Change in Textile and Clothing Industry

Business environment is in a continuously changing process. At macro level, local or regional economic crises are emerging, trends as deregulation, globalization and advances in information systems and technologies are impacting the economic environment, population ages, governmental regulations are changing, social movements and terrorism arise, international agreements are changing, nature is negatively affected by enterprises’ activity and so on. At micro level, competition is intensifying due to market’s globalization; consumers’ requests become harder to satisfy, as their requests and needs are evolving together with their knowledge and access to information and latest developments in e-commerce etc. Internally, also, enterprises confront with a series of challenges – new strategies are adopted in order to adapt to external environment’s requests, new technologies are implemented, know how is developed, managers become more professional and informed, new market segments are addressed, changes in leadership take place and so on. In European textile and clothing industry 99% of enterprises are small or medium (SMEs) [1]. Compared to large enterprises, SMEs have very specific environmental threats, as limited material, financial, informational, human and managerial resources, lower negotiation power, higher interest rates available etc. Even though they are permanently ready to change in order to grow, usually SMEs have little information about the way to approach change effectively. Change Management increases the efficiency of change projects, inducing employees’ acceptance and involvement. After a complex research of Change Management theory and models, as well as of T&C industry’s specificities TexChange, a customized change management model, was drafted. TexChange is a straightforward but efficient fivesteps model, perfectly adapted to SMEs, to ensure the success of organizational change processes.