Change Model Assignment Management Essay Research Paper

Organizational Change: Playboy Magazine Shift to Digital Media
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Organizational Change: Playboy Magazine Shift to Digital Media
Change has always been the one constant thing in the business field. Most businesses/organizations have experienced one form of change or the other, and the success of such changes depends entirely on how well change is managed. Organizational change plays a fundamental role in an organization's success by creating a competitive advantage (Weiss, 2016). When change is well-managed, it can push the organization in the right direction and help it thrive even through difficult seasons. This paper explores the recent change experienced by Playboy Magazine. This change model best suits this particular change and the effects of the change on employees, shareholders, and consumers.
Playboy Magazine: An Overview
Playboy is a lifestyle brand magazine based in the United States (US) (Playboy, n.d.). The magazine provides lifestyle and entertainment content to people all over the world. Playboy Enterprises publish it. The magazine has been around for almost seven decades, and in those years, it was published as a print media (Playboy, n.d.). However, in 2020, amidst the Corona Virus pandemic, Playboy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) announced that a final print edition would be published in 2020 in the US, and the magazine would shift to digital publishing. Part of the reason he gave for this shift was the pandemic, which had interfered with Playboy printed copies' distribution, especially during the lockdown (Kohn, 2020). Another reason was the changing preferences of consumers.
The CEO noted that they had been looking at ways in which the print magazine could meet the needs of consumers by offering them content daily instead of consumers waiting for months to receive the kind of content they want (Kohn, 2020). Before this shift, Playboy print editions were published after every three months, and this is something the Magazine leaders wanted to change. For a magazine that has distributed print copies for decades, ceasing print editions and shifting to digital media was a huge step towards complete digitalization. However, the magazine was preparing for the shift over the years by focusing on building an online following in social media channels such as Instagram (Kohn, 2020). Yet, the change was reactive rather than proactive. Reactive change occurs when an organization responds to an existing opportunity or challenge (Weiss, 2016). Also, reactive change happens when certain factors (internal or external) force the leaders to take certain actions to safeguard the company's interest. The Playboy magazine was responding to the challenges presented by the pandemic and the changing preferences of consumers. Other than these two challenges, the organization also had an online following, which provided an opportunity that needed a response. Kohn (2020) indicated that only a small percentage of the magazine's consumers received print copies. As such, many online consumers had no print media access, necessitating a need for digital media.
Change Model
Lewin's change management model would best manage the shift from print to digital media for Playboy magazine. Lewin's model involve...