Case Study: Radian Oil And Gas Company In Saudi Arabia

Organisational level

Question:

Discuss about the People and organization Radian Oil and Gas company.

The report is developed to focus on the people and organization where various business activities are managed. The business organization chosen here as the case study is Radian Oil and Gas company in Saudi Arabia. The company manages its engineering solutions properly and allows its customers to conserve energy. This will further help in making the organization operate efficiently through a wide range of products and services’ solutions and reduce the emissions of Carbon dioxide that can harm the ecological balance in nature. The business activities at Radian Oil and gas company have also led to the saving of fuel, electricity and water (Radian.com.sa 2017). The major issue that may be faced by the business organization is illustrated and how it can affect the business functioning at the individual, group and organizational level. The socially constructed nature of the organization is also understood along with the identification of various factors that can influence the organizational practices (Abedin et al. 2013). There are certain plans that will be constructed, based on the theories, to promote collaborative working and overcome the socially constructed barriers too.

The motive of the company is to conserve energy and so sustainable approaches have been followed to make sure that energy conservation is possible and ecological balance in nature is maintained.

Organisational level

One of the major issues faced was that a huge amount of energy was produced and electricity was also used largely, which increased the operational expenditures too. Radian Oil and Gas company started its business operations and processes in the year 2010 and since then it has been committed to the deliverance of excellence in terms of services provided to the customers. The company also operated trough a wide range of products and services that reduced the carbon dioxide emissions and even saved the fuel, electricity and water largely (Abraham 2013). The functioning of the engineering instruments and machineries incurred a lot of energy, because of which the costs for implementing those were also high. The issue was though negligible, still it posed to be a threat, because it delayed the construction project and even could have reduced the capital of the organization, furthermore creating more problems like being unable to improve the infrastructure of the organization through necessary investments. This is a major issue at the organizational level for Radian Oil and Gas Company in Saudi Arabia (Baines et al. 2013).

Individual level

Individual level

There are lots of questions related to the industry fundamentals including macro environmental factors, maintenance of balance between supply and demand, regulatory mechanisms for managing the cost components and influence created by geopolitics. The prices of oil and gas are reduced, which has created a huge adverse effect on the oil and gas industry of Saudi Arabia. Crude prices reduced, which resulted in complexities related to the trade flow and other traditional suppliers’ concerns. Depending on just energy is not favourable, because it could result in less market share and even create difficulties to gain enough profit in business and provide the right amounts of wages to the employees of Radian Oil and Gas Company, Saudi Arabia (Barnaud and Antona 2014).

Group level

At the group level, the issues faced were identified as lack of communication between the employees and lesser wages paid to the team members when involved in smaller projects within the oil and gas industry. It is often seen that the group members find it difficult to interact with each other due to different backgrounds or cultures from which they belong. Discrimination is a major issue that can create issues for the workers of Radian Oil and Gas Company at the group level. This not only could hinder the successful accomplishment of tasks but might also prevent the organisation to obtain the outcomes that were assumed at the earlier stages during the management of a project. This might even delay the progress of a project and prevent the completion of the project on time (Basu 2014).

The socially constructed nature of the organisation means the theory of knowledge in communication and sociology that can identify the development of jointly constructed understandings and make shared assumptions about the reality and origin of the organisation. The social constructionism theory enables to focus on the human beings perception related to the environment where they are working. The conservation of energy is related to the performance of the organisation, which shows that with the management of construction project activities, there will be production of large amount of energy as well as many investments. As the performance of the organisation is excellent, there has been production of huge amounts of energy too, which is considered as a major issue, because energy conservation is important for business sustainability (Baumeister and Peersman 2013).

Radian Oil and Gas Company has helped the customers to conserve energy and function more efficiently by delivering a wide range of business solutions to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and maintain a stable environmental condition. This would also save a lot of heat, water and electricity and at the same time preserve the environment by fulfilling its corporate social responsibility properly.  The organisation has achieved success through the development of a good relationship between the business and its customers and gain knowledge about the preferences of the customers, furthermore gain motivation level to emerge as a successful market leader (Bratton and Gold 2012). Radian Oil and Gas company is one of the most established business engineering solutions provider in Saudi Arabia that has been specialised in the areas of transferring heat, solar power and heating systems, conservation of energy and optimisation of combustion. The improvement of deaerators' effectiveness has been possible with little investments, the short shutdown has provided better capacity, high turnaround, and this was the cause of reducing the operational expenses too (Brindley 2017).

