Company president George Reed had built a successful toy companycalled Dandy Toys, which specialized in manufacturing inexpensiveimitations of more expensive products. However, with increasingdomestic and global competition, he became concerned that his cheapimitations would not be enough to maintain the company’s currentsuccess. George decided to call a meeting with all the company’smanagers to express his concerns. He told them that Dandy Toys mustchange and become more innovative in its products. He told themanagers that rather than just knock off other companies’ toys,they must come up with creative and innovative ideas for new andmore upscale toys. “By the end of this year,” George told themanagers, “Dandy Toys must begin making its own in-house–designedquality toys.” When the managers left the meeting, they weresurprised, and some were even shocked, about this new direction forDandy Toys.Although a few of the managers suggested some ideas fornew toys during the next couple of months, nobody really seemedinterested. In fact, business pretty much continued as always atDandy Toys, and by the end of the year not a single new in-housetoy had been made.

Organizational Change: Read the Dandy Toys case study on page578 of the textbook
(see section 15: Organizational Change, Development, and Innovationin the e-text), and
answer the following questions:
a. Comment on the change process at Dandy Toys. What advice wouldyou give the
president about how to improve the change process? What are some ofthe things
that might be changed at Dandy Toys as part of the changeprocess?
b. Why wasn’t the innovation process more successful at Dandy Toys,and what can be
done to improve it?
c. Consider the relevance of organizational learning for change andinnovation at
Dandy Toys. What should the company do to improve learning? Willthis help to
create change and improve innovation?