Siemens Organizational Structure: The Hard Task of Restructuring Essay Example

felt that this change will affect their powerful positions.

Moreover, employees may have low trust in the company or the CEO and believe that they cannot manage the change. We can conclude that these employees did not care about the company improving as much as they cared about themselves and how this drastic change would affect them. Kleinfeld’s failed because he went in and quickly transformed the organization without studying his plan well. Moreover, he should have taken careful and slow steps when making the change. Based on the information in the reading, Loscher’s efforts to change did not create controversy like Kleinfeld did, and there are many reasons that support why that happened.

Kleinfeld was thinking with his American mind and wanted to transform the organization’s culture that Germans are not used to, on the other hand, Loscher was more supportive of German employees. When Loscher took over the organization, it took him a while to decide whether to change or not. Apparently Loscher had made the decision to change with careful consideration, unlike Kleinfeld, the changes were not made all at once. Loscher knew how the employees reacted to Kleinfeld’s changing attempts and he did not want that to happen again, so he made some decisions about who to keep and who to let go.

People might have had aggressive reactions towards Kleinfeld attempts to change and did not give him a chance to continue with his plan. However, when it came into Loscher's hands to make the change, he went with downsizing and many underperforming employees lost their jobs and could not live through the change. Although Loscher's attempts were hard to achieve and the

company had several losses, he managed to make the company’s profits go up again and recognized Siemens’ operations geographically. For some people, readers could conclude from this case that restructuring efforts do not improve a company's financial performance.

However, there are multiple reasons that can prove this statement wrong. Organizations change for growth opportunities, to meet the market needs, or to follow up with the advanced technology. When it comes to changing an organization, there are many things that should be kept in mind. First of all, an organization undergoes change when it wants to be more profitable but that does not mean that all attempts succeed. In order for the change to be successful, we must realize why and what do we want to change. Also, we must identify the approaches we will follow to make the change.

An effective change management should exist by which employees are motivated to overcome the resistance to change and be more ready for it, where a vision must be created to build commitment and draws a future picture of where the company should be. Moreover, the development of political support in which beneficial relationships are created, and managing the transition. Last but not least, forces to support change and to withstand resistance must be created. In our case, unlike Loscher, Kleinfeld could not meet the lines of German corporate vision when restructuring.

In conclusion, it is not that efforts to change do not improve the financial performance of an organization, it is more about the steps taken to make the change. We must always believe that there is always room for improvement and we just need to follow the right

path in achieving it. When the organization is not performing well and its operation is costly, the management usually decide to downsize. Downsizing is basically decreasing the size of the organization and its costs by firing underperforming employees to improve efficiency, productivity and effectiveness.

Employees are the key of an organization, that’s why any organization should consider the well-being of employees when it comes to downsizing because there are many negative impacts that will harm the organization and its management. These disadvantages could be low productivity from the remaining employees, they will hold on to their ideas with a fear of being let go. Also, these employees will be stressed doing more than their job requires to make up for the missing employees and keep the same level of productivity. They might not be paid extra for their efforts and this will cause their morale to decrease.

Furthermore, this will result in trust loss from employees where they will feel that their careers are threatened. The organization’s management should be open with their employees and communicate their decisions to them, also, they must explain to the remaining employees why they are downsizing in order to maintain their trust and to ease their fears. We can conclude from this case that change is not easy to implement, we must take lots of factors into consideration and see whether it is possible to be attained based on our environment.

Kleinfeld failed to keep the German culture in mind when he proceeded in making changes and that resulted in catastrophic outcomes for him and the organization. He wanted to go from a European structure to an American one but employees were

not ready to accept it yet. The only way Kleinfeld could have succeeded was by making changes step by step and realizing that there is no need to rush into it. Nevertheless, Loscher might not have had taken the perfect steps to change but at least he managed to make the organization profitable again.