Discuss the pressures for change Kodak has experienced. Kodak is all the while the leading photography company in the photographic industry. Due to the change from film photography to digital photographic services in the photographic industry, the development has caused an organisational change to Kodak. As a result of market pressures, the company is now fighting new competitors. This changes had causes Kodak to undergo a major change in its organisational structure.
In recent years, Kodak had undergone a depression in its film processing division due to the popularity of digital cameras which creating a dramatic downturn in film sales. Many of the consumers had also losing their confidence in the brand because Kodak’s problematic early entry into the digital market had affected the company’s bottom line. Besides that, Kodak also will be experiencing a downturn in the price war which contributed to the depression in the company’s film camera division.
Kodak not only experienced the pressures from external environment but also the internal. Due to the downsizing in the company, it had resulted in Kodak employees’ having poor morale, with many employees left feeling insecure and dissatisfied with their supervisors.
Discuss the suitability of the planned change strategies in relation to Kodak. Should Kodak adopt a different change strategy to improve the likelihood of future success in digital photography? There are four strategies in the planned change of an organisation.
- Top-down approach to change – This approach to change is akin to the military model in its style and assumes that members lower down in the hierarchy will understand what is intended and follow through exactly as requested.
- Force-coercion – This strategy uses legitimacy, rewards and/or punishments as primary inducements to change.
- Rational persuasion – This strategy attempts to bring about change through persuasions based on empirical facts, special knowledge and rational argument.
- Shared power – This strategy involving others in decisions identifying the need for change and desired change directions. Among these strategies, shared power creates the longest-lasting and most internalised commitments to the change.
Therefore, Kodak can adopt this strategy to improve the likelihood of future success in digital photography.
What can Kodak do to minimise stakeholder resistance to future changes? Kodak can minimise stakeholder resistance to future changes by applying the following approaches.
- Education and communication – the company can deal by using one-on-one discussions, presentations to groups, memos, reports or demonstrations to educate people about a change before it is implemented and to help them see the logic of the change.
- Participation and involvement – the company can allow others to help design and implement the changes; asking individuals to contribute ideas and advice; forming task forces or committees to work on the change.
- Facilitation and support – the company can provide socioemotional support for the hardships f change; actively listening to problems and complaints; providing training in the new ways; helping to overcome performance pressures.
- Negotiation and argument – the company can offer incentives to actual or potential resistors; working out tradeoffs to provide special benefits in exchange for assurance that the change will not be blocked.
- Manipulation and cooptation – the company can use covert attempts to influence others; selectively providing information and consciously structuring events so the desired change receives maximum support; buying off leaders of resistance to gain their support.
- Explicit or implicit coercion – the company can use force to get people to accept change; threatening resistors with a variety of undesirable consequences if they do not go along as planned. By using these approaches, Kodak can easily minimise the changes in future.
