Question 1:

Jack White is the newly appointed general manager of the pet food division of Strickland
Corporation. He has completed a strategic review that has convinced him that the
division needs to undergo rapid and substantial change in a number of areas, given the
recent strategic moves of key competitors.
Although Jack is new, he is familiar enough with the company to know that there will
be significant resistance to the changes from a number of quarters. He also suspects that
some of this resistance will come from people with the capacity to act in ways that could
seriously impede successful change.
Jack reflects on the situation. He believes that it is important to introduce the proposed
changes soon, but he also recognizes that if he acts too quickly, he'll have virtually no
time to have a dialogue with staff about the proposed changes, much less involve them
in any significant way.
One option is to act speedily and to make it clear that "consequences" will follow
for anyone not cooperating. He certainly has the power to act on such a threat. The
risk, Jack knows, is that even if no one shows outright resistance, there's a big difference
between not cooperating and acting in a manner that reflects commitment. He knows
that he needs the cooperation of key groups of staff, and that sometimes "minimum-level
compliance" can be as unhelpful as resistance when it comes to implementing change.
"But maybe I'm exaggerating this problem," he thinks to himself. "Maybe I should just
go ahead with the change. If people don't like it, they can leave. If they stay, they'll come
around."
But Jack is not sure. He considers another option. Maybe he should spend more time
on building up support at least among key groups of managers and staff, if not more
broadly across the organization. "Maybe," he reflects, "the need to change is not quite as
immediate as I think. I just know that I'd feel a whole lot better if this consultation could
happen quickly."
Your Task
Jack respects your opinion on business matters and has asked you for your views on his
situation. What would be your recommendation? What factors should Jack take into
account in deciding what course of action to take?

Question 2:
The New York Times best seller Moneyball (Lewis, 2003) is a book about baseball. It
describes how Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, revolutionized
Major League Baseball (MLB) by introducing a new approach (sabermetrics) to assessing
the value of a player to a team (see Wolfe et al., 2006). The established approach to
assessing player talent favored future potential, but sabermetrics focused on past performance.
Also, the established approach focused on the statistics of batting average (BA)
and earned run average (ERA). The new approach was based on the argument that different
statistics such as on-base percentage and slugging percentage (OSP) were better
predictors of a player's performance. Beane introduced sabermetrics, but the underlying
concept was not his. The writer Bill James had argued (and been ignored) for three
decades that research attested to its superiority as a basis for determining a player's true
value to a team.
Beane's application of the new approach was successful, and the Oakland Athletics
moved close to the top of the league despite being outspent by most of their competitors.
As a result, the team had approaches from many interested businesses and sporting
bodies, including teams from the NFL and MLB, Fortune 500 companies, and Wall Street
firms.
However, other MLB teams continued to show a lack of interest in the new approach,
and some were openly hostile to it. Why? The MLB was bound in tradition and characterized
by deep respect for convention and precedent. Sabermetrics challenged treasured
orthodoxies for two reasons. First, it questioned the value of established predictors
of performance. Second, sabermetrics based decisions on statistics, and thus reduced
the importance of professional judgement. In other words, sabermetrics sidelined the
field managers who had previously enjoyed significant control over talent selection and
in-game tactics. Sabermetrics thus threatened the job security of many who had been
appointed on the strength of their knowledge of individual characteristics and aspects of
the game that were no longer considered to be important.
We can explore how the introduction of sabermetrics affected team management and
players in the movie Moneyball (2011, director Bennett Miller). Brad Pitt plays Oakland's
manager, Billy Beane, who is losing his star players to wealthier clubs. The Athletics'
owner Stephen Schott (Bobby Kotick) will not provide more money. How can he build
a competitive team with a limited budget? Beane hires an economics graduate, Peter
Brand (Jonah Hill). Brand introduces him to James' statistics-based approach to picking
talent, looking at the complementary skills of the players in the team as well as focusing
on individual capabilities. Using this method, Beane puts together a team of previously
unknown players. However, Beane's senior manager Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman)
will not allow Beane to use these recruits, and refuses to discuss the matter. The team's
talent scouts do not like the new method either. As you watch this movie, consider the
following questions:
1. Who is resisting this change and why?
2. What behaviors are used to demonstrate that resistance?
3. What role do emotions play, on both sides of this argument?
4. What tactics and behaviors do Billy Beane and Peter Brand use to overcome resistance
to their new approach?
5. What lessons can you take from this experience concerning the nature of resistance
and methods for overcoming resistance to change?

