Organization Analysis Analysing Organisation: Using Relevant Theoretical

Organization Analysis

Analysing Organisation: Using relevant theoretical perspectives frameworks, critically analyse organisation choice.

Analyzing organization is the process of assessing the organizations systems, functionality and capacity so as to increase the organizations performance, efficiency and overall output. This is done by using various theories and models whose aim is to understand the structure of the organization, technology and behavioral relationships Bate, Khan, & Pye, 2000.

This should be a periodic and detailed activity that assists the organizations management to identify any inefficiency or problems that may have risen and have not been dealt with the management will then come up with strategies to deal with them.

The Company

Compulyzed Telecommunications is a telecommunications company dealing with telephone, cabling, and internet provision services for both home and corporate clients. Compulyzed Telecommunications had an increase of 1.7% operating profit in the fiscal year 2011 as compared to the previous year this was about $40 million. Net profit during the year amounted to $26 million which was a 36% increase as compared to 2010. This increase in profits was mostly due to its improvement in their customer service department and the company's speedy response teams that have increased their customer loyalty and accorded them good recommendations from their current customers to their friends and colleagues. This in turn increased their sales and market coverage.

Compulyzed Telecommunications has a competitive advantage as they have a stronger brand than the other players in the industry. To make their brand get differentiated by their customers they have had to use marketing strategies that are intelligent and this has been one of their key successes. They have embraced social networking sites and online marketing to increase their brand prevalence, with social media they are able to tap into the online conversations to receive comments and feedback from their customers in regards to their products or services. Planning of the company's marketing and sales strategies will be dependent on this information plus also improving their products so that they can suit their target customers.

The company has also been using the social networks to resolve their customer issues speedily, they have a customer service page where their customers can post their complaints and ask for assistance and they have a team that is working for 24 hours to respond to these posts to ensure there is high turn around on customer response.

Employee retention has been a major problem at Compulyzed Telecommunications this has had a negative impact on the company's employee morale, their productivity and service provision to the customers. The company needs to know and understand that the needs of one employee are not necessarily the needs of the other employee as they are all diverse in their nature. The continuous exit of the company's employees ends up affecting their plans and this leads to company targets not been reached. If not curbed this trend will have serious negative effects for the company and their current profitable trend may not continue.

Organizational Analysis Models

To successfully perform an organization analysis, there are a few techniques one can use and the basic one is modeling. Models can be used to experiment the various variables that a manager can use to achieve the results desired. Organizational analysis models will typically be focused on the structure, behavior and technology used in the organization Milton & Raviv, 2002.

There are four models for analyzing an organization namely Rational Model, Natural System Model, Sociotechnical Model and Cognitive Model.

Rational Model

Frederick Taylor was the pioneer of the Rational Model, he had a background in engineering and it's this background that made him make this view of there been only a single way of performing a task which was the efficient way. It is from his work that scientific management came about which resulted in motion and time studies whereby there was timed tasks and efficiency was gauged on employee motions. To accomplish a task using the least time was the best way in performance of any task as per Taylor's view. He suggested that scientific principals should not just be applied to employees but to management also. Scientific management does work, but its main problem is that it creates boredom in the organizational as the employees are doing continuous repetitive tasks.

This model gives manager the authority and they are responsible for giving employees clear instructions and the employees need to make sure they complete the tasks assigned by their managers. The managers will then asses the performance of the employees and give out rewards or punishments depending on the way an individual employee performed Dean, Se Joon, & Susman, 1992()

This model assumes that employee motivation stems from pay increase or threats from managers. This is the major problem of this model as employee motivation will stem from other things not just money, therefore this model forms the starting point for organization analysis and should not be used for giving the complete picture.

Compulyzed Telecommunications can use the Rational Model to reward their best performing employees with salary increases and commissions for the customers/clients they sign on. The company can also use this model to improve on their response time to clients or customers as this will also add to their loyalty and also improve the company's customer serviceGremillion, 1984.

Departmental Managers are now charged with the duty of ensuring that they are clear in the instructions they give to their employees and this together with the compensation benefits accorded to employees will be geared to meeting the company's mission and goals.

With the use of this model the HR department which is charged with taking care of the employees' welfare will need to come up with innovative compensation criteria for the employees who excel in their tasks and duties continuously. The reward system needs to be considerate of every employee and acceptable by both employees and the management as well. Rewarding the employees with something that is not acceptable to them will definitely work against the company as the employees' are not motivated enough to make them excel in their performance Weiss, 2000.

The reward system mostly in monetary form would help in employee retention within the company and the costs the company incurs when they have to train new employees will be reduced and might be used to advance the skills of their current employees which is another form of reward for the employees.

Natural System Model

Natural System Model focuses mostly on the activities that can negatively affect the company Briggs, 2007.

A company is seen as striving to accomplish employee goals as well as its own goals. Thus maintaining the company's equilibrium so that it can meet its goals is its main goal. This model looks at the company holistically making it the opposite of the Rational Model. The Natural System Model views any modifications as been adaptive and unplanned reactions to the unstable conditions that may threaten the company's balance. Activities and events that threaten potential disruptions to the company's balance are the main areas of concentration for this model Casson, 1999()

Since this model assumes that all parts of a company are independent and interconnected, change becomes very difficult for the company as any change in a single department within the company has an impact on other departments of the company Cludts, 1999.

Because of this managers must plan for a systematic and comprehensive change that will cover the entire organization and not just a department or an individual, this reduces any conflicts that may arise.

Balancing the needs of all the company's employees, shareholders, customers and suppliers is what the models endeavors to balance. It assumes that companies work best when the employees belong to productive departments or committees, because of this they contribute to the achievement of the company's goals.

