The modern day management has different problems namely the problems of change of today and tomorrow. The problems of today are the very problems that a manager encounters when working under current laws for the current market and with the current competitors. The future problems are the long-term effects that arise with the things that might as well as be perceived as normal for the business. In the following essay I am going to speak about change approaches and the three areas that present problems for the management. The relevance and implications in areas like company internal communications, organizational structure, and diversity at the work place.
Company internal Communications. Corporate internal communication is perhaps one of the most serious issues in business change today, simply because we all rely on information of some sort. One should remember that every piece of corporate communication infrastructure indeed has its own unique advantages and disadvantages that can have effects on the future prosperity and survival of the given business. Email is increasingly burdened by Spam, lost email due to Spam filtering, and lack of centralized control are not new to business and individuals. Broadcast telephone messages also rely on white-collar workers sitting at a desk, checking their voicemail. Faxes and memos that we send when conducting business are paper-based, require some logistics (thus prone to mistakes), and may never reach the recipient at all. Few methods of internal communication are as capable of making information into common knowledge throughout any company in any industry as digital signage does.
We Can Write Your Change Management Research Paper from Scratch!
Internal communication within an organization infrastructure that we will discuss later in the essay creates an atmosphere where problems and concerns may be discussed frankly and openly. All the corporate team members accept ownership of their problems in order to resolve outstanding issues that jeopardize the corporate existence. Each team member in the organization has the right and ability to discuss their concerns with each other at a convenient time and place and to openly appeal misunderstandings and complaints. This is necessary to do to improve corporate efficiency as well as effectiveness.
Modern technology in communication is called digital signage. This signage oftentimes gets a bad reputation, simply because large amounts of capital go into purchasing and installing the monitors, networking them together (Awad, 121).
As one of the ‘simple solutions’, it’s interesting to add here that the company ideally should conduct the information securely in a timely manner. The information should flow across the organization and be available only to those who are entitled to receive it. I should add here that the company should also strive to maximize its ROI and the modern technologies allow the companies to do that with little efforts.
The most usual technologies are used to accommodate information needs for the following: All-hands meetings, Department announcements, Sales meetings, and Wireless internet (Rusanow, 102)
The information technologies should possess robust features and capabilities together with the private labeling and custom interface. The software should possess sophisticated security measures that are used to protect passwords, restrict the access only to a small audience together with the IP and URL blocking that would prevent any threat from the Internet.
The communication lines in a company need to remain clear so that each employee gets a chance to know in advance who to report to, who to oversee and what rewards and punishment to expect for a certain type of action.
The motivation system should also be created as to properly reward the desired behavior (increased sales, return customers, customer satisfaction letters, etc.) Each employee should not be neglected and left unnoticeable during good and bad performance times. Some organizations prefer to only punish employees for doing something bad and fail to reward them for doing well. As a result employees in these organizations tend to do only what is “passing” and does not give them rebukes from superiors. IN a responsible company management believes that the employees need to bend themselves backwards in an attempt to please the client and to improve the corporate performance, Organization’s employees need to be motivated and in constant view (Tiwana, 276).
Organizational Structures. Any corporate strategy implementation is achieved through organizational design. The primary aims of Organizational Structure changes are the following: Coordinate resources with responsible management (material, human) and Motivate (personnel) .The key players in a corporation are: the shareholders, the directors, the officers, the employees.
It is the shareholders who own the corporation. Regardless of whether that ownership may be 100% or 2% in the hands of one individual or spread among tens of thousands or millions, these people own the organization at least formally. Corporate shareholders may not participate in day-to-day corporate management or have a direct say in decision-making process of the organization. Major corporate shareholders, nonetheless, have great influence on the company because, they always vote on the following issues within the given organization (Englund, 51):
- Election and removal of company’s directors,
- Amendment of the by-laws,
- Major corporate changes (mergers, sales, dissolution),
- Disposition of corporate assets,
- Amendment of the articles of incorporation (Davenport, 311).
Each employee at an organization needs to understand that he/she is a part of the organization and is a valuable asset rather than a replaceable part in it. The company needs to understand that good performance is the only determinant the company’s success. The quality circles and other types of trainings discussed above are expected to constantly stress that thing for the employees (Waltz, 220).
