...Analysis of Intuit and Organizational Change This paper will follow a case study regarding the company Intuit, called Conspiracy of Change at Intuit. Intuit was a successful software company that enjoyed an 80 percent market share in each of its three product lines; it was one of the few companies still left that directly competed with Microsoft and still emerged on top (Jick & Peiperl, 2003, p.5). However with the increasing popularity of the internet it recognized that it needed to innovate in order to still remain relevant, “avoiding a downward spiral meant facing up to the Net, which had huge implications for Intuit’s strategy” (Jick et al., 2003, p.6). They decided to embrace this new technology and change the way the company conducted business. The case study showed the problems the company had with innovation and delivering new services to a newly immerging customer base (internet users). Intuit’s foresight and innovation allowed the company to remain competitive in an ever changing software market. This paper will analyze various concepts and models that applied to their success through the company’s recognition for the need for modernization and a new customer base, and through its recognition for the need for cultural change and employee empowerment. The change that Intuit experienced was born out of necessity; they were faced with a drop in demand for their current products and were behind in exploiting a growing internet market. This need for innovation is categorized...
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...The Ways Nestle Managed Its Environment Over Time Nestle used different ways to manage its environment. It did this through expansion of the product offering, expansion of the customer base, and by developing lower-cost ways to make and sell products. Early on, Nestle managed its environment by expanding into new markets, in both developing and emerging nations. As trade barriers fell, the CEO of Nestle Barbeck-Latmathe seized the opportunity and decided it’s the right time for Nestle to expand geographically into the developed and emerging markets such as those in Eastern Europe, India and Asia. By doing this, Barbeck drove Nestle’s performance dramatically, taking into consideration the massive number of potential customers in these regions and the enlargement in Nestle’s customer’s base. In the 1990’s; Nestle managed its environment by acquiring other companies. The companies which Neslte acquired at that time included U.S. food companies Carnation, Buitoni Pasta, Ralston Purina, Dreyer’s ice cream and Chef America, the British chocolate maker Rowntree, the French bottled water company Perrier, and the Mexican food maker Ortega. It is noticeable that Neslte regards acquisitions and efforts at diversification as logical ways to supplement their business. Nestle only acquires food making companies, the business it has special knowledge and expertise in. After all, Barbeck’s intentions were to customize these products to suit the tastes of customers in different countries...
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...A Raisin in the Sun Act III-A Lesson Learned In the final scene in “A raisin in the Sun,” some very important and much needed lessons are learned. Life changing decisions are made and for the better. In the last scene, Walter calls Lindner over to agree to take payment in lieu of moving into the all white neighborhood. Walter, as usual, can only think of money, and in his mind believes the large payoff from Lindner will be well worth selling out his family’s pride and honor. Lena decides, as Walter’s mother, to force his son Travis to stay to witness this life changing moral decision, in hopes that Walter will come to his senses; to everyone’s surprise he does. Walter looks into his son’s eyes and can’t sell his family short with his son watching. He decides to do what is best for the family’s morale rather than do what will put money in his pocket. That one decision shows the enormous lesson learned by Walter and how he changed. Character: The characters are well illustrated for us by the way they speak, their actions, and reactions to things. It is clear that Lena (Mama) has very little education and comes from a different time than the others. Ruth and Walter, the next generation, are slightly better spoken but still lack the educated speech that Beneatha and Travis, even younger, display with their current educations. Mama (Lena) is described as a big, strong woman, which is shown by how she reacts to the other characters, steering them the way she wants and mothering...
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...is based on constant teaching and learning and the required power of empathy, which bring an increase level of sensitivity to signals changing. The main idea here is to identify change and its associated opportunities in order to become the competitive one and the only one. I am very much agreeing with change and how one can change the rules and not compete head-on. We have to take a look at case by case models of change and understand the quantifiable rate of production. Let’s take for example: the smart car or electric car. If we all agree, it makes sense for the environment to accept a smaller “smart car”, and we achieve 100% adoption as consumers, what happens to the tracking industry and the delivery of our consumptive goods? Are we now willing to transport goods because we have to transport them into smaller containers with less power? Can you imagine a smart car next to a diesel 18 wheeler? Are we willing to sacrifice the safety of our families for the cost of the maintenance of the environment? People are fundamentally selfish and will not voluntarily create a sea change unless they are forced to do so or unless there is no choice. Companies can identify the need to change with the associated opportunities to become the only competition but without government intervention to drive the change at a local global effort, the results are depressing. Blue Ocean is a fantastic way to look at familiar environments in a new way to find competitive edge. Unfortunately, companies...
