Question

tushar had been hearing the rumor doing the rounds since the past ten days.However as per his nature he had ignored it and concentrated on doing his job even better. but today , tushar had seen his name along with other names recommended and officially told to start attending the three months computer course to gain knowledge on the usage of computers to textile industry. Tushar after completing a polytechnic (diploma) in textile engineering had joined the J.P Mills as a junior assistant in the design development department some twenty years ago at the time of joining the textile industry was booming J.P Mills was also doing well in terms of volume and profitability during the boom period however with the opening of the economy and the entry of many multi-national ready made brands a visible change was seen in the customers (buying behavior) the past eight years has seen shift in the customers mindset towards purchase of ready to use wear. this was unlike the earlier trend when people preferred to purchase a well known textile companies cloth material (in the market J.P Mills was doing very well and had almost 27% market share) and get their clothes stitched by any well-known tailor so as to keep in pace with the new market requirement the J.P Mills owner and managing Director decided to enter into a tie-up with an MNC, Sandy Wear store which wanted to enter into joint venture with J.P Mills to get manufacturing base in India. it was in this connection that the rumors started circulating about the new management planning to remove the existing employees of J.P Mills by introducing programs for them under the guise of upgrading their knowledge in computers when the rumors started initially many executives and employees had put in their papers. but many others like Tushar continued to put in their hours but one could always sense their uneasiness, Hence, seeing his name on the notice board, made Tushar uneasy and the expecting the worst, when he recieved    a call from Nancy , the P.A to the personal manager, Viresh, asking him to meet the letter after the lunch break. Tushar, when he met Viresh was pleasently surprised to hear that in the new organizational st-up he would be required to do a lot of the work on the computer (packages). this would eventually result in a lot of cost saving for the company because the availble new computer packages in the market will help in reducing the time (spent) between receipt of order, selection of the various designs (optimised) selection can be done with the help of the new software packages and execution of orders in time. Viresh ended the talk by saying that the new management expected all their responsibility to be entrusted to Tushar and hence his name had been put up on the list of those required to attend various computer courses.

Questions:

(i) Analyze the case in short - why the organization want to merge with sandy wear store?

(ii) problem identification - what factors had caused resistance of change among J.P Mills employees?

(iii)suggest appropriate solutions- could you suggest the best possible ways of handling change in J.P Mills?    

Answer 1

I) After reading the above scenario JP mills wanted to tie up with Sandy wear store to increase its sales in the market as now there is change in trend in the market where people now are preferring clothes which are ready to where rather than those which need to be studied again. So to have a better sales and to increase its customer base JP Mills is merging with Sandy store.

ii) Sudden change in management decision for asking employees to learn computer courses which they have not done in many years and the rumours that they want to remove employees and this computer course is just a disguise to give a reason for them to remove the employee. Because of this employees have panicked and started to put papers without even finding what is the reason for Sudden change in management decision.

iii) The best possible way in my opinion is that should have beforehand inform the employees regarding the course and the reason behind rather than giving them this news as a surprise. When we give surprise there will be rumours which is common as people speculate and do their own reasoning which sometimes create a bad impact. Hence my suggestion should beforehand inform the employees.