Accomplishing organizational change is one of the greatest challenges for business leaders in the twenty-first century. Building a successful organization takes time, effort, and perseverance. Once an organization obtains success, maintaining the success becomes a motivating force. This can prove to be an even greater challenge than building the business from scratch due to organizational structures and cultures which have been entrenched over the years. Oftentimes, due to the changing nature of the workforce today, these structures and cultures do not conform to the individuals running these organizations. When these structures and cultures are at odds with the people who make the organization run on a daily basis, leadership must initiate appropriate organizational change to push the organization forward.
Managing a transition is nothing new to Oracle’s founder and CEO, Larry Ellison. Founded in 1977, Oracle was a rapidly growing database software developer widely recognized as an industry leader (Greenbaum, 1992) throughout the 1980s. The company’s rapid ascent was built on meeting aggressive sales targets and not necessarily on putting the customer first. In the fall of 1990, Oracle’s stock came crashing down to earth amidst a fury of customer angst regarding poor software and even poorer customer service. To quote Mr. Ellison: “We were able to ignore [the problems] a lot longer than we should have. Success allows you to defer difficult decisions that should have been made” (Greenbaum, 1992, p. 30). After posting the first quarterly loss in the history of the company, a new management team was put in place with an emphasis on profitability and a user-first focus on quality. In 1991, Oracle surpassed $1 billion in sales and the renewed focus on the customer ...