HRM742-Wilson Brothers Case Study

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24-04-2020

Question:

You have recently been hired as the Director of Human Resources for Wilson Brothers Canada and have HR responsibility for all of the company’s Canadian operations. Bob and John Wilson have asked you to prepare a report for their review focusing specifically on organizational behavior within the company. Review the Wilson Brothers Case Scenario in depth and address only the required ten (10) topics listed below in your analysis report. Marks are allocated for thoroughness of coverage of the ten required topics and their analysis-linkages to appropriate OB theories and practices from the course and external sources. It is not enough to just describe the happenings at Wilson Bros. Analysis should include the effectiveness of the current approach for each of the ten topics as well as recommendations for improvement in each. Use each topic as a heading in your analysis. While there are no page requirements for the analysis report include all relevant analysis and be concise. Remember this is an Executive Summary for the owners of the company.

The required ten (10) topics to be covered, and subjected to analysis, are:

1.Organizational Design and Structure (Advantages/Disadvantages).

2.Job Design (Use of job design principles to impact employee motivation and employee engagement).
3.Decision Making (How decisions are made and communicated).

4.Equity (Specific issues related to perceived fairness in the organization).

5.Organizational Culture (Culture(s) within the organization and the effect of the culture(s) on organization performance).

6.Organizational Change (Analyze any significant change – current changes being implemented; a recent change already implemented; changes being contemplated for the future).

7.Work Groups/Teams (The existence of group or teams in the organization and their effectiveness).

8.Conflict (Evidence and effect of conflict in the organization and how it is handled).

9.Leadership Style (Leadership style of the owners).

10.Power, Influence and Motivation (The types of power used by the Wilson Brothers and how they impact and influence employee behaviour and motivation).

Each topic is worth 4 marks with the mark allocation as follows:

1.Describe the current situation for each topic at Wilson Brothers.

2.Analyze the effectiveness of their approach i.e. how it helps or hinders.

3.Make recommendations on how Wilson Brothers can improve.

4.Link your recommendations to specific OB theories/concepts.

Answer:

Introduction

This essay aims to discuss the Wilsons Brothers case and provide the brief discussion of the aspects of the organisation. The advantages and the disadvantages of the organisational structure is provided in this essay. A discussion of the job design is provided in the essay. The discussion of the decision making in the organisation is provided in the essay. The organisational changes is analysed in this essay. The discussion of the work groups and the teams is provided in the essay along with the discussion of any kind of conflict is provided in this essay. The analysis of the influence, power and the motivation is provided in this essay. Lastly, this report concludes with an appropriate conclusion for this essay.

Discussion

Organisational design and structure

The organisational structure helps in the development of the organisation in correct direction. The organisational structure of the Wilsons brother limited is

Bob Wilson: Co-Owner-CEO

John Wilson: Co-Owner-President

Murray Brown: Executive MP Marketing

Ron Abrams: VP Operations

Dave English: VP Engineering

John French: VP Finance

Gayle Robillard: VP Sales Retail

Diane Ouellette: VP Sales Food Service

Some of the advantages for the organisational structure are:

Promotion of the upward mobility: As the company, Wilson Brothers Limited operates in the strong structure, the comprehensive management of the training plan is easily achieved by the organization.
Simplification of the strategic planning:
Improvement of the training of the employees
Refinement of the process of decision making
Unification of the marketing message: The company could present the unified front to the customers, investors and the vendors when any common message of marketing has been utilised all through the organisation. The unified marketing message could help the organisation with the better understanding of the goals of the marketing and then do the extensive work all together for achieving the targets. When several departments are included in the single endeavour, the unified message of marketing could be helpful for the success of the project.
The upward mobility could be promoted significantly with the organisational structure. The strong structure of the organisation is increasingly able to prepare the qualified employees for the management. When this company is operating under the strong structure, the comprehensive training plan of management is significantly easier in creating and then executing for helping the maintenance of the strong managerial core. The department could work extensively together on the plan of development for helping the encouraging the training of the managerial candidates within departments.
The organisational structure also permits the employees to gain the clear understanding of the divisions among the lower, senior and the middle management. With the operational structure in the minds of the management, the workers could be extensively empowered for meeting and then exceeding the standards of performance that could assist in the progressing in the trajectory of their career.
It would facilitate the simplified strategic planning. With the utilisation of the strong structure of the organisation, the company is allowed the better focus on the single collection of the goals rather than the each group who is working on their respective agenda. It leads to the flow the communication that is offered by the organisational framework and the establishment of the respect and the responsibility for the hierarchy of the company that is introduced with the strong framework. It assists the company to utilise the resources in a proper manner in pursuit of the goals of the company as it is opposed to the doubling of the efforts or the experimentation with the options that are not in the best interest of the company.
The good organisational framework would make the training of the employee significantly easier in administering. It permits the training to be significantly flexible on the basis of the alteration within the organisation. when the flow of the information is regulated by the organisation structure, then the alteration in the information are significantly easier in monitoring in the company vast program of training.
Refining the process of decision making: irrespective of kind of the organisational framework that has been chosen by the organisation, reporting channel is always available for the decision maker.

