) In: Hiltrop J, Sparrow P (eds.) European Casebook on Human Resource and Change Management Prentice Hall, pp 110-122Downsizing:The rapidly changing global environment with regard to competition and technological advances in the industry and ICL’s subsequent decision to shift from hardware to total systems differentiation, led the MD to pursue a new strategy based on strategic alliances. The main reasoning behind this was that it allowed the company to break into new markets and gain access to new technologies quicker than would be possible if the company were acting on it’s own. This new focus, and the ongoing financial crisis led to the need to restructure the financial side of the organisation. This was achieved mainly through downsizing in a number of product areas and a series of redundancy procedures. As the case does not explain in detail the actual redundancy procedures, it is difficult to make critical assumptions of the firm. The availability of additional resources, coupled with the need for a newer set of skills and scarce financial resources appears to be a justification for the course of action taken by the company.Cultural changes:Armstrong (1999) cites the work of Furnham and Gunter (1993) defining culture as ‘the commonly held beliefs, attitudes and values that exist in an organisation. Put more simply, culture is ‘the way we do things around here’.With shifts in the product strategy and the recent collaborations came the difficult task of changing aspects of the cultural values of the organisation. The company traditionally embraced what theorists would generally refer to as a role culture. This referred to organisations operating in relatively stable environments with more of a focus on procedure, hierarchy and bureaucracy rather than dynamism (Amstrong, 2000 citing the works of Harrison, 1972; Handy, 1976; Schein, 1985 and Williams et al, 1989). For the organisation to succeed in the mor...
