Ascent Company’s Effectiveness and Problems Essay

Ascent is the company which specializes in providing accounting, auditing, and business consulting services. The company was established in Gaborone, Botswana, in 1976, and it became the part of Parker Consultants (the US multinational company) in 1996. Following the innovative and effective approaches to organizing the company’s work, Parker Consultants required the definite changes in Ascent’s organization and redesigning with accentuating the necessity to become a learning company. Thomas was appointed to work out and implement the strategy in redesigning the company into the learning organization where the accents are made on diverse teams, open communication, effective cooperation, and training employees.

It is necessary to determine several problems which should be overcome in order to redesign Ascent into the learning company. The first problem is the lack of the employees’ cooperative skills and ability to work as a team. The main cause of the problem is the significant cultural diversity of the workers as a result of recruiting expatriates who have no opportunity to learn the cultural and ethnic peculiarities of each other. The second issue is the absence of the employees’ motivation to work effectively in cooperation and present the developed projects in time. The cause of the problem is the absence of the certain financial benefits, bonuses, and rewards to stimulate the employees’ motivation and create the effective competitive atmosphere. The next problem is the absence of the regular communication between managers and employees to resolve the difficulties in work and interactions, and the problem is based on the particular features of the organizational structure where there are 54 executives and managers and 60 professionals. Furthermore, corporate culture is significantly centralized with the focus on the figure of Managing Director, and the fact prevents managers from making decisions independently and from the flexible system’s functioning.

To lead the change process and create conditions for developing the learning organization, it is necessary to pay attention to the cultural diversity as the main characteristic of the workforce. The programs to create the positive environment in the situation of the multicultural cooperation should be developed with references to the employees’ backgrounds to guarantee the effective team work. The next step is the provision of the necessary bonuses to motivate employees to work effectively within the team and present the individual ideas, thus, rewards can be used to create the competitive atmosphere to achieve better results. The effective team work is also based on efficient organization of the work with references to the manager’s control. Moreover, employees should cooperate with managers and act as the single organism. That is why, it is important to work out strategies for regulating the employees’ work with determining the managers’ role in the process and with accents on the possibilities of the open communication between all the workers.

The effective work of the learning organization is based on the successfully developed system and shared vision where cooperation between employees as a team and managers is the necessary condition. To meet the requirements, it is important to provide the significant delegation of authority to guarantee the open communication and limit the centralized model of leadership used in making decisions. The employees in the learning organization are in a constant process of learning new concepts and strategies that is why the programs of regular training are necessary to provide the conditions for creating the organization’s functioning with references to the interconnected thinking process between employees.