Challenges Facing New Zealand's Chief Executive: A Critical Analysis

Discuss about the Challenge Facing New Zealand’s Chief Executive.

Parikh and Gupta (2010) explain organisational behaviour as a manner in which people working in enterprises communicates with others in order to achieve their assigned tasks. Companies today are performing their activities in global environment that is related with frequent changes taking place in economy and technology (Cameron and Green, 2015; Harold, 2010). Numerous studies have been undertaken by researchers where they have tried to understand varied role CEO plays in improving the performance of enterprises and what motivates employees to stay in the company. This essay is going to critically analyse one of the studies undertaken by Ann Hutchison and Peter Boxall for evaluating critical challenges faced by New Zealand’s chief executives for better management skills.

Global financial crisis taken place in 2008-2009 and frequent earthquakes occurred in Christchurch has affected the economic growth of New Zealand severely where government in order to fill the national account deficit and for developing the social infrastructure started taking loans from countries (Hutchison and Boxall, 2014). As per the fluctuating scenario, change management in entities has become very essential where they require managing their workforce to be capable of adapting and performing in adverse conditions. This not only helps enterprises in achieving operational effectiveness through successful activities but also creates competitive edge over other players. In the opinion of Wei and Yazdanifard (2014) skill development and proper change management cannot be possible without top management support specially CEO who are responsible for managing uncertainty, making good business partners, administering personnel and being answerable to directors for company performance. The thesis statement for the article is to analyse the reasons behind why in spite of growth opportunities present in the country in sectors like manufacturing and services the residents are still migrating to developed regions like UK (Hutchison and Boxall, 2014). The author through research has identified that there is limited niche players in different fields (automobile, aerospace and semiconductors) of New Zealand that is limiting career opportunities of individual and they are shifting to larger international offices of other countries. The researcher in order to support this point has supported the statement with proper comparison where New Zealanders employment percentage in Australia was 83% men and 70% men as compared to its own resident that is 72% and 32%. The major problem identified by investigator was that the country consists of small scale entities where talented and educated workforce does not want to be as there is no scope for their career progression. Moreover the researcher has mentioned that the country have shortage of managerial resources who can motivate their subordinates to be in the company. The researcher question for this study can be:

1. Whether New Zealand consists of leaders who can respond efficiently to changes taking place in economy and technology?
2. What are the key challenges that chief executives experience in their environment?

Thesis Statement and Research Questions

The thesis statement pointed out by researcher offer main background information related with the topic, however, proper connection with research questions was lacking and no headings was given which makes the structure complex. The study started talking about what challenges the New Zealand is facing due to recession and global slowdown and why people want to move to other developed counties. Nevertheless, the researcher did not intended to evaluate what could be the suggested solutions for the problems being faced by CEO. Indabawa and Uba (2014) have agreed leaders like CEO and supervisors to be the most influential person who with the help of good leadership styles can motivate people to perform better in the organisation. With changes taking place in external environment they can be the only one who can inspire people to have positive attitude towards implementing change in corporate culture (Reiss, 2012; Hollyforde and Whiddett, 2002; Wei and Yazdanifard, 2014).

