and/or speed
Six Sigma—a set of principles and practices whose core ideas include
understanding customer needs, doing things right the first time, and
striving for continuous improvement
Note: This topic should be noted on the board for further discussion. Also, more
details on some of these challenges are found in Issue 5; this discussion can occur
during Issue 1 or Issue 5.
See Reality Check: Six Sigma for an example of how Six Sigma is used at
Goodyear Canada.
Once this list is complete (you may need to probe students or teach some of this material,
depending on the experience of students), highlight that a common denominator of all these
strategies is that they require companies to engage in change management. Change
management is a systematic way of bringing about and managing both organizational
changes and changes on the individual level. Although most employees understand that
change is continuous—responsibilities, job assignments, and work processes change—people
often resist it because it requires them to modify or abandon ways of working that have been
successful or at least familiar to them. Successful change rarely occurs naturally or easily.
Think-Pair-Share: Explain to students that organizations that fail to change do not
survive. Provide students with a list of John Kotter’s (1995) eight steps to managing
change, and ask them how HRM might contribute to those activities. The steps are:
(1) Not establishing a sense of urgency; (2) Not creating a powerful coalition to guide
the effort; (3) Lacking leaders who have a vision; (4) Lacking leaders who
communicate the vision; (5) Not removing obstacles to the new vision or motivating
employees; (6) Not systematically planning for and creating short-term “wins”;
(7) Declaring victory too soon; (8) Not anchoring changes in the corporate culture, or
failing to maintain the momentum of the change. See the full citation in the
Recommended Reading section.
Some of the strategic changes companies pursue are reactive changes that result when
external forces, such as the competition, a recession, law change, or an ethical crisis (such as
the backlash Volkswagen experienced in 2016 for cheating on its vehicles’ emissions tests)
have already affected an organization’s performance. Other strategies are proactive change,
initiated by managers to take advantage of targeted opportunities, particularly in fast-
changing industries.
Making Links with Previous Learning: Refer to the list generated previously about
how organizations are dealing with change (downsizing, outsourcing, Six Sigma,
process re-engineering, and the other ideas generated by students). Ask students
which of those strategies are more likely to be reactive change, and which are more
likely to be proactive change initiatives.
Small Group Exercise: State instructions and expectations for a small group activity
(5–6 students); the response should be done in PowerPoint if all groups have laptops;
limit the number of slides (5–8). In each small group, ask for a volunteer who has a
bad habit that he or she wants to get rid of (e.g., nail biting, procrastination, lack of
exercise, poor eating habits, etc.). As a group, develop a change management program
for the student volunteer while incorporating the key elements of change management
from the text. Encourage groups to display their change management programs with
Copyright © 2020 by Nelson Education Ltd.| 1-5
their PowerPoint presentations. Comment on the merits of each group’s presentation,
and also on the difficulties in assessing whether the change management programs
will produce lasting change, that is, that the bad habits will not return.
Competing, Recruiting, and Staffing Globally
The strategies companies are pursing today increasingly involve one or more elements of
globalization. The integration of world economies and markets has sent businesses abroad
to look for opportunities and fend off foreign competitors domestically.
How Globalization Affects HRM
When managers talk about “going global,” they have to balance a complicated set of
issues related to different geographies, including different cultures, employment laws, and
business practices. Human resources issues underlie each of these concerns.
Call-Out Question: Ask students to imagine that they want to send a Canadian
manager to Hong Kong for two years to give the manager developmental
opportunities. The Canadian manager earns $120,000 CAD/year. What would be
some of the challenges this manager might face? Lots of different issues may arise,
such as family issues, training in cultural sensitivity, performance management, and