Q1. Referring to a case study based on course work, your choice, or your own organizational experience, explain sense making approach to change? (Case example: 15 marks + theory: 10 mark 300 WORDS )

Q2. Evaluate and explain any three contingency approaches to change management. Use a case of your choice as an example to support your argument? (Case example: 13 marks + theory: 12 mark (4 mark for each approach) 300 WORDS)

CASE STUDY:

NESTLE

Nestle is a multinational company with operations in 80 countries at 500 facilities. Nestle had to deal with a lot of diversity with its international marketing program. However, it was not appropriate to decentralize the decision-making process so widely. Clearly the company had no corporate computer center. As a result, the information from different units was not comparable. Because each business unit was maintaining its own computer system which could not connect to the other systems, the headquarters had no way of benchmarking the international units to find out which unit was performing at what level. The result was that operating costs were spiraling. The disparate information systems meant that the huge multinational was not in a position to leverage upon its buying power which would enable the management to bargain more effectively with the suppliers in order to get better deals. In this situation, the suppliers had the upper hand as they drove up their prices to the maximum extent possible. The management launched an initiative to install an enterprise system through which the 500 facilities world-wide would be able to communicate through a standardized information system. In order to facilitate manage change in this regard the management formed a project management team of 50 top business executives and 10 senior information systems professionals. In the first implementation the management was not communicating with the employees in emphasizing the need for change. The change management team was also not well-represented. Because of these two problems, the mid-level managers were not aware of the scale of change involved. Previously the corporate culture had been based upon decentralization. This change management project was so basic that it was going to change the very corporate culture. However, because the top management was not communicating with the rest of the organization, the employees were unaware of the sheer magnitude of the change that was involved. Because of this gap in communication, employee resistance became the number one problem. This resulted in a high level of turnover among the employees who were to use the new system.