Case Study Essay: Big Energy - Impacts Of Integration Model On XYZ Staff Members

Background

Sally Johnson is a member of the management team of XYZ Energy, a major government-owned energy company. Following a high-profile corporate sales process, XYZ Energy was bought by one of its private-sector competitors, Big Energy, for a record price.

XYZ Energy was successful company that had established strong, efficient and robust processes and systems to manage its business and risks. It had also innovated new processes in areas, which gave it significant competitive advantage. The company had a loyal staff with relatively low turnover. The XYZ Energy management team was well respected by employees. A large majority of staff worked hard throughout the lead up to the sale to support the process and support each other. Although morale was not high, it was better than had initially been envisaged when the sales process was announced, the staff were extremely proud of the value they had built up for the company, and it was felt that Big Energy must see significant value in the existing processes and systems of XYZ Energy, as well as in their customer base.

The core business structure of both companies was similar, not surprisingly given they both operated in the same energy retailing market. For example, both companies had marketing, commercial, operational and trading department, and each one of these areas was represented on the companies’ management teams. XYZ Energy also had a strategy department, which Sally Johnson managed.

At the point of the sale, the chief executive and functional business members of the management team were immediately made redundant prior to any integration of XYZ Energy’s operations into Big Energy. Sally was retained post sale to facilitate parts of the integration or operations. With the removal of the core management team, it quickly became clear that Big Energy wished to remove the majority of the remaining staff as rapidly as possible once the essential integration of core operations was completed.

Instantly the morale with the XYZ Energy staff plummeted as they realized that, like the management team members, they would not be allowed to compete for their jobs based on merit. Morale continued to decline and frustration arose as Big Energy failed to leverage innovative processes and systems for its own competitive advantage, focusing on the speed of integration rather than its quality and the long-term benefits. Big Energy’s senior management rarely came to the remote office to engage with their new team, and staff numbers dwindled as people elected to leave and more redundancies were occurred.

Sally felt a strong loyalty towards the staff that had supported the growth of XYZ Energy, and therefore, immense anguish for them as their fate became clear. She attempted to argue to senior management that Big Energy should revisit its integration model and priorities in-order to preserve and leverage the competitive advantages and key skilled staff it had acquired.

(Source: Wood, J. Zeffane, R. Fromholtz, M. Wiesner, Morrison, R. & Seet, P 2013, Organisational Behaviour: Core Concepts and Applications, 3rd Australasian Edition Wiley, Brisbane; pp. 75).

Students are required to address both of the following questions in the their essay:

The rapid rate, at which Big Energy has opted to absorb XYZ Energy into its existing business model, has had an adverse impact on the employees that originally came from XYZ Energy. Discuss the impact of this integration model on the overall the attitudes, values and behaviours of the remaining XYZ staff members.

Based on your analysis in Question 1, you are required to provide management at Big Energy with some recommended strategies for dealing with the identified issues.

Strategy is the key component for a successful business plan and foundation. In relevance to the competitive market and the operational management of the contemporaries, an organization needs to manage its goals with correct methodologies. These involve the proper construction of business models, which serves as a transparent medium to insight the set ambitions of an organization. Proper beneficial implications are the responsibility under the header referred as the Management. The managerial implications are the key determinant of success rate for any organization. Systematic approaches towards the employee base are important for a sustainable stature. Each infrastructure should have a view to form a rewarding system for employees, in most cases, observant this is a recorded failure. This essay is set to analyze the impacts of an adapted integration business model in the Big Energy organization, on its employees and some recommends some mitigation for the raised issues ("Case Study Essay: Big Energy", 2017).

In the context of analysis, the prior necessity is to discuss the prevailing economic and commercial conditions persistent in the XYZ, of which Sally Johnson is a management member. To start with, the mentioned company in discussion is a government owned energy Sector Company with a high rating of sales processes (Kim, Trimi, & Chung, 2014). Followed by its success rate and market position, a contemporary to this one advanced to the procedural purchase of the brand or the organization. The contemporary in discussion for analysis is the Big Energy Corporation, which is a private sector infrastructure (Schaltegger, Lüdeke-Freund, & Hansen, 2012). The XYZ Company was a profound stature with an established amount of strength and efficiency following robust management to handle business and the risk involved. With a loyal employee-base forming an efficient team to support all the innovative measures taken by the company it was all set to capture the market with a competitive advantage. Any success related to an organization is not self-owned but only efficient and diligent team members can contribute to the high rate of success as is witnessed in this case (Foss & Loasby, 2013). In reference to the sales success, initially the staff of XYZ was not enthusiastic or confident enough, however, the figures relative to the same was the reason of pride for the staff. Amidst this successful process, the staff was introduced to the Big Energy enterprise with an expectation that it would provide the recognition to the existing processes adapted by the XYZ Company relative to which they captured a huge customer base (Lee, Olson, & Trimi, 2012).

Similarities between Companies

The operational management for both the companies was similar enough as they adjoined in the same energy producing and sailing market, with an addressing management team for the departments involved. Sally Johnson commendably managed the strategy department of the XYZ Company.

