(TIỂU LUẬN) assignment 2 organisational problem solving group report

BUSM2301B – Organizational Analysis Semester – 2020 Assignment 2: Organisational Problem-Solving Group Report Lecturer: Qui Nguyen Ngoc SG – G07 – Team Members: (s3820598) (s3877650) (s3878025) (s3828023) Table of Contents I Introduction II Probem Statement III Literature Review IV Solution Development and Proposal V Discussion and Conclusion 11 VI References 14 VII Appendix: Group Reflection 16 I Introduction: Our client is a global mining company and has their offices located across many continents, such as in Latin America, Alaska, Congo, Asia, and four mines located in Australia The company has grown significantly in recent years due to its acquisition of diverse development companies However, because of the decline in the management of firms in the mining sector and the sector's additions, it has yet to achieve the goal of optimizing the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities by promoting the organization's integration CSR is a topic of concern in society Specifically, for our client's mining industry, it affects the society from business decisions and operations with solving social issues, ethics, protecting the environment, protecting society as well as protecting human rights and responding to customer concerns Throughout the report, we will analyze the problems the company is facing Additionally, this report explores the aspects of solving the problems faced by the mining industry For this, it needs to improve collaboration with communication among all departments within the company to promote CSR and to utilize CSR to create a social impact that is profitable for the business Therefore, through research, we will provide the best solutions based on theory and practical research in the industry with our new process model for the company to ensure that they can satisfy the community and stakeholders' requirements about behaving socially responsible Besides, this report also consists of our research and proposal based on the two perspectives of “functionalism” and “social relativism”, which we think are the most suitable for solving the problems, due to their strengths and limitations 4 II Problem Statement: The client is having many problems with the organizational structure However, we believe that the main issue which the mining company needs to consider carefully is the lack of corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance Currently, the company doesn’t have support from society, which can create lots of problems regarding the environment and community This challenge may affect the company’s performance as well as its operation process in general A mining company relates to digging and drilling into the ground to get the desired minerals, which could have negative effects on the earth, groundwater system, and the natural landscapes nearby The CSR will support our client to be aware of its business impacts to all aspects of the society including the economy, society, and the environment (Zorrilla, Buck, Palmer, & Pellow, 2009) Understanding the role of CSR in a specific industry could be easy to identify and generalize it to the organization Nevertheless, finding the most effective way to implement it in real life is a difficult issue It needs the integration of all departments as a whole to participate and enhance the society and environment (Jenkins & Yakovleva, 2006) Our client is doing business not only in Australia but also in many other countries from Africa to Asia Moreover, there are various phases of the development in companies that our client has repurchased That makes the organization lacking in integration as a whole Different business units may have different perspectives They only focus on their responsibilities and use their ways to approach the goal as well as social responsibility The lack of collaboration will create mismatches between teamwork, social factors, environmental factors, political factors, mission, and business model (Hashaw, 2020) From the issue of lacking integration, it may put more pressure on the company to meet the needs of stakeholders The pressure will force our client to perform better, reduce the cost, and increase the necessary resources to standardize as a multinational organization Besides, an effective CSR integrated with business strategy can utilize the significant resources inside the company Additionally, our client can maximize the benefits to society and financial performance with a specific practical framework As a result, this integration will support the mining company to achieve both social and business impacts to maintain its reputation to the community (O'Brien, 2001) In an organization, constant communication and a sense of trust are believed to be important factors to pursue an efficient collaboration of all parties (Rothouse M.J 2020) Therefore, a lack of communication between departments can strongly fail cooperation As suggested by Rothouse M.J (2020), one of the reasons was due to the lack of interpersonal skills of the managers, which makes it hard to open communication within a team and among all the teams together Intending to legitimate the profit, they only focus on their internal affair and productivity to achieve the mere goal Moreover, not equipped with enough knowledge can also lead to a lack of communication among employees, as people tend to avoid the matter that they have no sense of Hence, as the idea of CSR may not be explicit to some people, with the help of communication, the corporation can enhance their potential and improve their social responsibility 6 III Literature Review: When it comes to resolving the issue of this global mining company, two