Change Model Assignment Management Essay Research Paper
Change Model Assignment
Consider a real business or non-profit organization that has responded to external change well during the past five years or less.
The organization and change that you consider in this assignment must be small enough that you can do an adequate job on the assignment. Do not choose an organization or company that is too large for you to examine critically in this short assignment.
Research how and why the change was made. Cite and reference at least four sources plus the course textbook.
In your paper,
Contextualize the organizational change you have selected within one of the change models described in the course text. This means consider the time and place of the organization, as well as economic, technological, geopolitical, sociocultural, environmental and other macro forces influencing the change.
Explain the rationale for choosing the model you have selected over the other models in Chapters 1 and 3 or other parts of the course text (one or two sentences per model only), and
Make sure you consider the effects of the change on the company’s shareholders, employees, and customers, as well as on society and the environment.
The Change Model Assignment paper,
Must be four to five double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s APA Style (Links to an external site.) resource.
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of paper
Student’s name
Course name and number
Instructor’s name
Date submitted
Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Ashford Writing Center resources.
Must use at least four scholarly sources in addition to the course text.
The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
Must document any information used from sources in APA Style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s APA: Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) guide.
Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See the APA: Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.
When you submit your assignment, run it through TurnItIn in the Waypoint portal proactively to determine you have followed all APA and other appropriate writing guidelines.
Organizational Change: Playboy Magazine Shift to Digital Media
Student's Name
Institution
Organizational Change: Playboy Magazine Shift to Digital Media
Change has always been the one constant thing in the business field. Most businesses/organizations have experienced one form of change or the other, and the success of such changes depends entirely on how well change is managed. Organizational change plays a fundamental role in an organization's success by creating a competitive advantage (Weiss, 2016). When change is well-managed, it can push the organization in the right direction and help it thrive even through difficult seasons. This paper explores the recent change experienced by Playboy Magazine. This change model best suits this particular change and the effects of the change on employees, shareholders, and consumers.
Playboy Magazine: An Overview
Playboy is a lifestyle brand magazine based in the United States (US) (Playboy, n.d.). The magazine provides lifestyle and entertainment content to people all over the world. Playboy Enterprises publish it. The magazine has been around for almost seven decades, and in those years, it was published as a print media (Playboy, n.d.). However, in 2020, amidst the Corona Virus pandemic, Playboy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) announced that a final print edition would be published in 2020 in the US, and the magazine would shift to digital publishing. Part of the reason he gave for this shift was the pandemic, which had interfered with Playboy printed copies' distribution, especially during the lockdown (Kohn, 2020). Another reason was the changing preferences of consumers.
The CEO noted that they had been looking at ways in which the print magazine could meet the needs of consumers by offering them content daily instead of consumers waiting for months to receive the kind of content they want (Kohn, 2020). Before this shift, Playboy print editions were published after every three months, and this is something the Magazine leaders wanted to change. For a magazine that has distributed print copies for decades, ceasing print editions and shifting to digital media was a huge step towards complete digitalization. However, the magazine was preparing for the shift over the years by focusing on building an online following in social media channels such as Instagram (Kohn, 2020). Yet, the change was reactive rather than proactive. Reactive change occurs when an organization responds to an existing opportunity or challenge (Weiss, 2016). Also, reactive change happens when certain factors (internal or external) force the leaders to take certain actions to safeguard the company's interest. The Playboy magazine was responding to the challenges presented by the pandemic and the changing preferences of consumers. Other than these two challenges, the organization also had an online following, which provided an opportunity that needed a response. Kohn (2020) indicated that only a small percentage of the magazine's consumers received print copies. As such, many online consumers had no print media access, necessitating a need for digital media.
Change Model
Lewin's change management model would best manage the shift from print to digital media for Playboy magazine. Lewin's model involves three main stages: Unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. The unfreezing stage involves preparing people for the change (Weiss, 2016). During this stage, people understand why the current way of doing things is not working, what needs to be done differently, and how they'll benefit from the changes. In the case of Playboy magazine, the CEO, in his initial letter, which was directed to the Playboy team and partners, informed them that they needed to change from print to digital media because of the pandemic, the changing preferences of consumers, and to meet the magazine's mission in the most impactful and effective way (Kohn, 2020). Through this, the team understands that due to the pandemic, printed copies will not reach the consumers. Those who embrace this change will be able to share their content with online consumers through digital media. Those who resist this change will have no way of reaching out to consumers and sharing their content since it could not be published in print editions. Also, those who adopt digital media will be able to reach more consumers because, according to Twenge, Martin, and Spitzberg (2019), the use of digital media has been on the rise, with more consumers spending more time on digital media than on print media in recent years as compared to the 1990s.
The moving stage involves the actual change. In...