Concord Bookstore Organizational Change
Brian Steensen
HCS/587
March 18, 2013
Virginia Weatherston, BS, MAS

Concord Bookstore Organizational Change
The 64-year- independent Concord bookstore underwent a period of upheaval created by the owners of the store not considering how the change in management without consulting the current staff and management could produce negative feedback from the employees. The owners showed that they need to improve their understanding of how organizational change should occur to produce positive outcomes (Spector, 2010, p. 2).
The situation the owners were responding to was the increase in competition from chain bookstores and Internet sales. They did not get the employee’s or the current management staff any notice the change was coming by just telling the staff that a new general manager would be put into place who would take the over the responsibilities of the three person management team currently in place. This led to resignations by the three managers and five other senior employees’ with a total of 73 years’ experience at the bookstore. This had an adverse community reaction regarding its effect on the bookstore. Owners maintained that this change was necessary because of financial considerations (Spector, 2010, p. 2). This paper will key in on the failure of the owners to initiate effective, phased change process that would have decreased the resignations of key staff.
Ignoring the different Phases of Change
The turmoil that this change created is that the owners ignore primary issues of the staff and fail to understand an effective change process. The owners identified the why, financial impact of chain stores and Internet, but failed with the staff buy-in of the need for change (Borkowski, 2005, p. 380-383). This helped to ensure that the change process would create resistance by employees because they did