management of IBM : case study of IBM

Introduction
The management of IBM has hired a new CEO named Louis Vincent Gerstner whose objective
is to regulate the expense structure matching the cost and revenue of IBM. He plans to complete
this duty through the reconstruction of IBM's Human Resource plan and the reduction of their
worldwide staff. The most significant aim of him is to correct the size of the company as it
highly impacts its payroll. Change management is defined as the framework of an organization
that helps in the effective management of its business through the development of relevant
strategies and implementing them to maintain its proper structure (Martinez, 2017). The research
aims to compare the change management theories, like the Kaleidoscope model, with the case
study of IBM. This will help Gestner to reduce the detention towards change.
Kaleidoscope Model of Change

Figure 1 : Change Kaleidoscope model
Source: (Tsoukas, 2019)
Outer ring – Organizational Contextual Features
 Time – The phase allows one to examine the time utilized by Gestner for the
implementation of the change. The required time has to be short as IBM urgently needed
to bring in the changes because of the huge loss experienced by it and change was
expected to streghthen the customer relations, retaining its competitive status. The
company had become bureaucratic and its culture was weakening rapidly as compared to
previous times. Furthermore, the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, also had to
implement changes in the company immediately while managing the engagement with
the administrative sponsors and articulating the business case since it was facing loss
because of the weak strategies which were unable to handle the competitive pressure.
 Scope – The factor explains the scope of change that is required by IBM to be
implemented company-wide as the company was giving slow responses to the relevant
market. Moreover, it has been facing immense loss with policies such as the promise of
lifelong employment and massive resistance towards changes being brought in the
company by the CEO. Other than this, a few department-specific changes were also
required to be implemented, particularly in the human resource department as the
management had been bringing in large and unrequired numbers of new employees. Also,
the IT department was assumed to concentrate on management processes too rather than
just the mainframes. Likewise, Microsoft was able to recognize the administrative
sponsors and the other influencers to help it obtain its objectives with the purpose of
restructuring and implementing both company-wide and department-specific changes
within the company.
 Preservation – This includes the many practices, assets, and features that should be
preserved during the change implementation. While Gestner struggles to bring in
effective changes within IBM, there are a few practices that are to be kept in mind as no
employee would want to leave the company. The factors that should be retained include
performance dependant salaries and the rewards, the formal communication lines, the

sophisticated HR system, the existence of a staff audit, the presence of company songs
and slogans that raised positive feelings, and the strong connection of the company's
employees with it. Nonetheless, the restructuring of the human resource department
should be retained despite the implemented change. Furthermore, Satya Nadella should
conserve the employee attitude towards Microsoft's core values and objectives as they are
the base of the success of any company.
 Diversity – This illustrates the level of diversity faced by Gestner after implementing the
changes that included the attitudes, values, and norms of the company. The mindset of
the company's employees is not diverse so they are not willing to receive the changes
positively. Most of the staff wore similar clothes, had similar behavior, and belonged to
the same age group of older citizens. While most of them resisted the change and made
fun of it, some even had to face mental issues because of the pressure of accepting the
change (Spohrer, 2017). On the other hand, Gestner was distinct from them as, being an
outsider, he held strong policies and thus, achieved success in bringing in the changes as
compared to the previous CEO, Akers.
 Capability – This phase describes the managerial abilities of Gestner to check how
effectively can he implement the changes. Akers' ability was weak and insufficient to
implement the required changes as he was completely instilled with the culture of IBM.
Furthermore, the capability of the company's staff to receive immediate change was weak
too, and instead of accepting it, they made fun of it for they were uninformed about the
declining position of the company in terms of competition and finance. This was mostly
because they were not encouraged to participate in the processes of the decision-making
and felt that Gestner was not taking the company's control. Moreover, the company had
been concentrating on irrelevant products, which made them face financial loss and fail in
the market competition and hence, lose the capability of accepting changes. Other factors
that led to this situation were the resistant staff, the slow reaction of the company towards
the market, and its weak culture. A famous company, Kodak, could also not implement
changes effectively as it could not completely understand the importance of its services
requiring a digital transformation, much similar to the lack of comprehension within IBM
its low capability of shifting to latched mobile phones because of its late entry in the
market.