Guang-­‐he Organization

Question 1.

“Be the change you want to see in the world”– the famous proverb is more apt to this case for both Wong  lung and ‘Guang he’ as an organization. Here exists clash of personalities and motivations that are undergoing the challenges and stress of change.

Steven’s personality – Steven is multi-cultural, fluent in mandarin, married to Chinese, western upbringing and educations, open view of the world towards equitable benefits to employees and efficiency to improved processes and systems, open to change and willing to take new challenges.

However, I find him naïve in accepting the role of an interim manger, but yet introduced to Hei and team as a consultant, such ambiguity of role is the sure recipe for failure. He neither fully understood the gravity of the challenge nor has clear strategy to handle the frictions and conflicts in the organization.

For the analysis of the Steven’s performance we will study the multiple factors and stake holders and their influence on the process.

1. Guang-he Organization:

1. Policy factors –

1. a. Hygiene  - Guanghe is paying their employees higher than other factories, also as most of the employees are under permanent status, not job security issues.  

1. b. Motivators – Limited Benefits, long working hours, Exploitation of migrant workers, fewer opportunities for growth, no training, fewer incentives contribute to low motivation of employees, high turn-over rates in the work force. Middle managers are working for retirement and prefer status quo, While Hei has low trust on employees due to low motivation among the work-force, so military style command and control management style exists.

As Hygiene factors are fine in the organizations, Motivators are of crucial impediment in adopting to the change.

1. Motivators (in detail) –

1. Power: Guanghe, or China in general, is high power –distance society, which prefers hierarchy. The huge gaps in the compensation and social status are widely acceptable.

1. Affiliations: Socio-emotional rewards and belonging of groups and associated status is highly valued. General cultural values and social conventions paly important roles in framing the organizational cultures. Therefore to succeed in such environment, a high level of cultural intelligence is essential.

1. Achievement: Individual achievement is not recognized and even considered as a sin, where training and empowerment is discouraged to disable defection to other companies.  The success of the group is considered more valuable than the individual success.

1. Expectations –

1. Worker’s valence- misalignment of the goals of the organization and that of the individuals is stark in this context. Workers are first motivated by high earning, that can improve their living standards for themselves and that further can support families. The expectation that leads to such outcomes is empowerment and efficient processes and systems.

1. Supervisor’s valence – Status quo, and safe retirement, Peer pressure, fear of change and failure to adaptation to the change will lead to their loss of job and affect their future prospects of financial security.

1. Hei’s Valence – Hei is afraid of becoming power-less. His opposition to change is driven by his ego, which forces them to reject a new system which might turn out to be better than what he has mastered for years. His motivation is keep his brother and family value his contribution and keep his social status of the co-founder of the organization intact.

1. Wong’s valence – Wong is motivated towards his retirement, wants the succession of the leadership to handover to his children, but with out hurting the harmony of the family. Conflicting expectations reflects the underlying tensions within the self and the group.

The organizational change is about making the fit and alignment of individual and company’s goals and objectives. Management conceptions and individual perceptions need to synchronized to make the change a success. We now analyze why Steven failed in his implementation of this change.

Steven’s approach –

1. Role - Steven used a western biased template for change. He approached the issue as a technical change rather than a cultural change in the organization. As mentioned before, the casual ambiguity and temporal nature of his involvement is not in his favor. He misinterpreted the task and failed to recognize or react when his plans were not successful or not received with full enthusiasm.

1. Culture - Failure to align the goals of Wong and Hei – Steven failed to understand the underlying power politics of the firm. Failure to recognize the repercussions of his changes to the established orders and status quo.

1. Motivations – Each stake holder in the game has different motivations, Hei is power –centric and followed a military regime with hierarchies. Workers and supervisors were limited to their bounded rational and exhibit low incentive attitude towards the work. Wong is conflicted with his family and business ambitions,  Alan and Sandy are hesitant and indifferent in their involvement in the factory floor but yet want a visible change to the organization. While Chee Lung wanted a successful deal and smooth transition.

Steven’s key role in of transition manger, that is managing these diverse forces, engage and align their valance to the desired outcomes. His major failure is the inability to communicate to the benefits of the change to workers, supervisors and especially chan. He should have approached Wong, Alan or Chee lung early when he faced opposition to his ideas and sensed unease among the team. Waiting too long for things to correct itself is source of his failure.