Weekly Initial Collaboration Post

Order Description

The British Airways swipe card debacle, Part 1

Note: This Collaboration takes place over two weeks. Students will use this thread to complete their Week 9 initial postings, and their Week 10 responses and individual summaries. Please read the directions carefully.

Palmer, Dunford and Akin (2009) described a case in which London’s busy Heathrow Airport held a 24-hour spontaneous and unauthorised strike as a result of a change initiative by management that led to disruptions in operations and the eventual loss of over 100,000 customers. The case considers the airline British Airways (BA) and illustrates how from BA’s management perspective the change initiative was a way of modernising BA and improving efficiency with the implementation of an electronic clocking system. Staff, on the other hand, viewed the plans as a radical shake-up intended to allow managers to manipulate their working patterns and shift hours resulting in loss of pay.

This Collaboration will give you an opportunity to review this case and consider how change initiatives can be seen as radical and disruptive if such initiatives are not communicated and implemented effectively. Managers of organisational change need to carefully assess the approach they take when implementing change. As Palmer, Dunford and Akin (2009, p.54) have concluded, ‘(t)he urgency, prevailing conditions, and attitudes toward the change are likely to influence how it is managed’.

To prepare for this Collaboration:

Watch the video on managing change and reflect on best practices for implementing change strategies in organisations.
Review Palmer, Dunford and Akin’s (2009) account of the change management initiative taken by British Airways.
Reflect on different change perspectives discussed in the literature from the required reading, including the Werkman (2010) article on how a sense-making perspective can enrich organisational development.
Identify the main problem in the case and try to compare management and union employees’ perspectives and interests with respect to organisational change.
Consider the problems and implications associated with management’s actions and reflect on how this type of change could have been handled differently both from management’s perspective and from the perspective of union employees.
To complete this Collaboration:

By Saturday (Day 3) in 300 to 500 words, address the following issues/questions:

Provide your initial analysis of the case on the swipe card debacle and discuss possible implications found with management’s restructuring program and new working practice. What were the major issues from the case that led to resistance to change?

Identify common changes that affect organisations and describe an appropriate communication strategy for announcing organisational change that would have led to a different outcome.

Submit your initial response to the Turnitin link provided and post to the Collaboration Forum.

Next week, you will continue this activity by responding to colleagues on their perspectives on the case, discussing lessons learned from the change strategy implemented by management and proposing new change management strategies that could be more successful in similar circumstances. You will wrap up the second week of this activity by preparing a final summary of what you learned and how your thinking may have changed as a result of your discussion and collaboration.

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