Managing Change
Citigroup Incorporated (or Citi) is an American based multinational banking and financial service company headquartered in Manhattan, New York. Citigroup was born out of one of the largest business mergers in history when Citicorp Financial and Travelers Group combined their assets in 1998. As of 2012, Citigroup is one of the largest financial services network in the world, doing business in 160 countries operating 16,000 offices worldwide. Citigroup currently employs 260,000 employees who service an estimated 200 million customers. Citigroup is a primary dealer in United States treasury securities and investments (Wikipedia, 2012)
The history of the company as a whole makes them as of 2012, 200 years old, tracing their founding back to 1812. In 1812, the company City Bank of New York opened its doors in New York for financial and banking services. In 1865, they changed their name to the National City Bank of New York after joining the national banking system. This move made them the largest banking system in America at the time. Currently, Citigroup is the result of the largest merger in history, whereas the company Citicorp combined with Travelers Group shortly after Travelers Group made the purchase of Salomon Brothers (a bond dealer and bracket investment bank). The new Citigroup is the combined assets, experience, and knowledge of these three major banking and investment groups combined. In 2008, Citigroup had to take a bailout from the U.S. government to ensure they made it through the financial crisis (Citigroup, 2012)
Cycle of Change
The cycle of change is a process from which an organization goes through a major change or implementation in order for the organization to change the way it currently does business. These changes can come about for many reasons, changes in technology, changes in the business structure, or major innovations within the business sector.
Each lifecycle stage does offer new opportunities for an organization. There are four distinct stages to the organizational life cycle. The first stage is entrepreneurial stage, which is the birth or the re-birth of the organization. This stage is making sure that certain resources are made available and that the organization is establishing its mark in the market. The second stage is collectivity stage which is the development of the organizations strategies and goals. In the collectivity stage this is establishing cohesion and guiding goals. This is the stage that Citigroup needs to focus upon; because of the organizations overarching goals the managers have failed the employees. Focus to be on place back building the knowledge of the employees, his or her abilities, skills, teamwork, and most of all for everyone to work together as a team. The next stage is formalization which is establishing, procedures, policies, and formal control systems. The last life cycle state is the elaboration stage which is the business revitalizing, and problem- solving stage. The paper will compare and contrast the continuous and discontinuous changes in the implementation of organization change, and the two different types of change agents within this change.
Continuous and Discontinuous
The two classifications of change that affect organization, continuous, and discontinuous, have specific agendas, and criteria to improve the company. Continuous, also known as first-order and incremental change, maintains, and develops the business. There are no drastic changes in culture, values, strategy, or identity (Palmer, Dunford, Akin, 2006). An interpretation of first-order change is maintenance for keeping up with what is the needed standard performance. A business that uses certain software may determine a new report is more effective than another report previously used. Discontinuous change, also known as second-order change is fundamentally different from first-order change. Second-order does not
