BE410 Impact of Changes on an Organization's Strategies and Operations - Waitrose

Change	Waitrose	Marks & Spencer
Organizational Structure	The organizational structure used in Waitrose is hierarchical . In this structure, decision is taken by the person having position in hierarchy. This structure helps in making quick decision-making.	The organizational structure followed by M&S is flat. The changes occurred using this type of structure helps the company in the involvement of its employees in decision making. This increases their job responsibility.
Organizational Culture	Waitrose follows a strong culture of innovation and involvement of employees into the organization (Anderson, 2016). This culture strengths the operations of the company and hence strategies can be made accordingly.	M&S follows role culture, in which role of each individual is assigned and allowed to work for it accordingly. This culture helps in increasing the job responsibility of an employee towards the company. Therefore it also helps to manage the operations department and strategies.
Pricing strategies	Waitrose don't follows the strategies are followed by others. It provides values for its member customers rather than discounting and lowering of prices (Bascia, 2014). This helps in increasing the image of it in the minds of customers and thus it strengths the bonding between customer and company.	M&S follows a dynamic pricing policy. In this policy, it changes the pricing strategies according to season. In festive season it also provides discounts to its customers which attracts them to their store and hence increasing their productivity.
Technology	It emphasises on promoting brand through its own mobile application by which it operates its business. This promotion helps the company to increase its demand and helps in high productivity of the organization.	It emphasises on promoting its brand through social media platform This promotion helps the company in increasing its brand name among the customers which are although not using it's products. This will increase the demand and hence production increases.
Marketing Strategy	This company has a great investment in the advertising of its products. To advertise, it emphasises on bundle pricing strategy through which the customers attracts. This helps the operations to increase their selling.	This company also emphasise on advertising but they mainly focus on psychological pricing (Byers, 2017). This mainly attracts the customers to their doors and helps to increase the business.

LO2: Evaluate the influences that drivers of change have on organizational behaviour

Ways through which internal and external drivers of change affect leadership, team, and individual behaviors

There are two types of changes by which leadership, teams, and individual behaviors are affected.

Internal Drivers of change

Following are the drivers of internal changes.

Resources:

Resources are the basics of an organization which can include human resources raw materials etc. If the resources are not managed properly by Waitrose then the affect of this on behaviours of:

• Leadership: Leadership is the ability of leader in which it makes the objectives and goals of organization (Jabbour, 2015). In Waitrose, if resources are not managed properly then the goals and objectives set by the leader cannot be achieved. This can affect the performance and productivity of organization.
• Teams: Teams are make to perform a specific task which should be specific in the goals and objectives set by the leader (Doppelt, 2017). If human resources are not managed properly in team, then the performance of each employee will not go to meet the requirement set by leader. This will adversely affect the performance of team and hence the goals and objectives of Waitrose cannot be achieved.
• Individual: Individual are assigned to perform a specific task so as to achieve the target set by leader of Waitrose. If the essentials of an individual is not satisfied then it can adversely affect its performance. This will increase dissatisfaction in employee and the task assigned to it will not be achieved by its goal.

Dissatisfaction:

This phenomenon adversely affect the performance of an individual and team and hence the leadership also affected. The affect of this internal change on:

• Leadership: A leader has role of assigning task to its followers. If task assigned to its followers get misinterpreted and not get a proper direction to achieve, this leads to dissatisfaction to the leader. This will surely affect its performance and the goals and objectives of Waitrose cannot be achieved.
• Teams: A team can be dissatisfied by the task assigned to it is not achievable. The task assigned to each employee in team should be achievable (Drover and Ariel, 2015). If dissatisfaction occurs, this will surely affect their performance and hence the productivity of Waitrose also decreased.
• Individual: They are assigned to perform a specific task, if task is not specific and varies, it will dissatisfy the individual. This phenomenon will also affect its performance and the performance and hence productivity of Waitrose affected directly.

External drivers of change

The drivers of external changes are as follows:

Political:

Political changes occurs when the government of a country in which business is operating is not stable. The affect of this instability on the behaviour of:

• Leadership: A leader has the responsibility of setting up the goals of Waitrose. It is operating its business in UK. If there is political instability in UK, this will influence the working of a leader and hence also affects its behaviour of decision-making.
• Team: If the goals set by a leader changes frequently due to political instability, this will affect the working performance of a team (Glassandand, 2015). Since task assigned will not remain specific hence, their behaviour is also affected adversely to manage the goals accordingly. This will decrease the performance of Waitrose.
• Individual: If performance of leaders is affected by political instability then the individuals behaviour will affected automatically and hence decrease the Waitrose productivity.

