Thursday, March 12, 2015

The GA Business and Management Consultancy: The Analysis by Dr. Jolito Ortizo Padilla

Note: Copyright Infringement is Punishable By Law
 
 
Executive Summary:
GA Consultancy  is one of the most prestigious and a well known consulting company in Asia with 20 branches all over the world. It services is diverse in the field of engineering, architectural, mining, construction and environments. The structure consists of two matrix streams  namely, the knowledge  which is for training and developing employees resulting to productivity, effectiveness, and efficiency among employees and the business streams which involved in the growth of the business, acquiring contract from the business sectors, managing projects and delivering these projects to the satisfaction of the clients.

Although the company is successful in consultancy business sector, there are situational problems that cause the company to prevent its growth sustainability in the marketplace. During the management audit the following are the operational drawbacks of GCC:

·         A mismatch between the present market growth potential over the current employee specialization.

·         Lack of planning and outdated operational strategy

·         Lack of motivations among employee

·         Outdated knowledge streams that are relevant to the technologically market sphere

·         Mission , Vision  goals and objectives are not emphasized and practice among employees

·         Employee engagement and commitment are lacking

The above mentioned weaknesses pre-suppose the GA Consultancy weaknesses that hinders the process of growth and expansion of the company.

  Introduction:

The effects of increased economic pressures and demands for greater competitiveness have drawn attention to the structural variables. The movement towards tighter and leaner organizations has emphasized the importance of alternative forms of structure and the demand of flexibility. According to Eden, M, 2004, “ It is important to design at least part of the organization so that it can recognize early  the direction in which uncertain situations will unfold, and so respond to change and uncertainty in an opportunistic, flexible and effective manner”.

GA Business and Management Consultancies and Management Today carried out a survey of 1,200 managers, from all types of organization, in order to understand their attitudes to their employers and how they are likely to change in the future. The survey draws attention to the changing relationship between organizations and individuals and that ties to the workplace will increasingly cease to be a hindrance.

There are four interconnected forces that have brought about the changing environment:

·         Changes in the shape of organizations themselves with outsourcing leading to a range of previously in house processes and functions fulfilled elsewhere.

·         Changing pattern of people’s working days with constant reference to flexibility. More than two thirds of respondents spent a significant amount of time working outside the organization.

·         The pattern of people’s working lives taking a very different shape with the ending of jobs for life and the active pursuit of career changes. Individuals increasingly choose employment that allows them to work from home or provide the latest technology;

·         The impact of new technology enabling greater workforce mobility. However, although technology is usually an enabler, it cans also disabling. For example, e-mail is the most important activity in helping people get their job done but it is also a burden.

2. Description of Management Function

Managers and employees of GA Consultancy throughout an organization should participate early and directly in strategic implementation decisions. Their role in strategy implementation should build upon prior involvement in strategy formulation activities. GA Consultancy personnel commitment to implementation is a necessary and powerful motivational force for managers and employees. The rationale for objectives and strategies should be understood clearly communicated throughout an organization. Major competitors” accomplishments, products, plans, actions and performance should be apparent to all organizational members. Major external opportunities and threats should be clear and managers’ and employees’ question should be answered. Top down flow of communication is essential for developing bottom up support.

GA Consultancy needs to develop a competitor focus at all hierarchical levels by gathering and widely distributing competitive intelligence; every employee of GA Consultancy should be able to benchmark her or his effort against best in class competitors so that the challenge becomes personal.

GA Consultancy Management Issues Central to Corporate Strategies is:

1.      Establish annual objectives

2.      Devise policies

3.      Alter existing organizational structure

4.      Restructure and Engineer

5.      Revise reward and incentives plan

6.      Match managers with strategy

7.      Develop a strategy-supportive culture

8.      Develop an effective human resources function

9.      Link performance and pay to strategies

Annual Objectives

Establishing objectives is decentralized activity that directly involves all managers in an organization. GA Consultancy personnel should actively participate in establishing annual objectives which can lead to acceptance and commitment. Annual objectives are essential to GA Consultancy because they 1) serve as a basis for allocating human resources 2) evaluate managers in their performance appraisal are  3) as the main instrument to monitor progress of the employee in achieving a long term objectives  4) establish organizational, divisional and departmental priorities. It is always a procedure that the objective are to be approved, revised or be rejected. The purpose of annual objectives can be summarized as follows Padilla, J, 2010

 “Annual objectives serve as guidelines for action, directing and channeling efforts and activities of organization members. They provide a source of legitimacy in an enterprise by justifying activities to stakeholders. They serve as standards of performance. They serve as an important source of employee motivation. They provide a basis for organizational designs”.

