Task 2.1.a.

Historical context for change:

To explain historical context we have go back all the way to 6000 BC. We have to consider
different changes occurred from 6000 BC to till date. There are so many organizational
changing eras past these years. First and foremost was barter system, where people didn’t
have money and trading systems in their economy. They just exchange the things and survive
their needs. There is no money and trading system in the market so they faced so many
problems. Every time if they need any goods then they have to search for the right person
who has that goods and he needs the exact goods to exchange (vice versa). There weren’t
measurements of value. After the barter system money was invented, first coins were
invented and they were used as exchange medium later on notes were invented.

Barbara senior is the father of organizational change. He has written so many books, articles
and magazines on organizational changes and historical context. According to Barbara,
organizational change can be compared with wind. As wind varies and is in different forms
same as organizational structures and operations. In 1700’s wealth was created in the context
of agricultural markets and customers. But weather hasn’t cooperated for agricultural era.

After the agricultural era there was industrial revolution and it is called as industrial era.
During this era there were so many changes in the economy. During this period people started
inventing new machinery to decrease the number of labour required for each task. During this
period currency started changing from one country to another country through import and
exports. Industrial era lasted till 1945 until World War 2. After that demand was more from
local markets and international as well compared with supply. All the organization failed to
meet the demand. After few years organization settled down and was able to meet the
demands of the people and technology too improved which helped them a lot.

At that time there was another revolution in economy with computers from western countries
like America and Europe. In the early 1980’s people started using computers personally as
well. After industrial era computer or information technology era was most important era.
Organizations started using information technology in their machinery, operations, and
processes in early 1990’s. Once information technology started developing economy boomed
in almost each and every country.

World Wide Web is the next era. People started using internet and there is no limit for the
technology from that day. Now a day’s everything is online. People can’t live without
internet. Almost all organizations (small scale, medium scale and large scale) have their own
websites now.

Organization’s markets i.e. clients or customers, suppliers, economic climate, labour supply,
economic climate, competitors, trade unions affect on organizations products. In the last 20
years along with product manufacturing, services become more important. Now services play
major role than product. There are so many organization which provide services only for
example BPO’s, IT-ITES, etc. We can call this service era as another organizational change
in the current business environment. Local markets become global markets.

Task 2.1.b Bureaucracy: Bureaucracy is defined as system of administration

distinguished by its hierarchy of authority, division of labour, written and inflexible rules,
regulations and procedures and impersonal relationship. Bureaucratic organizations are
divided into levels where tasks, responsibilities and authority are delegated between officials
of individual levels or departments, but all these departments are held together under a central
administration. In general bureaucratic organizations are run by government; it means they
are run by government officials.

Examples: Organizations like postal services, social security services, occupational safety
and health administration, armed forces are good examples of bureaucratic organizations.

Strengths: The strengths of bureaucratic organizations are as follows

1) Formal rules and behaviour are bounded by the rules made by the officials at all
levels.
2) Uniformity of operations is continuous despite the changes in official’s personnel.
3) Division of labour is based on the functional specialization.
4) Allocation of tasks to individual is rational.
5) Promotion is based on the technical competence.
6) Recruitment process of employees is based on merit-no ascribed status.
7) There is very less scope for discretion of officers.

Weaknesses: The weaknesses of bureaucratic organizations are as follows

1) Authority in these organizations is rational and legal; authority should be based on the
position of the official but not personnel. This causes lack of empathy and rationality
(judgement).
2) Authority has limitations as it is defined by only few officials; this leads to inflexible
in decision making.
3) Positions are organized in a hierarchy of authority which leads to fine limits in
decision making.
4) Organizations are governed by rules and regulations which lead to highly regulated.
5) Because of the hierarchy of these organizations decision making is slow.
6) In these organizations there is no urgency or priority for decision making.

Justification: There are so many differences between bureaucratic organizations and non-
bureaucratic organizations, but for current world of business I justify that bureaucratic
organizations are not suitable. In current business environment organizations must be able to
make decisions quickly; there is no scope for strategic planning in bureaucratic organizations
based on this I made my justification.
Task 2.1.c Organization development: Organizational development is a planned
organization’s effort to increase organizations effectiveness and viability. According to
Warren Bennis “organizational development is a response to change , a complex educational
strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values and structure of organization so that
they can better adapt to new technologies, marketing and challenges.” Organizational
development is a systematic, integrated and planned approach to improve organizations
effectiveness, to solve the problems that decrease operating efficiency.

