Assessment 1 Part B – Risk Analysis and Part C – Case Study

Assessment 1 Part B – Risk Analysis
You are the HR director at a large Australian bank with a bureaucratic
authoritarian culture and a highly unionised workforce. In response to
competitive pressures, the bank aims to become the fastest growing, most
profitable bank in Australia.
They are also looking at expanding their operations in Asia as part of their
growth strategy. You realised that in order to bring the company to reach new
heights, the bank needs to make changes to their organisational culture.
1. How are you going to introduce cultural change in the entire organisation?
(5 marks)
2. What are the risks of introducing a cultural change in a bureaucratic
authoritarian culture and a highly unionised workforce? For example, if the
change will require retrenchment, what are the risks involve? What are the
barriers to change? (5 marks)
3. Perform a risk assessment for all the risks you identify including your
recommended mitigation strategies. Use risk analysis forms similar to the
one you used in Session 4. (10 marks)
Total part B: 20 marks
Assessment 1 Part C – Case Study
Scenario
Change at Asia/Pacific Manufacturing (APM)
The atmosphere in the boardroom was intense. Mon Ey, the financial director for
APM just concluded his presentation on the current situation of the Australian
manufacturing division of APM. The following conclusions were made based on the
presentation:
ƒƒ APM Australian factories not competitive
ƒƒ Benchmarked against international best practice, production costs of the Australian
manufacturing operations are the highest in the world
ƒƒ The Australian factories have low productivity and high labour costs
ƒƒ Must cut losses and expand elsewhere OR make the Australian operations more
competitive
ƒƒ At risks of being taken over by another major competitor. If this materialises, all
Australian operations will be sold off and moved overseas
ƒƒ Share price dropped 20 percent from the past six months
In view of the current problems of APM, they decided to hire the services of STegic, a
strategic consultancy firm to make sense of the problem and possibly come up with a
recommendation as to the best possible course of action.
The study conducted by STegic reveals the following issues:
ƒƒ If the Australian factories could achieve 90 percent of best practice figures for
productivity and labour costs, the Australian operations would be among the most
profitable in the company

Introducing Cultural Change in a Highly Unionized Workforce

Part – B

Answer - 1

It is a higher difficulty to change the organization culture than to develop a new culture in a brand new organization. Since the bank is highly unionized and has an authoritarian culture it is difficult to introduce the change as the people are already accustomed to old assumptions, values, and rules. To introduce a cultural change the initial step is to redraft the internal rules and regulations and to have strong executive support along with training.

The main factor that will influence the cultural change is the presence of executives and the executives must support it. The executives must project behavioral change and not only verbal support. The change must be lead by changing the behaviors and it is the duty of the management to provide a clear cut explanation of the new culture so that their functioning is enhanced and more support can be ensured (Moncrieff, 2014).

Cultural change heavily relies on the behavior change and it is imperative that members of the organization must know what is expected of them and should understand the way to behave once the new culture is defined to them (Alter, 2013). Hence, training is an important factor that will be helpful in the communication of the expectations and teaching new rules and behavior.

Value and belief statement

The employee focus group must be used to ensure the mission, vision, and value in the description that will state the influence on every employee’s job.  The value and belief statement must be provided a complete understanding of the new goals of the organization. This will help in reflecting the actions and commit them to their jobs (Itami & Nishino, 2010).

Moreover, the reward and recognition should be evaluated and reframed so that the employees get to know about the reward attached to their performance. Hence, reframing of reward and recognition is another important concept that can be used to introduce cultural change in the organization (Levine & Prietula, 2013).