Leadership and Organizational Change

Leadership and Organizational Change

Introduction

Company ERICSSON is in the process of strategizing a shift in their organizational culture from being product focused to customer focused due to a marked decrease in sales and customer feedback. This change should facilitate seizing a larger market share of their product line in this highly competitive global economy.

Leadership problem /challenge

In order for any company to implement a change in culture successfully, particularly one as large as a shift from being product focused to customer focused, the change must start at the top of the organization. The CEO of the ERICSSON Company sets many standards, and the standard of leadership is arguably the most important. The primary job of a leader, as stated by Robert L. Swiggett in our text is to “create a vision” (Bateman & Snell, 2007, pg. 394). This vision must take many aspects into consideration, primarily summed up in the broad context of internal and external factors. Some of these internal factors are those that relate to human capital and the psychological implications of change to that human capital, organizational structure that will support the change, and fiscal obligations required for the restructure. External factors include a significant focus on determining target customers' needs and expectations and the analysis of public opinion in order to establish a fruitful marketing plan. With respect to external factors, if the analysis is anything other than customer centric, it needs to be resisted as not complimentary to the goal of organizational culture change. The CEO sets the tone through vision, but cannot operate in a vacuum. Leadership emanating from all levels of the management team, starting with the CEO, provides a rallying point for all levels of a company. Successful implementation of organizational change is dependent upon this leadership.

Leadership goals and priorities

The internal factors faced by any company in a time of any change are directly related to its internal resources. These internal resources include human capital as well as financial capital. Since human capital drives the financial capital, the largest amount of focus and effort should be on the internal employees.

The biggest internal challenge is in regard to the human capital and the human resource function. Internal resources must be identified; external consultants or experts on the consumer side must be hired. The shift must start with a strong goal and plan that is provided by the leader, along with a shift in expectations that permeates through all parts of the business. Resistance should be expected. “The difficulty in managing change resistance is when it is implicit and subtle” (Banutu-Gomez, M., & Banutu-Gomez, S., 2007, pg. 79). The plan for the change needs to be thoroughly conceptualized and verbalized with all the staff. The next challenge in regard to people is the impact to the organizational structure. The HR function will need additional headcount to support the communication and management of the changes. The addition of a customer research or focus department will add jobs that have a different set of deliverables than ...