Case Study: Carrie Worth is the CEO for a Boutique Hotel, called BHCo. The hotel is located on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland and provides customers with a unique luxury beach accommodation experience. BHCo prides itself on excellent customer service, luxury dining experience (5-star restaurant), exquisite room service, free internet connection, and an expensive range of toiletries in all suites. The foyer displays original works of art on the walls. Previously, the hotel managed a consistent and steady profit increase over the last 5 years including relatively stable management. However, since Worth joined the company in October 2019 to replace the existing CEO Ben Jones there were recent changes in the external environment due to the Covid 19 pandemic and Government requirements of social distancing, and as a result, BHCo was experiencing significantly reduced customers (both business and leisure), and as such, room vacancies were being recorded at 80%. Consequently, BHCo was revising its profit projections and were expecting a loss this current financial year.

The BHCo Board consists of 12 members (there are 11 male and one female) and they all enjoyed a good working relationship with Ben Jones (the previous CEO). However, since Worth has joined, she has consistently complained about ineffective senior management at the hotel indicating that staff were not working to capacity, plant and equipment were not being repaired in a timely manner and there were no maintenance routines in place. Worths leadership behaviours could be described as aggressive, getting the job done regardless and controlling every operational aspect of the hotel management.

Worth wants to move from a relaxed pace to a more vigorous pace including revising the departmental structure of the 600-hotel employees to increase accountability and improve communication among the various departments. She also wants to put strict systems and procedures in place to ensure that the hotel is running smoothly and efficiently. Worth wants to reward employees for the tasks they perform and she wants to pay attention to the finest details of running the hotel herself. Worth prides herself on ensuring both employee and customer safety are a priority, with a particular focus on providing safe equipment for employees to use and delivering fresh and safe food services to customers.

Worths leadership style is different to that of the previous CEO - Ben Jones. Ben Jones was liked by all employees. He was a people person, willing to go the extra mile for employees when they needed help and yet he was able to get the job done! Because of Jones relaxed personality, employees were understanding when he had to get tough about their individual work performance.

Worth understands that the profit forecast will need to be downgraded, however, she also believes that there is an opportunity to take advantage of low vacancy rates at this time. These opportunities are -: investing in improving outdated equipment and technology, performing maintenance and deep cleaning routines, increasing staff training, as well as considering new ideas to generate profit all of which will add value to the assets of the hotel. One such idea is to offer a five-star takeaway meal and drinks service to the Sunshine coast community!

She believes that the previous CEO was too relaxed and that things were let go with regard to maintenance and repairs and that there was a failure to attend to the operational details! Worth also hopes to streamline processes to ensure efficiencies, cut red tape and create additional income streams utilizing existing employees. However, the Board members disagree with her ideas and they regard them as being an unnecessary cost and too expensive. They do not see why these changes need to be made. Worth wants to improve facilities at BHCo to provide the customer with the luxurious experience that they advertise and think of additional ideas that will lead to increased revenue and she suggests that all of these activities will stabilize or increase the share price in the short term and lead to higher growth and higher profits leading to stronger profit and growth forecasts by market analysts in the medium and longer term.

Problems became elevated when during the end of month Board meeting when Worth disagreed vocally with the Chairperson on future company strategy. The Chairperson convinces other Board members that Worths strategies are too expensive at this time and that her ideas are unnecessary. To Worths credit, she emphasises the importance of a safe environment for customers and employees and she unveils a detailed future Strategic Plan of company activities going forward. Surprisingly, she manages to receive some support from the Board but not overwhelming support. To make matters worse, Worth is confronted with complaints from senior staff who complain directly to the Board about her leadership style. In addition to these complaints, she learns that employees are feeling nervous about the changes and some are fearful that they will lose their jobs due to the pandemic. Worth decides that there is significant conflict because of the manner in which she operates.

To manage this situation, Worth decides to consult you as the companys Director for Change. She seeks your advice about what strategies are open to her in dealing with these issues.

Q: Resistance is often a misunderstood outcome of change. How might Carrie Worth (CEO) benefit from learning about managerial responses to resistance that will facilitate change at BHCo? Discuss the three major strategies for dealing with resistance to change? Ensure you use Chapter 4 in Waddell et al. (2019) text in your answer