Oticon Change Management Essay Example

the other hand, no negotiation was available – the only way for an employee to reject the change process was resignation.

Critically analyse the leadership style used by Oticon throughout the change process. Leadership means different things to different people and many theories have been developed about leadership. There is a clear difference between a manager and a leader. Hayes (2007 pp. 168-69) will split the differences in terms of what has to be done and the capacity to do it. • Managers decide what needs to be done through a process of goal setting, establishing detailed steps for achieving these goals and identifying and allocating the resources necessary for their achievement (through planning and budgeting).

They develop the capacity to accomplish their agenda by organizing and staffing. • Leaders, on the other hand, focus on setting a direction and developing the strategies necessary to move in that direction hence creating a vision. They focus on aligning people, communicating the new direction and strategies and facilitating new coalitions formation committed to reaching those goals. Lars Kolind can be seen as a visionary leader using a transformational approach to motivate his employees to deliver is vision.

He is, as defined by Burnes (2004 p. 510), using the force of his personality to motivate his followers to sacrifice their self-interest in favour of Oticon. The Managers also had to play a role delivering the vision. Simple processes have been implemented to open projects -1 senior manager approval is enough- and the most impacted managers are the ones moving from a hierarchical structure to a project based organisation which implied changes in their behaviour to attract the best staff in their

team and retain them.

Oticon made the conscious decision to treat their employees as responsible adults i. e. used Theory Y assumptions. McGregor (1960) maintained that there are basically two views of human nature: a negative view – Theory X; and a positive view – Theory Y. Theory X, consists in a view where the workforce tries to do as less as possible, avoid responsibility and will look for security more than what is best for the company. Theory Y, on the other hand, consists in assumptions that give a much more positive view of human nature, e. . eager to increase the level of responsibility, staff is usually keen on sharing and use creativity and consider work as something natural. Analyse the case study from a cultural point of view. Burns listed many definitions of organisational culture, and a more simplistic and reductionist one is: “Culture is how things are done around here” (Burnes 2004 p. 170). The change in Oticon can be seen as a Re-Creation or Corporate transformation i. e. frame-breaking or discontinuous change that impacts the whole organisation.

This means the culture in the organisation will have to change to enable sustainability of the competitive edge. This is the reason why all things reminding of the past and the old culture had to disappear. Burke and Litwin (1992) consider that a transformational change involves a paradigm shift, and completely new behaviours. Instead of changes designed to help the organisation do things better (incremental change) the organisation needs to do things differently or do different things (Hayes 2007 p. 21). There are four main pillars to success in this type of cultural change (The

Denison Model): * Consistency * Mission * Involvement * Adaptability Lars Kolind used those 4 main streams in the processes of build, implement, develop and communicate this vision. Stakeholders were also involved in the in the process as he needed their support in adapting the company to better respond to market requests. References BUCHANAN, D. and HUCZYNSKI, A. , 2004.

Organizational Behaviour – An Introductory Text, 5th ed. London, UK: FT Prentice Hall. BURKE, W. and LITWIN, G. H. , 1992. A Causal Model of Organizational Performance and Change. Journal of Management, 18 (3), pp. 523–45. BURNES, B. , 2004. Managing Change, 4th ed. London, UK: Prentice-Hall. HAYES, J. 2007. The Theory and Practice of Change Management. 2nd ed. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave MacMillan KOTTER, J. P. and SCHLESINGER, L. A. , 1979. Choosing strategies for change. Harvard Business Review, pp. 106-114.