Assignment 3 POWER, POLITICS AND CULTURE

Assignment 3: Position Paper

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Influence of Politics and Power

The Eastman Kodak Company was established on October 24th 1901 from the Eastman Dry Plate Company created by George Eastman on September 1880. Kodak held a leading position in the company that used to develop photographs and photographic films. The innovations or techniques provided by the company gave them added benefit over competitors thereby making Eastman Kodak Company the leading company for a long time period. Eastman Kodak Company designs were therefore based on four objectives that made them prosperous from the company’s start (Fowler, 2013). These objectives included lowering manufacturing expenses, upholding the company’s dominance in technological advances, engaging in widespread product marketing and expanding their corporate image to exploit the global market (De La Merced, 2012). Emphasis on attaining these objectives ensured the company filled the market with its photographic films sold at good prices and in adequate volumes around the world. It was the inventions made by Eastman’s and their exploration activities that assisted the corporation to become one of the most prosperous companies in the America during the 20th Century (Kodak, ND).

Despite the great design and excellent objectives the Eastman Kodak Company had, it faced with issues and struggles that made them run into problems since 1970s to date. As technology advanced in the late 20th century, Eastman Kodak Company required changing into digital technologies because the photography market had gradually become digital (De La Merced, 2012). In this regards, changes in the photography market to adopt digital photography implied that the traditional films being produced by Eastman Kodak Company were becoming unnecessary. Unfortunately, since establishing their digital camera in 1975 Kodak’s management and leadership style have not been competent enough to ensure the company attains competitive gain. Their error involved refraining from continuing with the expertise digital required fast enough and they also did nothing to sustain the advances in digital technology (Kodak, ND). Due to this ignorance by the leadership of Kodak, the company’s size and sales have drastically reduced and in turn led them to continue struggling financially. These are instances that are still being experienced within the company to date (Fowler, 2013).

Sources of Power

The Eastman Kodak Company experiences various sources of power that include legitimate, expert, coercive, referent and reward power. Legitimate power in the Kodak Company is the power conferred upon various positions working there and includes managerial powers and those conferred on innovation or human resource departments. Eastman Kodak can effectively use its legitimate power to ensure certain tasks are allocated to various departments and ensuring they are effectively implemented to ensure business success. Using job descriptions, legitimate powers can be granted to diverse departments in ensuring that innovations and other improvements required by the company are carried out by experts (De La Merced, 2012). Further, in exercising the legitimate powers in an organization like Eastman Kodak, the personnel having these powers need the expertise, experience and qualifications required to be respected. Subsequently, Eastman Kodak acquires power from the experts working in various departments. The expertise or knowledge at their disposure should be used to bring benefits to the company through their innovations that bring technical advances capable of maintaining the company’s profitability. Through the expert power employees at Kodak possess, they can attain legitimate power to carry out company affairs and end up becoming motivated in helping the company to achieve its operational goals (Seroka, 2012).

The Eastman Kodak company also acquires its power from coercive power. These are circumstances that are evidenced by the company’s management’s actions of threatening employees to ensure strict deadlines are being met. The management’s capability of using coercive power have not fully been taken advantage of and it requires maximizing its coercive power to ensure its employees in all departments can cope with changes in the industry. Further, Eastman Kodak acquires its power from referent power. Referent power refers to the personality the company possesses and is clearly demonstrated by its leadership of the photography industry over a long time period. Kodak was a leading company in the film and photography industry where it acquired manufactured traditional films that had a high-quality. These were activities that led them to be renowned around the globe and can still ensure employees in diverse departments work to meet the set objectives. Lastly, Kodak acquires its power from rewards and it arises from its management’s ability of recognizing and rewarding its employees. These were activities that were mainly carried out during the days when Kodak traded in traditional films and should be replicated in the digital technology era. Such moves will ensure the company’s employees remain motivated and their productivity will increase to ensure the company benefits (Seroka, 2012).

