Managing Change (task 1)

The aim of this paper is to analyze the culture of a chosen organization which is Manchester City Football Club followed by an evaluation of the culture as well on the basis of Smith and Schilbury‟s (2004) cultural dimensions. Afterwards, with assumption that the chosen organization is able to perform better, the changes which would make contributions to the performance will be suggested and explained.Culture, according to Pettigrew (1979), has been perfectly defined in the anthropology area as the process of understanding the relationship between specific community of individuals‟ manners and the outer environment through researching and translating their ways of behaving and socializing. Afterwards, loads of organizational scholars and researchers made efforts to define culture without united answers due to their conventional perspectives on organizational theory. In spite of the different means of defining, the organizational culture owns many commonalities which are culture‟s inflexibility, culture being decided by employees within the organization, culture influencing organizational staff and difficult perception of the main assumptions of organizational culture. As added and concluded by Dunn (1991), the culture of an organization which is related to influences from environments within and without should be enhanced by the organization. It also can be understood that culture is the tool to influence employees‟views of value, anticipation and regulations, to give the organization criterion of performing as well. Consequently, the how successful an organization can be or what accomplishment an organization can achieve are closely related to the culture it possesses.Coming to the part of dimensions of culture, many obvious marks like symbols, heroes and rituals can be regarded as objects of reference during recognizing staff‟s beliefs within an organization, meanwhile some latent ones like values and assumptions are showed in other ways. The characteristics and features above are the basis of making disti nctions between different organizations with different cultures (Smith, A., & Shilbury, D., 2004). Thus researchers realized that a unitary and standardized method should be adopted in order to better serve researching organizational cultures (Holmes & Marsden, 1996). Instances are easy to be listed, like different dimensions proposed by Allen and Dyer (1980), Bettinger (1989), Denison (1990) and Gordon (1988). Moreover, the research conducted by Smith and Shilbury (2004) which aims to work out dimensions to measure cultures in national sport organizations and professional clubs can be regarded as a decent method and measurement. It includes 12 axial codes (second-level) which can also be subdivided into 68 selective codes (third-level). And in this paper, 5 axial cultural dimensions (change, goals, heroes and history & tradition) with related selective codes will be chose and analyzed. Meanwhile, the culture of the chosen organization will be evaluated and the reasons why the values are positive or negative withinthe organization will also be suggested.Change, which contains 14 selective codes, can be regarded as one of the most important dimensions in Smith and Shilbury‟s (2004) theory. For example, CEO‟s attitude to change and Board‟s attitude to change may have impacts on organization‟s culture. As the member of the original Football Association and Premier League, Manchester City does not have fantastic performance with twice relegation experience in the 90s until its purchase by Abu Dhabi United Group in 2008. Through the message sent by Garry Cook, the Chief Executive Officer, and other members of board in the club‟s Annual Report 2009/10, their attitudes to make changes are obvious. The club is through transformation of many aspects like infrastructure, facilities and professional capabilities. The main change is to build the team from mediocre to one having the potential to win the championships. As a matter of fact, after 3 years‟time, Manchester City made progresses with the support of sufficient i nvestment. It is clear that the investors or members of board in other words endeavored to get the good results in a short term. However, the way of change (heavy investment) may be result in a negative effect which hampers the future development.Under Smith and Shilbury‟s (2004) guideline, goals are a common factor affecting organizational cultures which may distinguish between different organizations as well. Some regard every year‟s championship as the goal of the club, while others put finance and business in the first place. Thus, different focuses and orientations could lead organizations‟cultures to different directions. According to Brian Marwood (Annual Report, 2009/10), chief Football Administration Officer on Manchester City, the success on pitch is the ultimate goal of the club, in the meantime, the acquisition, retention and development of quality players are central to on-pitch success now and in the future. The main target reflects the culture of the organization from one aspect with many other goals like infrastructure, service provided and global extension as supplements. Single focus enables the club to accomplish mission one by one in the range of degree of importance.Heroes, as Smith and Shilbury (2004) illustrated, are