Compulyzed Telecommunications would use this model to identify what ails their current employees and upon establishing the problems the company managers would look into ways of making changes that will encompass all the employees and not just individuals even though the employees needs are different. Compulyzed Telecommunications' management will need to identify a mid-point where they can satisfy each and every employee's needs Lioukas, Bourantas, & Papadakis, 1993.

To retain their employees they will need to come up with better pay packages, a good balance for work and family life for their employees and better progression scope within Compulyzed Telecommunications.

Sociotechnical Model

Sociotechnical model recognizes that there will always be interaction between technology and employees in the workplaces. The limitations of the previous two models i.e. Rational Model and Natural System Model gave rise to this model Sadler, 1971.

The environment is identified as key factor which does interact with the company by this model. The environment refers to social, human, organizational and technological aspects within and outside the company. All this are interdependent and any change in one automatically causes changes in all the others.

The Sociotechnical model also views companies as evolving all the time, and these evolving results from the exchange of information between employees that leads to a change eventually in the expectations of the employees and this causes changes in the company. The conversion of inputs into outputs is how any company's main task gets accomplished and the company design is usually around this tasks Wijnhoven, 2003.

Therefore each department within the company gets its design from its specific subtask. A company has integrated and yet differentiated units that are based on these three factors technology, time and geographical location. Reduction in the number of conflicts is achieved if the departments are integrated and differentiated effectively within the company and thus the company effectively gets its design around the main task Zorab & Lloyd, 1995()

As all the departments within Compulyzed Telecommunications will be integrated and differentiated there will be fewer conflicts between the various employees in these departments. Conflicts within Compulyzed Telecommunications arise from the fact that though an employee may be in the same company one finds that they are not valued as the others in terms of the benefits they are to be getting from the company and this reduces loyalty amongst the employees Jagers op Akkerhuis, 2008.

There will always be communication between the employees and there is no way that the managers can prevent this, the best way of dealing with the issue of employee satisfaction is ensuring that there is equal compensation and benefits. But the benefits should be calculated as a percentage of what one earns this way none of the employees will feel left out at all and there will be less employees exiting from the company, this will also increase harmony within the various departments in the company Genschel & Werle, 1993()

Cognitive Model

This model mainly focuses on how tasks are assigned within the company and the time frame for completion of these tasks. As compared to rational model it addresses other aspects of the company and not just assigning and clarifying of tasks Becker & Flaxer, 2008.

The cognitive model has three main components cognition, organizational setting and problem solving or decision making process. Cognition refers to the units of information processing within the company and departments. The organizational setting refers to how the company distributes tasks and how processes are coordinated within the various department Street & Meister, 2004.

Problem solving or decision making are the steps, procedures and operations that a company uses to reach on solutions for solving problems and making necessary decisions.

A company will make decisions in conformity with its objectives, basing these decisions on the information availed and that is where the cognitive model focus stems from. The model recognizes that a person has limited capabilities and capacities and at any given time they can only manage to do few things, the combination of all the employees small bits adds up to the overall task completion Wilkins, 2006.

To accomplish a single task at a time also encourages specialization within the company and this accounts for the affects the coordination and organizational behavior affects the company. Cognitive model focuses on the adaptation and development of companies in the various circumstances Glaser, Spurling, & Butler, 2004()

The current situation for Compulyzed Telecommunications of employee retention needs to be broken down into tasks and then subtasks so as to establish what is causing the high turnover of employees within the company, the results of which would be used to come up with decisions and solutions for this problem that is currently ailing the company. Breaking down the problem gives the HR department the opportunity to assign tasks according to people's specialty. Recommendations that the individual employees give should be looked into closely to ensure that majority of the employees needs are dealt with accordingly.

The company does not need to use all these four organizational models, management will decide which models will work best for them and the company so that they can manage to solve the problem that is ailing the company at the moment.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a tool for strategic planning. It will assist Compulyzed Telecommunications to focus on its key issues Shinno, Yoshioka, Marpaung, & Hachiga, 2006.

Things that are within the company's control are its Strengths and Weaknesses. This involves sales, marketing, Human Resource and finance. External factors are grouped into Threats and Opportunities, this are not within the company's control they include economic situations, the environment, technological advances and social changes Barney, 1995()

Strengths

The company can use its strengths to counter its threats in any situation. Since Compulyzed Telecommunications has a good and recognized brand they can use this to their advantage and be able to mitigate any threats that they may encounter Bloodgood & Bauerschmidt, 2002()

They have a solid marketing strategy that has made their brand easily recognizable by their current and potential customers. They have embraced technological challenges and have established how to work with them in their marketing strategies. This has helped add value to their company products and services. By embracing the technological changes the company has used social networks in reaching out to where their customers are and have tapped in to their conversations thus ensuring they continue using their strengths to mitigate their threats.

The company's speedy response times is also a key strength to them and this gives their customers less down times as they can be assured of quick restoration of services in case of any fault on their cables or lines. This increases the sales the company makes within a given time as they always receive good testimonials from their current customers. This is what made the company increase its Operating and Net profits for the previous fiscal year and the management is pushing for continued improvement in its customer services to ensure they continue been profitable and increase their profits.

Opportunities

Compulyzed Telecommunications can make use of its current strengths when taking advantage of arising opportunities. With the continued good testimonials the company should plan on improving their sales teams and the implementation teams so they can handle any increases in their client base. The company should also look into reducing the timelines it takes for a query to be responded to this way they can comfortable know that even with increase in customer base they will be able to handle any queries and on time too Ghemawat, 2002()