Internal Conflict in Business: Greenway Industries Case Study

Introduction

The case problem is concentrated on Greenway Industries which is a merged company operating as a family business. The company has been comprised of Olive and Lim families on the basis of equal share, controlling power, and employment opportunities. Originated from a software engineering and a small manufacturing firm of computer accessories, Greenway is aged about 18 months with satisfactory profitability.

At present, the company is running with 180 employees among who 45 employees are women. Having a number of skilled workforces as important bodies like- senior software designer, design engineer, production manager, a chief financial officer from both families, Greenway is now facing complexity and contradiction regarding equal employment opportunity in the workplace, disposition of company information on a public register and exposition of female authority in decision making which will focus and theoretical and practical recommendation will be proposed throughout the report.

Identification of problems

The case is clearly indicating the problem regarding the internal workforce, policies, and procedures as well as the overall significance of merging two different firms. Those can be observed as follows:

• The initial problem lies in sense of contradiction among the major governing bodies of the firm as being experienced, highly educated, and skilled, Robert and Ken don’t pose traditional thoughts in all vital issues although it is not affecting the firm vitally.
• Bob’s family is disclosing a more complex issue since his daughter Kate has been identified as a problem child because of her belief in the wholehearted approach of preparing agency reports for value proposition and overall transparency of the company regarding the modified company law.
• Since Greenways has only 45 women worker of whom most of them are in low- level management or clerical position, Kate is also concerned with significant women opportunity for control and decision making purposes for which informal campaign has been started that has been opposed by most of the members of board indicating it as a personal spot as it should be mostly preferred for larger companies.
• Demand of equal employment opportunity agency as the basic notification of merging.

Academic literature

Associating with relevant problems, the theoretical review will basically focus on a number of issues, like- equal employment opportunity, condition, and the law of women rights, freedom from discrimination, agency theory and reporting process, etc. which are discussed below:

Equal employment opportunity

Since Greenways has been suffering from the lacking of equal employment opportunity, according to the ways of changing such situation, several related laws should be considered in operation, as:

Variety of employee rights

The employees of any organization are obligated to have the following seven rights:

• Privacy
• Fair treatment
• Safe and healthy workplace considering freedom from the hostile environment like sexual harassment
• Collective bargaining
• Communication and involvement in the organization
• Notice of plant closing and of disciplinary movement
• Due process

Civil Rights Act 1964

It involves Title VII for restricting discrimination in hiring, compensation, privileges, conditions, and terms of employment on the basis of gender, race, religion, and so on. Practically, most organization regardless public, private or family is bound to maintain this law. Thus, the company should initially cover by the EEO[1] regulations.

Another amendment named EEOC[2] is also effective since it extends Title VII coverage which stipulates that Greenways should not do more than just discontinue discriminatory practices, and must actively recruit and make preferences to minority group members as women in employment decisions.

Affirmative Action Plans

This can be practiced for correcting past injustices in an employment process because of:

• Among 180 employees, the majority represents male members.
• Female workforce should be hired for revising past prejudice.
• Legal and social coercion are essential for importing the change.

Codes of practice

Additionally, the company can take such practice by equal opportunities commission, racial equity, and disability rights.

Legal responsibility of each department- It will be unlawful if any department directs anyone for discriminating or dispose pressure on them to do so.

Direct and indirect discrimination

Such discrimination may be noticed by the following situation:

• Treating a man or woman on the ground of sex with less favor.
• Direct discrimination on the basis of gender re-assignment.
• Sexual orientation of a person as Greenways lacks women intelligence in major decisions.
• Indirect discrimination since all treatments seem to be equal but opposite in practice and application on a general rule that appears relatively narrow proportion on women workforce.

Equal opportunities and DFID

It represents the policies regarding the general personal procedure, recruitment along with training, and promotion. Thus, by using the DFID intranet accompanying the electronic version, such scope will be available to monitor the annual performance of staff that can be scrutinized for assuring that no discriminatory practice has been made.

Departmental responsibility

Both the HR teams and line manager of the company should be responsible for adopting this policy and removal of unlawful discrimination. This practice should also be adopted by each managerial and supervising step.

Responsibility of line management

Strict restriction of harassment and bullying at this merged firm where line management must appreciate for a better and fair deal with all complaints by attending deliberation or taking harassing and offensive.

Training

Stuff of both enterprises must get equal opportunities policy regarding diversified training, selection, promotion, staff reporting, and legal management courses.

Complaint

It would be related to the allocation of job, probation, reporting, and training as well as harassment or bullying that can be visualized under equal rights process when it is dealt with while an appeal procedure also exists in an exhaustive requirement. In this case, the HR department must:

• Formal or informal complaints must be handled promptly and thoroughly.
• Each party must be equally and sympathetically treated for avoiding unusual pressure.
• A friend, college, trade- union, or staff counselor can be used to effectively handle such complaints.
• Registering of investigation within 10 days of submitting complaints with an objective of solving it with 2 months.

Follow-up action

It consists of:

• Necessity of counseling and support to the staff.
• Training of women staff regarding equal opportunity proposal.
• Amendment of the discriminatory staff report.
• Avoidance of victimization.
• Plain discipline in handling complaints.
• Appropriate review of policies.

Complaints about employment discrimination

This situation can be aroused at any time within Greenways while ACAS (Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service) should maintain a duty of helping the needed parties.

Compensation program

It would cover:

• Special damages which are expenditures along with other losses those are measurable.
• General damages are losses that are not measurable.

