British Airways Organizational Change

1388 Words6 Pages

In general, people do not accept and adapt to changes quite effectively when they are used to constant for a long time. Especially in the case of an organization, the company culture and structure would have been constant for a long time before considering for an organizational change. But once change has been made, people will start to learn from changes, however in some cases may not get better at change. Sometimes, change does damage that may not be reparable such as damaging staff morale, causing the increase of staff turnover.
For instance, Apple Inc. has changed the way the organization works since the passing of former CEO, Steve Jobs (http://www.businessinsider.com/). In the past, every decision had to go through Steve Jobs although …show more content…

It seemed that staff discontent was more than matched by customer dissatisfaction and in 1980 a survey by the International Airline Passengers’ Association put BA at the top of a list of airlines to be avoided at all costs (Grugulis, Irena, and Adrian Wilkinson, 2001). However, after 1996, the chairperson decided to change its methodology plan. It began to reduce the number of staffs, after explaining to the company about why he is restructuring to prepare the company for a change. At the heart of this was the ‘Putting People First’ training program launched by Colin Marshall, the company’s new chief executive, in December 1983. Originally intended for staff that had direct contact with customers, it was, in fact, attended by all 40,000 employees by 1986 and it aimed to revolutionize their attitudes costs (Grugulis, Irena, and Adrian Wilkinson, 2001). The staff get to learn and upgrade their skills, also not only do the company emphasize on how to serve customers, but they also made them understand why. People of different industries learn from this change at British Airways, knowing how important the methodology used in the company affects the overall system and …show more content…

A way to cultivate coherent operation is to have a clear articulated mission statement. Each department should be run on the basis of the mission statement and the goals of the company as a whole, never towards its own interest or objectives. Without team cohesiveness to work towards the same goal, the goal cannot be successfully achieved. For example, a huge industrial company that spends half its resources building cars and the other half scrapping the same cars. Even though a lot is going on, the lack of coherence makes it an unproductive and a failing