. Introduction
Detroit, a well known city for their music and car industry has lost its glamour. The good old days with international car shows and international celebrities attracting the city are gone and the reality is surrounded by crime, unemployment and poverty. According to the Daily Telegraph the city is unable to pay a debt of $18 Billion and was forced to declare bankrupt. As mentioned by the newspaper the car industry lost their faith in the city and a fast change is required in order to bring the economic situation in the city in a stable condition. Change is a continuous process going on around us. In order to adapt to these changes, and to bring improvements, change is also required within the organisations. This assignment will cover the basic principles of change management and how the implementation of change in any organisation can be managed effectively and efficiently. The assignment will also look at how these principles can be applied to the real life. For the purpose of demonstration, the current situation of Detroit city is taken and the change management principles and theories are then applied to the scenario in order to understand how these principles and theories can help bring about a change to improve the economic condition of the city.
The model selected for this assignment is the Kotter’s 8-step model which is a comprehensive tool that provides guidance on how to initiate, enable and manage the change in any given organisation.
II. Change Management
Change is the element of life. For any given organisation, change is unavoidable. This change can come from many different sources and for many different reasons and can be small or large. However, in order to stay competent and competitive, an organisation has to go change at all time.
Change management is a structured process that will cause proposed changes to be reviewed for technical and business readiness in a consistent manner that can be relaxed or tightened to adjust to business needs and experiences (Indiana University, n.d.).
The principles of change management are applicable on all organisations, and its usefulness is not limited to only the businesses.
In order to initiate change, there can be several sources and reasons. These initiators or the causal factors of change are called the drivers of change.
III. The drivers of change for Detroit City
For any change, the drivers can be internal or external. In the given scenario, the main drivers for change in the Detroit city are discussed below.
The people – the first and the most important driver of change in for the Detroit city is the residents of the city. The city is going deeper and deeper into slumps and the people are suffering from this. Although they are not the sole contributors to the current situation of the city, the people are one of the biggest stakeholders in the given scenario. These are the people who are suffering the most from the current situation of the city. The city once used to be a shining star and a huge industrial centre, and the people of the city thrived from this. However, the city is now down in the dumps. The productivity of the city is low and the local government does not even have the resources to provide the locals with the basic facilities and infrastructure.
Moreover, the people are facing social issues such as high crime rate. Being able to manage these problems can become a driving force and a motivating factors for the locals in order to bring about a change in the city and to turn the downwards economic trend around.
The local government – the local government can also play a significant role as a driver of change for the Detroit city. The local government is under constant pressure, both from the people of Detroit and the state, to turn the situation around and to lead the city towards the success and glory that it once held. If the local government manages to turn the