Question 3:
As we walked through the manufacturing areas of DuPont, the plant manager, Tom
Harris, greeted each worker by name. The plant was on a site that stretched over 10
acres beside the South River on the edge of town, and it was the major employer in the
community.
The plant seemed to be a permanent fixture, or at least more permanent than most
things. There had been changes, big ones, but the plant was still the plant. The Orlon
manufacturing operation had been shut down, the equipment dismantled and sent to
China. As far as I could find out early in my work there, these changes, despite their
magnitude, were seen as doing the regular business of the enterprise. No one framed the
changes as needing unusual attention, so there was no change management design. The
projects—getting rid of one operation and installing another—were planned and executed
just like any project. Change management was not a rubric used to either accomplish
or explain what was going on. More changes were coming, whether there was any
formal practice of change management or not. The plant would soon enough look very
different from what I saw on that first tour with Tom.
I first met Tom when he came to the University of Virginia seeking to make contact
with the academic community in order to bring some of the latest thinking in business to
his operation. His interest lay in introducing his managers to new ideas and in applying
those ideas to improving the plant. He was not, he said, looking for solutions to specific
problems, but rather to improve overall organization effectiveness. This was important
because he was under increasing pressure to do more with less.
In February this general bulletin was sent to all employees, and I began the fieldwork
from which a portrayal of the work culture would be built.
Gib Akin, a professor from the University of Virginia, will be spending time at the
plant. He has been asked to give us some new perspectives on our work and our
organization that we might use to help us develop people and continually improve.
Most importantly, he is here to help us appreciate and develop what goes right, assist
us in building on our strengths, to make the plant work better for everybody. His
presence
is not due to any particular problem, but is a result of our desire to continuously
improve.
Over the next six months I conducted interviews with workers and managers, spending
time in the workplace, learning about everyday life there. This yielded a thick description
of the shared stock of knowledge that organizational members used to interpret
events and generate behavior. What we made explicit with this process was the local,
widely used, everyday, commonsense model of work performance unique to this scene. In
a sense, this was the local organization theory that people used for getting along at work.
Of course, this theory was more important than any imported academic theory of
organization, because it had to work well or the users would not be successful in their
work. This was the practical theory in use every day and by everyone. Such culturally
embedded theory also tends to create what it is intended to explain, thus making it even
more powerful and generative. For example, in this plant, the local model of teamwork
was organized around a Southern stock car racing metaphor, which was not only used
to explain teamwork but was also the pattern for accomplishing it. And since everyone
knew the metaphor, and used it, it became so.
Tom and the other managers were surprised to learn of the NASCAR (the premier
stock car racing organization) metaphor, but it explained why they had not recognized
existing teamwork in the workplace (they had a different metaphor for teamwork) and
gave them a language in which to introduce change for improvement. Similarly, illumination
of the local meaning of effective supervision, high performance, and what constituted
a good day at work gave those with leadership roles constructs to work with for
making improvements, and the language for introducing change.
Managers, and particularly first-line supervisors, were asked to use this new understanding
gained from the findings of the study. Their new understanding could be used
to interpret the local meaning of effective work to capitalize on strengths to expand and
develop existing good practices in order to swamp problems, that is, to render problems
less troublesome even if unsolved.
The findings of the study also could be used as the basis for experiments. Members
of the so-called Leadership Core Team were instructed to introduce change as an
experiment—
something to be tried and watched closely, and after a designated time, if
it is not working as hoped, it can be stopped. Framing changes as experiments requires
thinking through what is expected and how and when to measure the results. And by
interpreting the possible results before they happen, all outcomes can be positive. Even
if things don't go as hoped, what does happen can yield learning. All experiments are
successes at one level or another.
Tom embraced the framing of change as experiment, and it was probably his most
pervasive concept regarding change. "A notion I use all the time is that everything is an
experiment. If you describe every change as an experiment, the ability of people to digest
it goes up an order of magnitude. And that goes for officers as well as people on the shop
floor. As a matter of fact, nothing is forever anyway."
Questions
1. To what extent are the following approaches to change embedded in the DuPont
story (justify your answer, providing specific examples)?
a. OD
b. Appreciative inquiry
c. Sense-making
2. In your opinion, how compatible are these three approaches? Why? What evidence
is there in the DuPont story for your answer? As a change manager, to what extent
could you utilize insights from each approach?
3. Imagine you are an OD practitioner brought into DuPont at the time of the Orlon
manufacturing operation closure. Describe the steps you would take to help manage
this change based upon action research.
