Management Change of the Xerox Company
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The Xerox company, in the 1980s, experienced the sort of problems faced by many companies in a changing economy--sharply declining market share and declining profits. The company addressed its problems with a management change, altering the leadership style and the way the leadership viewed the business climate and addressed business problems and issues. The result was a more successful operation. Other companies have used similar strategies to reshape management for a leadership structure more dedicated to quality than to responding to crises. Part of this effort included downsizing the workforce, and this was one of the first Fortune 500 companies to undertake this strategy. It involved a shift in the corporate culture in several ways, some deliberate, some a function of the move itself, and some simply a consequence. Rank Xerox is part of the multinational parent company, Xerox Corp., and both faced a decline in profits after having been the market leader in plain paper copiers. The company was not prepared for the influx of competition from Japan. Xerox decided on a survival strategy involving quality improvement both as a marketing goal and as a process for internal change, and this approach has helped revitalize Xerox's approach to marketing, human resource management, and operations around the world. The method undertaken is called leadership through quality, and it corresponds to a management approach known as total quality management (TQM). In this regard,
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n largescale layoffs, and it died when downsizing became the way in business (Ettore 16).
More companies today are seeking new ways of coping with issues of human resource management, just as did Xerox. Innovation can be encouraged by sheer need--major corporations tend to be more innovative when faced with disaster simply because the company has no choice but to innovate or die. Innovation can be encouraged by the use of incentives, the creation of teams charged with finding specific innovations, the development of innovative strategies, the introduction of team techniques such as total quality management (TQM) or quality circles, or an increased emphasis on research and development. A restructuring so that R&D takes precedence over some other operations or drives the engine rather then following along also encourages innovation. Innovation has to be rewarded at all levels to foster an atmosphere in which innovation is attempted. TQM is seen by some as a challenge to workers and as contributing to unemployment, while other authorities argue with this assessment and suggest that TQM does not bring about increased unemployment.
The act of downsizing by Xerox asserted loudly that the old promise of lifetime employment was
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Approximate Word count = 1245
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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