Group level

Various kinds of theories and models can be used to create a positive impact on the organisational practices and ensure that the issues such as lack of ability to conserve energy, financial instability and low level of communication between the employees of the organisation are overcome. Few of the theories used within the business organization Radian Oil and Gas Company, Saudi Arabia have brought huge advancements and progress in the project management, and some of these are McKinsey 7S model, Kotter’s Eight step model, Kurt Lewin’s theory of managing changes, etc. (Broadbent 2013).

The issues faced by the company were lack of ability to conserve energy and poor communication between the workers of the organization. Issues were also related to the industry fundamentals such as the inappropriate balance between the supply and demands, ineffective regulatory mechanisms and other macro environmental factors creating an impact on the organisation. Due to the lowering of the crude price, the trade flow activities were hindered, and suppliers' requirements were not fulfilled, which was a major concern as well. The company wants to overcome the issue of high amounts of energy production, which can also lead to the high generation of heat. The main focus of the company is to conserve energy and make sure that the energy and other resources are utilised properly to make the business function effectively (Brounen, Kok and Quigley 2012).  Therefore, it is evident that the utilisation of these kinds of theories can influence the organisational practices and led to better productivity, enhanced level of profit and even help the organisation to gain a competitive advantage in business. 

The Mckinsey 7 S model or theory consists of the various components that are needed to be followed by the Oil and gas company to accomplish a project and obtain the desired positive outcomes properly. The first element is the strategy that has allowed the company to implement strategies for pursuing the growth, development and creation of value within a volatile environment. To become successful in the present market, the price of commodities tend to increase, which needs to be re-evaluated based on the middle and high level expectations of the customers. Radian Oil and Gas Company has managed to confront strategic changes and made decisions to enhance performance and enable supply of products and services according to the demands of the market (Chin, Hambrick and Treviño 2013).

The structure of the organisation is maintained through the management of reports and optimises the exploration portfolio for increasing the production volume, mitigate risks and gain good amounts of return both in the long and short-term. The systems include the everyday organisational activities that the employees of the organisation are involved with to accomplish the tasks properly. As the issue related to the lack of conserving energy was to be overcome, it would be important for Radian Oil and Gas Company to identify areas of growth, find out opportunities to reduce the costs of production and even enhance the productivity level largely (Coleman 2012).

The Socially Constructed Nature of the Organisation

The shared values are the goals and objectives that have been developed according to the sets of values and beliefs required to maintain a good culture within the business organisation. The major values and beliefs are followed at Radian Oil and Gas company for the creation of a good culture and ensure that the work ethics are maintained properly too. This could make the employees of the organisation abide by the rules, regulations and procedures, furthermore develop a cost for fulfilling the demands and preferences of the customers in different segments of the market. The company aims for meeting the demands of people in the different market segments and manage the costs at various supply levels, which can allow the development of a project and ensure that economic impact is maximised (Cummings, Bridgman and Brown 2016).

Style represents the kind of leadership adopted by Radian Oil and Gas company to overcome the issues faced by the company and even the socially constructed barriers with efficacy. No one seems to bother about the issues faced by the company other than the leader of the business organisation. It is the role and responsibility of the leader to check whether the company has been performing properly or not and find out ways by which the issues can be overcome. The transformational and democratic leadership styles are followed mainly to consider the opinions and feedbacks of the employees and then make effective decisions in business for the business benefits (Davis 2012).

Staffs and skills are the other two major components of the McKinsey 7 S model that represents the employees of the organisation and their skills, competencies and expertise level. The workers have been trained to strengthen their abilities so that they can perform to their potential. This would also make the staffs informed about the issues experienced by the organization and then work as an unit to deal with the issue perfectly (Eisenberg et al. 2013).

The theory proposed by Lewin was also utilised by the organisation to implement changes to the organisation and ensure that the business operations and processes are managed properly. The various stages included unfreezing, movement and refreezing. 

The unfreezing stage allows for creating awareness of the issues among the staffs of Radian Oil and Gas Company and enhances their level of acceptability to respond to the changes with ease and effectiveness (Gorran Farkas 2013). The people, processes and structures of the company should be assessed to examine how changes should be possible, and the company could gain competitive advantage in business.

Theories and Models to Overcome Issues

The movement or changing stage allows for moving towards a new state and improve the existing structure, processes and culture of the organisation. This would make the staffs adopt the changes made by the company and learn the new ways of thinking, behaviours and processes that could be advantageous. The changing stage could also resolve the issues related to lack of communication and other cross-cultural barriers by promoting effective communication between the employees and become familiar with the changes and improvements that were made (Haddington, Mondada and Nevile 2013). The refreezing stage enabled reinforcements and stabilised the new state of the organisation soon after the implementation of changes. This helped in making changes to the organisational processes, structure and a perfect culture was also established, which facilitated team work, coordination and acceptance of new behaviours and attitudes. Acceptance of changes would bring more productivity, create a sense of urgency, develop a vision and empower the staffs of Radian Oil and Gas Company, Saudi Arabia to become successful within the business environment (Hayes 2014).

