From each change perspective, what are the key issues to understanding the wildcat strike?
The most critical are the employee’s needs for having greater autonomy, mastery and purpose in their work. The unilateral decision to institute a tracking system in the form of a to tracking their time is draconian and insulting to every employee working for the airline. The management team might as well just tell them outright they are not trusted, and are to be reshuffled based on demand. BA Management has shown the antithesis of transformational leadership by being authoritarian and lacking in any definition of the program to show how customers will be better served or productivity enhanced. A is the complete lack of coordination with the unions, a lack of announcement over the program, no input whatsoever from employees or management, and a complete lack of understanding of why employees choose to work for them given the different hours as well. A third aspect of understanding the wildcat strike is that the meaning fo the swiped card program was only relevant and explained within BA management, there had been no announcement or development of an educational program as to why it was important in the first place. For change management to be effective there must be relevance and meaning communicated to employees if the planned changes are to be acted upon and successful (Sargent, Hardy, 2011).
Assume that you have been retained as a change consultant by BA management to advise them on how to avoid such a situation in the future. What lessons emerge from each perspective and what recommendations would you draw from each in constructing your advice to BA management?
BA Management first needs to realize that this type of program, which affects thousands of employees and their lives, must be launched to maximize adoption, not compliance. There is a major difference in launching any new initiative where adoption is key to its success relative to introducing one where compliance can be demanded. BA Management, by not informing employees of the change, is in effect saying through their actions that compliance is demanded or they will lose their jobs. The sobering fact of 13,000 people let go or nearly 25% of the workforce is a force in the BA culture that implies compliance is critical if one is to stay employed. The swipe card is introduced by management through a compliance-driven strategy with none of the business benefits defined that are relevant to those most affected. Consequently, it fails as a program and serves as the volatile catalyst of a wildcat strike.
The the following. First, BA Management needed to be more transformational as a leadership team, less authoritarian and transactional. Transformational leadership seeks to create trust by being authentic, transparent and showing how the vision of change is relevant to the better performance of an enterprise (Nussbaumer, Merkley, 2010). BA Management failed to deliver a transformational vision for the program or even consider the people it would affect the most. Second, BA Management could have explained in detail why the swipe program would be essential for the airline to stay competitive, and designed it to provide employees with more flexibility and freedom to interchange schedules. If Southwest Airlines can do this with a regional operation, surely BA has the ability to do the same. The lack of vision and explanation of benefits to the employees, and
