Organizational Behaviour and Organizational Development
1. Introduction
“It is doubtful whether any change, introduced without consultation, could ever be successful”. In my opinion, I think that somehow the change without any consultation in a company will not be successful at all.
Company is consisting of organization which means groups of people who work independently toward some purpose. Organizations are not buildings or other physical structures, rather, they consist of people interact with each other to achieve a set of goals[1]. Employees have structured patterns of interaction, meaning that they expect each other to complete certain task in an organized way. But still many of company faces the difficulties to manage their organization due to retain the efficiency and enhance their performance. They need continuous development to increase their effectiveness and adaptiveness to changing situation.
Company’s Background
The Body Shop is known as a global manufacturer and retailer on producing beauty and cosmetic products. The company was founded in United Kingdom in 1976 by Dame Anita Roddick. Over thirty years, The Body Shop now has more than 1200 products and more than 2100 stores in 51 different countries. By the end of 2006, the Body Shop employed more than ten thousand people and twenty thousand people who are working as the Body Shop At Home Consultants or employed by franchises[2].
Body shop which has running over three decades and very successful, also need organizations development to keep hold of their successful, in addition to increase their organization effectiveness and adaptiveness. With stiff competition among competitor and a lot of innovation products every year. Body shop must exertion much harder to remain and assist their successful now. However, as time goes by, this company also faces some difficulties towards changing.
Today, The Body Shop not only focuses on its own profit or the productivity, but also cares for the community also. The company’s strategies always lead to the benefit for the people not only through using its products, but also through many campaigns that they have for the community. The Body Shop is a leader in the trend towards greater corporate transparency, and they have been a force for positive social and environmental change through our lobbying and campaigning programs around their five core Values: Support Community Trade, Defend Human Rights, Against Animal Testing, Activate Self-Esteem, and Protect Our Planet.
The Body Shop tries to build their organization with very strong staff and human resource. The structure of the company is built up very tightly to make sure the whole organization work with the same process and the same goals. The company’s head quarters are in London, Little Hampton, and west Sussex. The company has four main regions which are The UK and Republic of Ireland; The America; Europe, Middle East & South Africa and Asia Pacific. Within these four regions many international stores of The Body Shop are set up under franchise arrangements. The total number of stores are 2265 including 886 company-owned stores and 1379 franchise[3].
2. Organization Analysis
2.1. Advantages of the Collaboration
When an organization is confronted by change, it needs complex process and a long period of time. With regard to change, the most crucial process is about people. In other words, “one of the most vital initiatives an organization can take with staff is not to treat them as objects of, or obstacles to, change, but to involve them in it and make them responsible for it[4]. An organization which is faced with change, it cannot evade from the change. If the organization strives to avoid any plight within the change it may links with failure. The change doesn’t go away unless the organization is aware of it and attempt to find out the solution. Therefore, organizations should be willing to make various efforts toward the change to overcome all difficulties.
As mentioned earlier, involving people plays an important part in change of an organization. The Body Shop can be a representative example of involving employees. At first, look at the figures of the employees in The Body Shop is that “directly employed 10,034 people and a further 21,000 people are The Body Shop At Home Consultants or employed by franchisees”[5]. In general, managing a myriad of employees is quite difficult, for that reason, The Body Shop has endeavored to sustain motivation for the employees, that everyone at company has a role to play in living up to company values, and to ensure they are supported in this, they provide training, direct communication, informal dialogue at market level, a company intranet and a variety of employee and consultant magazines. In terms of motivation of the employees within The Body Shop, we can notice that it applies to Vroom’s Expectancy Theory which “human motivation is affected by anticipated rewards and costs – the employee’s desire for a goal, which is valence, multiplied by what the organization expects will equal satisfaction and motivation[6]. In addition, it is also related to Spot Award which is to the extent that the rewards are both contingent on good performance and awarded immediately, they are certainly consistent with expectancy approach, and provide the recognition most people desire.
The Body Shop has associated with NGOs (non-governmental organization) and maintains to support certain levels which isolate from society, as such The Body Shop made an appeal to the trust of the consumers, the other organizations, its employees, suppliers, and all relation of it. Particularly it has driven the employees to be motivated by self-esteem that is one of the vital principles of The Body Shop. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory can be true of this case, it involves needs for esteem that is, “If the deficiency needs are reasonably satisfied, a concern for self-respect and the esteem of others may arise. Esteem needs include the desires for achievement, prestige, and recognition as well as appreciation and attention from others”[7].