We have different approaches for the implementation of organizational development. They

are 1) survey research and feedback

2) T-Groups (Sensitivity training)

3) Teambuilding

4) Grid Training

Survey Research and Feedback: In this approach we have questionnaire surveys which help
us to determine attitude of the members for the smooth functioning of the organization. Top
level management and work groups receive the survey’s results, then they analyse this
results. All the group members usually participate in discussions on the implications of the
information, based on these implications they diagnose the problem and develop action plans
which will help to overcome the problems that are raised while the surveys being conducted.

T-Groups (Sensitivity training): In this approach the learners use experience in the group,
feedback among the participants and human behaviour to explore group process and gain
insights into themselves and others. Training is intended to concentrate on process rather than
content: that means it is not at all related to information value of communication. They don’t
have proper agenda for the meeting. The objectives are to increase participants’ sensitivity to
their emotions, diagnostic ability, behavioural flexibility and effectiveness.

Teambuilding: teambuilding is the process of diagnosing task procedures and patterns of

human interactions within a work group. In teambuilding they mainly concentrate on team
effectiveness which will help in improving the overall performance of the organization.
Attention is focused on work procedures and interpersonal relationships.

Grid training: Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid Approach is the origin for developing
this grid training approach. The main goal of this approach is changes are aimed at attaining a
(9, 9) orientation on the grid: that means the main concentration will be on production and
people.

We have few more techniques for intervention strategies in operational development.

According to Naylor the following techniques are helpful.

1) Role Analysis
2) Life and Career planning
3) Quality of work life
 4) Counselling

Comparison between Survey research and T-Group Approach:

Survey research follows a questionnaire approach where as in T-Group the approach is face
to face.

In survey Research top level management prepare agenda for meeting with work groups, in
T-Group meeting is conducted without any agenda.

Survey feedback approach objective is to attain action plan for their problem which they
identified in surveys, where as in T-Group their objective is to increase participants
sensitivity to their emotions.

Task 2.3.a

I have chosen LIDL as my organization in super market industry. LIDL is one of the most
successful retail stores in Europe. LIDL was founded in Germany in 1930’s as a grocery
wholesaler. The first LIDL supermarkets were opened in 1973 in Germany and by 1980
LIDL was a household name throughout Germany. During 1990’s it started opening stores
outside Germany and now it has LIDL stores all over Europe. The reason behind their
success is it is able to manage to supply quality food and groceries with much cheaper price
that other supermarkets.

LIDL opened their first store in UK in 1994. They have grown consistently and extended
their store capacity to 530 stores in UK till now and planning to open another 300 stores in
next 6 months. LIDL stores are operated by a network of dedicated store staff. They mainly
concentrated on middle class people, as we all know that there are so many middle class
people in this world.

Changes Appropriate: In current competitive environment it is very important for any

organization to make some changes to their business day by day. I would like to introduce
SELF-CHECKOUT MACHINES in LIDL. Nowadays we all find these self checkout
machines in almost all major supermarkets like TESCO, ASDA, SAINSBURY’S etc. These
machines have been introduced in 1992 in New York. Self checkout machines are automated
alternatives for the traditional cashier counters. We can scan the bar codes of the groceries,
place the items in bagging area and pay the cash on our own. These machines are designed to
save customer’s waiting time at the tills and some customers like self service. For 4 to 6
machines we require only one attendant, who helps customers, this will help in reduced
number of employees.

I would like to implement self checkout machines in LIDL using Kaizen Model. Kaizen is a
Japanese word which means change to become good or improve. Kaizen model was designed
after world war-2 to rebuild their business in Japan. So many organizations follow this model.
The key elements of this model are quality, effort, willingness to change and communication.
This model suits for almost all types of businesses from manufacturing to management.
Kaizen model best suits for strategic businesses i.e. businesses which have long term goals.
This model follows continuous processes which are divided in to 2 parts one is for problem
finding and other one is for problem resolving.

In the first circle it starts with problem finding, and then displaying the problem, clearly
having an idea about the problem and finally acknowledging the problem. In LIDL the
problem is customer’s satisfaction, as they have to wait in queues for billing.

In the second circle after acknowledging the problem we have a make a plan to overcome the
problem and then we have to check the plan and finally action. The plan for LIDL is self-
checkout machines.

Task 2.2.a and 2.2.b

Stakeholders are very important for any organizations when it is considering of making any
changes to the system. Customers, top level management, IT-experts, HR Management,
Marketing people, Finance Department these are all general stakeholders of any organization.
For LIDL to make this change self checkout machine, we need have proper co-operation
from all these stakeholders. Without approval from any of the above stakeholders we can’t
proceed in our project. We need to explain the need for change, plan to implement, strategy
of the entire project, finally profits how we will going to achieve with this change.

To find the stakeholders in the system and to involve them in the change we use tools like
stakeholder analysis and force field analysis.