4. As a class, decide on a fictional large-scale change that could affect DuPont. Divide the
class into three groups (and role-play the situation in two acts). In Act 1, one group
will take a problem-solving approach and introduce the change with the second group
(DuPont staff affected by the change). In Act 2, a third group (the appreciative inquiry
group) will introduce the change with the second group (DuPont staff affected by the
change). After the exercise, compare and contrast the steps taken in each approach.
From the point of view of group two (DuPont staff), which approach seemed to work
better? Why? From the point of view of groups one and three, how easy/difficult was
it adopting this approach? What broad conclusions can be drawn?

Question 4:
In this chapter, we have explored five change checklists, four stage models of
implementation, the processual approach to change, and four contingency frameworks.
These approaches are similar in some respects and different in others. Can they be
combined? Try the following experiment:
1. Bring the advice from these different models into a single list, omitting the overlaps.
2. Reflecting on your own experience and knowledge of organizational change, consider
what issues and steps are missing from these guidelines; add these to your master list.
Now create your own composite change management model; if possible, do this as a
group activity.
3. Can you prioritize this advice? What items are more important, and which are less
important? Taking a contingency approach, in which organizational contexts do
particular items become more or less significant?
4. Can you identify a preferred sequence of change implementation steps? And can you
explain and justify this recommendation?
5. Looking at your composite change management model, identify three management
skills associated with each of the elements. Use this as the basis of a personal
assessment; what are your strongest and your weakest change management skills?
6. Looking at the elements in your composite change management model, and reflecting
on your own experience of organizational change, which elements are usually handled
well, and which are often handled badly? Why do you think this is this the case?

Question 5:
As you read this case, consider the following questions:
1. With reference to John Kotter's eight-stage model of change, what mistakes did BA
make in this instance, and what aspects of the change management process did they
handle well?
2. How can the union's response to the introduction of swipe cards for check-in staff be
explained from a processual perspective? If those who were managing this change
had adopted a processual perspective, what particular issues would have appeared to
be more important, and how would they have addressed those issues?
3. Choose one of the contingency frameworks that was introduced in this chapter and
carry out a similar assessment. Which aspects of the organizational context of this
change were addressed in an appropriate and effective manner? Which context factors
were overlooked?
4. In your judgement, is there any one change management approach, or combination
of approaches, that provides the best understanding of the swipe card debacle? Why?
5. You are a change management consultant hired to advise BA top management on
how to avoid a situation like this happening in the future. What advice will you offer,
and on which change implementation perspectives will your advice be based?
The Strike
On Friday, July 18, 2003, British Airways (BA) staff in Terminals 1 and 4 at London's busy
Heathrow Airport held a 24-hour wildcat strike. The strike was not officially sanctioned
by the trade unions but was a spontaneous action by over 250 check-in staff who walked
out at 4 pm. The strike occurred at the start of a peak holiday season weekend, which
led to chaotic scenes at Heathrow. Around 60 departing flights were grounded, and over
10,000 passengers were left stranded. The situation was heralded as the worst industrial
situation BA had faced since 1997 when a strike was called by its cabin crew. BA's
response was to cancel its services from both terminals, apologize for the disruption, and
ask those who were due to fly not to go to the airport as they would be unable to service
them. BA also set up a tent outside Heathrow to provide refreshments, and police were
called in to manage the crowd. BA was criticized by many American visitors, who were
trying to fly back to the United States, for not providing them with sufficient information
about what was going on. Staff returned to work on Saturday evening, but the effects
of the strike flowed on through the weekend. On Monday, July 21, BA reported that
Heathrow was still extremely busy. Their news release said: "There is still a large backlog
of more than 1,000 passengers from services cancelled over the weekend. We are doing
everything we can to get these passengers away in the next couple of days."
As a result of the strike, BA lost around £40 million and its reputation was severely
dented. The strike also came at a time when BA was still recovering from other environmental
jolts such as 9/11, the Iraq war, the SARS outbreak, and attacks on its markets
from budget airlines. Afterwards, BA revealed that it lost over 100,000 customers as a
result of the dispute.
The Swipe Cards
BA staff were protesting about the introduction of a system for electronic clocking-in that
would record when they started and finished work for the day. Staff were concerned that
the system would enable managers to manipulate their working patterns and shift hours.
The clocking-in system was one small part of a broader restructuring called the Future Size
and Shape recovery program. Over the previous two years, this had led to approximately
13,000 (almost one in four) jobs being cut within the airline. As The Economist (2003)
noted, the side effects of these cuts were emerging, with delayed departures resulting
from a shortage of ground staff at Gatwick and "a high rate of sickness causing the airline
to hire in aircraft and crew to fill gaps. Rising absenteeism is a sure sign of stress in an
organization that is contracting."