2.2. Diagnosis the Problem in Body Shop
However, in 2006, there was a sudden issue that “It has been a turbulent year for Body Shop. Its $1 billion takeover by French cosmetics giant L’Oreal eight months ago raised unplued eyebrows across the ethical business world. Animal rights and environmental campaigners, many of them long-term Body Shop supporters, threatened a boycott. Founder Anita Roddick was widely accused of selling out”[8]. This issue above, has become a controversy among other organizations and its consumers, also it have an effect on self-esteems of the employees. Ever since, the employees of The Body Shop who face the customers “everyday in store or as consultant in people’s homes. Over the past year they have had to answer many questions about the new ownership, and they have had questions of their own”[9]. After the issue happened, The Body Shop initiated to convince people and it seemed to be success. According to The Body Shop’s director of values, Jan Buckingham “But internally, the takeover has not altered the company’s management structures. Body Shop operates as a separate, ring-fenced entity, reporting into L’Oreal”[10].
Above, that is the main and big problem that The Body Shop faces right now. As mentioned earlier, in matter of change we cannot avoid the company should react face to face with the change immediately. However, since The Body Shop was taken over by L’Oreal, they did not do anything for the situation their reaction was just tacit about the issue. As the result, the conduct laid The Body Shop open to public censure. As The Body Shop and L’Oreal declared, they may not be changed apparently, but unequivocally change is change, it is totally nonsense that our owner has changed but our structure, value, and culture are still remained and it will keep going with us, it seems to be discrepant from real situation. What is more, The Body Shop founder Anita Roddick who led to the unique value and objective of The Body Shop, passed away last year. So that The Body Shop has to consider about this issue and resolve this underlying problem at this point of time and they should redesign in terms of motivation and employee involvement. If they keep quiet and do not make any effort for the change, the serenity would be no longer in there and it would become an incurable issue in The Body Shop.
3. Critique the Initial Steps of A Change Process
Change is the only constant thing happening in an organization. Any change that happens in an organization may lead to a major transformation of the organization to which many steps has to taken by the employees and employers to adapt. Some of the steps that the body shop had to face were as follows. The process of overcoming the changes by the body shop will be discussed in the recommendation part.
The initial change process of the body shop was that it became a part of L’Oreal in the mid of 2006. This led to many challenges that the body shop has to face. Initially, they had to step down from a public listed company. Secondly, they had to maintain their values which were no similar with L’Oreal’s values. L’Oreal did support the body shop with their values. This is evident from the comment that was given by Jean Paul Agon, CEO, and L’Oreal. According to his comment given to the values report for the body shop, he says “I would like to take the opportunities to reassure all of the body shop readers that it remains the intention of L’Oreal not only to preserve the integrity of the body shop values but to continue to nurture them for the benefit of all. At L’Oreal we have tremendous respect for the values of the body shop and we have already started to look at ways in which other L’Oreal group brands can benefit from the long experience of the body shop. I also know how important those values are to you and I assure you that we have no intention of changing them or of standing in the way of their development and the important role they play”[11]. Thirdly, they had to face a change in the management. Though the management was not fully replaced or changed, the body shop management had to work under L’Oreal.
At this stage, the organization went through the Lewin’s three step procedure for change, the initial step being the unfreezing step, where, all the employees underwent a series of management training sessions to know and handle the change in organization and for their effective participation. The second step, being the movement step, all the employees and employers had to adapt to the organizational change. Then the last being the refreezing step were the new change has been established well. Having been more than a year after collaboration, the body shop would have effective applied the lewin’s three stage model. Practically they would not know that this is the Lewin’s three step procedure but the changes and discussions held in the organization after the change in management clearly points out the use of Lewin’s steps in the organization.
Lastly, it must have been a great challenge for the body shop to retain and satisfy their stakeholders and suppliers. This was most challenging of all the challenges that they had to face. The majority of them were convinced by the sincerity of L’Oreal’s commitment to stakeholders, to ensure that the body shop values would be entirely held up. Even after a year L’Oreal has kept up to its commitment and had proved it too.
