Woolworths Group : Change Management

Introduction:

Change in structure, strategies and operational methods of the organization are necessary for business sustainability. The term “change” defines to any alteration which occurs in the entire work environment of the organization. According to Contrafatto & Burns (2013), “change is the law of the nature”. In this assignment, the concepts of organizational change will be linked up with the organizational principles followed by Woolworths Group in the first assignment. In the second task, lists will be provided for highlighting the relevant change previously incurred in the chosen organization. In the third part, initiatives of organizational change will be focused after assessing the SWOT analysis. By critically assess the role of the change agent in the organization, this will develop climate for planned change by overcoming resistance and rallying forces for positive growth. Lastly, the definition of problem-centric and dialogic approaches to change will be demonstrated by assessing the benefits and drawbacks of each of these approaches.

1: Change is the critical aspects for enhancing the effectiveness of the management (Weichhart et al., 2016). Organizations undertake in response to dynamic internal and external factors that transforms with current necessities of the organization.  Evidence suggests that rigid hierarchies, narrow descriptions of job, inflexible rules and procedures and impersonal management and the high degree of operational specialization can’t respond in an adequate manner for demanding for change. In these perspectives, the organizational change is required for several internal and external reasons.

In the general perspective, change in the organization may tune in or reorganize them to future demand by anticipating the external events. This concept elaborates the involvement of changing the organization from the ongoing state towards the desired state for the future and managing the transition process. In other words, the idea of the organization has been inclusive in the theory of the management such as the “System theory” and “Theory of Complexity”. In the literatures of the management, expressions like “planned change”, “managing change”, “organizational change”, and “change agents” and more presently “change masters” have been conceptualized across many organizations (Weichhart et al., 2016). All these concepts are categorized and make available in different forms of collection of theories, practices, and policies. The fundamental concepts of changing organization is all about the managing efforts of the people of the management along with maintaining the synchronization of the basic needs of workers or staffs of the organization. Here the main underlying assumption of the managing changes is that of organizations and their managers who can have more influence and control over such alterations that are taking place in the midst (Chang, 2015). In this context, the organizational change as the concept of the management strategy assumes that organizations may interact with the environment on the constant basis.

In the concepts of the change agents, the organizational climate is comprised with the set of relationships between agents or stakeholders and several other factors that may be out of the out of the control of the organization. Being the agent of the organization, the personal attributes of managers needed to motivate and inspire others to follow their leads. The term change agent can be external change agents and internal change agents. Those who provided outside consultants who are temporary associated with the organization to remain engaged only during the time of the change process are the external change agent of the organization. On the other hand, individuals working for organization and has experience of improving the same organization are the role of the internal change agents in the fields of the organization. For both the individuals, the efforts of the organizational change needs to be approached as a process of identifying the individual sub-groups after undergoing district decision making processes and readiness to change.

2: Being recognized one of the renowned and trusted retail brands of Australia, Woolworths Limited constantly endeavors for delivering world-class experience for customers across all stores available in different parts of Australia (Woolworths Limited 2016). With the constant evaluation an innovation, the organization is perfect example who has remarked as incredible growth in term of delivering not only food chain retail services and liquor businesses but also financial services as well. The organization blends changing business environment and has made substantial changes for accomplishing the extended customer demands and greater values of their choices. The management of Woolworths believes that retailing should not be stand still and it is important to admit that decisions about customers and the behavior of shopping must change in a dynamic manner.

Woolworths is responding towards the new era of development by proving the foundations for ensuring the growth and opportunities. By putting the demands of the customer at the heart of their business, the management of Woolworths has rapidly changed their selling product concepts by accepting the mobile technology and increasing the accessibility towards the products and price fixation procedures. For instance, the retails products are initially sold out only in their stores across Australia. By accepting the welcoming changes in the world of retail business, the company has started their online operations to reach maximum customers. Eventually the company has recognized the needs to keep up and understand the demand of customers and ensure such the retail growth operation seamlessly and effortlessly between “physical” and “virtual” stores to shops in a way, which they refer the most. For extending their operations, Woolworths has made changes in the employee engagements policies. For serving near about 18 million customers, the human resource department of the company has followed the forwarded steps towards employing more people and work hard to earn their custom and reward their loyalties (Woolworths Limited 2016). In this way, the organization is continuously making sustainable changes for the growth of the organization.

Change in the organization is all about ensuring the sustainability in the business operation. Such changes refer not only the operational level but it also contributes towards encouraging contribution of each of employee of the organization. By accepting the truth that the retail business operation can’t be stand still because the demands and products preferences are moving and dynamic, Woolworths has perfectly managed the environmental changes. The organization has already made changes not only accepting the mobile technology to shop across the country but also in the field of human resource and the perspective of each employee of the organization.

3. SWOT of Woolworths Limited:

Strengths:

Being positioned as the market leader in the retail business in Australia, the company has perfectly presents their ability of dynamic leadership in the process of thee development of the business. Further the company has recognized their ability towards exploiting the retail market potentiality; the company has managed their resources effectively and efficiently. Here the company has made their efforts for minimizing the carbon footprint and accepting the zero food waste policies within the workplace.