Economical:

If economy of UK is fluctuating and the purchasing power of customers is not good, then affect of this change on the behaviour of:

• Leadership: The behaviour of leader affected when purchasing power of customers is low, they have to change their policy and decrease the price of their product. Waitrose will face serious consequences of this situation.
• Teams: Due to change in policy, the performance of teams affected. The profit of Waitrose will decrease consequently.
• Individual: If economical changes are frequent and people have not so much money to purchase, the employee of Waitrose can be fired from the organization to cut the cost.

Social:

In UK social factor includes the increase in demand of product Waitrose among customers. The affect of these changes on :

• Leadership: If demand increases rapidly then the policies made by leader should be change accordingly (Cook, 2016). Hence this will increase its power of bearing pressure and its performance will increase.
• Teams: There will be test for the team at the time of high demand. This will surely increase their pressure and performance.
• Individual: Increase in demand will increase the performance of an individual. This will surely help Waitrose to increase its productivity.

Technological:

If technology changes in Waitrose, then the effect of this on:

• Leadership: Due to technological changes, a leader should provide more flexibility to its followers in order to adopt the new technology (Hillson and Murray-Webster, 2017. This will increase faith of followers to it.
• Teams: Teams should adopt new technology and implement on their work. This will help them to improve their efficiency and productivity.
• Individuals: As above individuals should also adopt new technology and hence improve their performance and productivity.

Measures to minimize negative impact of change on organizational behaviour.

Following are the measures to minimize the negative impact of change on organizational behaviour.

Change should be clearly defined and aligned to business goals

The organization should clearly define the changes which are must because without specifying these changes it cannot be implemented by a leader. It must require a critical review to analyse the pros and cons of that change. The change should meet the organizational goals and objectives so that business of Waitrose will go in right direction. This step also help in identifying the inputs and efforts required to invest. Therefore this step determines the requirements and need of change.

Determining the impact of change

Once the change is clearly defined, now is the turn to determine the impact of such changes on each level of organization (Jacobs, Rouse and Parsons, 2014). The changes which are going to make should meet the goal of each level at Waitrose. The effect of such changes should be critically analysed so that particular change is meeting the structure of organization. This process will determine to know where this change is affecting the most and whether it is required or not. This step also helps to form a blue print to determine where the training and support is required most.

Communication among leaders and followers

After get to know about where the change is needed, there should be effective communication among the leaders and followers to know the followers what change is going to do. This is necessary for the employee of Waitrose to know because they are going to face such changes. The communication should be effective enough so that employee can be motivated to go for changes. After getting to know for employees about the changes, the leaders should be ready for the feedback from employees. If the feedback is necessary for the implementation of change then it should be attained by the leaders.

Effective training

After the third step, an effective training session is required for the employees, so that they will be prepared for the new change applied. In Waitrose, if technological change is applied than employees who are required to use that technology should be trained enough to implement the changes (Lopez and Wise, 2015). The training can be provided by face to face sessions or by online modules which must include all the required knowledge to implement such changes. This training session also let to know about the required skills for a change. The training delivery sessions should be effective enough so that it helps the employee to learn.

Implementation of the support structure

In the training session, an employee should be assisted by a support structure so that it may be helped to build proficiency of behaviours and technical skills to meet the goal of Waitrose. Most of the times there can be redundancy in the changes occurred, so as to overcome such issue a support should be there to help the employees in navigating the situation. In order to help the employee, a mentor with open door policy should be established to ask any question. This step is helpful in finding the type of support require to implement a change.

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Measuring the changing process

This is the final step of minimizing the negative impact on organizational behaviour (Rogers and Marres, 2016.). The changes which are implementing, at a situation should be measured in a way that whether they are going in a right direction or not. If there are any changes required to implement in order to achieve the desires of Waitrose, then it should be implemented. This step also helps to find the whether the change management process is successful or not. Through this process, a leader is able to know about other solution in case of failure.

