Managing Change Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Managing Change - Case Study Example The company that refuses to face up to the challenge of change will be swept away by the flood tide of this very change, the literature on change management implies. It follows that the company that manages change well could reap enormous benefits. Organizational change is a challenge, which may be imposed or initiated. It could be the outcome of a merger, the setting of a new organizational direction, or a newly installed information technology system (Concept Systems Online). In this paper's discussion of change, it relates to a plan of a progressive furniture manufacturer in the US to expand its operations into cyberspace, a process that follows the just mentioned concept except for the part about the merger. For one, it sets a new direction for the organization and it calls for the installation of an unfamiliar IT system. It can also be said that the change is initiated by top management and imposed by circumstance. Management initiated the move following assessment by the firm's finance and accounting department that profits do not reflect the rising manufacturing costs and that raw material inventories waste expensive rental space in public warehouses. The website option is then set to be imposed by suggestions that tran sferring part of the firm's business online can take care of this sort of production problems and ensure its continued profitability. This is where change management is called into play because e-commerce is strange territory to a small-town company run on paternalism by an outdoors type of man who involves himself in the design and technical work and shares lunch with employees, most of whom have been with the company from the start and thus strong on loyalty. Although without formal training in business and management, the hands-on company president reads and attends business seminars, which gave him an open mind about change. However, the reaction of employees to the online plan was frosty, indicating their lack of enthusiasm on this idea of change. This represents a big challenge to change management, which this essay precisely seeks to address, in a way that would illumine how to meet the challenges and how to carry out the appropriate change management methods and models set forth on the subject. Chad's Creative Concepts Chad Thomas, founder and president of the company called Chad's Creative Concepts, started entertaining the idea of going online when a conflict arose over the firm's production of standardized line of furniture on top of the custom-design products. The company was catapulted to prominence by custom-made wooden furniture that brought "a bit of the outdoors" into homes. As the market for this innovative and unique product boomed, Chad's decided to add standard-design furniture to its product line. Lately, the standard-design furniture accounts for 40 percent of the firm's sales turnover but only 25 percent of the dollar value of sales. The customized furniture makes up 60 percent of sales and 75 percent of the sales' dollar value, which means this product line remains the company's bread and butter. For this reason,