Change in organizations.

Change

1. Give the Russian equivalents:

1)permanent; 2) to move office; 3) to have a personality clash with smb; 4) a significant change; 5) to merge with; a merger; 6) to relocate a business; 7) hostile workforce; 8) to leave smth behind; 9) to hang on to; 10) to beat smb; 11) to bring smb into change; 12) to lay smth out for smb; 13) a vision; 14) to come to a conclusion; 15) to do well; 16) margin; 17) to take time off work; 18) to be in favour of smth; 19) to recognize; 20) to downsize; 21) to delayer; delayering; 22) lean/ flat organization; 23) front-line employees / grassroots; 24) junior / middle / senior (top) managers; 25) to empower; empowerment; 26) business process reengineering (BPR); 27) area manager; 28) to give rationale for; 29) to invigorate; 30) knowledge capitalization; 31) incremental; 32) gradual; 33) relish; 34) to have an impact on smth/smb;

2. Write the verbs from the box under the correct prefix to make words connected with change. Use a good dictionary to help you. Some of the words can be used with more than one prefix.

down- de- up- re-

centralise

organise

train

grade

regulate

size

develop

launch

locate

structure

3. Complete these sentences with the correct form of the verbs from Exercise 2.

1. It is now so expensive to rent offices in the city centre that many companies are ……………….... to the suburbs.

2. The company has recently had to down ...................... its workforce.

Reducing the number of employees is the best way to stay profitable in the current economic climate.

3. Excellent customer service is vital to keep up with the competition. The company has introduced new working practices and is re ...................... all part-time staff.

4. The seating plan in our office has been re ...................... to accommodate new staff.

5. Our product hasn't been selling well recently. The marketing team has decided to re ...................... the product with a more up-to-date image.

6. The company has noticed that too many decisions are made at Head Office. It is de ...................... the decision-making process so that branch managers are more involved at an earlier stage.

7. The company has finalised the plans to re ...................... the disused car park site. It is going to become a modern three-storey office block.

8. The most successful change in our company was the decision to re ...................... the company hierarchy. Now there is more opportunity for promotion.

Underline the nouns in order to make partnerships with the verbs.

4. Mach the terms and definitions:

5. Fill in the missing words.

1. In the struggle to turn the company into a _________ commercial outfit, some lines have been discontinued altogether and some jobs have been cut.

2. The trend is towards _____________ through allowing junior staff to take personal initiatives that normally would have been beyond the scope of their jobs.

3. Kaizen is a Japanese concept of _________ improvements in products through team efforts, which is predictable and based on a progressive acceleration of past performance.

4. To manage change successfully leaders in the organization must outline a clear ________ which describes what changes will be achieved by all or parts of organization, and how the achievement will improve the organization.

5. Profits fill 18 % following the company’s restructuring after it __________ its head office to Stanford.

6. Middle managers are the usual victims of company ___________.

7. To become a leaner organization it is necessary not only to reduce the number of employees but to empower the ___________ level.

8. Substantial cuts in funding had a negative __________ on the volume of production and made the company address such issues as restructuring and reengineering.

9. Titles such as _________________ reflect the changes in the role of the head of information technology.

10. As people are afraid of the unknown, question the necessity of significant transformation or have lack of trust to senior management they may become ____________ to change.

11. There are individuals who cope with change better and flourish in changing times. They move on with today’s dynamic workplace and do not _____________ past performance.

6. Read and translate the text.

Change in organizations.

Recent years have seen massive restructuring.Companies downsizedand delayered,getting rid of levels of middle-managementin order to become leaner, flatter,supposedly more efficient organisations. Often the reasoning was that computer networks allow top managers instant access to information that was previously gathered and transmitted upwards by middle managers, whose other main function was to communicate executives' key messages downwards to the workforce, and in this they were accused of diluting or confusing the messages, or worse. With fewer organisational layers, top managers say they can communicate more directly with front-lineemployees, the people who actually produce the goods or services, and deal with customers. With less direct supervision, employees have often been encouraged to make more decisions for themselves in a process of empowerment.

Another trend was re-engineering,the idea that an organisation should not change incrementally,but should start again from scratch with no preconceptions about how things should be done, not just in manufacturing but in all the processes that contribute to what an organisation does, hence business process re-engineering, or BPR.

The human side of this, again, was that there would probably be redundancies.The people remaining would probably feel demoralised, wondering when the next wave of change was going to come and whether it would be their turn to be thrown out.

There has been a reaction to downsizing and BPR and a realisation that an organisation's most precious asset may well be its people, and above all what they know. A company's accumulated knowledge and experience is part of company cultureand is increasingly seen as a key to success. This collective knowledge and accumulated years of experience is something to cultivate and develop. Some companies have appointed a chief knowledge officerwho creates systems to make this intellectual capital available to all employees via the company intranet( an internet-type system available only to the company). Knowledge management is a new business skill, essential if an organization is to achieve knowledge capitalisation - the most profitable application of the knowledge available to it.

7. Fill in the gaps in the text with the best word