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...after intervention completion january 2013. Intermediate 18 months after intervention completion july 2014 Long term 3 years after intervention completion january 2016.) The intervention will incorporate each of Kotter's (2007: 99) eight steps to leading change. The first step is to establish a sense of urgency. We will examine the market and discuss with the client the reality of their competition in order to get them to reprioritize. There are many major opportunities and potential crises that HDMC needs to be aware of but without motivation and commitment of the organizational managers the effort will go nowhere. The next step is to form a powerful guiding coalation team. Our cunsulting team will find the right number of people with good energy, level of trust, and strong authority to lead the change effort. This group will be trained to understand and not underestimate the difficulties of producing change and to also work together as a team. The following step is to create a clear vision and express it simply. This step will need to be acomplished by creating a vision that motivates people in the right direction. The vision needs to be easy to communicte and also inspire not only the people participating in the actual changes but also the stakeholders. Communicating the vision is our next step. This is where the team pulls together and communicates what needs to be done simply and honest. The fifth step is to empower others to act on the vision. HDMC...
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...Running head: SCOTT MORTGAGE Scott Mortgage James Jones Organizational Behavior 14 June 2010 Abstract This paper discusses the nature of change in a mortgage lending firm. It takes a look at the reaction to change from the employee and organizational view points. The characteristics of Ethical Intensity are reviewed as pertaining to the decision making process. It identifies the Decision Making Model and Approach to Change that Scout Mortgage used in revamping its human capital structure. Nature of Change The 21th Century has ushered in several factors that have been the catalyst for a dynamically transforming environment. Scout Mortgage, a loan mortgage broker since 1999 (Hellriegel & Slocum, 2009) has experienced the bullish and the bearish economic environment. In a work environment, the typical factors of change are driven by technological advancements which enable global-market-reach or globalization. With the increase of information technology and global communications, the world is communitively smaller. Any situation that affects a local market can be transformed into a national or international issue. The domestic housing sector economic downturn along with other Wall Street unethical and irresponsible actions have not only lead to a national but international recession and market collapse. In the case of Scout Mortgage, the technological advances have changed the way the company’s Loan Officers conducts business. Technology has automated a lot of task...
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...In 2006 I was face with making a major decision in my family’s life and changing it as they knew it. Like in the reading this week I had to go through the decision making of what I had to do to make changes and if they are what is best for me and my family. My wife and I have been working in the family business for 14 years and we were working 7 days a week, was this what I wanted for the rest of my life or my family’s life…No, that being said, I identified and diagnosed the problem I was facing. I worked on many alternative solutions, like hiring more help at my passion, changing hours, and lastly a different profession. But after evaluating the alternatives there was no way that I could change the hours, also there was no way that addition people could not be hired, which left the changing in professions. This is when I made the choice to look for a new job, but they were hard to come by in my rural area. I would start looking for a job in my area and also out of the state. I found a position in Atlanta GA and then the big part of this decision was moving my family away from the only life they ever knew. My wife and children have never left Pennsylvania for more than a week in there whole life. We packed and moved 800 miles and after 6 years and looking back it was one of the best decisions that I have...
