Xerox Corporation and Organizational Development Essay

Xerox Corporation and Organizational Development - Essay Example Strategies vary depending on what business, products or services, industry, location, machinery, labor and fund at the disposal of the business. In any organization, change is inevitable and the organization that thrives will always be the organization that anticipates change, is flexible and willing to adapt itself to change. Let us follow the organizational changes of Xerox Corporation that brought the company up from its fall and turned it around. Xerox Corporation is the world's largest document-management company. Headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, the company is a pioneer of photocopying that its name has become so synonymous with the product that the term "Xerox machine" is often used to refer to xerographic duplicators produced by other companies. In addition, the term "Xeroxing" is quickly becoming synonymous with "copying." The company made its presence felt in 1959 with the introduction of the first one-piece, plain paper photocopier using the process of xerography (electro photography), the Xerox 914. The company opened a famous research center, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center or Xerox PARC. Until the end of 1970, Xerox dominated the market with an amazing monopoly. Its market share was 90% and this led to a confidence about it surviving new competition in the market. By the 1980's Xerox's market share declined from 90 % to 43 % due to the competition from Ricoh, Sharp, Cannon, Kodak and IBM. Facing a downturn in office-equipment outlays, tougher rivals, an accounting scandal and management turnover, Xerox saw sales drop drastically. By the year 2000, Xerox's share price had fallen below $4, from a high of $64 a year earlier. In year 2001, Xerox experienced a net loss of $293 million. That was down 1% from the year before and 20% off its peak of $19.4 billion in 1998. [Xinxin, n.d, para 1.0] The basic reasons of failure for Xerox was not being able to anticipate and leverage the changes in the technology sector, lagging behind in developing products with digital technology and being overconfident in maintaining market share and brand loyalty. It failed to anticipate and strategize to face the emerging competition, was unable to offer customers lower priced products to counter the competition and was plagued by a lack of vision to scale to revolutionary digital age products using its strong presence. The organization was in desperate need for an OD intervention. When Anne Mulcahy, chairman and chief executive of Xerox, assumed responsibility in the year 2000, she had the unenviable task of turning around a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy. She realized that a massive organizational restructuring was in order if results needed to be achieved. Xerox's systems were studies and data was collected. The vision, the New Xerox Movement, was made to transform Xerox into a more cost-conscious, competitive, quality-control-based company contributing the first step encompassing the strategic change. Under her leadership, Xerox moved from losing $273 million in 2000 to earning $91 million in 2003. By last year, the company's profits had reached $859 million on sales of $15.7 billion. At the same time, its stock has risen, returning 75% over the last five years, compared with a loss of 6% for the Dow Jones Total