On the collaboration or at the phase of sales between the two companies, members from the management team were deliberately terminated from the organization prior to any collaborative actions following the integration of the XYZ into the Big Enterprise (Katz & Krueger, 2012). Post to this collaboration of the two companies, the technique of the removal of the core management team was providing more or less a transparent transcript and view about the future aspects of the employee base involved in the organization. This methodology followed by the Big enterprise indicated the rapid redundancies that was yet to surface post the completion of major procedures. Post the sale the prime attention was given to the integration model of the business organization to maintain a seamless management rather than focusing on the quality of the deliverables. All these activities from the senior management section was adversely affecting the employee base as well understood by Sally, the one who was retained to follow up with  strategy department. The decisions from the high-level executives highly demoralized the already present employees who performed immensely well throughout to provide support and effort for the betterment of the XYZ organization (Mazzucato, 2015). The adverse impacts accelerated as the employees gradually realize that would not be able to compete for their job positions based on the merit as for the other management members. The case continued to witness an upraised frustration accounting in the employees as the adjoining organization stopped focusing on any innovative measures or quality improvement and only concentrated on the speed of integration (Vulimiri et al., 2013). The long-term goals seemed to take a back seat. Another impactful behavior from the newly developed management was the non-engaging act with the XYZ team members. In this work environment, employees are likely to develop all possible kinds of negativities surrounding the job. Some emotional impacts could be shock, anger, disbelief on the job market and the loss that is difficult to manage.

The later crucial effects relative to such redundancies affect a person’s mental health, self-esteem, financial insecurity, all these triggering depression the stigma of being unemployed cause social embarrassments (Lounkine et al., 2012). Following all these, one important key factor is the job satisfaction, which in an environment like this as presented in the case is most likely to experience a downfall (Adesope & Nesbit, 2012). This in turn leads to more self-detachments of the employees from the organization leaving a more stressful effect on the remaining employees in the organization. The team spirit and unity is crucially important for success rates. As a true and logical management member,

Integration Model

Sally, one of the remaining employees, realized the fault in the model, the Company was following and it is commendable on her path to be able to think about the employees who have been a support in the growing stage of the organization and decided to commence an argument on this topic of unjust managerial behavior (Haufler, 2013).

Following the analysis of the case, it was clear enough that Big Energy enterprise set a bad example from a management point of view. Strategic and afflictive moves from a management system are a prior expectation and a necessity. A management system involves a systematic method aiming for the smooth and proper functioning of an organization through standardized practices (Birolini, 2012). The managerial functions comprise of firstly, organizing an enterprise, setting the justified code of policies, establishing proper operational management and finally an efficient supply chain (Rice, 2013). This is a generalization applicable to all the present organizations. In relevance to the case, major management issues are witnessed to which there are present possible mitigations and strategies to control and overcome the intense and adverse situation prevailing after the integration model adapted in the collaboration of the two parties. Few suggestive and recommended measures are discussed in the upcoming sections.

This section highlights some enlisted traits and strategies a good management system and as a result, the management members should possess to build an effective and active system (Hill, Jones, & Schilling, 2014). Firstly, as a priority, the leadership style should be considered in this subject. Ideally few qualities that should be present in the leader is the quality to motivate and guide the team in the correct direction, involving the innovative measures and improvement in quality. Upon criticism to this case, majorly these traits seem lacking. Secondly, the management team be actively participating in communication methods. Effective and efficient leading systems involve leaders who potentially maintain transparency between the system implications and the employee base, the essence of any organization. This is an effective way to gather inputs, which could eventually benefit the Company (Laudon & Laudon, 2016). Next is the strategy towards effective organizational plans, which allow the team members to get motivated and perform diligently. Next is the quality of being respectful towards the organization members, which could encourage the employees and provide them with job satisfaction. The management system should be able to show empathy towards the employees as without them it is near impossible to build a successful foundation and thus rewarding them is essential. Just for the fact that one may be an employer and the other an employee, it is unethical to be judgmental. The other crucial trait an ideal manager in a managing system should possess is the trait of being fair and balanced. This is a quality allows the system to provide justice and equal rights to every single employee present in the organization (Batool, 2013). Even in a model of integration as in this case, the XYZ staff should have been considered a part of the total organization and the unjust way of redundancies was incorrect from every point of criticism. Unbiased and empathetic are the essentialities an organization to have smooth run.

Impact on XYZ Staff Members

On analysis of the case study, it can be rightfully concluded that the collaboration process should have been more justified. The integration model should have had the features encouraging innovation and quality production involved in a system. The actions implied by the senior management team adversely affected the team bonding and job-satisfaction of the employees from the XYZ Company, demoralizing them completely. The employees were not rewarded for the long-term support that they provided the company to build the grandeur that the company built. The management system set out a wrong example in the case study involved. However, certain strategies for developing an improved management system are suggested and recommended. In the process of analysis, some positively impactful measures are introduced for the improvement of the organization.

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Case Study Essay: Big Energy. (2017). Myassignmenthelp.com. Retrieved 7 September 2017, from https://myassignmenthelp.com/free-samples/case-study-essay-big-energy

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