paradigms can be taken into consideration One of them is the functionalism paradigm, while the other one is social relativism Moreover, to run the organization properly we also need to have a suitable organizational structure and process model In this report, we will illustrate the importance of organizational structure and process model in a business and how Functionalism and Social Relativism can contribute to the improvement of the corporation’s CSR so that the organization can satisfy the environmental awareness and community requirements The functionalism paradigm illustrates a perspective which is drawn from the sociology of regulation and attempts to perceive its subject matter from an objectivist point of view (Burrell & Morgan, 1979) In the scenario in which our client is required to become a socially responsible corporation, a functionalism approach will result in the company being strictly managed by the employers and obligations, which helps the employees work in order and avoid being in conflict or reducing their profit However, since functionalism only seeks ideal profitability the client may overlook the reaction of the customers towards their CSR and the upcoming related campaigns, which can lead to a profit deduction Moreover, as each department in the company only aims at the expected goal, it leads to a lack of interaction among all departments, which may cause conflict to happen in the future As our client is performing the functionalism approach, we suggest that they should consider another kind of approach to not only enhance their CSR activities but also increase their wanted profit On the other hand, the application of the social relativism paradigm is a good tool for the company to pursue an interactive system According to Burrell and Morgan (1979, p.28), the social relativism paradigm is the one that ‘sees the social world as an emergent social process which is created by the individuals concerned’ Apparently, the interaction between all parties plays an important role in helping the organization legitimize the objectives Therefore, as an approach to the solution, the implementation of this paradigm opens a way for integration within the client to develop CSR as it emphasizes the cooperation of all departments as well as the consumers as they are, with the help of the management, are the ones who make sense of the system However, through joint activities, different opinions and perspectives are highly collected This can lead to confusion when making decisions and can be an obstacle on the way to achieve the final goals Organizational structure is of the key factors that determine the success of a business According to Chanki & Catarina in 2020, an organizational structure is “the total of the ways in which the work is divided into different tasks, achieving coordination”, and “impact on important outcomes in the workplace” So, companies must focus more on the structure for more effective work when it can help companies easily organize workflow, make sure important tasks are completed on time, and communicate and operate more efficiently (Sheila Kloefkorn 2014) Moreover, when doing an organizational structure, we need to keep in mind the fact that employees will be affected by the structure of the business and they are the main factor that decides the success of the business Therefore, in order to improve the CSR of the business, the mining company should make a logical and clear organizational structure so that all related departments could work efficiently together On the other framework, the Process model is “a set of related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome” (Wenhong & Y Alex 1999) Then, we can know that a business process model is a solid network in an organization to run the company Therefore, when making a business process model, the company should keep in mind all the types, elements, objectives, and perspective of the model Moreover, when selecting a business process we need to be concerned about “the three constructs, namely objectives, perspectives and characteristics” (Wenhong & Y Alex 1999) 8 Besides, companies when doing a process model need to take notice of the pitfalls of it when Michael Rosemann in 2006 had reported 22 potential pitfalls of the process model that many companies might fall into IV Solution development and Proposal: Regarding the problem identified previously in our problem statement, the organization is under the pressure to fulfill corporate social responsibility CSR has been one of the most important areas in environmental and social accounting research (Belal & Momin, 2009) Additionally, by presenting the concept of CSR, the organization can achieve environmental, social, and economic sustainability, as well as maximize the possible profits Therefore, we must ensure that the corporation can respond to the environmental and community pressure by leveraging the collaboration and communication among all the departments to tackle the issue Thus, a new process model is suggested This proposed model will illustrate a new system in which more collaborations between the departments to improve the productivity and manifest the CSR performance is carried out In the previous process, each department is in charge of one process which its sub-functions mainly manage This results in the problem that one department has to conduct many tasks at the same time which may cause the results to have flaws and be inefficient Therefore, in the new process model, the first thing we want to solve is the problem of no effective cooperation between the parties of the client After the reallocation, departments are expected to share their workload with the ones which have suitable and connected