The problem statement for challenges that New Zealand’s leaders face currently has been accurately described and supported by reference where the researcher has also described relevant facts related with country’s poor performance. For instance, it was identified that New Zealand’s agricultural and utility segment has performed far better than Australia but the service sector is not up to the mark which employs nearly 70% of country’s (NZ) population (Hutchison and Boxall, 2014). This information clearly suggests that necessity of strategic leaders in service segment like retail, hospitality, finance, construction and wholesale needs to be higher as compared to other fields like mining. Moreover, Mckinsey & Co. based on operations, performance and people management as productivity indicators ranked New Zealand as 10 among 17 countries which are still better than rest 7 countries and companies could improve their scenario by developing superior managerial capabilities. Researcher in order to find the key challenges that senior executives face in dealing with companies suggested a mixed methodology (quantitative and qualitative) where 1000 largest enterprises of New Zealand was chosen from the significant sectors; public, private and not-for-profit segments. Questionnaire created on the basis of Likert Scale was created along with some open-ended questions to have different opinions from the CEO participating in the study. Separate risk (14) factors related with risk and challenges currently faced by economy were made where respondents were asked to rank them on scale of 1-4. Selection of mixed method for the study was good with the help of which findings in both percentage and opinions could be achieved and could be cross-checked with validity (Creswell, 2014). Sample size and sectors were accurate as it helped the researcher to investigate 981 respondents belonging to different segments and relevant data was obtained. However, the study findings could be criticised for its reliability and validity as the proper method of analysis was not implemented. In order to have valid results a researcher should always involve mathematical testing like SPSS of data set through which proper correlation among variables could be evaluated (R. B., Burns, R. Burns and R. P. Burns, 2008).

Strength and Weakness of Article

Results obtained from the investigation illustrated different ranking of risk and challenges faced by CEO ranging from the segments to which they belonged. As per CEO working in private sector, market risks, shareholder management, gaining access to finance, and economic fluctuations as the most influential factors. On the other hand, public and non-for-profit suggested fund raising, economic fluctuations, compliance with government factors and managing alliance with global companies as top four challenging factors. It showed difference in people opinions’ based on the field they were in; however, there is no evidence that these findings are free of biasness as respondents could be reluctant to answer the asked questions attentively. As no ethical considerations or limitations for the study has been mentioned by the researcher the findings and its validity is questionable. Moreover, the researcher in the thesis statement raised retention of talented employees in New Zealand as one of the major issues faced by CEO yet no in depth analysis was done related with this point (Hutchison and Boxall, 2014). The overall study is based on research involving CEO where surveying employees with them could have been beneficial as it would have provided with reasons why people shift to other countries. Miner (2005) has identified motivation as the most important factor for retaining employees in organisations which can be achieved through intrinsic and extrinsic awards. However, the investigator mentioned only low wages and less career opportunities as the main reasons behind high labour migration. Lack of recognition, improper work culture, leaders’ ineffectiveness and lack of stability are some of the factors that influences the personalities of people (Wei and Yazdanifard, 2014). Poor retention in New Zealand economy could be due to lack of extrinsic rewards and inappropriate leadership styles adopted by executives in managing people which is essential for better change management (Fretwell, Lewis and Hannay, 2013; Sidhu, 2013). The researcher failed to analyse the importance of these factors in its analysis and limited the scope with knowing only the challenges faced by CEO in the country for managing companies. In spite of certain constraints of the study, it helped in identifying relevant challenges and risks faced by CEO based on sector type where non-for-profit entities face greatest problem in raising fund while private company claimed market related threats as the most challenging factor.

Conclusion

The overall structure of the article is weak as the investigator has failed to point out and describe the relevant information under suitable headings. The overall study creates confusion in mind of readers as it is difficult to identify the topics related with introduction and literature review. Though in the initial sections of the article the author has offered very interesting facts related to the topic and has supported the arguments with appropriate referencing there was no research questioned formation. However, the surveyor has discussed relevant facts and figures related with New Zealand where companies must respond efficiently to the economic and technological sectors fluctuations. The country is facing high migration where according to researcher low payments and less career opportunities are main reasons whose impact could have been analysed by investing employees in the study as well. The data analysis for quantitative method could have been performed with the help of statistical techniques for better validity and reliability among variables identified with risks and challenges. Nevertheless, the researcher was able to select appropriate sample size and segments to conduct the researcher which assisted in deriving relevant challenges faced by CEO currently in New Zealand.

Reference list

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Creswell, J.W. (2014). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. 4 th edition. London: Sage.

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Wei, L.T., and Yazdanifard, R. (2014). The impact of positive reinforcement on employees’ performance in organizations. American Journal of Industrial and Business Management, 4, pp. 9-12.