Essay Writer Sample:
Change of organizations may sometimes impact negatively or positively depending on various factors both internal and external. The possible decision to make should be very rational. Organizational change is a transition process when the company changes its current state to some other desired future state owing to various factors (Palmer, Akin, & Dunford, 2008). The management of organizational change represents the procedures used by the company in planning and implementing the proposed change in the organization.
The ideal point is to ensure minimal resistance by the employee and at the same time reduce possible costs associated with the change process. The organization requires maintaining their effectiveness during the transition point. The transition process may affect most of the functionalities of the firm considering that it needs to adjust the new working conditions. A case of Target Corporation will be significant in explaining the concept of managing organization change in details (Palmer, Akin, & Dunford, 2008).
Target Corporation is an American company founded in the year 1902. The company holds the record of being the second largest retailer after Wal-Mart. The corporation has its store in Canada that serves a major population through its subsidiary. The profit making company is trying to expand its operations in major economies to take the advantage of new and existing markets. Their expansion strategies have taken a wider view ranging from city centers to mobile. The company takes the advantage of information technology, a trigger towards each move.
In the year 2011, Target Corporation left Amazon to develop its personal e-commerce site. For quite a while, Target Corporation has been using the Amazon.com platform since the year 2001 in its retailing activities (Cook, 2011). However, Target Corporation had to make a change from the existing platform to the new e-commerce platform, a move that the management considered better in supporting the multichannel retailing strategy during the holiday shopping season.
Change at Target is a messy procedure, just as it is exhilarating. It is both a rational and creative process. The company’s change to e-commerce was aimed at increasing its profitability. With this change, the sales on the company’s website as well as the apps drove almost half of the mass merchant’s comparable-store sales growth. The company switched most of its activities to digital. The company now offers online shopping options for their many customers. This has enabled it reach a greater number of customers from all over the world. With the current rate of growth of technology, Target is now able to reach a wider range of customers through online marketing and advertisement. The company has enjoyed numerous benefits with this change. For instance, its sales increased exceeding what was expected by almost 3% within the first year of change.
There are many reasons thy organizational may decide to change. For Target, the increasing external pressures coupled with fast international growth and expansion was the main factors. The company had to come up with a fresh image that would attract a larger group of customers. By expanding into e-commerce, the company was able to capture a larger market. The external pressures faced by Target include the awareness of the consumers as well as the expansion of technology. As more companies adopted e-commerce, Target was also forced to change its way of doing business to the new one in order to appeal to its growing customers. Moreover, the increased competition in the industry forced the company to come up with new ways to stay ahead of their competition. Additionally, the company also faced numerous pressures from their customers for a more single-point-of –contact and streamlined interactions (Huy, 2001).
There are many different types of change that organizations can apply according to their needs. There are restructuring and downsizing changes, mergers and acquisitions as well as technological changes (Huy, 2001). These are the most common types of changes experienced by managers. Each of this change faces its own issues and challenges. In some organizations, the changes can be proactive and strategic. In others, change is reactive. In some case, what is seem as incremental for the change managers may be seen as transformational by those people affected by the change. In the case of Target, the change was both strategic and proactive and had both an incremental and transformational effect on the organization in entirety. The reasons for change, how the change is managed and how it occurs vary from one organization to the next (Kanter et al., 1992). The managers of organizational change, therefore, need carefully assess the approaches they make in implementing change. As explained before, change is a complex process. There are a number of strategies and skills that can be used to communicate change.
References
Cook, J. (2011). Target (finally) parts ways with Amazon, but retailer’s new site sputters at launch. Retrieved May 28, 2015, from Geek Wire: http://www.geekwire.com/2011/target-finally-parts-ways-amazoncom-retailers-web-site-launch-starts-outage/
Huy, Q. N. (2001). Time, temporal capability, and planned change. Academy of Management Review 26(4):601–23.
Kanter, R. M., Stein, B. A., and Jick, T. D. (1992). The challenge of organizational change: How companies experience it and leaders guide it. New York: Free Press
Palmer, I., Akin, G., & Dunford, R. (2008). Managing organizational change : a multiple perspectives approach. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