4. Approaches to change
WORK CULTURE
It is a well known fact that the body shop and L’Oreal have no similar objectives and values. Their entire work cultures are different. In spite of this variation they are able to achieve their desired targets only because of their good coordination on mutual understanding basis, because, L’Oreal has assured the body shop that they will support them with their values at all points as an act of human.
ADAPTIVE ORIENTATION
Falling under the renewing/transformational management, they introduced all changes to deal with future conditions, hence had a very good approach to change.
This implies that the body shop is not that organization that is slow and reactive to problems; instead it is proactive and is very fast in making decisions for the problems in advance that would arise. Hence it is highly stable and adaptive to the environment. This is the best part of L’Oreal because it knows how to organize the business transformations. This has helped the organization to excel over all other organization in its field.
ORGANISATION AS A SYSTEM
As an open system, the body shop had a well designed system to accomplish all their objectives. It is in continuous interaction with its environment and hence achieves a steady state of dynamic equilibrium and receives feedback from it, which helps them to adjust and to have better interaction with environment. Their environment includes their suppliers, customers, employees, franchisees and shop managers. They utilize the feedbacks given to improve their weaknesses in business. This helps them to hold a position in their customer’s heart for giving them this high privilege of criticizing them.
5. Recommendations
As Hall (1999)[12] mentioned, organization ought to “have the capability of being structured and restructured in accordance with the outcomes of decision making and political process within their own boundaries,” which accurately indicates the situation of modern organization. The Body Shop now facing some problems cause by joins L’Oreal as a subsidiary. Despite they claim their spirit value will not be changed, however, there are still have some conflict already existing as well as some potential issues might be floats to the surface further. According to the analysis before, there are some recommendations for the presenting and underlying issues that can provide for The Body Shop.
Change can be easily done when the change obtain support from people who associated with the transforming, refer to Cummings & Worley (2001)[13], “total quality management, as known as TQM, is the most recent and, along with high-involvement organizations, the most comprehensive approach to employee involvement.” Also, the illustrated of this managerial approach is explained as following: total, stands for quality involves everyone and all activities in the company; quality, represent conformance to requirements, which means meeting customers’ requirements; management, symbolize quality can and must be managed. Therefore, motivate of human resources and partnership as well as customer focus would be the most important essential steps.
Adapt the change ought to start within the organization, thus, endow with a clear direction and guideline for employees as well as all the administration levels. Reinforce and communicate the vision and mission of the company from both top down and bottom up. Top supervisors should show complete participation and support for the change of the company, also reassure and assist employees to adjust. Moreover, provide better compensation and reward system to encourage and increase personnel satisfaction, for the reason that “people generally do things for which they are recognized, reward can have a powerful effect on getting people involved in the organization”[14]. As information from employee of The Body Shop, The Body Shop provides an extra leave for birthday star during their birthday month after incorporate with L’Oreal. Apart from this, a superior compensation system can help for improve the revenue, and not only benefit at the moment but also can keep the latent change of administrative level or company strategy transformed at bay. Naturally, the administration level need to be aware and prepare for potential future changed of management or replaced of executive from L’Oreal as well.
In addition, survey research and feedback is another fundamental element of change. Through this feedback, it can “provide a basis for managers to improve their management and leadership skills”[15]. What is more, The Body Shop can discover what the additional difficulty gaps are between before changed and after changed regarding to their employees and customers which they did not adjusted or recognized yet. Also, some unexpected problem may come out during the changing process as well; therefore, keep updating and adjusting can be helpful for the transform of the company.
Change is always not easy. Change is always met by resistance from the people who related of the issue, especially for such a big international organization. This acquires a lot of practice and effort to achieve the best result. Besides, change is a continuing course of action, because “as the environment changes and the capabilities of evolve the strategy needs to evolve; not as a knee-jerk reaction to short-term but as a considered process over time”[16]. In short, despite the changing is still in processing, however, they are supposed to come out with a better system to satisfy their customers as well as accomplish the company’s objective.
6. Conclusion
Body shop itself has builds a strong foundation not only within their organization but also within their employee. But change can give them the feeling of unsecure and it was affect in employee work and performance. Therefore, the Body shop use the Lewin’s three step procedure to maintain their employee satisfaction and performance.
