level change and organizational level change. And the organizational level change should be based on the group and individual’s efforts. The organizational change involves major programmes which affect both the individuals and the groups. Decisions regarding such changes are made by the senior management. These changes occur over long periods of time and require considerable planning for implementation. Sometimes it even costs much time and money, and it have to face sacrifice to some extent. During the transformation, the marketing department is enlarged because of the direct profits, the scales and the districts have been expanded with the strategic planning. And the service of them has become diversified, from simple objective to multiple objectives to fit with the globalization and the international trade. Also, the marketing department would like to face the clients from different areas. This requires the addition of the employees and the accumulation during the marketing practice.

So at the same time, in the marketing department, the manager is then formed to lead the whole department, and the other departments should have to cooperate with the marketing department to analyses and to adjust to the new production and other routine work. The organizational structure is the pattern of relationships among various positions and among various position holders. As the marketing department become very important because of the development of the commercial economy and the symptoms of the service industry, the structural change has called on the whole set of relationships, work assignments and authority structure. For example, when the marketing manager report about the new demands of the clients, the casino should have to start the new service such as the other entertaining programs. Change in organization structure is required because old relationships and interactions no longer remain valid and useful in the changed circumstances, the marketing reactions are actually the most efficient proof for the facts. However the balance between different privileges are hard to handle.

Secondly, the culture of the setting that is changing and the role culture played in the change, has played the role as a guide. Formally, people have a natural resistance to change, but sometimes they get bored with routine and seek out new experiences. Take the casino company for example, when it first started, the motto of it is to have fun with the luxurious enjoyment, and the advertisements and other promotions also advocates the same thing. The marketing department’s responsibility is to find more business partners to share the profits through the booming of the entertainment with the foreigners and the tourists. The casino has a relevant long contemporary history, but as an corporation, it has taken revolutions in recent years fiercely. The beliefs and cultures have been built up by the company itself, the government and the whole market environment. In the company, the marketing manager has trained the colleagues about the values and the motto, even the advantages with others to help promote their marketing targets. Because peoples’ culture effects the organization performance and corporate change very much, a successful company shouldn’t leave out the guide of thought to keep changing with the pace of the society.Unfortunately, the change has also brought up the discontinuity and the destruction of familiar arrangements and relationships. Following this line of thought, change may be resisted because it involves confrontation with the unknown and loos of the familiar. When the manager face such problems, he has to endure a long time struggle, and only after several time, can the result be turned out and the reactions seem not quick and rapid enough. Therefore, many people find change both painful and frustrating, and new stuffs are more easily to accept the organizational change and seem to be more suitable for the marketing position.

There are some basic organizational change theories to analyze the process of the changing. Life cycle theories have an event sequence of start-up, grow, harvest, terminate, and start-up. They have a generative mechanism of an immanent program or regulation. Teleological theories have an event sequence of envision/set goals, implement goals, dissatisfaction, search/interact, and envision/set goals. They have a generative mechanism of purposeful enactment and social construction. Dialectical theory has an event sequence of thesis/antithesis, conflict, synthesis, and thesis/antithesis. It has a generative mechanism of pluralism, confrontation, and conflict. Evolutionary theory has an event sequence of variation, selection, retention, and variation. It has a generative mechanism of competitive selection and resource scarcity. These four motors are classified along two dimensions: the unit of change, which depicts whether the process focuses on the development of a single organizational entity (life cycle, teleological) or on interactions between two or more entities (evolution, dialectic) and the mode of change.

In the casino company, the manager has found out that the change is mostly down inside the company as regular adjustment and examination. However they have links between each other. The manage level has carried out the adjustment in different departments. Sometimes the  technology change or internal events such as change in key personnel will result in unstable revolution. That kind of episodic change is infrequent, discontinuous, and intentional. It occurs during periods of divergence when organizations are moving away from their equilibrium conditions. Divergence is the result of a growing misalignment between an inertial deep structure and perceived environmental demands.

