Topic 9 - The role of workers + Migrant workers + expatriate assignments

SUMMARY:

The role of workers:

Human potential has been considered as one of the most important asset for any company in the world. Sometimes it has been exploited and underpaid because the need of the companies of cost reductions. However, the labor force is taking more power although the technological advances are the new trend nowadays.

Workers have benefits that they did not have before: health and safety for them and their families, education, and other privileges than motivate them to do better things for the companies. This strategy has been implemented since the organizations realized that human resources are a key factor of success or default in the performance of outcomes for a company.

 That is why today there are a lot of labor unions, trade unions and many other organizations giving even more participation to the employees because it means that they are more prepared for participate in the decision making processes.

In the recommended reading for this topic (UNDERSTANDING MANAGEMENT GERMAN-STYLE) we can see clearly how the European companies have involved their employees in decision making process and specially in German style, how those employees make part of a “consensus” and how the trade unions lead by workers might influence in management decisions: “When an agreement is reached, everyone works together to help the company move forward... in Germany, a whole chain is involved but the difference is that once the decision has been taken there, it will be rigorously implemented”

Migrant Workers:

Migrant workers could be defined as the people who voluntarily or involuntarily have moved from one specific place to another in order to work or look for a job.

Those people are having a strong importance nowadays because this situation are changing the policies applied by the countries due to the labor force supply and demand according the population and organizations are managing this situation due to the diversity of people that they hire and policies of requirements for those kind of people within the organizations.

How can we differentiate the types of migrant workers? They can be divided in two categories: 1) voluntary or involuntary and 2) skilled and non-skilled workers. In the first category we find the workers that want to leave their home countries because they believe they will have better opportunities abroad, these are the voluntary migrant workers. At the same time we may find others that had to leave their countries because of social or economic problems that forces that worker to leave, these are the involuntary migration workers.

Taken from:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/images/pop_002a

In this chart we can see clearly the push factors that influence people and workers to go to another place and look for new opportunities. The worldwide statistics show that unemployment and poverty are the principal factors because people are motivated to look for a better job and they see those pull factors in countries that are more developed because the find more opportunities there.

Many worldwide institutions as the United Nations have been working in order to control and protect migrant workers because they are victims of exploitation and unfair situations due to the lack of the education that most of them present.

“Over the past decade and a half, however, migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong — mostly Filipinas and Indonesian women — have become highly active, organizing and participating in political protests. Hong Kong's migrant domestic workers protest in a place where they are guest workers and temporary migrants, denied the opportunity of becoming legal citizens or permanent residents”.

Expatriate assignments and Overseas Experience:

Nowadays, the tendency of international trade is to be more internationalized and the creation of new strategies in order to compete in local-regional markets and international markets. For this reason, companies are looking for people who have international experience, people who have visited and taken experiences from different places in order to construct or adapt those ideas in the host country or in the host company. We can see this experience in two types of international experiences that bring to the company new perspectives from their employees and then making them in strategies and products that help to the growth of employees and organizations at the same time. I will resort to the document written by Inkson et al (Inkson et al. 1999) titled "Expatriate assignments and overseas experience – contrasting models of international human resource development" in order to explain those two concepts and clarify the differences among them:

* In Expatriate Assignment (EA), the initiative for the international experience comes primarily from a company which operates internationally. In this process the company assigns a task for its employees in another country. This task might be since international recognition of markets or tendencies to international negotiations with customers in a foreign country.

* In Overseas Experience (OE), the initiative for the international experience comes from the individual. This process begins when a person decide to save money or get money from somewhere else with the main objective of go to another country and learn from this country (language, specific subject, or just experiences), then after a considerable time, this person returns to the home country and restart his career or decide to study another one.

Chart taken from: Inkson et al (Inkson et al. 1999):"Expatriate assignments and overseas experience – contrasting models of international human resource development"

Co-determination principles over the organization’s decision making process:

The co-determination principles is a organizational practice intruduced firstly by German companies, and it consists in the participation of employees in managerial practices and decisions. “the German model has a strong institutional framework but one which is flexible enough to adapt to change. Lane (1989) argues that the institutionalized system of worker representation in Germany results in a highly constrained industrial relations system which provides German labour with higher levels of power resources than employees in other countries.” (Avoidance strategies and the German system of co-determination, by Tony Royle).