Some of the disadvantages of the organisational structure are:

Increase of the nature of bureaucracy
Lack of the proper integration among the various departments or the functions of the company
Responsibility of the employees towards the project team and the functional areas

Job design principles

The job design principles are utilised for enhancing the job satisfaction of employees of the organisation. It helps the Wilson Brothers Limited to provide the required help to the employees using the approach of the job enrichment, job engineering, enhancing the quality of the work life and the socio-technical life and the social information processing approach. This helps the organization to manage a healthy work environment among the employees and the managers could easily manage the employees.

Equity

Some of the issues related to the perceived fairness of the organization are:

The individual who is majorly responsible for the taking of the final decision for hiring or promoting the employees would not use only the perception of their own but they have to assess and then evaluate level of risk of the decision that is taken by that individual on themselves and the organization. It is often seen that the promotion policy in the Wilsons brother limited is not provided to the appropriate individual with the proper experience, rather it is provided to someone who is preferred by the management of the organization. This leads to the partiality among the managers and the employees.

Organizational Culture

The culture of the organisation has helped in the rapid growth of the organisation and it provides the organisation with the required motivation and the idea for achieving significant growth. The brothers manage most of the work that has to be provided extra attention, and the employees help in functioning of the organisation properly. The managers provide the employees with the required training and the skills that would help them to undertake more jobs and execute the common tasks in significantly less time. This culture of the company provides the required fuel for the rapid development of the company and the expansion of the company in several countries.

Organizational Change

The change that has been implemented in the recent times in the organisation is the improvement of the transportation of the products to the customers in the market. As the company faces significant threat due to the increase in the prices of the petroleum in the country, the company made a decision and placed several small stores of the company all over the country. This helps in reaching to the customers easily and the transportation of the goods is done as per the requirement of the stores and this helped in reducing the cost of the transportation that was earlier done for the service of door to door. There are several benefits that are gained by the organisational change when it is implemented in the organisation. some of the benefits includes:

Increase in the motivation: as the leader has taken the initiative and promoted the altered business plan, the employees would likely be significantly excited to achieve the future goals of the company. This type of the action would provide the information to the people close and are open to the new ideas as well as the willingness in adapting the requirements of the market for the optimal success of the company. The employees view it significantly presented and when the visibility is provided regarding the development for maintaining the success in the contribution of the work.

Prediction of the challenges: When the adaptive plan has been created, the future challenges would as well as likely be extensively discussed. In the anticipation of the hurdles would require to be anyhow overcome, the leaders could allow the easy transition all through the process by the knowing what could happen.

Discover the new area of the business: After the strategically analysis of the present business plan with intention of the drafting of any new one, the company could discover the practices that were previously working in the company and the practices that requires the immediate change. It also offer the opportunity to develop the plans that combines with the specific skills from the specific people who comprise of the ability of focusing solely on particular project all through the completion. This concept of the knowledge regarding the required skills in the projects helps in the efficient progress of the company.

There might be significant resistance to change when the change management is considered. The stiff resistance could arise from the company, and it might emerge from the within the organisational employees or the senior and middle management as soon as the change management has been proposed. It would lead to the development of significant inertia. When the people are accustomed to the specific working process of the organisation, they fear the changes in the system that could damage the normal working. The other factors that could make the resistance of the changes among the organisation could be the insecurity, the loss of control, the possibility of the increased workload, the uncertainty and the surprise.

The growth of the employees could be immensely achieved and it has been observed that any employee who is performing the similar task for any significant amount of time might feel the requirement of change and the development of the skills. The organisational change would help this kind of individual to develop the skills and then apply these skills to the new changes. The individual would gain the significant job satisfaction as there would be the feeling among the employee that the skills of that individual is being significantly utilised.

Work Groups/Teams

The presence of the sales team in the company helped in the rapid expansion of the company to new customers and provide them with the knowledge about the products of the company and the services that are provided by the company. The team undertakes the task of providing the required information about the company to the new customers all over the country and appeal the customers towards the company.

Conflict

The effect of the conflict in the organisation is resolved as quickly as possible. In some situations there have been reported conflict among the suppliers and the managers or the managers and the employees. The counselling team that is implemented in the organisation helps in resolving of the conflict with extreme rationality and ensure that the conflict among the employees and the managers does not effect the working of the organisation. The proper management of the organisation helps in creating the effective understanding among the people of the organisation for preventing any serious conflict the might lead to the damage of the reputation of the organisation.

Leadership style

The leadership of the company has helped immensely towards the expansion of the company to new levels and the growth of the company as the successful food products distributor. The hard work of the leaders, who are the brothers has helped in the rapid growth of the company. The senior and the middle level management provided the employees with the required skills for excelling in their duties and grew to be the effective leaders for the company.

Power, Influence and Motivation

Powers are extensively utilised by the leaders of the organisation for ensuring the proper functioning of the company. Some of the powers that are utilised by the leaders of the company are:

Information power:
Legitimate power
Reward power
Expert power

Conclusion

Therefore, it could be concluded from the above essay that the company Wilsons brother limited could achieve significant growth and popularity with the implementation of the some changes in some sectors. The organisational design and the structure helps the organisation in the promotion of the upward mobility, Simplification of the strategic planning, Improvement of the training of the employees, and the Refinement of the process of decision making. The job design principles are utilised for enhancing the job satisfaction of employees of the organisation. The culture of the organisation has helped in the rapid growth of the organisation and it provides the organisation with the required motivation and the idea for achieving significant growth.

Bibliography

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