At the same time every organizational stakeholder should understand that life-long learning for employees nowadays is a norm rather than a whim of superiors. The employees should pursue additional personal development and training to benefit the organization, while the organization should be understanding to the employees’ increased stress and should reward them for taking these risks. Just like many other organizations, Organization should pay for various trainings and to constantly promote those who strive for the best (Rumizen, 45).
Diversity in the work place. Diversity almost always includes disability in the company as well as a potential strength. Therefore, one must admit, workforce diversity has become a major management strategy for many employers in the 1990’s because it makes good business sense around the world (Groff, 11). A diverse workforce furnishes all companies with a competitive advantage by enabling them to better meet the needs of their customers (that look like the diverse employees), to successfully compete in the global marketplace (if the diversity includes race, ethnicity, origin), and hire from an expanded labor pool (which might be overseen by the competition) (Burke, 82).
Efficient management of diversity within organization involves the creation of an open, fair, supportive, challenging, and responsive organization in which physical, racial, sexual, etc., diversity is acknowledged and valued. Diversity, therefore, is defined as all of the ways in which we differ from other humans. As noted before, some of these dimensions can be race, gender, age, language, physical characteristics, disability, religion, sexual orientation, and other differences irrelevant to one’s ability and propensity to do a job.
All companies that include people with disabilities in their diversity programs increase their competitive advantage compared to those who hire a homogenous group of employees (McElroy, 90). It is interesting to find out that people with disabilities add to the variety of viewpoints needed to be successful and bring effective solutions to today’s extremely competitive business challenges. From the utilitarian point of view, hiring the diverse individuals means that the US economy becomes much stronger if all the people are employed and the population become much more happy if all the people are employed.
To summarize all the questions and issues that arise with the company’s communication, structure and diversity programs and require radical changes, I would like to present the ways to contribute to the corporate increased efficiency and effectiveness.
Proper education. One should learn the new updates with respect to the industry innovations, the ways to improve communication, and to create the organizational structure that would be the most productive. The fact that the wireless office (aka wireless internet) and lean organization are the most profitable things does not mean that they are going to stay like this in the next 10 years. Certainly that if we allow our employees to be diverse and to educate themselves we are going to keep on par with the modern techno updates.
Proper implementation plan. If we agree that the organization lacks proper communication structure, we should not panic but rather discuss the way to overcome the given problem within the shortest time frames and with the least resources spent. We should allow risks and change to be present to a certain degree, and we should do the best we can to maximize profit.
Human factor. Whatever the organization does is in fact done by our human resources that are the company’s most precious assets. One should try to motivate the employees to learn, to educate themselves, to remain diverse and to like their organization. The company should understand that it is always cheaper to make decisions regarding communication, organization structure from within rather than from the outsourcing consulting agency. Last but not least, the company should develop a proper compensation system that would encourage innovation and productivity.
References:
Burke, Warner, Organization Change: Theory and Practice, Penguin books, 2000.
Senge, Peter, The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations, NY Random House, 2001.
Englund, Randall, Creating the Project Office: A Manager’s Guide to Leading Organizational Change, Penguin books, 2002.
Molden, David, Realigning for Change – 8 Principles for Successful Change Management in Your Organization, Prentice Hall, 2001.
Rumizen, Clemmons, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Knowledge Management, NY Random House, 2002.
Tiwana, Amrit, Knowledge Management Toolkit, The: Practical Techniques for Building a Knowledge Management System, Prentice Hall, 2001.
Davenport, Thomas, Working Knowledge, Penguin books, 2001.
Rusanow, Gretta, Knowledge Management and the Smarter Lawyer, Barons books, 2001.
Groff, Todd, Introduction to Knowledge Management : KM in Business, Harvard University Press, 2000.
Awad, Elias, Knowledge Management, NY Random House, 2000.
McElroy, Mark, The New Knowledge Management : Complexity, Learning, and Sustainable Innovation, UCLA Press, 2002.
Waltz, Edward, Knowledge Management in the Intelligence Enterprise (Artech House Information Warfare Library), Penguin books, 2001.
Free research paper samples and term paper examples available online are plagiarized. They cannot be used as your own paper, even a part of it. You can order a high-quality custom research paper on your topic from expert writers:
EffectivePapers.com is a professional academic paper writing service committed to writing non-plagiarized custom research papers of top quality. All academic papers are written from scratch by highly qualified research paper writers you can hire online. Just proceed with your order, and we will find the best expert for you!