sub-functions to impulse the efficiency and quality of the product For example, in the original system, the Planning and Coordinating department has to take care of too many processes before the construction of mining starts Consequently, it’s highly recommended that the budget needed for the project be planned and considered by both the Planning and Coordinating and Finance As the ideas are shared and discussed, the final price can be decided more easily Moreover, the action of conducting studies for future mining activities can be done by the collaboration of the R&D (Research and Development) and the Planning and Coordinating The findings collected by the R&D team from the sub-divisions like Engineering, Geology, Exploration provide the Planning and Coordinating team with thorough knowledge to come up with a precise plan Hence, R&D can help the strategies be set up and developed properly As the system is now processing better with the cooperation of the divisions, the way to perform an effective CSR becomes easier However, only integrating all the parties of the corporation is not enough for efficient CSR, as the communication between our client and the community, as well as among the departments is also essential Thanks to the Communication department with the help of the Services department, the company can easily broaden its approach to the community, which leads to public participation and consultation with them Accordingly, by attracting public attention, our client can leverage social influence marketing to promote their products, which helps them not only to improve the efficiency of their upcoming CSR activities but also to optimize CSR to aim to profit maximization for the company Besides, all collaborations of departments in preparation for the project will provide a better understanding of social knowledge and environmental problems, as they can support the others in research, which will also help the client to carry out better CSR performance, based on the new process model 10 V Discussion and Conclusion: First of all, we believe that the biggest strength we have from our solution is a connected system with more interactions among the parties participating in the process of a project This process illustrates the application of the social relativism paradigm as it highlights the importance of continuous interactions of the participants which is the key for objectives to be legitimized (Hirschheim & Klein, 1989) Hence, all departments under the company collaborate, creating a system in which every part links together to maximize productivity According to Vintró & Comajuncosa (2009), the purchasing decisions of consumers will be influenced by how the company can fulfill its product and service expectations Therefore, the weight of communication between our client and consumers is noticed and the immediate solution is conducted With the process of 11 communicating, many findings and discussions will be shared, a better understanding, sympathy, and support from one department to the others will be performed, the managers can have a variety of perspectives from not only within the working environment but also the external forces to have better knowledge to make modifications and supply better guidance On the other hand, by having a specific manager to direct particular departments of similar functions and having sub-functions collaborate, a certain goal can be easily defined so that each team knows and focuses on their main assigned task This shows the functionalist perspective which has the system working to achieve the final targets profit maximization and an effective CSR performance (Hirschheim & Klein, 1989) However, there exist limitations By applying the social relativist characteristic, different perspectives are collected However, this may lead to confusion and no unanimity in mindset If the manager is not rational enough to come to the best decision, in the end, disagreement and conflict among the departments when cooperating will affect the process as a whole Receiving too much feedback from different sides will place pressure on the company to behave in socially responsible ways properly Furthermore, because with the functionalist view, the main concern is the prespecified end and the system is designed to contribute to this end (Hirschheim & Klein, 1989), the real performance throughout the whole process may not be performed That means the employees may have known about the specific goal of the task they have and will only just care and try to finish it when the due date is near only to achieve the goal but the quality of the result cannot be guaranteed Hence, if the quality of the product doesn’t meet the consumers’ expectations, the performance of efficient CSR will be affected In summary, the methodology of using only the social relativism paradigm in combination with the functionalism paradigm can complement each other yet is still not ideal and realistic Though the application of functionalism can have the client to have a specific aim to move forward, it can become a system lack of consideration with the employees since their opinions may be taken for granted and all they have to is following the goal That’s when the use of social relativism is needed to help all participants have their rights to speak up and share different perspectives On the other hand, while with the social relativist way, collaboration and discussions can be conducted to boost efficiency and productivity, too many different ideas collected at once may distract the prespecified target and downgrade the quality Thus, functionalism is applied However, to achieve success in the industry, applying only two paradigms, which are Functionalism and Social