Three Star Polyplastics Manufacturing Co. Ltd., was founded in 1978 by Mr. Bishan Singh after retirement from his military service. In 1995, it was still family owned, had no union, and was conservatively and paternalistically managed. The company adapted to changes slowly, but it remained a profitable enterprise.
In 1982, the company sent five of its first line supervisors to a human relations training program, but the liberal ideas with which the supervisors were indoctrinated made a negative impression on the company's top management. As a result, all supervisory training was conducted in-house after that. In 1989, labour problems and conflicts between the supervisors and the human resource department led the management to enroll the company's 15 supervisors in a S-day executive development program organised by a management consultancy firm. This change of policy was initiated by the new H.R.D. Manager, Mr. S.P. Jain. To avoid having too many supervisors away from the factory at once, three were sent to each monthly program.
Mr. Deepak, a young supervisor who had a production engineering background, returned from the executive development program excited about what he had learnt especially about delegation of authority, giving employees the opportunity to assume the maximum possible responsibility and establishing channels of open communication with employees. After the Friday afternoon session, Mr. Deepak discussed some' of these ideas with his immediate superior, Mr. Naresh Kumar. Both seemed genuinely pleased to learn that Mr. Deepak felt he had benefited from the management development program
When Mr. Deepak returned to work on Monday morning, he discovered that several quality control problems had to be dealt with, a report was due, and several employees needed to talk with him about work schedule problems. It was Friday afternoon before he realised that he had not yet been able to take any of the ideas about which he had become so enthusiastic By this time, the frustrations of the week had taken the edge off his enthusiasm, and he became preoccupied with the pleasant thought of a relaxed weekend with his family. He felt that Monday morning would be a good time to begin the new ideas.
Questions
(a) What is the probability that the "outstanding" training program will change the behaviour of the concerned supervisors ?
(b) What factors in this organisation function as a deterrent to change ?
(c) What steps do you recommend to stimulate lasting changes in supervisory behaviour ?
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Managing change case study 