Stakeholder Analysis: stakeholder analysis is a technique used by organizations to find

which stakeholders must be involved and how to involve them in the system to make the
change. This analysis provides invaluable input for change strategies in overcoming
opposition. By conducting interviews with individual stakeholders in the system we can
collect required data. The questionnaire of the interview should focus on background
information on the change process, information that identifies key stakeholders and clarifying
the assumptions about stakeholder’s power in decision making.

Force Field analysis: Force field analysis is a process of identifying and analyzing the force
field in the organization and making some necessary alterations to these forces to accomplish
the change of the organization. There will be forces that oppose the change and support the
change, these must be balanced.

As our change are self checkout machines, based on the stakeholder’s analysis the
stakeholders involved in LIDL are identified as follows:

Authorities that accept or reject the change, i.e. Top level management.

Different departments that involve in the change are IT, HR, Marketing, and Finance.

IT: Information Technology experts in LIDL will have look at the self checkout machines
background, technology, software and hardware. They will analyse these machines and make
a report on it.

Marketing Department: Marketing managers and team members will have a group chat with
IT experts and they will suggest the advertisements that need to be make on the machines in
each screen, the offers which LIDL provides to the customers that need to be posted in each
screen. If there are any special offers seasonally like Christmas, summer and winter, they
need inform the IT experts.

HR Department: HR people will recruit the staff required for these self checkout machines.
The staff may be attendants who will help customer’s queries, IT experts who maintain these
machines servers. After recruiting the staff they will give proper training for them to the
process run smoothly.

Finance Department: Finance managers will take care of the budget of the project. They will
make some surveys which will help them in finding the cost need to be invested and profits
we will get in fixed terms.

Top Level management: After analysing the outcomes from each and every department top
level management will make decision about the change. They will implement strategic goals,
proper plan for the change like when to start and deadline.

Customers: Last but not the least; we must have approval from the customers as well.
Approval means to know about their opinion by making face to face surveys. Before we
proceed with the change we must analyse the customer’s surveys results.

Importance of the change:

Time is precious for everyone. In the current business world people always think about how
to save time and to make their works faster and easier. Exactly this will help us to make the
change i.e. self checkout machine which will be faster, saves time and user friendly as well. I
have seen so many people who were used to LIDL, now they are switching to TESCO,
ASDA, the reason for this is they don’t like to wait in the queues and they are interested in
self service.

By introducing self checkout machines we can increase our market share by attracting new
customers, obviously it will help in increased profits. In current business market share or
number of customers is very important. Self checkout machines not only increase the new
customers but also they won’t lose existing customers. Every organization will think about
cutting down their running cost or maintenance cost. For self checkout machines we have
only initial investment and less maintenance cost. As we are cutting down number of staff
required, it obviously decrease maintenance cost.

Initially for 6months to one year we appoint few supervisors for monitoring the whole change
and making a day to day analysis to the top level management. This will result in helping us
to evaluate our change which we made.

Task 2.3.b

Complete plan:

Vision statement: To extend the market and attract the customers from other competitors
like TESCO, ASDA, SAINSBURY’s etc.

Self checkout machines are very easy to understand and use. Even uneducated people can use
it easily. Once customers take all the groceries they required, they can scan at self checkout
machines, they just need to follow online screens on the machine and then make a payment
through debit card. As it is having so flexible and user friendly nature we make a plan to
implement this self checkout machine.

Plan for implementation of self checkout machines has several sequences of steps. The steps
are as follows:

1) First we have to analyse the whole scenario in different aspects i.e. gathering the
information required for each department of the organization.
2) We have to submit the collected data to top level management, who will further
analyse it and make a decision.
3) Once we get approval from top level management, we have to recruit few IT experts
and attendants required for these machines to operate smoothly.
4) After giving them proper training, we have to purchase the machines which will cost
£15,000 per once machine.
5) Initially we are planning to purchase only 50 machines at a time. Then we have to
contact the finance department to make arrangements by gathering funds.
6) We will install these 50 machines in 10 different stores 5 for each store.
7) All the above sequence of steps will take 3 to 4 month’s time.

Objectives: The objectives of self checkout machines are as follows:

1) To increase the market share of LIDL without losing existing customers.

2) To increase the revenue and profits of LIDL.
3) To improve customer satisfaction.
REFERENCES:

Barbara senior, 2002, organisation change, 2nd edition, Pearson education LTD, England.

Bernard Burnes, 2004, Managing change, 4th edition, Pearson Education LTD, England.

Business Dictionary 2010: ‘Bureaucracy’

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/bureaucracy.html

http://www.orgdct.com/index.htm accessed on 26/01/2010

www.LIDL.com accessed on 30/01/2010