Overview Case Study #2 is centered around the reaction to a change initiative taken by British Airways (BA) in July of 2003. BA was implementing a new electronic time-keeping system that would use swipe cards to record when their employees began and finished work each day. As an act of protest, the staff from two terminals at Heathrow Airport in London went on a 24-hour strike that cost BA £40 million and 100,000 customers. The general consensus from commentators was that BA management made a huge mistake in launching such an unpopular initiative at the start of their busiest season. In addition, they did not take caution with regard to the attitudes of their employees, who had already reached a high level of bitterness and anger over the lack of consultation, poor wages and a general dissatisfaction with management. The end result of the wildcat strike, which was reached after extensive talks with representatives from three unions, included a delay in the introduction of the swipe card system and a 3% pay raise for administrative staff.
Questions
Each change perspective gives a slightly different insight into the key issues that resulted in the BA wildcat strike. When evaluating the situation from the organization development perspective, it is important to systematically evaluate the organization as a whole with specific emphasis on attitudes and behaviors. Had the managers of BA begun their change initiative in this way, they would have understood the negative beliefs held by the organization members that would be affected by the change. The case study said “‘the heart of the issue is that the workforce wants respect’; it was not until the wildcat strike that CEO Rod Eddington was even aware that ‘there was a respect deficit to be plugged’” (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin, 2009). With a thorough organization analysis, this may not have been the case and BA might