Annual objectives should be consistent, measurable, consistent, clear, challenging and be communicated throughout the organization that are the characteristics by appropriate time dimension and with rewards and punishment, reasonable, challenging, clear, communicated throughout the organization, characterized by an appropriate time dimension with rewards sanctions. Too often, objectives are stated in generalities, with little operational usefulness. To improve GAC communications and performance are to be specific , clear and  measurable.  Objectives should state quantity, quality, cost and time –and also be verifiable. Terms and phrases such as maximize, minimize, as soon as possible, and adequate should be avoided.

Policies

Changes in GA Consultancy strategic direction do not occur automatically. On a day to day basis, polices are needed to make strategy works. Policies facilitate solving recurring problems and guide the strategic action. Broadly defined, policy refers to specific guidelines, methods, procedures, rules, forms and administrative practices established to support and encourage work towards stated goals. Policies are boundaries, constraints, and limits on the kinds of administrative actions that can be taken to reward and sanctions behavior of GAC personnel; they clarify what can and cannot be done in pursuit of GAC objectives.

Policies let both employees and managers know what is expected of them, thereby increasing the likelihood that strategies will be implemented successfully. They provide a basis for GA Consultancy management control, allow coordination across organizational units, and reduce the amount of time managers spend making decisions. Policies also clarify what work is to be done and by whom. They promote delegation of decision making to appropriate managerial levels where various problems usually raise, Wall Street Journal, (2001).

The Strategic Business Units

As the number, size and diversity of divisions in an organization increase, controlling and evaluating divisional operations becomes increasingly difficult for GA Consultancy managers. Increases in sales often are not accompanied by similar increases in profitability. The span of control SBUs accords to certain common characteristics, such as competing in the same industry, being located in the same area, or having the same customers.

Two disadvantages of an SBU structure are that it requires an additional layer of management, which increases salary expense. Also, the role group vice president is often ambiguous. However, these limitations often do not outweigh the advantages of improved coordination and accountability. Another advantage of the SBU structure is that it makes the tasks of planning and control by the corporate office more manageable.

Restructuring and Reengineering

Restructuring and reengineering are becoming commonplace in the corporate landscape across the United States, Europe, Asia and GCC countries. Restructuring also called downsizing, rightsizing, de-layering, involves reducing size of the firm in terms of number of employees , number of divisions or units, and number of hierarchical levels in the GA Consultancy organizational structure, S. Ghostal and C.A Bartlett, (2005) . This reduction in size is intended to improve both efficiency and effectiveness in KTG. Restructuring is concerned primarily with shareholder well-being rather than employee well being. Recessionary economic conditions forced company to downsize, lying off managers and employees.

In contrast reengineering is concerned more with employee and customer well being than shareholder well being. Reengineering also called process management, process innovation, or process redesign-involves reconfiguring or redesigning work, jobs and process for the purpose of improving cost, quality, service and speed. Reengineering does not usually affect the organizational structure or chart, nor does it imply job loss or employee layoffs. Whereas restructuring is concerned with eliminating or establishing, shrinking or enlarging and moving organizational departments and divisions, the focus of reengineering is changing the way work is actually carried out.

GAC can employ restructuring when various ratios appear out of line with competitors as determined through benchmarking. Benchmarking involves comparing a firm against the best firm in the industry on a wide variety of performance related criteria. GA Consultancy will benchmark ratios such as head count to sales volume, corporate staff to operating employees, or span of control figures.

GA Consultancy primary benefit is from restructuring cost reduction. It can rescue the firm from global competition and demise. But the downside of this strategy can reduced employee commitment, creativity, and innovation accompanies by uncertainty and trauma associated with pending and actual employee layoffs, Sue Shellenbarger, 2010.

GA Consultancy  manage more people spread over different locations, travel more, manage diverse functions, and are changed agents even when they have nothing to do with the creation of the plan or disagree with its approach. GAC must look for people who can do things, not for people who make other people do things. GAC managers need to be counselors, motivators, financial advisors and psychologists. They also run the risk of becoming technologically behind in their expertise.

