Education Experience
In my institution of higher learning, I have experienced some change resulting from hyper-competition pressures. The education industry is now laden with a lot of institution of higher learning, and technological advancement has tweaked the competition. The hyper-competition results from the external pressure exerted by the institution’s close competitors as they poach for students. On the other hand, internal pressure comes from the institution’s administration to the staff to deliver quality education as a way of outdoing the competition (Palmer, Dunford, and Akin, 2009).
The frontline supervisor is the person in charge of all the staff that deal directly with clients. In any organization, customer satisfaction and loyalty means higher profits and organizational growth. For example, in an air travel agency, the frontline supervisor must ensure that all the passengers receive communication about their flight at all time because that is a vital aspect of air travel. Inadequate supervision may result in an exodus of clients. As (Larkin, 1996) notes, service is about people and the ultimate value of an organization can offer to the client, is the personal touch through good service. Hyper-competition leads to some changes in the entire business model. The executive must ensure that they do not lose out to the competition at all cost and, therefore, will exert pressure on their staff. The pressure exerted may lead to some resistance among the staff (Palmer, Dunford, and Akin, 2009).
In such out institution, the lecturers and their assistants were required to sign performance contracts as opposed to just showing up at working and work on unspecific tasks. Such a move leads to resistance because that is common when people are pushed out of their comfort zones.The situational approach was applied in managing the resistance experienced at the institution. The administration introduced incentives to the staff as a way of trying to improve the quality of education at the institution. The step-by-step change model is one of the standard approaches to implementing organizational change. Here, the organization introduces new aspects gradually, as opposed to effecting change instantly. The advantage here is that employees get time to adjust and hence organizational stability. The disadvantage is that it takes too long for an organization to take transform and hence instability. For example, when a learning institution uses a step-by-step approach, the staff and the students have enough time to make the necessary adjustments (Palmer, Dunford, and Akin, 2009).
Kotter (2007) proposes that an organization in need of transformation must use an eight-step model. One of the most important steps in this model is that of empowering the staff. The staff represents one of the key stakeholders, and they must be part of the transformation. An empowered staff means they relate and clearly understand and embrace the change. For instance, in a learning institution, empowering the lecturers to provide quality education means that they can share the institutional vision of what the such an education ought to be, and they can then figure out how …
