Change Management Through Transformation

Question: Discuss about the Change Management Through Transformation. Answer: Introduction The company Nike Inc. was founded in the year 1964 as an importer of Japanese shoes by Blue Bowerman and Phil knight in 1968(10-K, 2014). It was an initiative of a Japanese firm called Onitsuka Tiger Co for which collaborated with Nike and created a firm named Blue ribbon sports (BRS). BRS opened its first plant in U.S. in 1971. With this, Nike expanded its products range adding a variety of sports shoes, apparels, and equipments yet the strongest of these three SBUs is ts footwear division which makes 35% of the market share. 13% is the share of apparels. By providing quality and diversity in products, Nike has become a global leader in sportswear. The companys global market share is 2% (Euromonitor, 2011) which made Nike the largest apparel and Footwear Company in 2014. Mission and Vision Mission: The companys mission statement represents their strategic approach to be a global leader in footwear, apparels, and equipment market. The mission statement of Nike as declared officially is To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. (Smithson, 2016)As stated by it founder Bill Bowerman, If you have a body, you are an athlete. Their slogans like Just do it promote a winning attitude and inspires customers. Their product diversification helps pull in wide range of customers justifying their every athlete in world strategy. Vision: Corporate responsibility is no longer a staff function at Nike. Its a design function, a sourcing function, a consumer experience function, part of how we operate---says Nike CEO, Mark Parker. The statement reflects upon the companys inclination towards corporate social responsibility. The company has not published any vision statement for company but it has a vision for CSR which is to help NIKE, Inc. and our consumers thrive in a sustainable economy where people, profit, and planet are in balance. (Smithson, 2016). Nike is concerned about sustainability and quality necessary to promote business benefits to every customer. The overall culture of Nike promotes a nonprofit orientation. The directed mission statement and nonprofit orientation have helped NIKE gain the trust of its customers leading to expansion across geographies rapidly since incorporation. The company which started in the US now has over 700 shops worldwide with 254 in the United States alone. Its quality and strategic approach have helped it to diversify in various geographical locations. The following graph shows its revenue breakdown across different geographies. General Enviornment The major factors that form a business environment of a company include its Competitors, Technology, Customers, Suppliers and Economy. Competitors : The biggest threat to NIKE is its competitors, ADIDAS and PUMA.In spite, Nike being ahead of Adidas in 2010 (Euromonitor, 2011). It still stands ahead in competition. To beat its competitors, NIKE works to get control over the market by product diversification, use of technology and increasing its offerings in terms of prices. Technology: Not only the quality competitors but also the other fake brands are now causing threat as they are using technology as the tool to promote too. Nike has to stay updated with the technology trends like online services or innovative technology in apparels and shoes like sensors to predict health. Customers: The brand perception is important. There is a need that they get repetitive customers and customers always choose NIKE over the competition. They have to make their customers feel premium. Suppliers: All the manufacturing at NIKE does not happen in house so NIKE has to take care of the quality of suppliers and supply chain management. Economy: The economy plays an important role. Being a manufacturer, NIKEs business is largely impacted by economic fluctuations. The downward swing of the economy leads to an increase in suppliers prices. The bad economy affects the sale of goods especially sports as it does not come under basic need of customers. The positive side is, the variation in the global economy has not affected the spending of customers especially on food and retail. It has in fact increased to $447billion from $437billion In America, between September 2014 and September 2015(Lee, 2015).This positive trend explains the need of customers which is expected to increasing in coming years. If NIKE takes proper measures to understand the response of people to the economy fluctuations through continuous surveys and customer feedback, it can work on the strategy to still be a leader in the market. Its revenue also depends on its growth not only in sportswear but also in other SBUs. It can also look for investment a s sponsorships to Football leagues or other such events which will attract more customers and a balance will be maintained. Focusing on new technology trends, and expansion in youth-oriented verticals like music, NIKE can maintain its leadership. Corporate social responsibility As mentioned earlier the vision statement of NIKE itself is not profit oriented. It has been concentrating on its CSR activities for long just as most other companies do. In a 2008 Economists online survey of 1,192 global executives, the companies gave priority to CSR was 55% which increased to 70 percent by 2010. (Kash Rangan, 2012). According to the research of VIssel Tolhurst, including CSR in planning not only brings benefits to the company but also proves advantageous to economic development by giving businesses more decisive roles across levels of society. The major advantages of having a CSR culture in the organization is, Have positive impact on Community Help support public Value outcome Support being an employer Promotes Professional and Personal development Enhance relationship with clients More than just donating money CSR is about contributing to the welfare of society and operating more ethically and transparently. To avoid Corruption, avoid Bribery at all levels and leads to sustainable production over the long term it is important to follow ethics and have an environment of social responsibility in a company. Setting labor standards helps in smooth functioning of the whole chain. Along with CSR, ethics play an important role in the organization. Organization is made of people and people operate on emotions. It is the ethics o the organization which is a critical driver of the company as a brand, as a leader and as an employer. The decisions made at a lower level or higher level is influenced by the code of ethics in an overall organization. The right kind of ethics can have direct benefits like, Generating more customers, boosting sales and improving overall brand image which helps in long term relations. (Cadbury, 