Relativism, is not enough The use of only two paradigms that follow the “order” will only keep the organization improving and moving forward from the existing flaws without making any changes If our client wants to become successful in the long term, we believe that it would be more ideal to leverage all four of the paradigms as the company can have a holistic approach as well as avoid having limitations in the way they would develop It would be impractical for a corporation, especially a global company like our client, to solely keep following one model for 12 improving their CSR activities and earning profits from the beginning without having any changes and alternation, or being affected by external elements, such as community and stakeholders Therefore, we suggest that our client take the idea of performing all four paradigms, depending on the occurrences, to extend their profits and influence under consideration for further success By using the Radical Structuralist paradigm, our client can help make a connection between the management and the employees and obtain their support for the company as it can fulfill their expectation of an ideal workplace Accordingly, the employees realize that there will be someone to understand their circumstances and solve the conflicts between different classes happening in the company by putting himself into the worker’s shoes As the company can tackle the relationship issues from the workplace, their workers can be guaranteed to be satisfied with their job and contribute more to their company, in this case, which is helping to improve the company’s CSR activities and profits Yet, the radical structuralism “has a tendency to oversimplify”, which is that it can’t see the conflict arising from the coalition As a result, this comes back to the problem of lacking collaboration among employees, which requires the company to think of another solution for the case Therewithal, by using a Neo-humanism approach, it would help the corporation to have more open consultations between employees, or company and community, and allow for a deeper comprehension of the information that is not seen on the surface This information or knowledge can benefit the global company by helping to improve their both internal and external operational processes to deal with the CSR problems, including their ability to work with different cultures and integrate the employees from various parties for the success of the company With such information or knowledge, alternation can be made to further enhance more potential processes for CSR or advocate certain impacts to industries that could be life-changing and possibly reduce the dissensions seen in companies due to the lack of information, which usually leads to the lack of communication Nonetheless, neo-humanism may not benefit the client, as it aims to the human factor more than the profits and believes that it must be the organization to serve people Consequently, the company should thoroughly consider which approach to use We must look into all four approaches of the paradigm and see how each of the approaches can help the company to deal with the problem they are currently facing, which is the inefficient CSR model It's always advantageous to look at multiple perspectives from all possible ways and implement them for the potential solutions to maximize the wanted results It’s also crucial for the company to look into conflicts and how we would solve them or reduce the chances of conflict arising in the company, affected by both internal and external factors As using all four paradigms to approach the matter, there will be some problems in the way of managing the company, as the paradigms don’t follow the same pattern That is the reason why the corporation needs to carefully decide which paradigm should be used in which context to solve the possible issues 13 VI References:  Burrell, G & Morgan, G 1979, Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis, Heinemann, London  Chanki, M., Catarina, M., Georgina, R & Ayse, K 2020, ‘The role of organizational structure and deviant status in employees’ reactions to and acceptance of workplace deviance’, International Journal of Conflict Management  Hashaw 2020 What Is Organizational Integration?, Hearst Newspapers, viewed Januarry 2021  Hirschheim, R & Klein, H 1989, Four Paradigms of Information Systems Development, Communications of the ACM, vol 32 (10), pp 1199 – 1216  Jason, F 2020, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Investopedia, viewed January 2021  Jenkins, H., & Yakovleva, N 2006, ‘Corporate social responsibility in the mining industry: Exploring trends in social and environmental disclosure.’ Elsevier, 271-284  Michael, R 2006, ‘Potential pitfalls of process modeling: part A’, Business Process Management Journal, vol 12, no 2, pp 249-254  Michael, R 2006, ‘Potential pitfalls of process modeling: part B’, Business Process Management Journal, vol 12, no 3, pp 377-384  Rothouse M.J 2020, Establishing Trust and Authentic Communication Among Organizational Teams, Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Innovation in Organizations Palgrave Pivot, Cham., viewed 31 December 2020  Sheila, K 2014, Why organizational structure is so important for small búinesses, Phoenix Business Journal, view January 2021  Vintró C & Comajuncosa J 2009, CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE MINING INDUSTRY: CRITERIA AND INDICATORS, Dep of Management, Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya, viewed January 2021,  What are Economies of Scale?, n.d.,Corporate Finance Institute, viewed 29 December 2020  Wenhong, L & Y Alex, T 1999, ‘A framework for selecting business process modeling