Human resources management at AAA Transportation Waukegan Wisconsin

HRM and Team Management

The notion by Vernon that AAA should not expand out of their core business and Bud that AAA is not strong enough to compete with existing companies that service the nonperishable foods market in the Midwest confirms a fact that people normally have a built-in anti-change immune system. This kind of mindset creates a powerful inclination to resist change (Duffy, 2009). Unlocking and subsequent modification of immune system can make an organization's employees' to release new energy on behalf of new ways of thinking, believing, and doing. The internal anti-change immune systems are powered by entropy, negentropy, and dynamic equilibrium. This paper discusses and defines mental models and mindsets and how they affect an organization's employees in this case AAA Transportation an interstate trucking company that specializes in transporting wholesale produce in refrigerated trailers in the Midwest. The paper identifies four steps to changing mental models and how they can be used to bring Vernon, AAA drivers' supervisor, and Bud, AAA's corporate officer onto the team. The paper also identifies the five forces that influence those mental models/mindsets and how they affect coworkers' mindsets with examples of mental models/mindsets that are possible affecting Vernon and Bud's decision making processes. Finally, the paper analyses the most commonly used mental models/mindsets in guiding decision making at the workplace and how those models influence ones decision making process.

Some of the four steps that can be used to bring Vernon and Bud onto the team are: recognizing the power and limits of the mental model; keeping the mental models relevant; overcoming inhibitors to change; and transforming the world. It appears that both Vernon and Bud are against the resolve by the new AAA Transporters management to add delivery of nonperishable products like canned foods to their delivery route. The management intends to expand the area they cover and provide expanded services to their existing customers. Vernon strongly feels that the company should not expand out of their core business while bud is inclined to an idea that AAA is not strong enough to compete with existing companies that service the non-perishable foods market. The first step into changing their mindsets is identifying why diversification of AAA's traditional market is alien to them. Could it be that these gentlemen fear that when AAA deviates from its core business into transportation of non-perishables will make the company gradually fall apart and they may subsequently loose their jobs? Could it be that the duo strongly believes that natural and mechanical systems cannot improve themselves so by objecting to the new management's proposition they would preserve the status quo and keep things locked in place? Could it also be that these gentlemen's mindsets are hardened by beliefs and values that are collectively built into the system's social infrastructure? New mental models can also be built to change the duo's mental mindsets using the tacit and explicit knowledge (Duffy, 2009). Organization wide knowledge can be created by engaging individual experts in structured activities to make their tacit expertise explicit. The best of the explicit knowledge is then transformed into organization wide explicit knowledge. This creates functional organization wide mental models.

Some of the forces that influence workers mental model/mindsets are environmental, hereditary, educational, genetic, and past experiences. Individuals within an organization normally make up their minds on what works and what does not work. These attitudes are fuelled by beliefs and values. Talking of educational forces, workers in an organization may resist transformational change because that change threatens to undermine and displace everything they know, believe, and do (Byrne & Johnson-Laird, 2009). A theory may be flatly dismissed or vehemently attacked if it goes against what an established intellectual community thinks if it threatens to shake the secure and comfortable foundation upon which the existing paradigm of thinking rests. It appears that Vernon is academically convinced that a business should not expand out of their core business while Bud believes that AAA is not strong enough to compete with companies that traditionally do the non-perishable food transport. In the context of genetics, people have anti-change immune system which makes them create a powerful inclination to resist change. Modification and subsequent unlocking of this immune system releases new energy on behalf of new ways of thinking, believing, and doing. Internal anti-change immune system is powered by entropy, negative entropy, and dynamic equilibrium (Byrne & Johnson-Laird, 2009). Dynamic equilibrium keeps things the way they are. There are forces in individuals that compete for and against change and this keep them in a relatively stable state of being. Because of the dynamic forces it is difficult to change because people are captives of their systems. This was probably the reason as to why Vernon and Bud were against the expansion of AAA's market niche. People also tend to resist change because of the experiences they had previously endured (Byrne & Johnson-Laird, 2009). By the virtue of the fact that Vernon and Bud had stayed long enough at AAA's they were justified in resisting the company's expansion from its core business. May be a relation or a college happened to have lost a job as a result of the company he was working for expanding from its core business and they were not keen to go through what they had gone through.