Writer Can Select The Title

Ericsson and IT enabled change

Student name

[Institutional Affiliation(s)]

Introduction

The given article is about the socio-material perspective of IT-enabled change. This case study mainly deals with Ericsson which is a telecommunication company that succeeded in transforming its finance and account ting unit from decentralized structures into a shared service center (SSC). Mainly, four dimensions (common meaning, ground, behavior, and interest) have been spotted in this paper, that highlight IT-enabled change as a practice, both material and social.

Overview and history of the organization

Ericsson is a telecommunication organization that was founded in 1876 having a business with over 80,000 employees worldwide. It has been in the limelight for transforming its finance and accounting unit within three years into a globally oriented structure that consists of networks of SSCs. Ericsson needs advanced ways of transferring the financial and account data as it started communicating at the global level (Loney, 2019). It started its transformation process formally at the beginning of 2004 that completed successfully, around 2006.

Organizational Behavior issues

In this case study, various organizational behavior issues were observed but the few that directly influence the employees include the issue of time taken by employees in adopting the changes that they are just introduced with. Ericsson finds it difficult to motivate its employees to adopt the new environment as recipients (Shonhe & Grand, 2019). For example, the new tools used by this organization have a conflict with the previous ways of recording performance due to which employees find it hard to absorb the way the new tool works.

With the invention of the new ways of judging the performance and skills of the recipients, the organization faced another issue that was of poor communication and feedback. For the employees at Ericsson, it was difficult to share their individual views as they used to do in the absence of IT-enabled change. Because of the lack of direct involvement in the operations, employees were unable to provide proper feedback, when asked.

As the employees were not comfortable in adapting to the newly implemented technology and the ways that were introduced with it, a change in expectations of the employees was observed that effected their behavior as well. From this case study, it can be seen that with change in the working environment, a change in their expectation is considered compulsory, but in the present scenario, though supportive activities of the coaching team were involved as transformation entailed changes to deeply ingrained local practices of the employees but still, it was taking too long for enabling the recipients to warmly welcome the new ways.

Goal

Considering the above-mentioned organizational behavior issues, different approaches have been given that is the ultimate goal of the consultant team. For them to manage employees, their conflicts and smooth functioning of the organizational operations. First of all, employees must be taken in confidence regarding the new tools and being a member of the consultant team, one must try to understand the concerns of recipients to resolve the conflict between previous and newly implemented ways in an organization (Cross & Calvo-Merino, 2016). Recipients must be encouraged by introducing different activities that would develop their interest in adopting new tools and ways. For resolving the conflict, highlighting commonality between the new and old tools would prove effective.

The consultant team must consider the stabilizing activities and motivation of the recipients. Recipients must not be discouraged if they share any of their views so that they feel a sense of security while giving their persona opinion or individual feedback. Management must try to understand the emotions of the employees and should arrange a session where recipients could share their views.

To bring the expectations of recipients at the same level, it is important to give them a form of the team. It would be hard for the management to fulfill the diverging expectations of employees, so the consultant team must promote ideas and activities that would unify them as a team. As a team, they would have the same expectations that authorities could consider to fulfill.

References

Cross, E. S., & Calvo-Merino, B. (2016). 26 The Impact of Action Expertise on Shared Representations.

Loney, B. S. (2019). Enhancing Decision-Making in Experienced Military Medics: A Case Study Intervention (Doctoral dissertation, The Florida State University).

Shonhe, L., & Grand, B. (2019). Implementation of electronic records management systems. Records Management Journal.