Evaluating Change Management in an Indian Commercial Vehicle Manufacturing Firm

The article endeavours to understand the intellection, implementation and ramifications of change management on workers and managers through changes in the mode of work organisation and on organisational culture. It is a qualitative ethnographic study that tries to communicate the non-linear, partial nature of the change management process and the challenges that underpin its implementation in the Indian context. This paper makes a contribution to the larger intellectual conversation by going beyond the existing literature’s commentary on the impact of lean manufacturing on employees, from merely a cause and effect standpoint. It does this by drawing attention to an indeterminate subjective space that underpins interaction of employee aspiration, and work related viewpoints, corporate image, infrastructural constraints and the mode of work organisation that lean manufacturing seeks to modify. This indeterminate subjective space of organisational interaction between multiple stakeholders determines the outcome of change management. It also brings out the importance of context in impacting senior management’s decision making in its implementation of change management. The main impediments underlying the implementation of change management in the case study firm and India, comprised of limitations of personnel, infrastructure, market compulsions, supply chains and varying management repertoires and individual aspirations. The implementation of lean manufacturing in the case study firm was exacerbated by varying working arrangements prevalent within the same plant and degrees of automation and advancement in the same plant. Corporate and plant level management spoke of empowerment, participative management and long-term developmental objectives. In the same breath, there were more immediate economic and cost reduction imperatives for it to consider such as outsourcing and closing of its production shops. These counteracting measures in conjunction with the difficult Industrial Relations history of the plant made attempts to secure the wholehearted acquiescence of workers difficult. Poor communication and multiple anxieties of various stakeholders about their careers and relevance made the outcome the change management programme partial and unrealised. Finally, the paper has also highlighted the problems inherent in lean manufacturing and added voice to the sobering critique of lean manufacturing.