Leadership Behaviour and Culture

Decision-making skills are important because of assist individuals in avoiding indecisiveness and regretting owing to the humongous costs incurred since wrong decisions were made. Various strategies will for improving the decision-making abilities of managers at Eastman Kodak will be used for improving individual decision-making abilities and group decision-making abilities. Firstly, managers will be taught how to carry out a cost-benefit analysis before reaching a final decision about an issue affecting the company. Secondly, managers at Eastman Kodak will be taught how they can narrow down on the choices at their disposal so that they can simplify their analyzing of costs and benefits of adopting a certain decision. Thirdly, managers in Eastman Kodak will be taught how they can successfully indulge in evaluating the significance of deciding on the company before they can make one. Fourthly, managers will be taught how to avoid concentrating on small issues that hardly impact the business’s performance. Fifthly, managers at Eastman Kodak will be taught how to research issues affecting the company before deciding on major issues and how they can make decisions that are well informed and based on their research to ensure they can make decisions confidently and are assured they have made the correct decision (Kehoe, 2013). In this regards, these strategies arising from the power and politics at Eastman Kodak will ensure managers can apply conflict management skills in bringing win-win situations for the company. These skills will equip these managers with the ability to avoid conflicting situations and bickering in the management team thereby ensuring the most appropriate decisions are reached.

In improving the motivation and productivity of employees working at Eastman Kodak, the managers will learn how they can use various strategies like learning how to keep genuine interest in their employees, building personal connections with them and how to inspire their employees. These activities will be enabled by teaching these managers better communication and listening skills to ensure they can effectively build good relationships with their employees and resolve any conflicts that arise in an amicable manner (Seroka, 2012). Managers at Eastman Kodak will also learn how to cope with technological changes in their industry using various strategies. They will be required to follow the influencers in the social media for suggestions on how they can remain on par with the innovations in the industry and learn the importance of spending time on research and reading about technological changes in their industry. Through such activities, these managers will find ways for making improvements to the existing technologies to achieve competitive advantage in the industry. They will learn also learn how to avoid being carried away by trends in their industry and ascertain their benefits or risks of adopting them by carrying out a cost-benefit analysis on such trends and reach appropriate decisions on their usage before they can be adopted for use (Kimball &Nink, 2017).

Leadership Influence

Poor performance by the Eastman Kodak Company management is negatively affecting the perception of employees and organizational culture. The company’s unfriendly leadership and poor relationships with employees results in distress of losing occupation as the situation grows more antagonistic and terrifying (Mattiolli, 2012). These conditions at the workplace reduce employee morale and productivity and the lack of drive in acting out at a high standard. For Eastman Kodak Company to solve this issue, it has to invest on individuals who can make sound decisions for the company. For the top management, Eastman Kodak Company can begin by contending for the most prosperous talent which can have a direct effect on the company. Additionally, Eastman Kodak Company should constitute a strong board that would hold ineffectual CEO and directors accountable for poor verdict making. Eastman Kodak Company should have an excellent market exploration team to aid forecast looming market variations so that they provide the managers with ideas from the external environment which to assist them in reacting faster and adequately to digital changes. Lastly Eastman Kodak Company can have internal subdivisions that handle generating, mounting, familiarizing to the novel technology to ease in running the company.

Executive Summary

In this regards, the company should hire competitive leaders in the company who can make sound decision for the company so as to take the company to its right position in the markets. The company’s management should get held accountable by the company’s board for the poor decisions they make. They should also make friendly environment for the workers in the company to boost their morale and familiarize them with new technology. More so, the company’s management should invest more in research and technology and freely ascertain employee feedback and improvement suggestions to ensure all staffs feel appreciated. All these initiatives will lead to better production and innovation methods by workers leading to greater digital production and increases to the company’s sales and profitability.

References

De La Merced (2012). Eastman Kodak Files for Bankruptcy. The New York Times

Fowler, B. (2013). Kodak bankruptcy: Can ‘failed company’ find new Kodak moment? Retrieved on 2 May, 2018 from https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0820/Kodak-bankruptcy-Can-failed-company-find-new-Kodak-moment

Kodak, (ND). www.kodak.com

Kehoe, K. (2013). 10 Ways to Improve Your Decision-Making Skills. Retrieved on 19/5/18 from http://www.wisebread.com/10-ways-to-improve-your-decision-making-skillsKimball, L. S. &Nink, C. E. (2017). How to Improve Employee Motivation, Commitment, Productivity, Well-Being and Safety. Retrieved on 19/5/18 from http://www.mtctrains.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/How-to-Improve-Employee-Motivation-Commitment-Productivity-Well-Being-and-Safety.pdf

Mattioli, D. (2012). Kodak Shutters Camera Business, The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203824904577212873966942132.htmlSeroka, S. (2012). Five Ways to Keep Employees Motivated, Committed and ProductiveRetrieved on 19/5/18 from http://www.gordontraining.com/leadership/five-ways-to-keep-employees-motivated-committed and productivity.