This practice has had a strong impacts in many other countries as a model of “consensus” or learnig organizations where the decision making process is not centrized but it includes all the possible perspectives from employees who are sometimes customers and bring good ideas for the organization development.

From the managerial perspective we could find some advantages and disadvantages for this kind of flexible structures:

-       To reduce management-labour conflict by means of improving and systematizing communication channels

-       Small but important effect in the final performance of the company

-       The opportunity to correct the existent failures in the company that the management board could not perceive before

-       However, if the company does not apply restrictions an laws for this practice, it might become as a flexible and weak organization where the decision making process become more complex because the number of actors that have to reach an agreement and a point of accordance

Employee’s perspective:

-      Employees could have more loyalty for the company if they feel that they are making good things for the company that they work to.

-       In systems with co-determination the employees are given seats in a board of directors in one-tier management systems or seats in a supervisory board

“In general, the principle of ‘codetermination’ (loosely translated in French by ‘joint management’ but not in the literal sense) implies that one appoints people who are competent and capable of having discussions with the employers in a skilled supervisory board. Yet, the trade unions have their own academics” (Taken from: UNDERSTANDING MANAGEMENT GERMAN-STYLE)

Recommended readings:

- Piette, Jean-Jacques. 2004. “Understanding Management German style”. Les Amis de L’ecole de Paris.

- Inkson et al (Inkson et al. 1999): "Expatriate assignments and overseas experience – contrasting models of international human resource development"

- UNDERSTANDING MANAGEMENT GERMAN-STYLE

Topic 8 - Merging OC

SUMMARY:

Integration processes and strategies have been growth the last decades due to the implication of a globalized world where companies need to expand themselves in order to compete with bigger competitors and gain expertise for customer satisfaction and recognition.

Nowadays, not only big firms around the world are making business: big companies need small and more specialized companies and by contrary. However, the success or failure of this kind of business depends on the strategy implemented by the actors since the planning process, until the post-business stage.

The most common integration strategies used are the Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A), which principal objective is the fusion or the acquisition of two companies of the same sector, in order to increase the market presence in other countries and to expand its operations with certain cost (time, money, resources, independence, participation, etc). This is an important decision that companies have to take with a structured plan, analyzing all the variables involved before and after the integration process, because the company have to decide if it would grow more with a partner or through a merger, than it would by own. Sometimes the organizations take this decision because they have internal conflicts that they would not resolve by themselves and they need capital injection to survive in the market or because the company wants to expand to other markets and create future value.

In this process of integration the companies need to take into account the importance of transference of technology and knowledge because both companies are using learning process in order to achieve common goals: this is a necessary condition to the merger process. However those transferences are not always enough and sufficient to the merger success because the companies have to face with another dangerous barrier with this kind of business are made in different countries: The acculturation process. This concept become a real problem for the outcomes and performance of the companies involved when they cannot manage the cultural differences

Taken from: http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/05/new-report-q2-sees-uptick-in-blockbuster-ma/

In this process of integration the companies need to take into account the importance of transference of technology and knowledge because both companies are using learning process in order to achieve common goals: this is a necessary condition to the merger process. However those transferences are not always enough and sufficient to the merger success because the companies have to face with another dangerous barrier with this kind of business are made in different countries: The acculturation process. This concept become a real problem for the outcomes and performance of the companies involved when they cannot manage the cultural differences and try to make a kind of “ideal cultural fit”, or even worst if their cultures do not fit at all.

