Cassi Stephenson
BUSM Management
Chapter 7 Review 1
The difference between how change is handled in an organization can be described in two metaphors. Calm water looks at change in business as if you were on ship crossing a calm sea and only the occasional storm would disrupt your journey. In the calm waters metaphor change is seen as the occasional disruption in the normal flow of events. White water rapid metaphor describes change as a group of people trudging through white water rapids that has never worked together before; to add to the challenge they are doing this at night time. White water rapid describes change that takes place in uncertain and dynamic environments. The stability and predictability of calm water metaphor do not exist. Most managers never get out of the rapids with constant changing environments, such as changing structure, changing technology, changing employees. People can be resistant to change due to uncertainty, habits, concern over personal loss, belief that change is not in the best interest of the company. Environments change every day and will continue to change there are ways to reduce resistance by education, participation, negotiation, manipulation and corporation. The calm water metaphor is not realistic for today’s constant changing environment. Successful managers will have to learn to adapt and succeed in a white water environment.

Chapter 7 review 3
There are many ways managers might change structure, technology, and people. Managers can change the structure by choosing how the job gets done and who does it. Changes in structural design can be done by reporting relationships, coordination on mechanisms, employee empowerment, and job design. Managers could combine departmental responsibilities instead of one person being responsible for there each individual job having people work together and being responsible for an entire department. The number of employees a manager supervises could change; they could go from overseeing twenty employees to fifty or a hundred depending on departmental changes. At any time in any organization the rules can change and new ones will be implemented. This will be easier for new employees to handle than employees that have been with the company for 20 plus years. The rules will change to increase standardization each company seeking to have the same quality product consistently. Technology changes will convert imputes into outputs, new equipment will be brought in, new tools, methods of automation, computerization. Technology is constantly changing and will affect every manager and their employees. Software updates for computers at the office happen monthly , every four to five your computer systems are updated , email changes, how to store save and send files changes. Technology changes faster than most companies can keep up, managers will need to not only need to constantly keep up to date on the new technology, but also know how to train their employees on the new systems. Even my local grocery store who still counts back change and has you original cash registers is being forced to go more digital just do to the fact that their system are not up to date with government food stamp cards and their scanners have to be able to register which foods are going towards WIC customers. Some Automation seems to be a big issue for the people not the companies robots are replacing jobs that people used to do. A team that used to operate with ten people will now operate with ten. They will have people there to fix the machines if they break down and supervise that everything is running smoothly, but the need for people will be less. I see it starting to happen even in local restaurants. For example my local Applebee’s has new machines on the table you can pretty much order everything you want except your entrée on this machine for now. On a busy weekend you would normally have to staff 10-17 servers that’s now cut in half you do not need as much staff when a machine is doing half the work for the server. Managers are going to not only have to learn how to train employees to work with these new systems, but also deal with grumpy employees who hours have been cut and the money they are making is not as good. This will greatly impact manager’s day to day operations. Managers have to deal with people every day and the changes that affect them, changing attitudes, expectations, perceptions, and behaviors in my opinion one of the harder task a manager has to face. Organizational development is an important part of a manager’s job this focuses on people and the nature and quality of interpersonal work relationships. There are different OD techniques used to make changes in the organizations people to make them work together better. Techniques such as sensitivity training, team building, intergroup development, process consultation, and survey feedback. All of these methods will help build a better environment for employees team building in my opinion is one of the most important. You can have one strong person or have a group that works well together, each from different cultures and backgrounds that will bring more to the table than having one individual that is a good employee.

ETHICS DILEMMA
A good paying job is hard to find these days there are a lot of companies that had to cut back during the recession. This put a lot of pressure on employees who stayed with their organization and the ones who left and had to find new jobs. Company’s used to hire people for all different departments since the recession a majority of those departments no longer exist and the work load was merged onto the employees who stayed to learn and carry out the work, usually without extra pay. Before the recession if this type of pressure was put on an employee they would most likely quit and find a new job. New jobs are hard to come by and even under the circumstance you found another job companies are expecting employees to have a lot of different skills and a degree; in which you will have to learn a new job take on the same if not a bigger work load and you are not guaranteed to make more money even if the same. Most employees are sticking with their jobs because they need them, and are afraid to make less. Even if the work load is stressful or too much most employees are not going to ask for help due to the fact they do not want to be replaced by someone who could handle it. There are few people out there that have job security anymore. There are people around every corner that have the same skills if not more than you that need jobs. Companies are not going to increase their labor cost when it is just as easy to hire someone new for the same or less money to do the same job. So what can organizations do to get their employees to participate in EAP’s? Do organizations even have an ethical responsibility to help their employee’s? One of the ways an organization could evaluate to see how their employees are feeling about the work load is to have anonymous surveys and anonymous e mails/electronically based comment boxes sent to HR to evaluate how the employees are really handling the work load. Workers will often not complain or seek help due to fear of losing their job. If there was way for employees to handle the stressors of work without the fear of getting fired this would help immensely. A strong HR department can make all the difference for a successful company. Management should also evaluate if the work load is too much for any employee to handle for a long period of time. With the amount of people looking for jobs they could cut the pay and hire more employees and delegate the jobs. This will give your employees with seniority and a larger skill set to focus on what they were originally hired for and the busy work delegated to the younger more egger just to work employee. You could hire on person and pay a higher wage bog them down with a tone of work and have a tired, worn out, and unambitious employee or hire two employees, split the pay that you would have hired to the one employee for and delegate the work load and decrease stress. Organizations have an obligation to help their employees with stress. If they want jobs done right when they need to be a happy employee is going to produce better work, than an over worked and stressed employees. There are companies that have workout facilities, yoga and meditation rooms, black out rooms for employees to nap for a short period of time. These companys have a higher success rate than other organizations that do not offer any stress programs for their employees. I think it is important to have an outlet for employees to have communication with their higher ups without the stress of getting fired. I think it is in an organizations responsibility to offer EAP’s.