l improve CanWest's bottom line by eliminating duplication, capturing scale economies, reducing costs and improving internal and external communications" said Harry Ethans, Project Manager of the integration program. Eliminating departments such as A/R, A/P and the customer service call-in center in each of the individual newspaper groups and stations and centralizing them at the head office will reduce operating costs and will make communication between groups more efficient. CanWest remains a combination of two distinct and equally important drivers: that aimed at constant improvement of current business operations, and that of ensuring future development and growth. In order to generate new revenues, CanWests sales and marketing teams began to seek methods of increasing ratings and circulation and to launch a new generation of multimedia products. The bureaucracy at CanWest was not a hindrance but a help to this reengineering process. The bureaucratic nature of CanWest created a sense that the changes were controlled and well planned by the top management. While employees were still fearful of dealing with the radical changes happening within the company, many of them were calmed by the sense of control and direction provided by the bureaucratic hierarchy of top management. As Hammer and Champy comment in their book, without bureaucracy in traditional corporations, chaos will result (48).Change StrategyDescriptionWhen implementing a complex change program, its important to develop an underlying strategy for doing so. In the case of CanWest the change was implemented from the top down, meaning the CEO and other upper level management instigated the change with the middle and lower level employees adopting the new processes. Although each individual division of the company would enact a strategy specific to their needs, we chose to focus on the overall strategy adopted by the parent company to integrate these newly acquired ass...