GA Consultancy present set up has led managers’ and employees’ mind set being defined by their particular functions rather than by overall customer service, service quality, or corporate performance  which are GA Consultancy weaknesses , Suzanne Vranica, (2010). The logic is that GAC tend to bureaucratize over time. As routines became entrenched, turf becomes delineated and defended, and politics takes precedence over performance. Walls that exist in the physical workplace can be reflections of “mental” walls.

In reengineering, GA Consultancy should use technology to break down functional barriers and create a work system based on processes, services, or outputs rather than on functions or inputs. Cornerstone of reengineering is decentralization, reciprocal interdependence, and information sharing. The Wall Street Journal, 2011 noted that reengineering today must go beyond knocking down the external walls that prohibit or discourage cooperation with other firms-even rival firms.

GA Consultancy benefits of reengineering are that it offers employees to see more clearly how their particular jobs affect the final services being marketed by the firm. However, reengineering can also raise manager and employee anxiety, which, unless calmed, can lead to corporate trauma.

3. The Environment in GA Consultancy

GA Consultancy should strive to preserve, emphasize and build upon aspects of an existing culture that support proposed new strategies. Aspects of an existing culture that are antagonistic to a proposed strategy should be identified and changed. Substantial research indicates that new strategies are often market driven and dictated by competitive forces. For this reason, changing GA Consultancy culture to fit a new strategy is usually more effective than changing a strategy to fit an existing culture. There are numerous techniques that are available to alter an organization’s culture, including recruitment, training, transfer, promotion, and restructure of an organization’s design, role modeling, positive reinforcement, and mentoring.

Schein, L, 2004 indicated that the following elements are most useful in linking culture to strategy:

·         Formal statements of organizational philosophy, charters, creeds, material used for recruitment and selection, and socialization

·         Designing of physical space, facades, buildings

·         Deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching of leaders

·         Explicit reward and status system. Promotion criteria

In the personal and religious side of life, the impact of loss and change is easy to see. Memories of loss and change often haunt individuals and organization for years. Ibsen, N 2005 wrote “Rob the average man of his life illusion and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke”. When attachments to a culture are severed in an organization’s attempt to change direction, employees and managers often experience deep feelings of grief. This phenomenon commonly occurs when external conditions dictate the need for a new strategy. Managers and employees struggle to find meaning in a situation that changed many years before. Some people find comfort in memories; others find solace in the present. Weak linkages between GA Consultancy management

Human Resource Concern when implementing strategies

The job of human resource manager is changing rapidly as GA Consultancy continues to downsize and reorganize. Strategic responsibilities of the human resource manager include assessing the staffing needs and costs for alternative strategies proposed during the strategic planning and developing a staffing plan for effectively implementing strategies. This plan must consider how best to manage spiraling health care insurance care. Employer’s health coverage expenses consume an average 26% of firm’s net profit, even though most companies now require employees to pay part of their health insurance premiums.

The human resource department must develop performance incentives that clearly link performance and pay to strategies. The process of empowering managers and employees through involvement in strategic management activities yields the greatest benefits when all GAC members understand clearly how they will benefit personally if the firm does well. Linking company and personal benefits is a major new strategic responsibility of human resource managers. Other new responsibilities for human resource may include establishing and administering an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), instituting an effective child care policy, and providing leadership for managers and employees in the way that allows them to balance work and family.

 
GAC fails in three Human Resource Causes

1.      Disruption of social and political structures

2.      Failure to match individual’s aptitudes with implementation tasks

3.      Inadequate top management support for implementation activities.

Strategic implementation poses a threat to many managers and employees in GA Consultancy. New power and status relationships are anticipated and realized. New formal and informal groups’ values, beliefs, and priorities may be largely unknown. Managers and employees may become engaged in resistance behavior as their roles, prerogatives, and power in the firm change. Disruption of social and political structures that accompany strategy execution must be anticipated and considered during strategy formulation and managed during strategy implementation.

A concern in matching managers with strategy is that jobs have specific and relatively static responsibilities, although people are dynamic in their personal development. Commonly used methods that match managers with strategies to be implemented include transferring managers, developing leadership workshops, offering career development activities, promotions, job enlargement , and job enrichment , Dale McConkey, (2001) .

A number of other guidelines can help ensure that human relationships facilitate rather than disrupt strategy implementation efforts. Specifically managers should do a lot of chatting and informal questioning to stay abreast of how things are progressing and to know when to intervene. Managers of GAC can build support by giving few orders, announcing few decisions, depending heavily on informal questioning and seeking to probe and clarify until consensus emerges. Key thrusts that succeed should be rewarded generously and visibly.