For BA management, introduction of the swipe card system was a way of modernizing
BA and "improving the efficient use of staff and resources." As one BA official said, "We
needed to simplify things and bring in the best system to manage people" (Tran, 2003).
Staff, however, saw this as a way to radically change their working hours, cut their pay,
and demand that they work split shifts. One check-in worker said, "This used to be a job
which we loved but we are now at the end of our tether. What comes next? They will
probably force us to swap shifts without agreement and all this for less money than working
at Tesco" [a supermarket] (Jones, 2003).
One commentator argued that "the heart of the issue is that the workforce wants
respect"; it was not until the strike that CEO Rod Eddington was aware that "there was
a respect deficit to be plugged." Specifically, staff were concerned that "BA will try to
turn them into automata, leaving Heathrow at quiet times of the day only to be brought
back at the busiest moments, while not paying any extra for the disturbance. Women, in
particular, want to preserve their carefully constructed capacity to balance the demands
of work and home" (Hutton, 2003). Although BA denied that the system would be used
to make staff change their hours without notice, staff did not accept this promise—wondering
why the system was being introduced if that was not the intended use. A
union official said, "We know that BA breaks its agreements" (Webster, 2003). Another
worker said that the strike was meant to be a "short, sharp shock" for BA: "They would
then be able to bring us in any time they wanted, which is just not on, especially for
those of us with families" (McGreevy and Johnston, 2003).
The Change Process
Unions argued that the walkout was triggered when BA senior management abandoned
talks over the introduction of swipe cards and announced that they would be imposed
with five days' notice. This unilateral decision by BA, and the lack of consultation with
affected staff, were cited as the key reasons for the strike. Even BA's pilots, who did not
oppose a check-in system, were said to be sympathetic with the check-in staff, as they also
felt that the implementation of the swipe cards had been mishandled by the airline. One
commentator described the change process as a "commercial disaster," which served as
"an important warning about the dangers of management by diktat, certainly, but, more
profoundly, about an incipient revolt against the close control and monitoring of our lives
and movements that modern information technology enables" (Hutton, 2003).
The Economist newspaper argued that it was a mistake to introduce new working practices
at the beginning of the summer quarter—when the airline generates most of its
revenue. Similarly, The Times (2003) also said that this was a major management blunder:
"To pick July, the start of the peak holiday season, to launch an unpopular new clock-in
system, is asking for trouble. To push through a scheme without realizing the extent
of the resistance by those involved suggests a management aloof from the mood of its
employees. And to allow managers to give contradictory statements on the use of the
new cards seems guaranteed to foment mistrust."
As Hutton (2003) argued, with 20,000 other BA workers using the swipe card system,
"Imposing them after months of inconclusive talks must have seemed—especially given
the pressure to contain costs, with the airline set to report its worst ever quarterly loss of
£60 million this week—a risk worth taking. It was a massive miscalculation of the workforce's
mood." This miscalculation was related to staff cynicism and bitterness about the
redundancy program that had been conducted, staff fears of a lack of consultation, poor
pay rates, and dissatisfaction with management, who would have considerable knowledge
on which to act in the future. The Guardian (2003) echoed this viewpoint, noting
that "the trigger was undoubtedly the back-handed way BA management at Heathrow
tried to force the introduction of swipe cards at exactly the wrong time, when the peak of
the summer boom was approaching. They should have known how important it was to
approach any potential changes in the working patterns of women juggling with childcare
schedules in a very sensitive way."
Rod Eddington, chief executive of BA, acknowledged that it was wrong of senior management
to introduce the new clock-in system in the way they did. On BBC Radio, presented
with the claim that BA was guilty of "bad management" and "crass stupidity" for
not predicting the level of anger to the swipe card, he replied, "With the gift of hindsight,
it's difficult to disagree with you" (Clark, 2003).
The Resolution
As a result of the walkout, BA's news release on Tuesday, July 22, said that it would hold
talks with representatives from three unions: Amicus MSF, Transport and General Workers
Union, and GMB. The introduction of the swipe cards would be delayed until Wednesday,
July 23. Following further talks, BA finally announced on July 30 that they had reached
agreement with the unions to delay making the swipe card system operational until September
1. They also agreed to a 3 percent pay rise for administrative staff for 2003, not
on the basis of introducing the swipe card system, but based on being "confident that
the remaining Future Size and Shape cost efficiencies will be delivered."
As one person observed: "You have to ask, how important was this scheme to the
future operation of BA in the first place? How much money was it going to save and
wouldn't it be better to wait a few months for discussion to reassure the staff they are not
going to get turned over?" (Behar, 2003).