This theory is equally important as the other two models or theories for managing changes within the organisation and enhances its capabilities to overcome issues and establish itself as a successful company within the marketplace.

At first, a sense of urgency is created to demonstrate the problems to every member of the organisation. The issues included the high production of heat and energy with very little amounts of energy that had been conserved. Due to the immense heat generation, the cost of operations and business activities also got higher along with a reduction in capital. Another major problem was the emissions of carbon dioxide in large amounts due to the energy production, which not only deteriorated the organisational functioning but also created negative effects of the environment (Järvenoja, Volet and Järvelä 2013). The issues were needed to be addressed to create urgency among the staffs and make them know how to deal with those.

The organisation has developed a team consisting of skilled workers with proper guidance by the leader to coordinate the activities and communicate important information about the issues. It could be understood that, at the individual and group level, there was lack of communication, which had been identified quite easily by developing a guiding coalition. After this, a strategic vision is formed, and initiatives are taken to clarify certain things to the employees and link the initiatives with the vision and mission of the organisation (Kenney 2012). A volunteer army is enlisted to enable large-scale changes and allow them to discuss the effects of these kinds of issues and furthermore identify opportunities to ensure that the changes are successful and noteworthy. 

McKinsey's 7S Model

The next stage of the Kotter’s model has facilitated the capabilities of the organisation to overcome the barriers and created a positive impact on the business functioning. This has also created enough scopes for Radian Oil and Gas Company to generate short-term wins and keep track of the progress of the project. Kotter’s theory is used by the organisation to improve the credibility of systems, structures and policies and initiate changes consistently until the vision gets turned into reality and the goals and objectives are accomplished (Love, Lopez and Kim 2014). Lastly, the changes are made with the focus on accelerating the production and business processes efficiency through the development of communication between the new behaviours that have been adopted and organisational success. By understanding these issues, the company would be able to implement high-efficiency energy saving cooling tower to reduce high amounts of heat generation and even conserve a lot of energy. The staffs could understand the urgent need for making changes and even implement various effective regulatory mechanisms for creating positive effects (Okfalisa et al. 2012).

It is often seen that resolving an issue becomes easier when collaborative working is established within the workplace, and same has happened with Radian Oil and Gas Company in Saudi Arabia. There are various plans to improve the collaborative working among individuals and enhance the effectiveness of the workforce. The leader must inspire his subordinates and communicate with them frequently. This creates new lines of communication and motivates the employees to perform their roles and responsibilities with dedication and commitment. Aligning the shared vision and purpose is essential to foster collaborative working and make the employees understand their roles properly, furthermore help the organisation to achieve the goals and objectives by contributing to the organisational effectiveness too (Ortiz-Cruz et al. 2012).

The staffs are willing to coordinate with each other and discuss certain matters, thereby provide their feedback and opinions, based on which, effective decisions can be made. It has developed close relationships with the employees and enabled the leader of Radian Oil and Gas Company to establish a healthy culture where people can work as an unit (Oyedepo 2012).

Plans are also designed to diversify the workplace to manage flow and exchange of information at a faster rate and maintain innovation, creativity, synergy and resolve conflicts and misunderstandings within the workplace. It is important to maintain privacy and make sure that information and data about clients and employees are not disclosed. The employees must be careful to keep the data and information secured and prevent any sort of unauthorized access too, which might result in loss of data (Patel, Pettitt and Wilson 2012).

Conclusion

With the advancement in technology, the internet has become widespread, and it has benefited the company by allowing the workers to interact with one another and develop deep connections to manage proper flow and exchange of data and information with convenience. Though emails, telephonic conversations and video conferencing can be essential tools for employees to communicate with each other and work in coordination, still face to face meetings can foster better relationships and provide guidance and support whenever critical situations are needed to be handled. An employee engagement platform is created to improve the collaborative working and align the staffs of the organisation with the shared vision and purpose (Radian.com.sa 2017). This has smoothened the progress of the entire system to develop interpersonal relationships and empower the staffs to bring positive results for the organisation by working together.

Not just communication is essential to enhance the working efficiency, but also the ability to respond to changes is needed for fulfilling the demands of the stakeholders. One of the most effective plans for the creation of a collaborative working environment is to enable transparency for defining the roles and responsibilities of the employees and share information to guarantee the participation of the employees and reduce chances of errors to the utmost level possible. Collaborative working could also help in preventing the supply chain risks and make sure that good quality resources were provided for enhancing the manufacturing and production processes (Shin et al. 2012).