Inadequate support from GAC management often undermines organizational success. Chief executives must be committed to strategy implementation and express this commitment in highly visible ways. It must be consistent with actual rewards given for activities completed and objectives reached.  GAC must involve as many managers and employees as possible in the process. Although time consuming, this approach builds understanding, trust, confidence, commitment, and ownership and reduces hostility and resentment.

Motivation:

Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs)

An ESOP is a tax qualified, defined contribution, employee benefit plan whereby employees purchase stock of the company through borrowed money or cash contribution. ESOPs empower employees to work as owners; this is a primary reason why the number of ESOPs has grown dramatically to more than 12,000 firm covering 17Million employees (Chan, M, 2012).

Beside reducing worker alienation and stimulating productivity, ESOPs allow firms other benefits, such as substantial tax savings. Banks lend money to ESOPs at interest rates below prime. This money can be repaid in pretax, lowering the debt service as 30 percent in some cases.

4.      Communication

GA Consultancy failure to recognize and understand relationship among functional areas of business can be detrimental to the firm, and the number of those relationships that must be managed increases dramatically with the firm’s size, diversity, geographic dispersion, and the number of services offered.  

Communication, perhaps play a most important word in management, is a major component of motivation. An organization’s system of communication determines whether strategies can be implemented successfully. Good two way communication is vital for gaining support for departmental and divisional objectives and policies. The strategic management process becomes a lot easier when subordinates encouraged to discuss their concerns, reveal their problems, and provide recommendations and suggestions.

Recommendation and Conclusion

Motivation explains why some people work hard to accomplish specific objectives. Objectives, strategies, and policies have little chance of succeeding if employees and managers are not motivated to implement strategies once they are formulated. The motivating function of management includes at least four components: leadership, group dynamics, and communications and organizational, Dale McConkey, (2002).

When managers and employees of GA Consultancy strive to achieve high levels of productivity, this indicates that the firm’s strategists are good leaders. Good leaders establish rapport with subordinates, empathize with their needs and concern, set a good example, and are trustworthy and fair. Leadership includes developing a vision of the firm’s future and inspiring people to work hard to achieve that vision. Kirkpatrick and Locke, 2005, reported that certain traits also characterize effective leaders: knowledge of the business, cognitive ability, self confidence, honesty, integrity, and drive.

Research suggests that democratic behavior on the part of the leaders result in more attitudes toward change and higher productivity than autocratic behavior. Drucker , 2004 said

“Leadership is not a magnetic personality. That can just as well be demagoguery. It is not “making friends and influencing people”. That is flattery. Leadership is lifting of a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a person’s personality beyond its normal limitations”.

Group dynamics play a major role in employee morale and satisfaction. Informal groups or coalitions form in every organization. The norms of coalitions can range from being positive to negative toward management. It is important therefore, that GAC management identifies the composition and nature of informal groups to facilitate corporate strategy.  

Reference:

Chan, M. 2010, Organizational Behavior, 1st edition, Prentice Hall, pp98-100

Dale McConkey. “Planning in A Changing Environment” Business Horizons, September- October 2002)

Drucker, P.F (1980) P.F. Managing for Results, Heinemann Professional (1989)

Eden, M, 2004, Outsider CEO: Inspiring Change with Force and Grace”, USA Today (July 19, 2004):3B pp26-27

S. Ghostal and C.A Bartlett, : Changing the Role of Management: Beyond Structure to Processes”, Harvard Business Review  73 ,1 2005; p 14

Want To Be A Manager? Many People Say No, Calling Job Miserable . Wall Street Journal , April 4, 2001, 1 pp45

E, Schien , The Role of the Founder in Creating Organizational Culture, “ Organizational Dynamics (Summer 2001), pp 13-28

H. Ibsen , The Paradox of Corporate Culture, California Management Review 28, no. 2 (1998) pp 37- 40

Padilla, J. 2010, Strategic Management, 2nd edition, pp124-136, Prentice Hill

Sue Shellenbarger, “Employers Often Ignore Office Affairs, Leaving Co- workers in Difficult Spot, “Wall Street Journal , November 29, 2010 B7, pp 15-18

Suzanne Vranica, Ad Firms Heed Diversity.” Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2010, B7 pp34-36