Sigitek Case

Sigitek Case

Barriers and Drivers to change facing Smithers:

Smithers has in his favor experience in reengineering business processes from when he was an engineering service manager. His style of personal management aided him in instituting corporate culture changes in a manor that was well received by Sigtek employees. This experience was needed given the long-standing organizational differences that Smithers faced between Sigtek's engineering and manufacturing divisions.

Another challenge faced by Smithers was the different management style of his counterpart, Richard Patricof, who was vice president of operations. Patricof's focus was not on results or productive feedback from employees. He felt that style and a tolatarian approach to personnel management was best suited for this total quality (TQ) training program.

Other barriers Smithers faced was the possibility that employee expectations on the success of this new program may be too high given previous attempts to change Sigtek?s differing engineering and manufacturing corporate culture. It would be difficult to unite these two internal organizations.

The major drivers to the success of the TQ program was that Sigtek was in desperate need of a change in its processes or face the risk of going out of business. This rift between operations and engineering would drive the company into the ground given the weak leadership of the President, Charles Bradley.

How efficiently was change introduced?

The team at Sigtek established a set of goals for the implementation of the TQ program. An outline of the training process was created and presented to senior management. The response was non-plus, which instilled a great amount of concern to Smithers. The cold response from senior management clearly indicated that their support in the implementation o this new program was questionable. Sigtek?s approach to change involved choosing one manager from the engineering and operations sector respectively to be trained as site instructors for TQM. They in turn would train other employees to implement TQM. There was already a history of discontinuity between Smithers and Murphy. There was no unified team effort between these to key players.

Signs of failure also came when Patricof handpicked a cross-functional group of managers to form a site Quality Improvement Team, which was to coordi...

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.... Today's change initiatives are primarily based on a problem-solving view of organizations and change.

Despite the potential positive outcomes, changes are often resisted at organizational level.

Resistance to change appears to be a common phenomenon, it can take many forms and it may be difficult to identify the exact reason for the opposition. Although organizations have to adapt to their environment, they may set up defenses against changes and they prefer to concentrate on the routine things they perform well.

Involving senior corporate management in the development of functional tactics improves their understanding of what must be done to achieve long- term objectives of the organization. It also helps ensure that functional tactics reflect the reality of the day-to-day operating situation. Most importantly it can increase the commitment of corporate management to the strategies developed.

Crucial to the implementation of cultural change is senior management?s ability to use leadership and provide a shared vision of the future. In a chaotic, dynamic world of change we must be able to come up with new ideas and inventions in order to compete in the global market.