Weaknesses:

The immense pressure of the rival companies such as Metcash, Aldi, Coles and many others, the Australia retail business market gives new challenges to hold their stable customer base over the years. Companies like Woolworths, for instance, have made a lot of price changing policies to make their products as competitive in the market. However, the company faced challenges for reducing their product price because the Australian Government has restricted the move of Woolworths in keeping higher prices for their products while making collaboration with Coles. This is one the prime weaknesses of Woolworths (Woolworths Limited 2016).

Opportunities:

The Australian retail business has a immense growth potentiality for future period. The factors like advanced supply chain management, advanced and dynamic consumer lifestyles and changing shop culture have large uphold the abilities of retailer and provides good opportunities to grow.

Threats:

High rivalry in the retail industry is the main threat of Woolworths (Woolworths Limited 2016). Furthermore, the changing government policies and tax rates and interest rates are major factors which can affect the growth of Woolworths in the upcoming period within the Australian retail.

Based on such SWOT analysis this cane clearly indentified that the “change” has been taken by Woolworths for sustainable business operation. Still the organization need to make some changes for making innovating pricing strategies for delivering their products at the reduced prices. On the other hand, the company has failed to sustain its competitive advantage. For this, the company has to explore the promotion strategies and the extension of sponsorship. The company has the financial resources for adopting such changes in their business.

4: By initiating and managing change in the organization with the efforts of individual or group is known as a change agent. The concepts of change agent managers of the organization are still not clear among managers, employees and HR professionals.  Most of the organizations are looking for individuals who are capable of turning strategy into the reality for sustaining during the process of business development in the competitive world. Change agent can be internal such as employees or managers who are associated with the organization to oversee the process of the change across all departments of the organization (Waddell et al., 2013). In the selected organization, the managers and employees of Woolworths Group are being trained to develop the required skills to oversee change. Here managers of the organizations were initially struggled with the inventory management skills. Later efforts would be given towards the improvement of the stock management skills. The significant role of the changing agent emphasized when organizations are looking for changing patterns of thought, change agent will be able to solve the problems which have already created the current pattern of thought. On the other hand, change agents are also characterized as external change agents. These are outside consultants who may be associated with the company to remain engaged only for the duration of the process of the change. With limited association and familiarity with the organization, external agents of the change manager’s profile generally are paired with an internal coordinator from the human resource department. In the process of the turning planned strategy into reality organizations are looking for the legitimate role of the changed agents. In this context, organizations have taken care of the functions of the human resource seriously. Kumar et al., (2016) admits that human resource people are quite capable of managing people of the organization and their positive influence engulfs unfavorable working conditions within the organization and demonstrates value they can add to the business.  Lozano et al., (2015) agreed with the fact that executive are carried out change management principles within the organization in the way, the process of changing can best be managed. As the agent of the change management within the organization, human resource professionals make major changes which are the people related issues. Brad Banducci, the chief executive officer of Woolworths Group goes even further advocating that developing an encouraging organization is the deliverable expected from the role of the “changed agent” in human resource of the organization. Moreover, this is further commented by many marketing scholars that the senior role of the HR has now become changed in the field of “changing leadership” in the specified job specifications. In the large organization, firms sometimes affords their own  in-house change specialist. There are a lot of strong arguments in replacing the external consultant and functions directly with the management team of the organization to facilitate change efforts. Due to these consequences, the role of the changed agents along with their characteristics of the effective change management principles has been changed. 

There are three distinct roles that change agent can effectively manage: “Consulting”, “Training”, and “Research”. Being work as a manager, he/she has bound to perform each of these functions often at times. Most interestingly, an outside change agent can also perform these activities.

Consulting:

Being as a consultant of the changed management profile, the manager maintains a close association with employees or helping organization members for generating data internally (Higgs et al., 2014). In this case, the agent makes changes by finding solutions to problems through analysis of valid data.

Training:

The manager functions as a trainer in an organization. The manager or outside change agent if one is used, has a combined function as a trainer. Firstly, thee changed agent derives implications for action from the current data and secondly, it provides members with a new set of skills. Under this skill, the ability of translator are being tested of the change agent of the organization. There are several companies like Woolworths have employed outside consultants for instructing members of organization on how to enhance the overall operation of the company.

Research:

Sometimes managers may play a role as a researcher. The manager may train organization members for the betterment of the organization. For instance, the changed mechanism is incorporated for the Woolworth’s inventory management process. Now the company engulfs the problem of out of stock availability for better managing the stock activities. All these happened due to company’s intervention strategy. Being as a changed agent of the organization, the manager designed an evaluation component that has bens used for resolving not only the current issues but also for the future concerns as well.

5. Defining the Problem-centric and dialogue approaches to change

Problem-centric model of diagnosing change considers as one of the central activity of managing change in the most appropriate way. This particular model based upon conscious effort in identifying the symptoms as well as causes (Rosenbaum et al., 2016). In this model, emphasis has been given on the creating occasions for dialogues in attempting for capitalization as well as building achieving it as far as possible. These values majorly underlies upon the orientations for discussing the approaches to change.

