Report abstract summary
This report seeks to address the issue at hand of aligning Blue sky Media PLC for change and strategic renewal. It also aims at rebuilding the company and improving the position the company has previously held. There is also the aspect of restoration of employees trust in their leaders.
The leaders have to adopt the innovative programmes of work publicized by behavioral scientists for other levels in organizations. When they work with other leaders, they have to rely increasingly on matrix organizations, temporary tasks groups, and project teams.
The work most typically reflects what is described as an exploitative-authoritative organization. In contrast, other departments in companies are practising with the more open and practical participative group approaches described by Likert. Though it is not clear that these innovative designs may lead to increased productivity, growing evidence suggests such results for knowledge – based workers in complex information environments.
Introduction
Blue-sky media PLC is an organization which is changing fast. This organizational change is stimulated by a major external force, for example, substantial cuts in funding, decreased market opportunity and dramatic increases in services. It has therefore undertaken technical, structural or strategic shifts in the organization to evolve to a different level in its life cycle, for example, changing from a highly reactive organization to a more stable proactive environment.
Since this organization has been going through major changes in the aspects of employee’s relations to their leaders, the new CEO has to institute radical changes. There must be a paradigm shift in the manner of operations and also the method of handling issues, especially those related to new strategies for change.
Background
Blue sky media PLC is faced with several factors which necessitate change. These are societal, environmental and internal factors. External factors for change are globalization, differences in workers, technological change, and managing work ethics. These are challenges that cause change in organizations.
Internal forces for change originating inside the organization are recognizable in the form of signals indicating that something needs to be changed. For instance, reduction in effectiveness is a pressure to change. A company that incurs its last three months of the year loss in a span of a fiscal year is for sure forced to do something about it (Lopucki & Whitford, 1990; Weiss, 1990).
Strategic renewal is helpful in guiding the company to downsize, outsource, reengineer, and in corporate venturing, restructuring and rejuvenation. The major aim of strategic renewal is to see the company reposition itself in the market. This helps avoid threats like corporate takeover by other bigger companies.
Human resource management will be vital to either institute measures to retain staff or retrench them through massive lay-offs. The company could also invent other measures aimed at staff appraisal depending on performance and put requisite steps accordingly.
Leadership is essential in a successful corporate world. Visionary leaders help drive their companies to scaling professional and corporate heights. Leaders can either be democratic or autocratic. The company CEO who is democratic encourages workers contribution to the management and running of the company whereas the autocratic leader is strict and runs a one man show.
Project objectives
The first objective of the reorganization is to achieve a framework for financially stable business operations through a capital increase in the company. This will help widen the scope of operation. In addition, the reorganization brings the subsidiaries together directly under the umbrella of holding company making it possible to more efficiently manage the entire business, increase profitability, and strengthen the relationship between the company and its subsidiaries, while at the same time boosting the group’s sales.
The second objective is maximization of the total value of the company’s assets. There are two elements to this objective. First, it is desirable that as little value as possible will be dissipated during the reorganization process; to this end, it is desirable to minimize the time that the process will take and the direct and indirect costs incurred during this process.
It is a good thing that, when the reorganization process ends, the company’s assets will be allocated to their highest-valued use. This implies, among other things, that the assets will continue to function as a going concern if and only if the success value exceeds the liquidation value and that, if the assets continue to function as a going concern, they will be employed under the maximum possible capital structure and the optimal governance structure.
The third objective is highest division of total value: From an efficiency perspective, what matters is not only that the total bankruptcy value will be as large as possible but also how this value will be divided among the participants.
The reason for this is that this afterwards division has important later consequences. In particular, to induce participants to provide finance to the company ex ante, it is expected that, in the event of ex post insolvency, the value will be divided according to the distribution or ranking of priorities that were agreed upon as a contract.
Benefits and key outcomes
A well-defined business process benefits a company in three dimensions. These are productivity, process, and people. Since the performance of a particular enterprise is a combination of the results of its processes. Well defined business processes contribute to a well-managed company.
Productivity, process, and people are interdependent and synergistic. When people acquaint themselves well about the process and become experts in the process, productivity will increase, further increasing the morale of the workers (Gertner & Scharfstein, 1991).
Employees can be motivated through increased morale, which is very important as it increases their productivity. A percentage of between 10 and 70 is estimated to be the inefficiency effect. Improvement of productivity can be tremendously drawn from such inefficiency. Identification of the process activity to ensure error free work can be done since there is a clear definition of the business process. The people perform daily tasks which are persistently changing.