Though the issues like lack of ability to conserve energy was not a socially constructed barrier, still it is important for Radian Oil and Gas Company to maintain an optimum level of energy and conserve it properly. The combustion operations were optimised with the burners used with a low level of NOx, which can deliver the best performance. This would also facilitate the working mechanisms of the flame monitoring systems, combustion control and control the fuel-air ratio properly, furthermore measure the water level and implement systems to manage the burning of fuels and conserve energy as much as possible (Sutherland 2013). Al these innovative approaches could allow Radian Oil and Gas company to improve its business operations and processes, ensure consumption of fewer amounts of fuel and even reduce the carbon dioxide emissions largely.

Many of the customers believed that not maintaining a balance in combustion could create a negative impact by increasing the ownership cost and even degrade the performance and effectiveness of the operations. All these issues would further increase the cost of fuel, create a sudden shutdown of the systems, increase costs of production, produce high amounts of energy, which might create large amounts of heat and cause pollution too (Vaara and Whittington 2012).

To overcome the socially constructed barrier, the company has introduced a patented dual strainer venture steam trapping system, to improve the effectiveness of the oil and gas industry and even reduce the cost of maintenance of boilers. This would further improve the transfer and exchange of heat and energy and make sure that the most suitable amount of energy is used and any other than that is not wasted. There would also be reduced emissions of carbon dioxide, and on the other hand, the need for replacement of failed steam traps could be prevented as well;, furthermore creating energy efficient system that can both conserve energy as well as ensure successful functioning of Radian Oil and Gas Company in Saudi Arabia (Watson 2013). The running of the steam traps would be possible in a better way, furthermore, it could serve as both patented gas turbine and even augment the power supply to enable conservation of energy and overcome issues where high amounts of heat and energy might be generated.

There were other socially constructed barriers that have been generated due to the issues related to the industry fundamentals such as macro environment, inappropriate balance between the supply and demand, inaccurate regulatory mechanisms to control the cost of business operations and processes. With the reduction in prices of crude oil, it has also raised a lot of issues and complexities with the flow of trade-related activities and even low quality goods and raw materials delivered by the suppliers (Yingjian et al. 2014). To overcome the issue of lesser market share, Radian Oil and Gas Company must provide the right amounts of wages to the employees and make sure that they are kept motivated, furthermore allowed to communicate with each other and work as an unit to overcome the socially constructed barriers with ease and effectiveness.

The waste energy is also a major issue, which can be generated in the form of steam, exhaust gases and even may generate lots of heat due to the high energy consumption. Radian Oil and Gas company has utilised various innovative approaches to make sure that the renewable energy sources are used properly to obtain energy from solar power and with the use of solar water heating systems. The company, in the recent years, has promoted its sustainable approaches by utilizing the fuel cell technology combined with an electrochemical device (Abedin et al. 2013). It has helped in combining the hydrogen fuel or natural gas with the oxygen present in the air to generate electricity, heat and water at a faster rate with much efficacy. The fuel cells have worked like a charm for producing and conserving energy, furthermore put strict rules, regulations and limitations to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide. There are few other innovative approaches undertaken by Radian Oil and Gas company to focus on the needs of customers and at the same time, conserve a lot of energy to create a positive mindset among the customers about the company and develop a healthy environment where people could lead a better life in the future (Abraham 2013). The energy conservation should also allow for finding out new ways of generating energy through environment-friendly approaches and ensure that the needs and expectations of the customers are met, and energy that is conserved can be used for other purposes when needed, in the future.

Conclusion

Based on the analysis of various aspects related to the management of people and organizational activities, it could be understood that Radian Oil and Gas Company had managed to bring fruitful results by identifying the issues at first and then developing relevant approaches to overcome those properly. The problems were experienced at individual, group and even at the organisational level that not only hindered the successful completion of projects undertaken, but also created socially constructed barriers. Few issues experienced by the organisation were the production of huge amounts of energy and heat, which was needed to be conserved, issues generated due to inappropriate balance maintained between the demand and supply due to fall in oil price and lack of communication problem faced at the group level.  The theories used here to discuss the impact of issues and ways of resolving those included McKinsey 7S model, Kotter’s Eight step model, Lewin’s theory, etc. Several plans were designed as well to improve the efficiency of collaborative working like enabling transparency, diversification of the workplace, the creation of an employee engagement platform, etc. Lastly, few innovative approaches had been discussed here to resolve the issues and even avoid harmful effects on the environment by maintaining a sustainable place in the market.

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