There are certain key assumptions as well as value orientations given for categorization the organizational development practices. In this particular segment, it describes as well as contrast regarding dialogical forms of organizational development practice for identifying orientations of diagnosing change. Problem-centric model of diagnosis considers as logical empiricism based upon Positivism Philosophy (McCarthy & Eastman, 2013). This major orientation takes into consideration for relevance of open systems perspectives for conducting the diagnosis activities. In other words, Diagnosis model based specially on social construction particularly upon paradigms for future analysis purpose

As rightly put forward by Hayes, J. (2014), the reliance of any business organization elaborates on profitable exchanges in and within business environment. This helps in drawing attention in understanding the need diagnosis for all outputs for evaluating the performance output. This reveals attributes in terms of sales figures with the help of feedback taken from customers as well as other key stakeholders (McCarthy & Eastman, 2013).

In the recent world, Change Management revolves around constant business goals as well as strategies. In other words, Changes are inevitable as well as managing change for essential activities. On the contrary, Change Management is largely used for project activities in guiding with disciplinary course of action (Keppel & Wardell?Johnson, 2012). This majorly focuses on wider impacts of change involving people as well as teams and individuals starting from current state to future state. These change ranges from simple process until major system process for achieving organizational potential (McCarthy & Eastman, 2013). There are vital two types of change management programs involving systematic organization for undertaking wide-change initiatives for bringing transformation efforts. These specified internal change management for change control programs involving tools as well as processes in controlling over daily operational or in case of project-specific changes in an effective way (McCarthy & Eastman, 2013).

Critical assessment regarding benefits and drawback of each approach

Benefits of using Problem-centric approach to change

Benefits of Problem-Centric approach and dialogues to change involve satisfying the ultimate objectives. This particular approach will take into consideration activities regarding change management emphasizing on process as well as procedures (Hargreaves et al., 2014). Woolworth’s current business growth plans for major strategic priorities such as extending leadership in food as well as liquor. This majorly acts as portfolio analysis for maximizing the shareholder values. This enables maintaining proper record of accomplishment for building new growth business (Keppel & Wardell?Johnson, 2012). It helps in putting activities in place enabling new era of growth.

Problem-Centric Approach helps managers for communicating well-prepared change message for Woolworths Limited for better understanding of activities (McCarthy & Eastman, 2013). This particular approach enables effective communication with team members allowing single message and accompanying supporting materials for Woolworths Limited. This approach explains the Woolworths Limited moving away from current stage as well as dangers in staying at that particular place (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). This clarifies the changing environment as well as identification of change management for Woolworths Limited. In addition, this approach explains the future activities involving the employees working at Woolworths Limited. At intermediate state, it reveals effective ways for communicating for building high level of confidence among the employees working at Woolworths Limited. On the contrary, change management objectives as well as activities for closely coordinating for identifying owners responsible for change. These change agents at Woolworths Limited will properly define the re-training place for changed job descriptions as well as employment contracts in an overall manner (Frankland et al., 2013).

Drawbacks of using Problem-centric approach to change

Problem-centric approach fails in undertaking change management activities after realizing goals in case of planned as well as unplanned changes on internal or external basis (Keppel & Wardell?Johnson, 2012). Woolworths Limited Corporation faces frequent changes that cannot be treated as successful policies conducted by change agents. It fails in diagnosing problems in associated with transition before it considers as crisis in any form (Cameron & Green, 2015).

Therefore, it can be stated that Change Management brings out some of the vital theories as well as methodologies pertaining towards change management. It reveals the change management impacts as well as various change management theories and methodologies for proper course of action (Keppel & Wardell?Johnson, 2012).

Identification of approaches preferred for using managing to change

Problem-centric approach to change for Woolworths Limited Corporation is large and rapidly growing disciplines for increased deployment especially on global scale. This refers structured approaches facilitating towards adoption of change by groups as well as individuals in and across the organization (McCarthy & Eastman, 2013). Woolworths Limited Corporation will adopt this particular approach for managing change involving proper tools as well as techniques in process and procedures. Managing organizational changes majorly starts from understanding ways for managing change for tools and techniques. It brings awareness for need change as well as desiring participating and supporting change management activities at Woolworths Limited Corporation (Keppel & Wardell?Johnson, 2012). This will render proper knowledge for change management activities in sustaining reinforcement to change activities. This particular theory will define the building blocks as provided in the Woolworths Limited Corporation for attainment of future goals as well as objectives (Rosenbaum et al., 2016). It will describe the successful change pertaining towards change at individual levels as well as outlining the goals for bringing successful change management. This act as an effective tool for change planning activities for considering management activities, supporting managers as well as developing corrective action and diagnosing gaps in the most appropriate way

Conclusion:

By describing the significant contribution of the organizational change towards the perspective of Woolworth, this can be said that alteration in strategy, concepts, policies are required for growth of the business.  Fulfillment of the demand of the customers is the ultimate goal of any business. Thus a constant evaluation and alteration are required for ensuring the sustainability in the competitive business world.

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