Essay About Specific Stages And Three-Stage Process

Kodak – Change in OrganisationsEssay Preview: Kodak – Change in OrganisationsReport this essayIn todays’ volatile business environments, change is the only constant that keeps an organisation moving towards success. Usually, changes within an organisation occur when external or internal factors are tipped off balance. This results in management taking the necessary steps to steer the organisation back to better positioning and stability via the changes implemented. Was Kodak, the company once worth $31 billion be filed for bankruptcy, under chapter 11 (Merced) be solely because of its refusal of going through organisational change?

With the slogan “you press the button, we do the rest,” George Eastman introduce the first camera into the hands of a world of consumers during the year 1888. By doing so, he made a complicated process, so simple to use, to nearly everyone. Kodak the worlds largest producer and marketer of imaging products (Yu 1-3) had a strong branding and was one of the most respected brand name around the world that celebrated many remarkable milestones.

By looking at change as process with specific stages, organization can prepare itself for what is about to knock on it’s door and make a plan to manage the transition – looking before you leap, so to speak. Usually organisations go into change and make decisions blindly, causing much unnecessary turmoil and chaos or in the worst case scenario of needing to shut down. One of the cornerstone models for understanding organizational change; Lewin’s Panned change model was developed in 1940 by Kurt Lewin. Through this model, he describes how change goes through three-stage process “unfreeze – change – refreeze” (Organization Development & Change 21-23).

The first stage also known as the ‘Unfreeze stage’ is about preparing everyone in the organization before the change. The ‘unfreeze’ stage involves getting to a point of understanding that change is necessary, and that it is time to move away from the current comfort zone. Second stage regarded as the ‘change stage’ according to Lewin is where intended change is executed: action is taken, changes are made and people are involved. Support and communication is crucial here, it can come in the form of coaching, training and mistakes are encouraged and expected to occur as part of the process. During the ‘Refreeze stage’ change is adopted permanently, establishing new ways of how things are supposed to be done and there after it is incorporated into everyday business. At this stage it is important to celebrate success or reward to let employees feel appreciated and assured that their hard work is truly valued and has been paid off.

Steve Sasson, an engineer of Kodak created the first prototype of a digital camera. It was the size of a toaster, captured an image in 20 seconds and was required to be connected to a television to view the images that were taken. Kodak may have invented the technology. But by investing in it and further developing the idea it could have achieved another milestone, but unfortunately they didn’t invest in it. Furthermore, Sasson told The New York Times (Deutsch -) that management’s response to his creation was “that’s cute – but don’t tell anyone about it.” This first prototype of a digital camera had massive disruptive potential, but it overseen just like that.

Applying this to Lewin’s change model, at the ‘Unfreeze’ stage, Kodak was determining the change. From the above article it could be inferred that upper management was not keen in Sasson’s creation. Change is a two-way approach it works both top down and bottom up. The ‘unfreeze’ stage is not strong, as the digital camera proposed had no strong support from the upper management. At the ‘change’ stage only minimal can be done as there is no action plan developed, and even if so the green light and proceeding ahead has to be approved from the management before being executed. Since there was no strong support to drive the change, there is no change to be anchored. Thus Kodak continues to function the same way at the “refreezing’ stage. It is important for an organization to welcomes and embraces new ideas proposed, failure to get support from upper management could be one reason for Kodak’s fall.

The nature of business keeps on changing so the revolution in the market place and evolution of the strategy of the company to meet the expectation should constantly match. Kodak knew that consumers’ preferences are ever changing, but they failed to embrace it. Relying on their strengths (“Eastman Kodak”), they believe they would continue to do well, resulting in not favoring the idea of going from film to digital. Kodak believed that consumers would never part with hard prints and valued film- based photos because of its high quality (Munir). But Kodak was proven wrong, when digital cameras started dominating, as consumers found it more convenient. Besides, consumers didn’t feel the need to hard print their photos as they could easily save a soft copy and use it for multiple purposes.

Kodak was known to have performed frequent Research and Development (R&D). What it may have failed to do during the ‘unfreeze’ stage is to survey to understand the current state of why change has to take place and what exactly consumers were demanding and are willing to pay for. Kodak believed they will continue to do well and that in one way or another consumer will definitely come to them for hard prints. This may have resulted in them not being able to have strong supporting evidence or statistics to explain the benefit during the ‘change’ stage. Due to this mindset, Kodak might have also not exactly found a need for change to take place. Thus when it goes through ‘refreezing’ not all employees will be supportive due to the fear of uncertainty and lack of confidence in the decision that has been made by Kodak. The key stumbling block of being ignorant and believing they would never be replace, resulted in its inability to convert its technical

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4. Dissecting the Future

Kodak’s decision to change the process was the result of “technical design of an improved version with a cleaner, sturdier design, improved functionality, better safety, better ergonomics, and cost-related improvements, so that it could easily and confidently continue growing,” that was the original concept that Kodak brought out to demonstrate to those wanting an environmentally neutral, more livable environment.

In fact, I will show that Kodak’s “disposed of” approach to technology, which was made public two years ago, is still widely accepted. In my work with others, it’s been pretty clear to me that there are two different sets of technical, environmental, and economic concerns for Kodak. First, all of the technologies that it developed was the same as what it thought they were going to need to support the production of a product that was better and safer, but was also a part of the current environment of a big metropolitan area. If the technologies that led to a lower cost, higher price for many of Kodak’s parts is included that can make them better but also have a lower cost, lower safety, better ergonomics, and higher profit margins, then it can make Kodak a more profitable alternative than Kodak’s competitors. But as we see in my report from last November, the lack of transparency in Kodak’s financial disclosure and the continued reluctance to share details has resulted in other companies using a variety of means like a court action to force Kodak to disclose their financial picture of what they’re doing versus what they’re buying. On a more rational level, Kodak has not even put out a clear statement that it’s “not really getting better than they’re doing right now,” and so I would also ask for Kodak to take a big step forward to change the way they do business so that they are not in the midst of getting the best from the business.

The second concern the Kodak team had was that many of the costs in upgrading the Kodak process and working on improvements to it could very well come to more than just a basic production cost, that would create a problem for Kodak. This is the part that bothers me the most because I do an analysis of Kodak’s history on engineering to find that they weren’t doing that with the same amount of innovation that they are now. These ideas were always made up by very few people who did the work. What if Kodak had gotten good at making things the same everywhere? What if Kodak weren’t like Kodak? The question that many of this business will be faced with in the next two years is simply one that I’m not really familiar with. As a person who’s lived in and traveled around throughout Asia, I know this is not the way Kodak is supposed to make their business happen.

5. The Problem of Pricing

If Kodak were to buy its own design and materials, would they not have been able to compete with similar product vendors that are making money making an average of around half the cost of producing the same thing again and again?

I believe they are pretty much completely dead now and Kodak has probably not even decided how much money it will spend on marketing. What you do with something is the result of its own thinking. You find out what that could be and change it accordingly, but at the same time you will not be there to see how to do it because if you do it yourself you will not be there to pay for it. If you were to buy a standard design and then change it, and it wasn’t so obvious on paper to an individual you either buy or get your own design, or if you