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Identify three driving forces and three restraining forces in systems that management at Rockcliffe Marketing Consultancy wish to introduce
- Driving
- Marketing Systems are outdated and need modernising
- Managers are very enthusiastic about a new system
- Managers need to make change to meet profit objectives and prevent job losses
- Restraining
- Marketing executives need to learn how to use a new computer system
- Marketing executives are not keen
- Marketing executives have a lot of clout
- Training is costly
- Driving
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Analyse the types of actions that management might take to either strengthen the driving forces or weaken the restraining forces.
- Management could utilise techniques such as education and communication to try and inform the resisting marketing executives and persuade them that the changes are a good thing in the long run.
- If more gentle/amicable methods are ineffective, then more harsh measures could be taken. Managers are aware that job cuts are a risk if this change does not go through, so they could make this clear to marketing executives to motivate them to accept the change.
- The learning for the new software is a temporary commitment, and time off is being offered to complete it. This is a reasonable move by managers that should hopefully bring marketing executives to the table at the very least.
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Assess the various causes of, and pressures for, change and how these contribute to the value of change for an organisation.
Change is an inevitability for any organisation that wants to survive. However, the pressures for and against changes are highly fluid and dependent upon the specifics of each change. Regardless, all changes are characterised by a few similar factors. Typically, you could expect the employees to generate a resisting factor and the managers to generate a driving factor. A change is usually required to safeguard the future of the business, yet it might be made at the expense of those who work there. Employees typically like to have a routine and a way of doing things - change disrupts this and causes dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction is bad for the productivity of a business so managers aim to avoid or minimise it where possible, but in some cases this may not be possible as a change may be strongly contested but still required.
Another generalisation that could be made is that small organisations are more flexible and adaptive to change than larger ones. This is largely due to the difference in scale, as asking 5 people to change is much easier than asking 5,000 to. However, it is also likely that if the larger organisation managed to get 5,000 people to change, their benefit would be far greater than that of the smaller 5 person organisation. Smaller organisations also may be newer and therefore still trying to break into a market, meaning that rapid and frequent change could be used as a fundamental part of their business strategy so employees may be more used to and accepting of change.
Pressure for change usually originates from a threat or a potential threat to a business. This is a broad scope and cannot be easily defined, however there is typically a negative repercussion for the business failing to change, which acts as a main driving force for the change.
Nokia is a prime example of the need to adapt to change. Nokia was the dominant phone manufacturer, however after the release of the iPhone their market dominance was rapidly disrupted. Companies such as Apple and Google entered the mobile market and become the dominant players. Nokia still has a market share in mobile handset sales, but it is far smaller than what it used to be. This could have been avoided if they had been more innovative and open to change. The iPhone’s removal of a physical keyboard in favour of a digital one was dismissed by Nokia, so they did not adapt to the changing consumer preferences until multiple competitors had already launched their own offerings.