2002) Improve productivity by retaining employees in the company by reducing recruitment of new workforce and training them again. (Cadbury, 2002) Attract talent to work with. Attract funds from banks or investors to maintain financial stability in the company. (Cadbury, 2002) An unethical culture can damage the brand image and affects overall operations, customers, investors and future growth of the company. Nikes culture Culture is how organizations do the things----Robbie Katanga (Michael Watkins, 2013) Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which governs how people behave in organizations. These shared values have a strong influence on the people in the organization and dictate how they dress, act, and perform their jobs. There can be four types of Organizational culture as described below: The basis of this type of culture is Collaboration. The managers and employees are a part of a big family who is actively involved in all activities of the organization. Here, the leaders are more like mentors rather than bosses and the teams are bound by traditions and commitments. The core values are teamwork, communication, and commitment. It focuses on building respectful relationships with teammates, clients, and .customers. The root f this culture is promoting creativity. The employees are encouraged to innovate, manage teams, take risks and bring out their entrepreneurial skills. This culture gives freedom to employees to experiment, fail, learn and improve. The core of this culture lies in moving and changing fast. This culture is result oriented and the leaders are more demanding. The culture demands results. The team is united by a common agenda to succeed and compete with rivals. The core drivers are market share and profitability. The culture is more rigorous to achieve the goals. This culture is based on formal values. It follows some strict procedures for operations in the company. The culture focuses on consistency and uniformity. It is dependent on monitoring ad coordination which ultimately emphasizes on efficiency and predictability. The companies generally adopt the combination of all four which is termed as Corporate Culture. Corporate culture refers to the beliefs and behaviors that determine how a company's employees and management interact and handle outside business transactions. Often, corporate culture is implied, not expressly defined, and develops organically over time from the cumulative traits of the people the company hires. Nike has a culture that encourages employees to behave in ways that are in coherence to NIKEs business objectives. Training programs are designed to maintain such corporate culture that aligns with the brand image of NIKE for sports footwear, apparel, and equipment. NIKEs employees are given instructions on how to work with their customers and colleagues to maintain healthy relations with them. The main drivers of companys culture are Promoting Innovation, Dynamic workforce, and collaboration. My fitness to the organizational culture of Nike I personally believe in freedom of thoughts, freedom to experiment and apply my learnings to whatever job I do. Since I am a commitment oriented person I always believe in a collaborative environment and delivering concrete results. Being good at my leadership (Linda, 2006) qualities, I like to take up challenges, manage teams and work with them to achieve the desired outcome. Observing the overall culture of the company which takes care of its employees and encourages innovation and learning through various training sessions. I believe I can utilize my current skills and adapt very well to the companys culture. Being a people oriented culture, I can find myself fit as I too believe in working for people and customers would be at the forefront in my mind while dealing in the business. I have always been a active participant in social and cultural gathering as I love to interact with people so if a culture would promote that, I would be able to perform better in team work as well as enjoy my work. I am not a person who can stick to routines but would like to practice creativity. Innovation is another aspect that the company encourages a lot and me being an experimenter and appreciator as well as preacher of creativity and innovation, I would be able to enjoy working in the company and would exercise the freedom to bring out my own ideas. I also found that learning is encouraged in the company and I being a passionate learner who keep reading and updating myself, I would be very keen and active participant in the learning programs such that I would be able to make the best use of the learning obtained in the company. Another aspect that I found would make me an appropriate fit in the company is its appreciation for corporate social responsibility. Being focused on CSR, the company would require those people to work for it who understand the aspects of sustainability and can feel for the environment such that they work towards the social and environment betterment. I have been an active participant of environmental welfare programs like marathon races for nature, nature trails, cleanliness drives, and more. Thus, I understand the concepts of CSR and would work sincerely to ensure that environment is not harmed in any way by my actions. My keenness to work in an environment friendly way would also help the company to be ensure its alignment with its sustainability aspects. Conclusion The report analyzed NIKEs business with respect to its culture, business environment and corporate social responsibility. It involved analysis of the organizations environment and the impact of its factors like economic variations on the operations of the company. It was found while studying the external environment that the company has ADIDAS and PUMA as its major competitors in the sport shoes space yet it is ahead of Adidas. It was found that the company encourages employees to practice norms that are in line with the goals of the organization. Finally, I explained how I can fit into the culture of the company and illustrated how I make the right fit for the company. References Behavioral Ethics in Organizations: A Review, 2006 The Pennsylvania State University CHANGE MANAGEMENT THROUGH TRANSFORMATION, 2014 Australian Bureau of Statistics Corporate Social Responsibility: new context, new approaches and new applications, 2010 Leeds Business School Environmental Strategic Analysis, 2012 NIKE, Inc Harrison, S. (1997). CSR - Linking behaviour with reputation. London, Thomson: P. J. Kitchen. Heath, R. L. (2001). Handbook of public relations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Nike Foundation. (2011). Investing in the Girl Effect: the most powerful force for change. 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