LO3: Determine how barriers to change influence leadership decision-making

Different barriers of change and how it influence leadership decision making

When there is a change, their is a barrier. A company should bring change after analysing the forces that supports the changes or resist the change. Waitrose is a supermarket chain which provides products of different company and did not manufacture anything on their own. Waitrose should start manufacturing as they have the resources which is needed by the company to produce and apart from that they have a brand equity in the market which can help the company to sell more. Force field analysis is a method of monitoring and analysing the forces which can affect the change which will make by the company in the future (Rogers, 2016). If the driving forces are bigger and stronger than the restraining forces than Waitrose should made the change and vice versa. While analysing the forces, each forces should be assigned a points according to their importance and maximum points should decide that company should go for a change or they should not. Force field analysis with functional example is discussed below,

Driving forces: These are the kind of forces which supports the company to go for a change. These forces includes the strength of the Waitrose and how it can help the company to attain their business objectives. Driving forces of Waitrose is discussed,

• Waitrose should produce unique and different product as customer always seeks for new products. Waitrose should understand the unmet needs of the customer and then make their product according to them. (1 point)
• Waitrose is one of the largest supermarket chain in the world thus have enough resources like funds to start their own projects. (3 points)
• Waitrose is the only supermarket chain in UK which has Royal warrant from the Queen of England. Hence the goodwill of the company will help the company to increase their sales. (4 points)
• Due to ample of funds, Waitrose can use latest technology to increase their quality and reduce their cost price so they can maximize their profits thus helping the gain the competitive advantage over other. (4 points)

Restraining forces: These are the kind of forces which are against the changes which will be made by the company. This includes weakness of the company like manpower planning, return on investment etc. If this forces is more stronger than the driving forces than company should not apply the changes planned by them. If they are equal to driving forces than company should modify their plan so to make the driving forces stronger (Marresand, 2016. Restraining forces of Waitrose are explained below:

Manufacturing business will incur huge cost for the company as the equipments and facility cost is high when starting for the first time. So the risk of investing the money is high consequently it will take many years to recover the cost incurred by the Waitrose.( 2 points)

• Time taken to establish the manufacturing business is high. By the time of making the plant if any new technology or external factors changes than it will take more time to replace or modify it thus increase the time and cost for the company, (2 points)
• Manpower planning will be hard as after the plant they have to manage the many employees (Soehner, 2015). Waitrose work is to reduce the gap between the workforce in the company and required workforce. Maintaining these work will be hectic and can affect the profitability of the Waitrose for a shorter period of time. (1 points)
• Waitrose relationship with other brands can be affected in a negative way as after their personal product they will prefer to sell it to earn more profit rather than selling other company's product and earns a commission on it.( 4 points)

So according to the above analysis, Waitrose should go for the manufacturing plant as driving forces has more points overall as compare to the restraining forces. We provide the best essay writing service from professional writers at the best price. Contact our experts.

LO4: Apply a range of leadership approaches to a change initiative

Different leaderships approaches to deal with changes

Leadership style plays an importance part in the success of the organizations. Leader work is to help the employees to attain their goals with maximum utilization of resources. Thus helping the company to improve their performance and productivity. Waitrose should use the leaderships style according to the scenario. Kurt lewin has proposed change theory model which helps the company to implement the changes so to attain the highest level of utilization. According to Change model, leader should follow these steps the implement the change in the organization i.e., Changes should be made after analysing all the impacts of the change (Wagner, 2016). Beside this structure of the organization should be changed as it will affect the performance of the employees. At last leader should be sure that implementation is done for the permanent basis rather than for the shorter period of time. All the three steps of this model will be discussed below with the help of functional example,

• Unfreeze: This is one of the most crucial stage of the change model as it makes the path for the employees to change for the betterment. Waitrose leader should opt a transformational leadership in which they motivates other to change for their betterment as well as company betterment. Their work is to set the challenging target for the employees and then help the employees to attain them with their expertise and knowledge. Communication of the leader is important in this stage as their work is to make employees aware of the opportunities they are seeing and how it can help the employees for their professional and individual growth.
• Change: In this stages employees of the Waitrose are now accepting the change and try to modify their action according to the requirements of the environment (White and Robinson, 2014). Waitrose leader should opt participative style in this. Leader work is to work with the employees to clear the hurdles which they are facing. Effective communication and motivation is required by the leader in this stage. If the employees are motivated enough to accomplish their work than leader has achieved their work with full perfection.
• Unfreeze: This is the last stage of the change in which employees of the Waitrose are now stable and happy while working and adopting change. In this stage, Waitrose leader should opt supportive style in which leader should support their employees while working. For the great work by the employees, Waitrose should reward their employees with incentives, bonus, trips etc so that they can improve their performance. The employees are happy from the change and working with their productivity then the vision they have set while making the change with be achieved.

CONCLUSION

From this report it can be concluded that changes in a business environment should be implemented well enough to achieve the organizational goal. Sometimes the changes also forced to change the mission and objective if they are not implemented properly. In this report, Waitrose is compared with M&S in different aspects of changes which affects the operation and strategies of companies. After that, the effect of internal and external changes on the behaviour of leadership, teams and individuals is discussed. The effect of barriers to change influence leadership decision-making and range of leadership approaches to change initiative is also discussed in this report.