Models Of Strategic Change That Is Appropriate Management Essay

Lewins change model is the appropriate model for the British Airways strategic change. According to this model, the initial step of any change process it to unfreeze the current pattern of behaviour as a way of managing opposition to the change.

On the basis of the organizational level of change needed, such unfreezing may involve – on the individual level by selectively promoting or terminating the employees and on the structural level- by developing highly experiential training, providing data based feedback on how employees feel about certain management practices. Each of these interventions is planned to make organizational members address that level’s need for change.

The next step, movement, involves making the definite changes that will shift the organization to any other level of response. On the individual level, we would anticipate to see people behaving in a different way, possibly representing new skills.

At last, on the interpersonal- style level, we would anticipate to see behavior patterns that indicate better interpersonal trust and less dysfunctional interactions. The final stage of the change process which is refreezing involves stabilizing these This stage may involve redesigning the organization’s employment process in order to increase the likelihood of hiring applicants who share the organizations new management style.

LO1.2 Discuss how your chosen strategic change model is relevance British Airways in the

Current economy

Markov models and Monte Carlo simulations staff replacements can be employed along with the Delphi technique, for strategizing change. The application of Kurt Lewin is a wide-ranging plan of approach to hit issues governing the British Airways. Kurt Lewin’s three steps of change in British Airways had both the positive as well as the negative impacts on organisational employees and its structure. The existing pattern of behaviour, which is ‘Unfreeze to cease resistance to change was ordained and was effecting a person’s behaviour. It includes the downsizing of workforce policy and shortened employee’s incumbency and also reduced the hierarchical levels. It also empowered functioning people and made the decisions to spread fast which resulted in a better performance.

Lewin’s second models bring forth highlight of top management to bottom-line. Obviously, it transformed the internal structure and system of the British Airways. It was also complemented with the incentives to absorb shock and a new performance appraisal was introduced in order to alleviate the change by placing the above systems in a behavioral pattern. It emphasized on customer pleasure and amalgamation of the entire team of people in the hierarchy.

LO1.3 Discuss the benefits of your chosen strategic change models as intervention

Techniques in British Airways

British Airways today is the world’s most important airline. Because of the internal and external pressures, BA was forced to adapt to as corporate culture, value and company mission in order to improve the organisation’s performance.

Lewin’s model is the most important strategic change model for BA. The Unfreezing Stage reduces the hierarchical levels and gives more independence to working people and also allows work to get done without any difficulty as a result the organisation’s performance is improved. In the past, retirement which is a policy to reduce employees was introduced in this stage. It was got a good response from many employees. There were major changes in British airways top management. The Movement Stage

is the second stage of Lewin’s Model. In this stage, the company involved in building any change to be real which BA developed strategy and plans to bring the idea of the top management-level to the bottom-line employees. For supporting this stage, a number of internal British Airways structures and systems were altered like new bonus system and opening of Terminal 4 at Heathrow airport etc. The final stage is Refreezing in which the company had to alleviate changes by establishing systems which can make behavioral pattern in BA. For example, a new performance appraisal system was created to highlight customer service and subordinate development. BA’s symbols were introduced to carry those changes.

LO2: Understand issues relating to strategic change in an organisation

LO2.1Based on the case study discuss why you think British Airways need change

In the 90’s, that British Airways was well-known as the world’s number one airline when it came to quality and customer satisfaction. Today the above mentioned statement would have obscurity in itself as British Airways’ strategy seems to have changed from a service focused business to one competing on value that the British Airways have implemented in an attempt to deal with low profits and the high operating costs.

Today all the organisations are being all the time more challenged by change. Subsequently, they have to to be aware of the issues that force the need for change which means that the organisations call for a proactive approach to the strategic change management.

