BB4Change[1]
.rtfBusiness brief. Unit 4
Change in organisations
Recent years have seen massive restructuring. Companies downsized and delayered, getting rid of levels of middle-management in order to become leaner, flatter, supposedly more efficient organisations. Often the reasoning was that computer networks allow top managers instant access to information that was previously gathered and transmitted upwards by middle managers, whose other main function was to communicate executives' key messages downwards to the workforce and in this they were accused of diluting or confusing the messages, or worse. With fewer organisational layers, top managers say they can communicate more directly with front-line employees, the people who actually produce the goods or services, and deal with customers. With less direct supervision, employees have often been encouraged to make more decisions for themselves in a process of empowerment.
Another trend was re-engineering, the idea that an organisation should not change incrementally, but should start again from scratch with no preconceptions about how things-should be done, not just in manufacturing but in all the processes that contribute to what an organization does, hence business process re-engineering, or BPR.
The human side of this, again, was that there would probably be redundancies. The people remaining would probably feel demoralised, wondering when the next wave of change was going to come and whether it would be their turn to be thrown out.
There has been a reaction to downsizing and BPR and a realisation that an organisation's most precious asset may well be its people, and above all what they knovs. A company's accumulated knowledge and experience is part of company culture and is increasingly seen as a key to success. Many now believe that this collective knowledge and accumulated years of experience is something to cultivate and develop. Some companies have appointed a chief knowledge officer who creates systems to make this knowledge available to the company as a whole in a process of knowledge capitalisation.
Change and the outside world
Today's trendsetters become tomorrow's old fogeys. This is most visible to the person-in-the-street in retail organisations. Corporate history is littered with the names of companies that failed to anticipate social trends: the perception 'old-fashioned' is hard to throw off.
Now everybody is focusing (or should be) on how the Internet is going to change the way they do business. How, for example, will it affect traditional retailing? Will the Saturday morning drive to the supermarket begin to lose its appeal? How will it affect what in five or ten years, will be 'traditional' telephone banking? However, it is not enough for the technology to exist. There are complex social processes involved in the way it is exploited and the way it then evolves.