methods’, Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol 99, no 7, pp 312 - 319  Zorrilla, C., Buck, A., Palmer, P., & Pellow, D 2009, ‘Protecting Your Community: Against Mining Companies and Other Extractive Industries’, A Guide for Community Organizers, Global Response, viewed 29 December 2020 15 VII Appendix: Figure 1: Mining company’s Organizational Chart Group Reflection: When our group started to the assignment, we read the question, but it appeared to be difficult to understand Therefore, we had a meeting and had continuous discussions among the group members and asked for advice from classmates, the lecturer, or even the school tutors to have a better understanding of this group assignment While our group is working, there are many ideas such as the member telling the others their idea to collect the useful ones and come up with the final best way to the report, based on multiple perspectives More importantly, some of our team members have very good ideas, they will look for useful information, such as articles, data and research from numerous different people to make the group work more effective Conversely, if the whole team does not contribute, the performance of the work decreases because you lack teamwork skills Besides, to help the progress avoid time-wasting, we separated the needed parts of the report and required each member to their given task equally, so that everyone would contribute to our assignment For example, Phuong would take responsibility for the two first parts, Hoang did the literature review, while Vy and Anh were responsible for the solution and discussion parts 16 Moreover, our team always listens to each other's opinions Each person has their own way of thinking Consequently, there would be no right or wrong answer when we debated, instead we attempted to find the most suitable method for the job After we have listened carefully to our teammates' opinions, comparation and addition would be added to our opinion and ideas If someone is sure of everything, then they could boldly suggest new ideas to the team Our team members are always confident in their opinion However, Phuong is afraid that her opinion is wrong, so she is afraid to show her own opinion Yet, the others in the team would encourage her during the progress, and even when someone was wrong, our team still listened and corrected each other When an individual is encouraged and facilitated by growth Then they will try more at work and contribute more value to the organization Last but not least, as a team leader, you must scientifically organize your work Ms Vy always proactively arranges, manages work, and solves problems arising in the group She always ensures fairness among members so that work is not interrupted for any reason what For example, not all of the best members did more parts, the other members did the easier or lesser parts Our team allows the members to show their best There was no dominant perspective, since we all respect the others’ ideas, and tend to collaborate the ideas logically to solve our client’s problems instead of using only one perspective Therefore, each member can rely on the experience applied by the whole team in common work In addition, my team regularly observes and pays attention to help members work scientifically and on schedule Throughout the work, every member gets along and has discussions well with each other All are responsible, dedicated, and hard-working We started to work right away after receiving our tasks Whenever someone made mistakes, the others would share their ideas and he or she would willingly listen and correct However, due to the arising pandemic and physical distance, sometimes it was hard for all of us to gather to work together at the same time Despite that, all members still tried their best to communicate through SNS, have our joint file on Google Docs so that all members can take part in writing and modifying the assignment together Members were all responsive, trying their best to participate in the meetings, give ideas and Even when all the members were busy with their own schedules and works from other courses, or even during our Christmas holiday and New Year Eve, we still worked hard and found time to finish our assigned tasks on time As a result, our assignment was finished on time 17 One more thing, as we were going through the assignment, the theories on functionalism and social relativism had influenced us a lot When we are working together, we split the assignment into parts and everyone has their own task But, as the assignment is connected, we decide to work together to find the answer to the question before going into the writing part Besides, while working together, we contribute a lot by talking and less texting so it helps our workflow run smoothly By having perceived knowledge from the functionalism and social relativism approach, we acknowledged the importance of information along with human interaction for an effective progress and working in order First Name Student ID Parts Contributed Contribution Hoang s3820598 All 100% Vy s3877650 All 100% Anh s3878025 All 100% Phương s3818023 All 100% Signature ... Journal, vol 12, no 2, pp 24 9 -25 4  Michael, R 20 06, ‘Potential pitfalls of process modeling: part B’, Business Process Management Journal, vol 12, no 3, pp 377-384  Rothouse M.J 20 20, Establishing... Development, Communications of the ACM, vol 32 (10), pp 1199 – 121 6  Jason, F 20 20, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Investopedia, viewed January 20 21 ... in 20 06 had reported 22 potential pitfalls of the process model that many companies might fall into IV Solution development and Proposal: Regarding the problem identified previously in our problem