Case Study British Airways Swipe Card Debacle Essay

In order to successfully and effectively implement change all of the employees should have a good understanding of how the changes will benefit the organization, their positions, and how it might impact their routines. To many employees the implementation of change is not always properly communicated, and the process of change on paper as it is being implemented can be threatening as well as confusing. Also, the people behind the scenes making the changes may not have taken specific details into consideration regarding effective changes that perhaps the employees

Implementing change in an organization is complicated. It is important that a manager understands their role and responsibilities for which could very well be the success or failure of an organization. A manager should know how to handle staff resistance, and the areas that require change. There are processes that help management with assisting their staff members with adjusting to change and concentrate on the areas of importance. This process includes planning, assessment, implementation, and evaluation. The difference between a failed organization and a successful manager is when the manager has the ability to implement change with little disruption to

Some employees resisted the change which happened during the prior restructure where management was downsized

Managers need to determine the best method of communicating the changes to the employees that are directly affected. This material presented in last weeks class and in the course material helped us understand how important communication is when implementing changes in a work environment. The course book identified four main approaches to managing change in an organization. Lewins’ Three-Step Model argued that successful change in an organization follows three steps: Unfreezing the status quo, movement to a desired end state, and refreezing the new change to make it permanent. (Robbins & Judge, 2011). This approach requires manages to evaluate the need for change and implement a plan of action to help the organization manage changes effectively.

Organizational change is a necessary outcome when considering various scenarios contributing to the resulting vision. Perplexing as it may seem, change initiatives don’t always result in positive outcomes. In fact, many never succeed. As a change agent, one should always have formulated a vision of what change will “look” like for the organization. One would be hard pressed to paint a landscape without having a vision of what the landscape should resemble. Yet, resistance to change usually becomes a significant factor contributing to an initiative’s failure. It is likely an

In order to obtain long term success, it is important to strictly follow Kotter’s Eight Step Change Model in the correct order. The first step is to create a sense of urgency among the staff. The PCA called in a meeting and introduced the concept of the change and reason for the change. It was a mandatory meeting and snacks and beverages were served. Several concerns and threats affecting the financial aspects of the company and how to maintain job security were addressed. Employees were asked one by one how they like what they are doing, why or why not they like it, what is important to them and what do they think can be done to improve it. Creating a guiding coalition and directing others in the right direction of change is the

Monitoring change processes during/after implementation determines the effectiveness of the organizational change, unsuspected problems and reveal potential solutions to problems that surface during the change. Dr. Lindsey Medical Clinic recently employed a filing staff to sort records, file records in accordance with the correct patient, and scan records into electronic format. The monitoring process consist of training two file room employees to use a computerized change monitor software. The change monitor software implementation addresses performance evaluations based on

The scenario upon which this paper is based relates to the British Airways Swipe Card Debacle case study from the textbook, Managing Organizational Change: A Multiple Perspective Approach (Akin, Dunford, & Palmer, 2009). The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss the organizational change associated to the implementation of a new swipe card system that led to strike of over 250 British Airways check-in staff, losing 40 million pounds and negatively effecting the company’s reputation. Additionally, this paper will relate the case study to several change approaches (organizational development, sense-making, change management, contingency, and processual) and identify key issues. Additionally, this

Not only were the leaders impressed by the employees insights, they took action to address all of the problems. As a result, participation increased, communication improved, relationship between employees and management improved, and access to training and development opportunities were wide-spread. But most importantly, once the original change initiatives were introduced, employees embraced the initiatives, offered insights on how to improve their outcomes, and ensured their success.

There are many reasons that change can or must occur within and organization. The key will be in understanding the organization and the prospective change. According to Mangundjaya (2015) "there are many variables that can influence the success of organizational change, such as the content of the change, the process of the change, individual characteristics, leadership, external environment and organizational context" (p. 67). Organizational change has the potential to successfully align an organization with its goals or completely derail any future success and progress. It is important that the organization takes the proper steps to prepare for, implement, and evaluate change.

The first step in driving the necessary change within the organization is to secure an outside consultant to serve as a change agent. The change agent will facilitate and guide the organizational development (OD) through process consultation intervention. In this process, it will be necessary to identify sources of resistance through Force field analysis. Once the sources are identified, one-on-one meetings and group meetings will be conducted to educate the employees on the changes and the reasons why change is necessary. This step will find the management team working to re-define the vision of the organization. As part of

Empowering broad-based action—the company should continually check barriers of change and remove obstacles to make the change strategy successful. BA (2010) announced that striking staff would forfeit cheap travel perks. This action aimed to reduce strikes and penalized strikers. In addition, more than 80 crew members (2010) had been suspended and 13 had been permanently dismissed from BA. BA took actions to remove barriers. However, it did not help Cabin Crew to meet their needs, and caused new barriers.

1.1 Change management is described by Armstrong (1) as “the process of achieving the smooth implementation of change by planning and introducing it systematically taking into account the likelihood of it being resisted”. Change, the fundamental constant in any successful organisation, can be adaptive, reconstructive, revolutionary or evolutionary and can happen for a number of diverse reasons:

All management levels of BA should engage in the task of eliminating waste, which is time consuming and continually nurtured. This can be efficiently implemented through the creation of a change management team that is a combination of Internal and External change agents. This team would gain the necessary synergies that can address the internal issues and develop the skill-set required to improve productivity.

NASA had a firm hierarchy and this brought about a lot of resistance to change from people. NASA could have gotten more of the people involved in the changes. I find that by getting people involved and having some key people or champions to support the change, there is less resistance. People want to feel involved and a part of decisions, especially if it impacts them directly. When it comes to successful change management, get people involved earlier, which will contribute to greater buy in and acceptance. Keep in mind that this should not be the sole solution for employee resistance; successful change management is about understanding the true nature of the resistance.