On the contrary, the organizational change needs the principle regulations, the clear strategies, the detailed management and the effective practice. In fact, the information for the company to deal with is multipled then before, the fast pace and the serious target have driven the company to a busy state, even sometimes the change turns out to be the repetition and the gap in the communication may let the change become unreal. For example, the manager has to set up new principles in the department and the profits should be calculated different  in the financial department, however the financial department just supervise the result of the planning instead of analyzing it. Without any examination and improvement, some temporary change has failed. However the communication from the manage level to the common employees is not clear. On the other hand, the marketing manager once was recommended to train one subsidiary company to set up a new marketing and managing principle. At the same time, he was in charge of the other districts’ calculation of profits, the conflicts happened and the casino at that time could have no time to focus on the new regulations, they became tectonic and the sales department at that district only followed the traditional promotion.

Overall Evaluation:

Through the analysis, the author tends to prove the current situation of the organizational change and both the strengths and weaknesses are presented in the practice of the changing. Though it has the necessity, it still has to undergo painful struggle and experiments. The organizational change in essential is the change of the thought in the operation. The management structures and leading styles, the cultural and social communications and the political conflicts can all be counted in the evaluation. The crucial problem is about the action during the changing. And compared with the episode change, what the organizational change tends to do is to improve the quality of the company, and to guide the direction of the development through various attempts and approaches.

During the organizational change, there are strategic change, structural change.process oriented change and people oriented change. The changes are in the whole set of relationships, work assignments and authority structure. They relate to the technological developments, knowledge expanding, information processing and automation. To conclude, as it was mentioned earlier, changes at any level may affect the other levels. Because of its pervasive nature, change at one level is often interrelated with changes at other levels. The strength of the effect will highly depend on the level or source of change.

Improvisational Change Models have their own process for the company to follow. One of the earliest models of planned change was put forward by Kurt Lewin in 1975. Lewin explained that organizations like human beings prefer to stay in a state of equilibrium or a steady state called as homeostasis. He observed that the stability of human behavior was based on “quasi- stationary equilibrium” supported by a large force field of driving and restraining forces. This observation gave rise to the theory of Force Field Analysis. This social scientist views behavior as a dynamic balance of forces working in opposing directions. Driving forces facilitate change because they push employees in the desired direction. Restraining forces hinder change because they push employees in the opposite direction.

Therefore, these forces must be analyzed and Lewin’s three-step model can help shift the balance in the direction of the planned change. In the unfreezing stage, the manager has reduced the forces which maintain behavior in its present form, recognition of the need for change and improvement to occur. According to Lewin, the first step in the process of changing behavior is to unfreeze the existing situation or status quo. The status quo is considered the equilibrium state. However, the factors are not necessarily presented in the company’s conflict. Sometimes some external factors just impulse the revolution and the traditional minds have to welcome the creative minds to join for survival when they are not prepared yet.

Then comes the movement stage, in Lewin’s second step, it is necessary to move the target system to a new level of equilibrium. Three ions that can assist in the movement step include: persuading employees to agree that the status quo is not beneficial to them and encouraging them to view the problem from a fresh perspective, work together on a quest for new, relevant information, and connect the views of the group to well-respected, powerful leaders that also support the change. Please note: the ‘movement’ stage involves 1. Initial problem identification; 2. Obtaining and disseminating data; 3. Problem Diagnosis; 4. Action Planning; 5. Implementation; 6. Follow up and stabilization; 7. Assessment of consequences; and 8. Learning from the process. At that time, the marketing manager as a changing agent, he should know clearly the role in the change. Sometimes he is the prime mover who creates and innovates new ideas. Sometimes he is the sense maker to redirect the strategies, he should be aware of the position and cooperate with the colleagues to fulfill the duty, the responsibility should be clarified. Though as a marketing manager, he has much more resources than others, he shouldn’t be narrow-minded to ignore other department’s opinions. The new management has put the democracy in the principle so that the anticipation would not only focus on the leaders.