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...He wants to look for alternatives that benefit the company. He is willing to contact and look into information that could help the company grow. Rob has demonstrated large amounts of optimism. He has a new vision for the company. He wants to take HEI from being a low-tech bed and metal furniture manufacturer that is going downhill to becoming a high tech medical equipment manufacturer. Rob has hope that he can complete his vision. He is taking the necessary steps to set his plan in motion. Even through his finance and operations people disagree with him, he is not giving up. He knows that the company board is set in their ways. The change has to start from within the company. He wants Ashley, whom works in the HR department, to help formulate a program to help get the finance and operations people to be more positive and optimistic about the changes he is trying implement. These assessments show how dedicated Rob is to the company. I believe the company will prosper with Rob taking the lead. 2. What’s your reaction to the finance manager’s pessimism? What about the market manager’s optimism? What implications does this have for Rob and the company? I am quite shocked by the finance managers’ pessimism. The finance manager can clearly see that the company is under financial strain. The company is under a cash flow strain because of decreasing revenues from their existing product line. It is very clear that the company has to make some...
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...diversify with new products. Situation during early 90’s: The recession of the early 1990’s has significantly changed the market environment. Cutbacks in production have decreased the demand for standard machine tools and customers are asking for new products. Upper management has recognized the need for a new strategy but lower level management shows no flexibility to change. Situation during mid 90’s: By 1995 the recession has been over for a couple of years but nothing has changed within William’s organization and product line. Revenues and sales are decreasing rapidly. By 1996 the company was sold to Crock Engineering. Crock replaces all of the Williams senior managers when the company shows losses. Crock announces than Williams would become a specialty machine tool manufacturer as demand for specialty products have increased threefold. Situation during late 90’s: The upper management tries to change the company culture through project management, concurrent engineering and total quality management. Unfortunately long term employees are not on the same page as upper management and they still resist change. A project management consultant is hired from 1996 – 2001. End of the Williams Division As the project management system matures, after 6 years, the company shows a profitable quarter in March, 2002. In May 2002, the Williams Division was sold and more than 80% of employees lost their jobs. Williams Machine Tools Company – A case study Identification of Problems...
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...Strategy case study: Starbucks-sacrificing dividends for growth Starbucks has grown a lot since it's opening in Seattle in 1985. It went from 17 stores, to over 15.000 stores all around the world in 2010. But they are changing their strategy, and purpose. They started closing down shops, and refocused on the Starbucks experience, which would increase customer's willingness to pay and also increase profitability. They even payed their first dividend 2010. That ment a huge change of purpose. But is growth bad ? It has it's benefits and dangers. Warren Buffet states, that ‘Growth benefits investors only when the business in point can invest at incremental returns that are enticing – in other words, only when each dollar used to finance the growth creates over a dollar of long term market value.’ We can say that it worked for Starbucks in the beginning, when growth also meant growth of the share price, and even though no dividends were paid, the company was still profitable over the years, but with the emerging of new competition (ex. McDonalds coffee shops,…), and the loss of some of the Starbucks Experience, in 2008 the company didn’t see any share price growth, and still hasn’t paid out any dividends. From this, we can see focusing strongly on growth is not always a good idea, and while it can bring the company market share in the beginning and can even prove the be more profitable in the long term, it should not be the only purpose of the company. And when Starbucks reached...
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...The two new members in Mr Hung’s group are Minh and Hoa. Because of their strongly opposed characteristics, they are always in conflict with each other in work. Minh is an extrovert, energetic and friendly person so he might adapt to a new environment quickly. Moreover, through his enthusiastic and active attitude, he might be very good at collaborative skills and he can connect people in group by promoting spiritual people. Because Minh is sociable and funny, all people in the group have fun to work together and have higher productivity work. With these characteristics, Minh can work as a product marketing or teller. In contract, Hoa is an introvert and independent person. He can access and complete his work by himself while the others need to support by their manager. It can not be denied that he is an experience people, active in work but he does not have teamwork skills. Although Hoa is intelligent, creative and confident in working, but he might not develop to remote sales group as Mr Hung expected because of his poor collaborative skills. Hoa always does not get along with their partners and does not build his own opinion, this will make lower productivity. Since the company makes new policies which include higher sales targets for each employees to achieve, from which Minh and Hoa common argument. Minh and Hoa are at the sixs and sevens. The problem between them is they have an argument over the best sales methods for older people. Hoa is increasingly absent from work...
