Thinking Personally about Social Change

Introduction

Gucci Corporation has been chosen for this analysis since its social system changed for it to survive in the business environment in which it operates. Using a functionalist approach, Gucci had to change its organizational structure. This is because the structure makes it possible to classify the company’s departments into different functional areas, such as finance, human resources and marketing. As a result, the company’ employees are grouped according to their special talents, expertise and experience.

Social Change Analysis

The selected functional organizational structure will make the employees of the company to behave differently, for instance, there will be increased communication. This is very healthy for the business operations of the company, because more information and knowledge will be shared among the departmental employees. Moreover, there will be efficient allocation and use of the company’s resources among its employees, and since there will be a more harmonized chain of command; the employee’s morale will be higher. As communication is improved among the employees, there is more knowledge sharing, because the staff members tend to form a strong work relationship. In this regard, decision making processes are made faster since there is a lot of coordination among the employees. This also implies that there is little duplication of the company’s resources since its raw materials and labour operate more efficiently, because every employee concentrates more in his/her role, as outlined in the firm’s job description manual (Weinstein, 2010).

The functional requisites explored above led to incorporating more human resources to facilitate business operations of the organization. For instance, the employees of the organization were involved in the decision making processes, and this helped in improving communication among the staff members and management team. Moreover, it helped in outlining functional roles for the staff and the management, and this minimized conflict among the team. In this regard, post evaluation of Gucci’s functional organizational structure can be done by conducting employee questionnaire interview to determine its success/failure (Giddens, 2006).

Poor performance of Gucci prompted the human resources managers to instigate functional changes in the company’s departments. This was done after a consultative effort, when all the employees had been informed of the anticipated benefits, for instance, reduced role conflicts among the staff members. These changes would not only benefit the organization, but the employees were to be the most beneficiaries since their compensation and rewards increased. However, during the decision making process, some employees were not convinced fully, and they tried to resist the proposed functional changes, arguing that it would increase the workload. Some junior staff employees simply complied with the proposal without voicing their arguments, and this could be as a result of fear or ignorance, but some of them made suggestions that were given lesser weight. On the contrary, the management team’s ideas were implemented due to their highly skilled/expertise, knowledge and experience in strategic decision making. This was a clear indication of power that is witnessed in many organizations, where the junior employees’ suggestions are given less weight (Haralambos & Holborn, 2004).

Focusing on Gucci social setting, desirable ideas on reality, definition and values on running the business, made the management team to implement the functional structure, which would facilitate organizational growth and development. However, this came with some amendments to avoid role duplication and conflicts, which might lead to wasting the organizational resources. Therefore, it is evident that such frantic efforts show how people negotiate skillfully, and change the proposed ideas and definition of the current problem/situation. Regarding this, people often negotiate for changes, which lead to amendments (Giddens, 2006).

Indeed, changes emerge from historical circumstance, for instance, poor performance of Gucci. Such poor performance circumstances prompted the management team to implement structural changes. In summary, the change was happening because of poor organization performance that could be controlled through a proper human resource management. These changes were instigated by experienced and skilled senior management team. Implementing the functional structure would lead to both human and financial resources productivity in the organization. Therefore, the functional/structural change management illustrated the interplay of structure and human agency as the causes of change in the organization.