Then during the refreezing stage, it needs to take place after the change has been implemented in order for it to be sustained or “stick” over time. The third stage is about stabilization change at the new level and reinforcement through supporting mechanisms. It is the actual integration of the new values into the community values and traditions. During this period, the manager should know well about what stage the company is in and try out the right strategies, because the company has different targets and requirements in different period. However, learning and adjusting can always be the correct principle during the revolution for a company. The changes can last for a long and repeated time to check if it fits for the direction, but actually, most of the experiments don’t have enough time for examination, once the manager has came out about the complaints on the contradiction with the financial departments and temporary needs of the casino itself. And the environment hasn’t provided a tolerant phenomenon for the company to grow is another practical problem to sort out. Therefore, Lewin’s model illustrates the effects of forces that either promote or inhibit change. Specifically, driving forces promote change while restraining forces oppose change. Lewin’s work has assumed organizations operate in a stable state, but it still has values for basic analysis on the organizational change and is the formation of other theories, following the basic steps, the companies have to figure out the main clue for the changing development.

The recommendations:

Considering the problems in work, the marketing manager should try out his own roles to fit with the management in the organizational change to make things worth progressing.

Firstly, the management has played an important role in the development of the corporation. The principles of the corporation can decide about other strategies. The company has to figure out the principles and record them into regulations and rules to restrict every employees in the group. Learning and following the rules should be efficient. During the development, the company would come out with a series of principles to meet the temporary needs before-head, such as the quality examination, the employees’ evaluation periodically, the marking of the planning, the relationship with the clients, they can all be reflected in the principles and make it a good habit for the employees to realize the importance and to act on it. A systematically implemented change is more likely to proceed smoothly and to encounter fewer obstacles than is a change that is implemented too quickly and without adequate preparation. Evaluate implementation and regulations should be done accordingly. For example, the huge statistics are needed to form the report and to do the prediction of the market in the next season and even the next period.

Secondly, the recognition of the change should be established. For a marketing manager, who anticipate needed change, recognition is likely to come much earlier, as a result of marketing forecasts indicating new market potential, expert indications about impending socio-economic change or a perceived opportunity to capitalize on a key technological breakthrough. The manager tends to initiate change because they expect it to be necessary in the near future in any case. The manager must then set goals for the proposed change. The goals can be set to maintain or increase the market standing, to enter new markets, to restore employee morale, to reduce turnover, to settle a strike and to identify good investment opportunities.

Thirdly, diagnosis and management on the change must be maintained. An important next step is diagnosing organizational variables that have brought about the need for change. Low pay, poor working conditions, poor supervision, better alternatives in the job market or employee job dissatisfaction should all be taken into consideration. To carry out this diagnosis, the manager may discuss the situation with employees and other managers. Therefore, it has become the teamwork. Communication and cooperation become essential elements in the process. After the manager has developed an understanding of the problem and its causes then he must select a change intervention that will accomplish the intended goal. An intervention is a specific change induced in an organization with the intention of solving a particular problem or accomplishing a specific objective. For example, if turnover is caused by low pay, then a new reward system is required and if the cause is poor supervision then interpersonal skills and training for supervisors is required. For another example, if the change involves the use of new equipment, the manager should not make any changes that rely on the use of new equipment until it has arrived and been installed and workers know how to use it.

Finally, the culture of the company can be inner power, which should be stressed. The creativity in culture can be crucial in the organizational change.Arguably, collaboration can have the effect of reducing opposition and encouraging commitment. The willingness and awareness to change can make the process more powerful and mindful. The value of the company can be generalized instead of stay vague in mind, a centralized and spiritually optimistic values can help to realize the dream of the company. The manager is such leader to search for the proper values and beliefs regardless of the disagreements and doubts. When there are full of creative minds and stubborn beliefs, they can change into effective behaviors and scientific management as well, for example a belief that the company should not trade with particular countries, or that professional staff should not have their professional actions appraised by managers. Comments:

You have mentioned your role in the change process, in order to give us a better understanding of the situation, please also elaborate more on the casino company e.g. workforce, size, management culture, turnover, type of services etc

Also give some briefing on the macro and micro environment which justify why changes are needed e.g keen competition, or change of  government policy etc. 

You have a clear elaboration of the Lewin’s theoretical models and process, please suggest how to apply into the work settings so that we can understand what current or future changes will be seen.