Shoe Style International: Guide to Answer Change Management Question

For students who are studying about change management, consider this question.
Discuss the factors that will determine whether the CEO is successful in changing the corporate. (Shoe Style International, 9707/31/O/N/13)

You can obtain the past year paper from this website.

Students could first discuss the ineffectiveness Jacque's communication approach by merely sending videos of himself announcing his vision and mission in making SSI an social responsible and ethical company.

Then, students can give suggestion how should Jacques communicate to make his proposed be accepted and win the support the the managers.   To do this, students should look at the idea of advising Jacques to first meet some of the key managers personally and communicate with them in an informal manner in order to build relationship and establish a positive rapport; this is essential in the attempt to win support and elicit commitment from those how are required to implement change.

Students can also give suggestions that Jacque, instead of pushing his message through a video which is considered to be one-way communication, should engage in employee participation in getting the relevant managers in some discussion and have Jacques listen to their concerns and opinions.  Such approach will provide opportunity for the managers to express themselves and allow them to gain some attention from Jacques which can help to satisfy their ego needs and thus motivate them to cooperate.

In addition, Jacque should not just communicate how the change can benefit the business organisation but to indicate how the change when it can help the company build a better reputation and thereby gain higher acceptance of the consumer to result in higher sales can subsequent bring greater profit to SSI which later can used as reward to the employees in terms of higher bonus. Note: Students must realize that the management should not merely announce how the organisation can benefit from the change but must also indicate how employees can specifically derived benefit from it as an individual.

It must be noted that despite having a code of ethics, this does not always ensure that the subordinates will follow.  To effectively ensure the ethical code is adhered to, Jacques need to implement measure to enforce it and that a monitoring mechanism is put in place to detect any employees who may engage in bribe and use harmful materials in production of the shoes.

Students need to realize that not all employees will give their commitment towards the proposed change.  As such, Jacques may need to be ruthless  by giving an ultimatum those who continue to resist to in join him to realize the change or to get out of the company.

Nevertheless, a more tactful approach can be made which is to offer a voluntary separation scheme (VSS) to act as incentive in encouraging those employees who resist to resign on their own accord rather than to be forcefully dismissed or systematically retrenched.  It must noted that it can be adverse to SSI as organisation if those employee who resist are kept working in the company as they can act as cancer that hinder the smooth operation of the the enterprise as they may instigate others to resist or their low commitment to the company result in poor business performance.

Then you can conclude that without following any of the above suggestion, it is unlikely that Jacque's proposed change will be successful as you final paragraph.