The prospects are finely-identified and invariable. However, in the event that errors take place – their cause can potentially be identified by the organization. The moment the root cause of the errors is pointed out, they can be fixed by making adjustments on the process, which also puts off their recurrence.
It is also very critical that the workers are motivated as it can help steer the process forward. The customers should be fully satisfied through a well-identified process. As a result, the customers become loyal to the business and feel satisfied, which brings about motivation (Lopucki & Whitford, 1990).
Assumptions/constraints
While dealing with individuals you will find that most individuals want to develop their potential. In addition, they have interests for personal growth and development in case they are provided with supportive and challenging atmosphere. They like to make a higher level of contribution in achieving institutional goals than is normally acceptable.
The manager asks, listens, supports, challenges, encourages risk-taking, allows failure, removes hindrances, gives freedom and responsibility, sets high standards and rewards success. This will in turn help to boost the morale of employees and aid in furthering successful organizational change.
While dealing with groups, the manager needs to understand that one of the most reference groups for individuals is the working group; this includes peers and the boss. Majority wish to be accepted, and socialize with one or more small reference groups. They make bigger contributions to the groups’ efficiency and growth.
The manager should let teams flourish; leaders should invest in groups/teams; adopt a team-leadership style rather than a one-on-one style. They ought to actively engage group members to help the leader in decision-making and problem-solving, by training them up suitably. Therefore this will help group members to deal with both positive and negative feelings hence solve problems through mutual interactions.
In designing and running an organization, traditional bureaucratic organization structures must give way to newer organizational designs. The needs and aspirations of employees ought to be addressed. Placing people first can lead to organizations that are more human, development oriented and encouraging. They are also high performing in terms of output, profitability and output quality. The result is that people are an organization’s most essential resource; they are the source of productivity and profits and should be treated with care.
The current bargaining-based process appears to fall substantially short of the goal of maximizing total reorganization value. This happens both because value is often dissipated during the process and because the ultimate outcome of the process might not be value-maximizing.
The redesign process under the existing rules takes substantial time (White, 1984; Weiss, 1990). In one re-organization of a major corporation, the administrative expenses of the company and of the creditors committee came to $3.5 million per month (Cutler & Summers, 1988).
Essentially, the company under reorganization might incur substantial indirect costs from functioning inefficiently during the reorganization process. Because the incentives of management during the process are generally not well aligned with the maximization of reorganization value, the management decisions during the process are likely to be distorted. In addition, because of the insolvency cloud hovering over the company, potential business partners may be reluctant to deal with the company or may demand especially favorable terms.
Potential inefficiencies in the structure emerging out of the process: There are reasons to suspect that inefficiency costs might continue to be incurred even after the reorganization process ends, because the structure emerging out of the process might not be optimal. White (1994) suggests that the existing process is biased in favor of continuation — that is, the company is likely to continue as a going concern even if the most efficient route would be liquidation.
Lastly, constraints under which the project must operate are based on the amount of resources available for implementation of aspects of the recommended strategies. However this can be addressed by ensuring that there are enough funds and requisite resources long before the organizational change, diagnosis and redesign is embarked on.
Quality control
Other
This proposal will be effective only if the expected conditions prevail and the outcomes are only achievable as per the procedure set (Lawrence & Lorsch, 1967).
Milestones
References
Cutler, D. M., & Summers, L.H. (1988). The costs of conflict resolution and financial distress: evidence from the Texaco-Pennzoil litigation. Rand Journal of Economics, 19, 157-172.
Gertner, R., & Scharfstein, D. (1991). A theory of workouts and the effects of reorganization law. Journal of Finance, 46, 1189-1222.
Lawrence, P.R., & Lorsch, P. (1967). Organizational and Environment. Boston: Harvard Business School, Division of Research.
Lopucki, L., & Whitford, W. (1990). Bargaining over equity’s share in the bankruptcy reorganization of large publicly held companies. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 139, 125-196.
Weiss, L. A. (1990). Bankruptcy resolution: direct costs and violation of priority of claims. Journal of Financial Economics, 27, 285-314.
White, M. J. (1994). Corporate bankruptcy as a filtering device: Chapter 11 reorganizations and out-of-court debt restructurings. Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, 10, 268-295.