A cooperative and peaceful work environment is a key need in every organisation and strikes in the organisations also affects the good will and brand of the organisation. Strikes in any organisation imply that there is lack of proper communication between employees and the managers which ultimately leads to growth of tension in the organisation climate. BA now need to adopt a strategy to ensure that strikes won’t occur and for this over-communication need to be done to check nothing gets missed and the project manager and the employees must understand the value of compromise and work actively together in order to avoid any risk of bitter relationship which may give birth to a strike in the future.

LO2.2 Assess the factors that are driving the need for strategic change at British Airways

Strategic management is a set of managerial decisions and activities that determines the long-run performance of an organisation. It includes aspects such as strategy formulation on the basis of the current environment of the organisation, implementation of formulated strategy, and its evaluation and control. The organizational development tradition is an approach to carry out organizational change with a view to increase efficiency. A variety of employee involvement strategies are taken in to account, but there is minor confirmation for their effectiveness as a means of securing commitment and improved performance.

Due to the incidents like the global slowdown in the travel industry and lower demand for bookings, that fuel costs rise sharply, costs of insurance going up in the BA saw the need for strategic changes in attracting the market. Strategic change is imperative for every business because it determines its success in the market. A major strategy of airlines is alliances or merges. Alliances or merges are a part of strategic management plan. Alliances are useful for any airlines to manage and preserve the business. This strategy was also adopted by the British Airways for better service and customer satisfaction. The motivating factor behind alliances is long-term profitability. Their formation is for strategic reasons like accessing larger markets and building hub-to-hub traffic etc.

LO2.3 Assess the resource implications of British Airways not responding to strategic change

British airways have been affected by the change in technology, business trends, and economic trends. They have been slow to adapt to the changes according to the changing world and this has become a major setback in the British Airways where they have lagged behind.

The key problem for British Airways is the poor management strategies. Earlier, the company was doing amazingly well with high profits. The company’s reliability had grown enormously in the transport industry as well and therefore it was termed as a company with class. Later on the troubles for the company led to its financial catastrophe due to lack of managerial strategies or we can say due to resistance to change.

The change in the business trends is one of the main causes of the poor management strategies as the customers have been varying their behaviours from the conventional habits they were used to. Another main problem that is the root cause of the poor management strategies is the rise in fuel costs. Earlier in the past, the fuel prices were low and easily quantifiable. The times have passed by and the prices of the fuel today have sky rocketed which means that the income have diminished and have now transformed to losses. Because of this reason, the management of British Airways is having management crisis due to resistance to change.

Another problem is the competitors of the company. There were no competitors in the past to compete with British airways. Earlier, the company did not have any struggle but this all changed with the formation of new rivals in the industry for example- Easy Jet due to which BA faced a huge loss of customers and they started making losses.

Technology is also a problem which has affected British Airways leading to its huge poor management strategies. The organization strategic change management has been not efficient in solving all these entire problems.

LO3 Stakeholders in developing a strategy for change

LO3.1 Identify a system involving stakeholders in the planning of change at British

For Creating a stakeholder aware culture in the organisation a structured approach is needed, skilful management is also essential. A structured process which is focussed on identifying the stakeholders, understanding their expectations and managing their expectations, monitoring the efficiency of the stakeholder activities and continual review of stakeholder community can be used to achieve success in managing stakeholder relationships. A stakeholder has a stake in the activities of the organisation. That stake may be an interest in the result or product, an individual or group influenced by the work or the product which may be direct or indirect.

As an unremitting upgrading process, stakeholder administration requires understanding support from everyone in the organisation ranging from the CEO to the employee to the short-term contractor. This ensures the concepts of effective stakeholder relationship management in the organisation.

Management should have to recognise that success criteria of its organisation must be broader than the bottom line considerations:

-The only business driver is not only shareholder value.

-Organisations today need to think about socially valuable behaviours such as sustainability and corporate social liability as an important part of their mission and goals.

Many organisations followed the management ideologies of the bottom line. Above all, the CEO should be a hero and the shareholder value is supreme. Any kind of activity that an organisation undertakes, whether it be operational, strategic or tactical, the activity can only be unbeaten with the input, obligation and support of people- stakeholders. Attainment of and maintaining the support and loyalty of stakeholders requires a constant process of appealing the right stakeholders at the right time and obviously to understand and manage their expectations.

