Question

You and the other top managers of your organization have been trying to cut costs through changes in organizational structure, employee benefits, and production methods.

At every step of the way, however, your middle managers and supervisors have stymied your progress by refusing to implement the changes or by doing so through half measures. These changes, they insist, are bad for the organization as a whole.

You and your top management colleagues meet to plan a new strategy. One exasperated vice president argues for coercion: force the lower managers to accept the changes or fire them.

Do you agree with this VP's recommendation? Is coercion ever an appropriate course of action? If it's not, how else might you top managers handle the situation?

Answer 1

Answer

Coercion is something like last option for the managers to use for bringing the desired change in the workplace. It involves forcing the employees/low level management to adapt and follow the changes by making them fear and threaten them to do so it order to secure and protect themselves from getting fired.

But, coercion has negative impact on the employees morale and it is not so effective to deal with the members of the firm. It might increase the stress, counterproductive behaviour and may leads to the strikes and lockouts, protest against the top management/firm by the employees and much difficult situations, that harms the reputation and profitability of the business.

In the above case, top management needs to bring Changes in the structure, employee benefits, and methods of production, to cut the cost for strengthening the financial stability of the firm. In the meeting, the VP (vice President) recommended for coerced approach to make the low level management follow changes. Even the mid level managers and supervisors are not able to understand the need and are not willingly accepting the changes, due to some fear.

Coercion is not an appropriate course of action for the given situation. The top management needs to opt for other strategies, viz, openly communicating the change and needs with the employees/low level management, and taking feedbacks from them to understand what aspects are bothering them. It is important to have a planned approach, with an effective team to bring about change and improve the production process without compromising on the employees benefit plans. Members needs to be trained effectively, in order to make them more capable and advanced for handling the new processes easily.

Involving the members in the change process and allowing them to have a say in decision making will help in implementing the desired change. Thus, coercion is not a suitable strategy, and must be avoided in order to keep peace and to bring positive change without risking the organisation's interest and the employees interest.

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