The Concord Bookstore Paper
The Concord Bookstore Paper
Maria Krajewska-Brown
Creating Change Within Organization-HCS/587
02/19/2013
Evelyn Moorman
Abstract
This paper discusses the change process in the small, privately owned Concord Bookstore in Concord, New England. As much as we know about the bookstore, we understand that the change process initiated by the president of the company did not get a positive response from the personnel and created a cascade of undesired events with employees leaving the company and general disagreement on the change process.
The Concord Bookstore Paper
The Concord Bookshop is a small company, which due to certain external trigger events became financially unprofitable over the last couple of years and required major changes in the running of the business. As a privately owned company, the Concord Bookstore has been run for many years by three families, which decided to disregard the employees input, to change management and come up with a new business plan with a newly hired manager. We learn about the company as the process begins facing disagreement from the employees, who do not understand or approve the ways and means of the change process, and do not agree with claims of financial disaster. The very first step of the change process already shows the symptoms of its failure, since the staff is fleeing and anger grows in the circle of faithful customers and the community at large.
Reading the story of the bookstore many issues come to mind, but at least three problems can be pointed out and considered as undermining forces of change. As the crucial factor of failure I would consider the fact, that the entire change process was initiated entirely by ownership and announced by the President to the employees with no warnings. To that point, nothing was ever presented to the personnel about the financial problems for further discussion. This very first step is a sign of the change process implementation by ownership to maintain full control
Maria Krajewska-Brown
Creating Change Within Organization-HCS/587
02/19/2013
Evelyn Moorman
Abstract
This paper discusses the change process in the small, privately owned Concord Bookstore in Concord, New England. As much as we know about the bookstore, we understand that the change process initiated by the president of the company did not get a positive response from the personnel and created a cascade of undesired events with employees leaving the company and general disagreement on the change process.
The Concord Bookstore Paper
The Concord Bookshop is a small company, which due to certain external trigger events became financially unprofitable over the last couple of years and required major changes in the running of the business. As a privately owned company, the Concord Bookstore has been run for many years by three families, which decided to disregard the employees input, to change management and come up with a new business plan with a newly hired manager. We learn about the company as the process begins facing disagreement from the employees, who do not understand or approve the ways and means of the change process, and do not agree with claims of financial disaster. The very first step of the change process already shows the symptoms of its failure, since the staff is fleeing and anger grows in the circle of faithful customers and the community at large.
Reading the story of the bookstore many issues come to mind, but at least three problems can be pointed out and considered as undermining forces of change. As the crucial factor of failure I would consider the fact, that the entire change process was initiated entirely by ownership and announced by the President to the employees with no warnings. To that point, nothing was ever presented to the personnel about the financial problems for further discussion. This very first step is a sign of the change process implementation by ownership to maintain full control