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...soon as possible to deal with one hour. Next recall all products back to factory. Start advertising for new products. Make some changes to the product by changing color, labels, and scent. Also we go to take the blame for what we did and proved medical compensation. Last hire scientists to help with research and testing. First we are going to deal with one hour. We going to let them know that there has been a recall products and we are testing them as soon as possible. Also we take blame for the misunderstanding with the products. We are giving medical compensation to the one that misused any of our products. We also are trying different resources to make our products out of so this misusing the products will not happen again. Soy- DRI is hiring a new scientist’s crew to make sure everything is tested before leaving our factory. As the vice president of sales marketing I going to make sure that advertising am met. For example, no rushing from the products to be tested to meet a deadline. Make sure everything is tested and all of the marketing crew is on one page. If these things are met in this department then more products will be sold and sales are going to go up. Last we decided to make a few changes to our products. First changing the color of the baby- dri to pink for babies so that it will not be confused with the soy-dri. Next change the label of the baby – dri to have a picture of a baby so that it is not confused with the soy- dri. We going to give the baby-...
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...Week 07 Written Assignment – Morals and Ethics in Cartoons Michael Lenz Rasmussen College G332/MMC3407 Section 03 Visual Communication in the Media - 2013 Summer Quarter Todd Woods August 17, 2013 Week 07 Written Assignment – Morals and Ethics in Cartoons My morals and ethics in Cartoons example is a comic strip I found on www.dilbert.com. This comic strip details the dilemma of the character Dilbert trying to access a website that the security department at his workplace has placed a block on. Dilbert is in need of accessing this site for a business reason. Dilbert visits the Security department at his workplace to have them unblock this website for him, so that he can access for a business reason. The security guy says websites can only be unlocked if the Director of Human Resources sends written approval. The Director of Human Resources states that he can only make recommendations to the CIO (Chief Information Officer). The CIO yells at Dilbert for bothering him for this issue, and tells him to go back to his hole and think about the career mistake that he made. The last section at the meeting with his department, Dilbert asks if they can skip what they accomplished this week. The dilemma that Dilbert is struggling with is very obvious, as he tries to get to a site to help with his work, and spends a lot of time going through channels only to get shot down, talked down to, and basically told he just made the biggest...
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...Club IT is a local music nightclub owned and operated by Ruben Keys and Lisa Tejada. Recently, Club IT has changed the inside looks of the club and done some heavy remodeling that has improved the business and surely has paid itself off. Then next thing in need of change is the information department. Club IT has asked me to come in and review the club and decide what changes I feel should be made. Since I have arrived, I have had a chance to get to know the staff, and become familiar with the business. After careful considerations, I have evaluated the status of this business, resources, supply chains, and customers. I have found three business problems in need of change at Club IT, and will suggest how these issues can be solved. While analyzing and evaluating Club IT, I have found three business problems that could stand to see some solutions. The first and most obvious issue is that the name of this club is Club IT; meaning information technology is and should be available. The problem with this is, Club IT only offers to its staff and customers a dial up internet connection. With using a dial up internet connection, the bandwidth is slow, can only provide a maximum speed of up to 56 kilobits per second, and limits access to certain medial like videos. Also, if any kind of software needs updated, it will be difficult to do so. Second, the Club IT websites has been designed to make things easy for the customers to offer a wide variety of options for music, and shopping...
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...Consulting National Chains Dustin Riedemann Kaplan University IT402: IT Consulting Skills Prof: Abdellah Tazi August 21, 2013 There are many different ways to look at whether or not the national chain should change their IT applications to help support the customer loyalty program. First the consultant needs to look at all the pros and cons of both changing the applications and the pros and cons of not changing the applications. First we can look at the pros of changing the IT applications to include a customer loyalty program. A good thing that may come out of changing the IT applications would be that the national chain would hope to keep the customers that the regional chain already has. This would help them to make more money and hopefully make the merger a success. This could also attract new customers that are looking to save money when shopping for their regular groceries. By promoting the customer loyalty program and telling potential customers that if they sign up for the program that they will be saving “x” amount on certain marked products, this will more than likely start to bring in more customers to the national chain because most people are always looking for a way to save money. This will also make the national chain more money because they will have more customers coming in and out of their doors, but they will still be making money off the products that they are selling, but they may not be making as much. A con to changing the IT applications to have...
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