LO3.2 Analyse the change management strategy of British Airways with stakeholders

STAKEHOLDERS

Stakeholders are the persons or groups who are impacted by or can influence the success or failure of an organisation’s actions. They are the groups or individuals who supply important resources.

The Stakeholder Circle methodology

The Stakeholder Circle is a five step methodology which provides a flexible and structured approach to understand and manage relationships within and around the organisation’sactivity. It is based on the concept that the success of any organisation’s activities depend on the participation of the stakeholder community. With each of the activity a team is associated, often unobserved in many stakeholder engagement processes like it appeared to be known as being imperative to the success of that activity. The outmost circle references possible stakeholders:, those who may be important to the victory of the activity at the later stage.

The methodology defines a concept that any activity of the organisation can only exist with the informed approval of its stakeholder community. Managing the relationships between the stakeholders’ community and the activity will augment the chances of the success. The community of stakeholders consists of individuals and groups having a different potential to influence the activity’s result either positively or negatively. The team associated with the activity must develop knowledge about this stakeholder community. This information will help to define the suitable level and substance of communication required to affect stakeholder’s expectations and actions. The five steps are:

â€¢ Identification of all the stakeholders.

â€¢ Prioritisation to determine who among the stakeholders is crucial.

â€¢ Visualisation in order to determine the overall stakeholder community.

â€¢ Engagement through effectual communications.

â€¢ Monitoring the outcome of the engagement.

LO3.3Evaluate the systems used by British Airways to involve stakeholders in the planning of change

Key stakeholder are the stakeholders with major impact on or considerably influenced by the work and where these interests and influence must be accepted if the work is to be thriving.

The British Airways stakeholders consist of the groups who are concerned in the British Airways business and that would be:

-British Airways Workers who want BA to do well as the company pays their mortgages.

-BA shareholders who want BA to do well because they have possession of the company and want their investments to increase.

-BA suppliers as they make money by supplying the BA with goods and services.

-BA customers as they want BA to do well so they can continue to use their service.

STAKEHOLDER CIRCLE METHODOLOGY

It is based on the concept that the success of any organisation’s activities to achieve its objectives depend upon the involvement of the stakeholder community. All decisions of the relationships are made from the point of view of the project manager. Team surrounds the activity which at times is overlooked in many stakeholder engagement processes. Surrounding the team there is stakeholder community that, at present time, is identified as the important factor for the victory of any activity. The outermost circle is of potential stakeholders those who are/will be crucial for the project’s success at later stages.

LO3.4 Were there any resistance to change? If so explain

The CEO, Willie Walsh of British Airways, has faced major industrial action when he implements a change programme intended to develop the competitiveness of the BA. British Airways illustrates the unfreezing-moving-refreezing procedure of change. The changes at the BA faced the increased competition for example from the Virgin Atlantic Airways. Organisational change hence can be critical for the performance and the survival as well. BA is the largest UK airline. BA is the market leader but instead the low cost airlines can influence the decisions that BA makes. Boeing and airbus are the core BA suppliers.

BA tries to keep a healthy relationship with the media in order to have good relation with the public. Stakeholder engagement British Airways has been important for many years. Networks of stakeholder relations exist within the Airways.

In the BA change process, the time and attention change leaders spent on the unfreezing face is of particular note. When change leaders fail to see the unfreezing phase as a crucial and separate phase they often encounter problems. Resistance to change is likely to be strong without any explicit attention on the unfreezing phase and this ignorance towards the unfreezing phase is also the reason behind the failure of change efforts. There are two additional and crucial points. First is that the managers should not suppose all the change activities to occur in succession. Activities necessary in the one phase of the process may overlap with that of the next phase. For example- The change leaders may be engaged in the activity of the moving phase while continuing to convince people to the requirement of change which is an activity associated with the unfreezing phase. Second is that instead of an individual a team of the change leaders should guide the organisation through a important change effort. The team can work more efficiently than a single person as there is too much work like deciding how to better unfreeze people, vision development and its communication, generation of small wins, overseeing many change projects.

