Managing White Space

Running head: MANAGING WHITE SPACE

Managing White Space at Superior Widget Company

Managing White Space at Superior Widget Company

Superior Widget Company (SWC) had made a change in the Customer Service Department (CSD) from regional CSDs to a centralized CSD. The SWC’s CEO decided to unfreeze the CSD’s status, when he or she wanted to change the centralized CSD’s policies and procedures, and then refreeze the department with a new status quo. This will cause regional cross functional departments that interact with CSD to change their way of doing business. Through SWC unfreezing the process of CSD, it will disconfirm the present department manager’s behaviors; the changing of polices and procedures will cause department managers and employees to learn new concepts of CSD, and refreezing will cause department personnel to exhibit new behaviors (Schein, 2002-2006). While the organizational structure is unfrozen, the organization will select a ’change status quo’ team; it will consist of department heads to change the status quo.

Organizations, like SWC, will usually select a team with the profile of any stakeholders’ manager that has cross functional interaction with CSD. These managers will collaboratively set a new status quo for the department, while it is in an unfrozen state. The department’s managers that should be involved in the change may be Finance, Inventory Control, Transportation, General Warehouses, Regional Sales, and etc. When companies, such as SWC, make changes within the organizational structure, it creates conflicts between the organizations cross functional lines. This will cause management to view the areas of conflicts, the way to approach the situation, and the commitment and availability from upper management.

Areas of Conflicts

When an organization makes internal structural changes, there are two areas of conflicts that will arise. One, Individualist conflict arise because people think of themselves by nature due to their society norm, and fear a disruption on satisfying their own agenda of achieving wants and needs. Case in point, the Regional Sales managers and the Sales representatives fear the new guidelines for servicing their accounts; it may cause some decrease in stores revenues, and it will intern lower their potential earnings. Second, personnel resists change in the workplace because it may create power struggles, a climate of mistrust, loss of status/or job security, and individual’s inclination towards change (Managing, June 4-5, p.3-5). For instance, Inventory Control manager feels, he or she, is losing the ‘invisible’ say, “Where the products are shipped.” Therefore, the ‘change’ team must understand the conflicts, and it will need to analyze and select the most appropriate strategy to approach the situation (Hoban, n.d., p.2). The way to approach the situation is utilizing different modes of communication and different computer generated reports to assist in an equitable strategy for the change in the