Women’s position at the top of the organization

The historical attitude toward women resulted in the female-oriented jobs paying significantly less than the male-viewed positions. Such discrimination has resulted in a gender-based pay system that is known as comparable worth. Under such agreement, factors like skills, working conditions, responsibilities are evaluated that revolve around the economic worth of jobs to employers.

On the other hand, the glass ceiling describes the invisible restriction which blocks females from ascending to the upper- level of a firm.

Agency reporting process

Theoretically, managers should work for the betterment of the company along with the owner but practically, managers may work for their personal interests and goal even at the cost of general employees. In such type of confusion where the goal of the company and the right of employees are somewhat conversely related, the agency reporting process ensures the transparency of the company’s overall financial, managerial, accounting and marketing structure where general shareholders, employees, creditors, customers, and even government can keep an eye of top management’s activity.

Critical analysis to the case questions

As we know that Ken is the senior software designer and Peter is the chief financial officer and both pose the place of significant board membership. Thus, the preparation phase will thoroughly consider the followings activities:

Understanding the responsibility

Their responsibility as an employer is not the reverse concept of the employee rights, rather than understanding the concept of ethics, law recognition, communication effectiveness, human dignity treatment, collective bargain, etc. as below:

• Ethics has been considered a hot topic and for this being an HR professional, they should remember the 10 most serious ethical situations like the following-
• Hiring, training, or promoting on the basis of likeability.
• Allowing no discrimination in pay, discipline, promotion.
• Sexual harassment.
• Promotional sex discrimination.
• Inconsistent use of discipline.
• Lack of confidentiality.
• Discrimination in the compensation program.
• Nonperformance issue in appraisals.
• Tendency of personal gain.
• Sex differentiation in hiring or recruiting.

The law is very much complex and changing rapidly for which they must seek legal assistance regularly. For this, they must communicate line managers’ legal requirements. Directing the HR department for extensive reading, workshops, and counseling would be helpful in this circumstance.

The overall employee rights can not be fulfilled because of the lack of a communication interface. A number of communication forms can be:

• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission:

Since human beings are not just other factors of production, they need respect and consideration for which proper treatment with human dignity is very much essential understanding for both Ken and Peter.

• Simply, the employer should not have any preference to bargain in good faith or not or maintain a union forming.
• Next, they must accept responsibility to their due procedure which refers to the employee’s right of telling from own side of the condition having all the facts measured in a fair and impractical way.

Organizational modification

As a chief financial officer of the firm, Peter has a wide access of introducing agency reporting process within the firm for which a change in company strategy can be suggested, as:

Basically, the concept of adopting genuinely motivated reporting process has become important in the Greenway’s context when the company has been converted into a merged family business. Modern era of accounting and record keeping can emphasise on a number of significance of that as below:

• The reporting process will be helpful in establishing financial transparency of the firm.
• It is a prime indicator of sound organizational strategy on which the firm can compete against major competitors in the industry.
• Because of the planned and controlled process, accounting information will be recorded timely since the competitive environment requires wide access of information. In such situation, while it has been stepped in the broader era of merging approximately crossing the traditional image of family business with a number of observing bodies like customers, investors, creditors, government etc., it needs to meet such forces demand by creating computerised databases to link with them.
• By preparing such report, the decision- making authority will get accumulated and correct data with the assistance of self- directed work team that will be very much effective in perfect forecasting of the company.
• It will motivate management for producing future decisions which place the best interest of the firm being consistent with its mission, vision, goals and objectives.
• It will be an efficient and effective measure of comparing itself with other competitors in terms of inputs and outputs.
• It will also motivate in building strong agency relationship and identification the performance and scope of each employee.

A number of strategic changes can be offered for adopting this action plan, as below:

• Legal and social concern is the topmost factor which would enlarge the company’s existing situation of moderation.
• To have a sound action plan, modification of corporate governance should be in consideration, so that the complex agency problem would not arise.
• Necessity of forming the governing body by planning commission or project area committee.
• Re-development of expertise audit so that clear and complete documentation can be prepared.
• Proper establishment of equal employee rights and related laws for ensuring women participation in making decision.

Concise development of:

• Professionalism
• Partition
• Partnership
• Preaching

Although having a number of advantages, the acceleration of such process is associated with several problematic issues, like:

• The technique is singularly oriented with huge cost and complexity.
• It is not easy to adapt a family business like Greenways.
• Disclosure of necessary information sometimes indicates a distortion of confidential report which may hamper productivity and profit.
• Agency problem is very much common in this case as both the firm have belonged with different background.
• It also considers “creative self- destruction” as a problem in corporate governance.
• Generally, a family business occupies blocks of control in public firms that can be violated in taking such step.
• It would also reveal the board’s eagerness of controlling family, not for general stakeholders and employee- treatment law.
• Flow of agency complexity can have detrimental effect on public investors.
• Overall, an ongoing success of the company could be hampered through the imposition of such practice because of huge contradiction among the members of both families.

Conclusion

After analyzing the entire situation of Greenways industries, it can be summarised that the company is potentially suffering an internal conflict which is the integral part of any family business. Initiating its new recognition as a merged firm that demands for public reporting policy, it also notifies an improper job environment as a sign of male- dominated society. Thus, a close check- up of such issues identifies the necessity of orienting and implementing of employment rights for giving women the right opportunity in participating major corporate decisions as well as other promised facilities. Generally, this solution can be concluded by prevailing 50% of female workforce in entire management along with some important turning points and drawbacks of agency reporting process.

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