Resistance to change

Tushar had been hearing the rumour  doing the rounds since the past ten days. However, as per his nature, he had ignored it and concentrated on doing his job even better. But today, Tushar had seen his name along with other names recommended and officially told to start attending the three month's computer course to gain knowledge on the usage of computers to textile industry.

 Tushar, after completing a polytechnic (diploma) in Textile engineering had joined the J.P. Mills as a junior assistant in the design development department, some twenty years ago. At the time of joining, the textile

industry was booming. J.P. Mills was also doing well in terms of volume and profitability during the boom period. However, with the opening of the economy and the entry of many multinational readymade brands, a visible change was seen in the customers' buying behaviour. The past seven to eight years has seen a shift in the customers' mindset towards purchase of ready-to-use wear. This was unlike the earlier trend, when people preferred to purchase a well-known textile company's cloth material (in this market J.P. Mills was doing very well and had almost 27o/o market share), and get their clothes stitched by any well-known tailor. So as to keep market requirement, the J.P. Mills Director, Nithin Kapasi, decided with an MNC, Sandy Wear Store, into a joint venture with J.P. Mills base in India. in pace with the new Owner and Managing

to enter into a tie-up which wanted to enter to get a manufacturing  base in India.

 It was in this connection that the rumours started circulating about the new management planning to remove the existing employees of J.P. Mills by introducing programmes for them under the guise of

upgrading their knowledge in computers. When the rumours started initially, many executives and employees had put in their papers. But many others, like Tushar, continued to put in their hours, but one could always sense their uneasiness. Hence, seeing his name on the notice board, made Tushar uneasy and he was expecting the worst, when he received a call from Nancy, the P.A. to the Personnel Manager, Viresh, asking him to meet the latter after the lunch break.

 Tushar, when he met Viresh, was pleasantly surprised to hear that in the new organisational set-up, he would be required to do a lot of the work on the computer (packages). This would eventually result in a lot of cost saving for the company, because the available new computer packages in the market will help in reducing the time (spent) between receipt of order, selection of the various designs (optimised selection can be done with the help of the new software packages) and execution of the orders in time. Viresh ended the talk by saying that the new management expected all this responsibility to be entrusted to Tushar and hence his name had been put up on the list of those required to attend various computer courses.

Questions :

(a) What factors had caused resistance to change among J.P. Mills employees ?

(b) Do you agree with the strategy adopted by Viresh in communicating about the changes to Tushar ?

(c) Could you suggest any other way of handling the above situation ? Whv ?