Body shop also has to maintain their organization to adapt with the changing and work under the name of L’Oreal. Especially they have to satisfy and assist their employee to adapt with the change. The Body shop can adapt with the changing and seems like success to maintain everything was owing to the Body shop has good quality coordination on mutual understanding foundation within their organization and, In spite of change Body shop organization structure and take in hand for their work, L’Oreal did not take action to change everything in Body shop company. They just allow body shop continue their work like previous. L’Oreal respect and support all the values of the Body shop, and started to look the benefit they can get from the long experience of the Body shop.
Even they seem like success to maintain everything but there is still some weakness in their organization. Body shop may be being able to use the Total Quality Management to increase employee involvement, as well as maintain their strong relationship with their supplier and customer. Provide better reward system and compensation system also good to encourage and increase their employee personal. And in the same time, create a new vision for support their focus due to distract public’s attention from the exiting issues and convince public that Body shop will not remain like before but they can do better in the future can be good for the company to impress their customer.
7. References
Burnard, B. (2000). Managing change: a strategic approach to organizational dynamics (3rd ed.). London: Person Education Limited.
Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C.G (2001). Organization development and change (7th ed.) America: South-western college publishing.
Hall, R. H. (1999) Organizations: structures, processes and outcomes (7th ed.), New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Hodge, B.J., Anthony, W. P., Gales, L. M. (2003), Organization theory: A strategic approach (6th ed), New Jersey: Pearson education.
Mcshane. S. L & Von Glinow. M. A (2005), Organizational Behavioral: emerging realities for the work place revolution (3th ed). New York: McGraw-Hill
Ronald, R., and Sims, P. (2002). Managing organizational behavior. Westport: An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
Robert, P. Vecchio. (2000). Organizational Behavior: Core Concept (4th ed.). Orlando: The Dryden Press Harcourt College.
Whiteley, D. (2000). E-Commerce: Strategy, technologies and applications. London: McGraw-hill.
The Body Shop. (2010). About Us. Available: http://www.thebodyshop-usa.com/global/content.jsp?page=aboutus. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
The Body Shop. (2009). Our Company. Available: http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/services/aboutus_careers.aspx. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
The Body Shop. (2009). Values & Campaigns. Available: http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/values-campaigns/index.aspx. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
Unknown. (n.d.). Body Shop takeover – Ethical business as usual. Available: http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?contentID=4936. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
[1] Mcshane. S. L & Von Glinow. M. A (2005), Organizational Behavioral: emerging realities for the work place revolution (3th ed). New York: McGraw-Hill.
[2] The Body Shop. (2009). Our Company. Available: http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/services/aboutus_careers.aspx. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
[3] The Body Shop. (2009). Our Company. Available: http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/services/aboutus_careers.aspx. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
[4] Burnard, B. (2000). Managing change: a strategic approach to organizational dynamics (3rd ed.). London: Person Education Limited.
[5] The Body Shop. (2009). Values & Campaigns. Available: http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/values-campaigns/index.aspx. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
[6] Ronald, R., and Sims, P. (2002). Managing organizational behavior. Westport: An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
[7] Robert, P. Vecchio. (2000). Organizational Behavior: Core Concept (4th ed.). Orlando: The Dryden Press Harcourt College.
[8] Unknown. (n.d.). Body Shop takeover – Ethical business as usual. Available: http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?contentID=4936. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
[9] The Body Shop. (2009). Values & Campaigns. Available: http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/values-campaigns/index.aspx. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
[10] Unknown. (n.d.). Body Shop takeover – Ethical business as usual. Available: http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?contentID=4936. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
[11] The Body Shop. (2009). Values & Campaigns. Available: http://www.thebodyshop.com/_en/_ww/values-campaigns/index.aspx. Last accessed 10 Mar 2010.
[12] Hall, R. H. (1999) Organizations: structures, processes and outcomes (7th ed.), New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
[13] Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C.G (2001). Organization development and change (7th ed.) America: South-western college publishing.
[14] Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C.G (2001). Organization development and change (7th ed.) America: South-western college publishing.
[15] Hodge, B.J., Anthony, W. P., Gales, L. M. (2003), Organization theory: A strategic approach (6th ed), New Jersey: Pearson education.
[16] Whiteley, D. (2000). E-Commerce: Strategy, technologies and applications. London: McGraw-hill.