Individuals of the team must possess knowledge related to all the problems needed for the change efforts and must have different point of view for various solutions. Leadership is also crucial in the context. The team needs individuals who are capable to lead the team efficiently and confidently. The team size is also a concern. Six may be enough for a smaller organisation while fifteen or more may be needed in a larger one.

LO4 Planning to implement models for ensuring ongoing change

LO4.1 How would you develop appropriate model for change for British Airways

Lewin’s change model, according to me, is the appropriate model for change for the British Airways. It is outlined as below:-

Lewin’s Change Model

Organizations tend to always work in order to maintain a steady state and this may help us to understand that why do organizations require external force to initiate alteration and why that change will be opposed.

Organizational change can occur at three levels and the patterns in each level need different change strategies. The levels involve:

Changing the persons who are employees in the organization which includes changing their r skills, values, attitudes, and behaviour.

Changing the organizational environment or interpersonal style which means that how open people are with one another, how the conflicts are managed and how decisions are taken, and so on.

According to Lewin, the initial step of any change process it to unfreeze the current pattern of behavior as a way of managing opposition to the change.

LO4.2 Based on the case explain how you would plan and implement a model for change for British Airways

British Airways used the same tools and faced the similar thing which others faced for their revival. They chose for manpower management and strategic movement. Future requirements of manpower were compared to that of the existing human resource. It identified skills and competencies. On the basis of the, the organization prepared a plan for developing the human resource strategy for preservation and removal with compensation.

A process driven mechanism ensued to collect competencies that are vital in the organization.

In order to achieve its goals the British Airways undertook strategic functions based on enterprise and the objectives were to make the organization competitive. In the British Airways, skill obsolesce are a major factor in the organisation. It needs deep-seated actions to be performed. Any organization has two categories its knowledge set, smart people and skill-sets that are ensured with job definitions. Overstaffing increase training cost and production cost. It also affects values, morale and productivity. If an organisation wants to create an optimised manpower planning designs then the following points are salient:

1. Delivery and allocation of manpower and Balancing of demand & supply.

2. Human resource controlling.

3. Introducing policies on succession, transfers and repositioning of manpower.

Internal/External Changes in the Organization

Internal/external changes in the organisation are fairly natural. They add to innovations of competitive strategy. External changes include change in the customer need and taste, amendments in government policy while internal change is related to product and service design innovation, appointment of well-informed senior managers for fresh ideas in order to deliver better services.

Amidst a set of fiscal problems, the only alternative that British Airways could take resort to was a privatization

program. It had to sale government owned stakes to the private players. It influenced and improved the

organizational performance; which was subjected to fierce competition.

Lewin’s Model

The model to be engaged for managing change is the Lewin’s model having three stages. The step one includes unfreezing which reduces the forces of change which maintains behaviour, identifies the need for change and the points that required enhancement. The step two consists of adopting movement for development of new attitude for the execution of the change and in the step three re-freezing is to be adopted in order to alleviate the change at new level.

LO4.3How would you develop appropriate measures to monitor progress at British Airways

Key Performance Indicators:

KPI’s or Key performance indicators are the financial and non-financial measures which are used to assist an organisation to measure its progress headed for a settled organisational objective.

A key measure of company’s success is customer recommendation. An onboard customer survey, British Airways Global Performance Monitor (GPM) survey and a follow up online survey on the arrivals process which provides monthly insights into the views of the customer.

British Airways expect big things of everybody working for it. It invests in new leadership training; implementing comprehensible communication programmes and recuperating the way company supervise presentation in all the business areas by training and systems solutions.

British Airways must attain a constantly strong financial performance to keep on investing for the future success of the business and provide enough shareholder returns. The main way for measuring financial performance is Operating margin.

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