Lion Nathan Case Study

This report is a case study on Lion Nathan, a prominent alcohol company in Australia. It explores the company's cultural change strategy and its impact on human resource practices. The report analyzes various change management theories and provides recommendations for future improvements.

Running head: LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note

1LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
Executive Summary
The respective paper is a report based on the case study of one of the most prolific alcohol
company of Australia, Lion Nathan Company. The case study mainly focuses about the human
resource practice of the Company, highlighting the cultural change strategy that the company has
brought in order to be the leading company of the nation. The report analyses the various human
resource management approaches with change management and change leadership theories in
order to analyze the internal as well as external condition of the organization. The report also
gives recommendations about the necessary changes that the organization can bring in order to
function smoothly in future.

2LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
Introduction
Change management is indeed an important factor in an organization. Change
management is an algorithmic and systematic approach in order to deal with the transition as
well as transformation of the goals, processes and technologies of an organization. Change is
inevitable. An organization needs to change in order to update and upgrade itself for its survival
and thrive in the fierce global competitive world. The purpose of change management of an
organization is to implement strategies, schemes and policies in order to effect change, control
change and help other individuals in an organization to adapt the change as positively as it can
be. The respective paper is a report based on the case study of one of the most prolific alcohol
company of Australia, Lion Nathan Company. The case study mainly focuses about the human
resource practice of the Company, highlighting the cultural change strategy that the company has
brought in order to be the leading company of the nation. The report analyses the various human
resource management approaches with change management and change leadership theories in
order to analyze the internal as well as external condition of the organization. The report also
gives recommendations about the necessary changes that the organization can bring in order to
function smoothly in future.
Company overview
Lion is a beverage and food company that operates in Australia and New Zealand. The
company produces and also markets a range of beverage, alcohol and milk products. Beer, wine,
cider and also plain and flavored milk, yoghurt, cheese, juice and soy products are some of the
products that have been produced and marketed by the respective company. The company Lion
was formed in 2009 under the name Lion Nathan National Foods. In the year 2011, the company

3LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
changed its name to Lion and then National food became a subsidiary company that was based
on the city of Melbourne that was called Lion Diaries and Drinks. Therefore, it can be
understood that the company is a famous brewer as well as a diary company in Australia
(Lionco.com).
Purpose and Objectives
The purpose of the company Lion Nathan is to produce dairy and juice products that
would deliver important and essential nutrients to the families of Australia despite any regional
of geopolitical barriers. The respective company Lion Nathan is to provide a strong evidence that
the alcohol which are produced in the cider press and breweries of the company are authentic as
well as having certain health benefits that can cater to the health requisites of the population up
to certain extent. The main objectives, apart from providing proper goods, products and services,
are also committed towards working for the benefit of communities and societies in New
Zealand and Australia. By the help of maximizing the health benefits of its products, the
company plays an active role in the community’s efforts to minimize or eradiate excessive
eating, drinking and anti social behavior among the Australian citizens and New Zealanders
(Lionco.com).
Business Operations
The respective company Lion Nathan is a food and beverage company that is considered
one of the most important companies in the nation. The company offers the customers (both
functional as well as prospective), Australia’s most delicate and magnanimous iconic brands in
milk, beverages related to diary, such as milk shake and other drinks with milk, cheese, yoghurt,
juice as well as soya milk. The company, every year, purchases almost one billion liters of milk
from over 550 farmers of Australian diary and also takes almost 75,000 tons or fruits from the

4LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
orchards of the nation. The company works relentlessly to build amicable partnership agreements
with their customers, farmers and other stakeholders of the respective company and have remain
attached to its core business focus, which is creating and producing value in the long term
business arena by getting core competency or becoming enigmatically championed in the field of
dairy and juices, and credentials of their own safe, secured, reliable and honest supply chain
management which is another core competence of the respective company (Lionco.com).
Discussion
Change management- definition, scope and approaches
Change management can be defined as a collective term of all kind of approaches that are
created, prepared and formulated within as well as outside the organization in order to prepare,
support as well as help the individuals, teams, organizations or collective groups in making the
changes in an organization (Kotter 2012). It cannot be denied that change is inevitable. The only
permanent thing that remains in the world is change and with the passage of time, the old ideas
are debarred and new ideas come into force, thereby, changing the complete sociological, socio-
economic, political as well as physical changes in the society with new sets of approaches and
ideologies that emerge in order to progress the nations of the societies. Therefore, it is always
echoed that changes should be acknowledged and encouraged. In the context of human resource
management, the aspects of change management are indeed a necessity. Changes occur in the
organization due to a plethora of factors, such as the external as well as internal influences.
External influences include socio-political, political factors, economic factors such as changes or
amendments in the economic schemes and policies of the nation where the company is working
in. The human resource management team of an organization is always in a constant pursuit to

5LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
update and upgrade the composition of the employees in the organization, therefore, aspects of
change management theories have been continuously used by the human resource management
team of a particular organization for its development and progression (Calder 2013). The
respective report deals with the change strategies the human resource management of the
company Lion Nathan had taken up in order to place the company into one of the leading alcohol
producing firm in New Zealand and Australia.
Human Resource Practices and Change Strategies
Identified Issue
In the early years of 200s, Lion Nathan company witnessed an increasing amount of loss
and underperformance. After a keen exploration, the causes and reasons identified for the
underperformance of the company was the management and the individuals who were designated
in the management sectors of the respective company (Theage.com.au.2003). Therefore, such
obnoxious situation needed for an ultimate solution; therefore, the idea of change management
was introduced in the company. The company had been determined to change its management
and employee culture. Lion Nathan Company believes in ten core behaviors within their
organization. The People and cultural systems leader of Lion Nathan, Jason Sharpe declared that
it is the large scale and long term culture transformation that drives the engagement of Lion
Nathan’s employees up to a greater extent. The introduction to leadership development
framework has helped in reinforcing practices such as regular feedback from peers and direct
reports.

6LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
The theories and approaches
An organizational culture can be divided into three sections, firstly, Artifacts, secondly,
espoused values, and thirdly, basic assumptions and values (Driskill 2018). Artifacts can be
defined as the surface culture that can be easily discerned, yet it is hard to understand or
comprehend universally as well as objectively. Espoused values can be defined as conscious
strategies, goals and philosophies. Basic assumptions and values can be defined as the medium
by which core as well as the essence of culture is comprehended, yet it becomes difficult to
holistically understand because they exist widely in the unconscious state of mind of the
individuals within an organization (Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015). Therefore, it has to be
remembered that culture is both static as well as dynamic factor that widely influences the
activities and outlook of an organization intensely (Birukou et al. 2013).
The change management theories that can be utilized in interpreting the cultural changes
the company has undergone are “Kotter’s 8 step change model”. Kotter’s 8 step change model
for change management can be broadly and widely defined as a change model proposed by an
American management expert, John Kotter that are aimed to improve the ability of an
organization to change and increase its opportunities in the context of culture change in order to
succeed. According to Kotter’s 8 step change model, there are eight mechanisms that can be
utilized by the management professionals in order to bring and manage efficient changes that can
be introduced within as well as outside the organization (Appelbaum et al. 2012). The eight
mechanisms that has been mentioned and described in Kotter’s 8 step change model are:
establishing a sense of urgency for change among the employees, formation of a powerful
collaboration, creating a vision and a mission for the sake of change, communicating the vision
and the mission to the employees and individuals working in the organization in order to

7LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
influence them to accept the changes, encouraging and empowering other employees to act on
the vision, planning and creating short term wins, producing more change oriented activities and
institutionalizing new approaches to a certain extent that the occurrence of change is normalized
within as well as outside the organization (Kotter 2012).
Changes brought
The company Lion Nathan brewery of Australia, with its effective change management
theories, approaches and perspectives, was able to transform the organization leadership style
from “command and control” to “coaching and result oriented” style. The modification of
leadership style from a commanding to a cooperative coaching style has been one of the reasons
for the development of the organization and employee satisfaction. With the introduction of a
leader with completely different personality, from assertive to cooperative and collaborative,
hugely influenced and manipulated the employees within the organization to work in a better
way with adequate and optimum enthusiasm and encouragement. The organization has aptly
amalgamated the contingency theory of leadership style with Kotter’s 8 step of change model for
bringing in change in the human resource management, especially, the arena of leadership within
the organization. The contingency theory of leadership style is largely a situational theory that
focuses on suitable variables that might determine the most appropriate or effective leadership
style to fit the specific circumstances at that time (Chemers 2014). The organization might have
been facing situational issues which required certain core competent soft and hard skills which
might be the reason for introducing the theory of contingency while changing their leadership

8LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
styles in their management department that can roughly be called “the need of the hour” (Dinh et
al. 2014).
With the help of change management theories, the organization had also introduced
subsequent changes in the process of recruitment and selection within the organization.
Recruitment and selection is one of the most important factors in the organization and can be
called as one of the core functions of the organization. Through the process of recruitment, the
company selects its candidates and employees who would work for them to meet the objectives
of the company. The human resource management system in Lion Nathan had taken up certain
policies, with the help of Kotter’s change management theory, regarding change in the
qualitative recruitment of the employees and candidates. The company is more intrigued to hire
candidates with high learning ability with dexterity to adjust and cooperate themselves in any
kind of adverse situation, having a sound emotional intelligence apart from academic intelligence
with traditional strategic ability (Lionco.com). Such amendments and modifications inside the
organizational management arena have proved to be overtly beneficial for the company that
fetched the company with popularity and fame.
Recommendations
Despite of the subsequent improvement that had been brought up by the company through
change management approaches and perspectives in order to enhance the performance of the
company in the global as well as local market, there are certain fallacious areas which are needed
to be changed or modified or thought upon. Recently, the company Lion Nathan has diversified
its business operations from selling beer and alcohol to selling coffee and other popular
beverages among the beverage consumers all over Australia and New Zealand. However, even

9LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
abiding by the traditional business proverb “risk is equal to return” , the company had indeed
taken up the risk of diversification, but nevertheless, has been facing tremendous ups and downs
throughout its life cycle. As a beverage company, Lion Nathan had been facing fall in its
revenue, where l revenue for New Zealand and Australia fell 9.5 per cent in the 2016 year, to
A$2.2 billion ($2.38b), though the company said the NZ side of the business was performing
well (Nzherald.co.nz.2017). Therefore, to cater to the immediate concerns of the company
regarding its profit, revenue and goodwill, the company still needs to revisit and rejuvenate its
management strategies. The company should provide more attention to the marketing department
of the organization. The company must know the fact that marketing department is the core area
of a business which helps the business survive and thrive in the competitive world (Burns, Bush
and Sinha 2014). Therefore, the organization should be aware of the fact that, in order to enhance
the performance of the company, more stress should be given to the marketing department.
1. The company Lion Nathan can include more effective and optimized recruitment and
selection methods in case of the marketing department recruitment and try to hire the best
candidates with dexterity in the field.
2. The company can also introduce proper, prolific, sufficient and effective training and
educational programs in the arena of marketing and sales to the employees and
professionals of the marketing department.

10LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
Conclusion
The respective paper concludes by providing a report based on the case study of one of
the most prolific alcohol company of Australia, Lion Nathan Company. The case study mainly
focuses about the human resource practice of the Company, highlighting the cultural change
strategy that the company has brought in order to be the leading company of the nation. The most
significant changes that had been brought down by the human resource management of the
company Lion Nathan was culture change in the organization, where the leadership style of the
organization was changed from being assertive and dictating to cooperative and collaborative in
its approach with the help of Kotter’s 8 models of change theory. Another important change that
had been brought down by the organization was rejuvenation and reformation of the recruitment
and selection section of the organization, where the company demanded for more promising,
highly skilled employees who have a strong arena of emotional intelligence in them, who possess
both traditional as well as modern wisdom in order to deliver their work in the organization. The
report concludes by analyzing the various human resource management approaches with change
management and change leadership theories in order to analyze the internal as well as external
condition of the organization. The report also concludes by giving recommendations about the
necessary changes that the organization can bring in order to function smoothly in future.

11LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
References:
Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S., 2015. Changing organizational culture: Cultural change
work in progress. Routledge.
Appelbaum, S.H., Habashy, S., Malo, J.L. and Shafiq, H., 2012. Back to the future: revisiting
Kotter's 1996 change model. Journal of Management Development, 31(8), pp.764-782.
Birukou, A., Blanzieri, E., Giorgini, P. and Giunchiglia, F., 2013. A formal definition of culture.
In Models for intercultural collaboration and negotiation (pp. 1-26). Springer, Dordrecht.
Burns, A.C., Bush, R.F. and Sinha, N., 2014. Marketing research (Vol. 7). Harlow: Pearson.
Calder, A.M., 2013. Organizational change: Models for successfully implementing change.
Chemers, M., 2014. An integrative theory of leadership. Psychology Press.
Dinh, J.E., Lord, R.G., Gardner, W.L., Meuser, J.D., Liden, R.C. and Hu, J., 2014. Leadership
theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives.
The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), pp.36-62.
Driskill, G.W., 2018. Organizational culture in action: A cultural analysis workbook. Routledge.
Kotter, J.P., 2012. Leading change. Harvard business press.
Lionco.com. Available at: https://www.lionco.com/about-us
Lionco.com. Available at: https://www.lionco.com/about-us/our-leadership
Lionco.com. Available at: https://www.lionco.com/people-careers

12LION NATHAN CASE STUDY
Nzherald.co.nz.2017. Available at: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?
c_id=3&objectid=11911204
Theage.com.au.2003. Available at: https://www.theage.com.au/national/how-lion-nathan-boss-
turned-himself-around-20031110-gdwpjl.html