essentially influencing the culture of an organization. And “on-field heroes” and “off-field heroes” offer the cultural distinctions between different organizations all the time. Moreover, “on-field heroes” may be able to act as a medium of reflecting the culture of a sport club. In Manchester City football club, Carlos T evez, without doubt, is the on-field hero at the moment with 19 goals and 7 assists. However, what the club and supporters are most satisfied with is his never-give-up spirit which is also the essence of the club‟s culture. Meanwhile, as recorded in club‟s Annual Report 2009/2010, former heroes who helped club win the 1969-70 League Cup and those who assisted the club to promote to the Premier League were introduced to the crowd before matches in memory of the achievements theyhave done. The movement above reflected the organizational recognition of past heroes. Another important view on heroes is that loyalty accounts more than other factors in evaluating contributions. Thus, a new position named Club Ambassador was assigned to the 60s legend Mike Summerbee who could be perceived as a role model of loyalty by public. The method of using “on- and off-field heroes”to reflect and promote the sunshine culture of the club can be rather positive and acquire the public recognition.History and tradition, according to Smith and Shilbury (2004), is always related to the sport organization‟s past experience and its perspectives on its past. Also under the axial codes, the selective codes like age of organization, perception of club success and financial impact of success on organization will be analyzed. Firstly, Manchester City football club possesses a history of 117 years. As the example in Smith‟s (2004) article described, though the past of a club is always put aside by people, the history is what they could have eternally. Thus the long history of the club can well reflect the progress of the organizational culture. Secondly, how the club perceive the success can also be a part. Manchester City is not a widely-recognized strong team until purchased by Abu Dhabi United Group. After amounts of investment, the club has stepped into the line of quasi-strong team. The Annual Report 2009-10 speaks highly of the missions the team has accomplished, though the most remarkable one is the 5th place in the league which reflects its different perception of success from other clubs like Manchester United or Chelsea. Finally, the intention of the new owner is good which is helping the team to gain success by investing in purchase of world-class players, however the over-investment, on the other side, negatively affects its future development. The final task is under the condition that the club could perform better in some way, explain how a change should be managed. The change suggested for Manchester City is a transparent system for performance appraisal and professional development to replace the one at the moment. Before managing changes, according to Robinson (2004), there is need for managers to know in which way change occurs. As suggested by Pettigrew et al. (1992), and Spurgeon and Barwell (1991), three ways which are rational, structural and contextual in respect are essential to study how change occurs. And among the three approaches, the contextual one which relies on the relationship between different objects in the organization is considered to be the most suitable approach for studying changes in sport organizations. Since the working environment is changing all the time with most managers‟ responses through introduction of new tactics like quality or performance management (Robinson, 2004), the new change is recommended. Moreover, apart from adopting contextual means to changing, there are 4 other factors affecting new change which are environmental auditing, awareness of the culture, good leadership and use of power (Grant, 1995; Johnson and Scholes, 1999). T o bespecific, this could be categorized into two groups which are people with power to change and those possessing the resources. Thus, the managers in Manchester City should take the factors into account when conducting the new change.On the other hand, there is no doubt that change will cause resistance from staff for some reasons (Kanter, 1989). During the change in Manchester City, the resistance could come from staff‟s concerns about their competence of dealing with the occurring tasks, or loss of face in front of colleagues when the outcomes of the appraisal are not good. Thus, strategies suggested by Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) seem helpful for managers to deal with the problems of resistance against change. Among them, participation and involvement is regarded as the most effective way which easily gets employees‟ recognition of the new change. Moreover, education and communication is another effective method which aims to make the staff aware of the rational of change, its process and benefits it could bring about. This method is essential for the change in Manchester City getting the staff understand the meaning of alteration.Eventually, from five approaches of implementing change generalized by Howell and Badmin (1996) and Kotter and Schlesinger (1979), the normative one is suggested to apply in Manchester City. 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