ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

Organizational Change

Organizational Change

Introduction

This article is about describing and analysing changes took place in an organisation named Dubai Ports World (DP World). The article mainly focuses on cultural change, the encouraging and opposition forces within and outside the organization. The change process started about 24 months ago when the company became a global operator, and still going on. But, there are some results out of these changes process, which are going to be explored throughout this article.

Even though the article will focus on cultural changes, it is essential to mention some structural and political changes which have some direct or indirect influence on the culture throughout the change process. A brief description of DP World will be explained below. Then, the situation of the company before change and the need for change is explored. After that the change, driving and opposition forces were discussed .At the end of this article, some suggestions were introduced and discussed to improve the applications of those changes and to overcome any problem or resistance occurred during the change process. The conclusion will give a summery of the results of that change and its positive and negative effects.

Brief Description of Organisation

DP World is an international organisation based in Dubai, UAE which established in 1979 operating two ports only in Dubai (earlier known as Dubai Ports Authority). It is a serves provider company in the field of cargo containers handling. This serves includes loading and discharging containers from and to vessels, stuffing and repacking cargo containers and storing containers in the terminal. The main customers are shipping lines and traders, who need to move their cargo from one place to another. The importance of this business in the world economy is that more than 90% of world cargo is transported by sea. This business is growing up, especially with opening new markets and increasing imports and exports in between countries and breaking barriers between them.

This company ranked as the third company in the world in size in this field and it has a network of 49 container handling terminals around the world across 31 countries which are working in autonomic way (DP World Website, 2008). Every group of terminals in a certain location is reporting to a regional office which is accordingly reporting to the headquarter office in Dubai. Each terminal is considered as a separate business unit in its operation and revenue, and it has only to follow the general outline strategy from the regional and headquarter offices and get some technical and financial support whenever needed. The general model of DP World is decentralised model, which involve a minimum level of interference of head office in the business units operations .This is mainly because the terminals are located in different countries and continents, and subjected to different governmental lows and situations (external environment) and "when the environment changes, organisations have to be able to respond" (Hill & McNulty, 1998, p.7).

This business is considered to have a low level of diversity, because this depends on ...