“Nahavandi and Malekzadeh (1988, p.82) adopted the anthropological term acculturation to describe the cultural changes resulting from the interaction of one organizational culture with another, or: … the ways in which two groups adapt to each other and resolve emergent conflict.” (Taken from: “Challenges and opportunities in mergers and acquisitions: three international case studies”)

Challenges:

-      The market situation: This is a significant variable that firms have to take into account before to think in investment or purchasing of any other firm. Sometimes every step is followed correctly by the actors of the merger, but if the market conditions such as economical variables, political stability are in troubles, one acquisition may fail immediately. In the first case of DB and BT, we can see clearly how the market situation was an important advantage for the development of this successful integration process, but this is not the same all the times.

-      Cultural Convergence: This is the key factor that we are dealing with in this topic, because sometimes is more effective if one company makes all the efforts in order to manage and address the cultural differences and not to try to achieve in ideal cultural fit that sometimes is impossible to reach. This process take many steps an planning, however those conflicts can be observed in the post-merger stage and this is even more complex because the firms have already invested much money and resources and they cannot lose them. In the case of the banks, the German and American banks made all the possible efforts in order to reduce the cultural clashes to the minimum level.  

Recommended reading: 

Alzira Salama, Wayne Holland, Gerald Vinten, (2003) "Challenges and Opportunities in Mergers and Acquisitions: Three International Case Studies – Deutsche Bank-Bankers Trust; British Petroleum-Amoco; Ford-Volvo", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 27 Iss: 6, pp.313 – 321.

Topic 7 - Organizational learning + managing change and conflict

Sub-topic 1: Organizational learning

SUMMARY:

Organizational Learning is not a new concept implemented in the globalization era, but it has earlier origins in 1920. However, is has been really considered since 80’s decade with the constant growth of organizations that had been increasing with the concept of free trade and commercialization between different regions and countries. This concept brings more requirements for the organizations and their members because the need for survive in a changing world. For this reason, Kavita Singh says in their document, that “Organizations are operating in an environment of complexity and uncertainty where the only constant is change” (An analysis of Relationship between the learning organization and organization culture in Indian business organization).

Nowadays the organizations make part of “The knowledge Society”, where the person or organization that has knowledge and knows how to apply it, has the power to compete with other direct and indirect actors: this is one of the reasons because people, workers and organizations in general have more challenges in order to compete in a globalized world where the expectations are increasing: people need to be more prepared to change and to learn even more and this process requires certain level of commitment and desire to change.

However, not all the people within an organization are trained for change and innovate in the processes and that’s why this desire of change and the creation of strategies to motivate the employees has to start by the management innovation, using technological techniques, innovating processes, etc.

Saljo (1979) after a deep research of organizational learning proposes five steps to achieve a structured learning and change in organizations:

-      Acquiring information

-      Memorizing

-      Acquiring facts, skills and methods to be used later in the process of implementation

-      Making sense and building connections

-      Interpreting and understanding reality (comprehension)

“Lievers and Lubberding (1996) discuss the problems of organizational change in depth. They state that organizational change might require not just a change in structures, procedures, or systems, but also a change in behavior or even a change in the norms and values that guide organizational behavior—norms and values represented by cognitions” (EBSCO Database: “Learning barriers: a framework For the examination of Structural impediments to Organizational change, Remco schimmel and dennis r. Muntslag”).

Many countries and their organizations have been applying organizational learning in order to compete with others: India and China for example, had economies damaged by political or social conflicts in the past, however, they are implementing this kind of processes in the organizations and nowadays they are becoming powerful countries with strategies according their competitive advantages.

1. Learning organization and its key characteristics:

Learning organizations are defined by Pedler et al. (1991) “as an organization which is in a continuous process of transformation through the learning of all members within and outside the organization”. This concept has a strong tie with the concept of change and its implications: We have to take into account that learning organization needs the proper climate and environment in order to obtain good outcomes. This climate involves some aspects such as new ideas from employees within the company, research of social framework, proper training of employees to be pro-actives, taking a deep feedback of the company and the sector.

But this is not a concept that can be applied for one or several persons, even all the persons by their own because it would not work and would not bring the expected outcomes from change and learning. For this reason, we saw the need of interaction, communication and sharing of information within the organization and outside the organizations in order to fit the strategies to the context.

The following chart will show the key factor of learning organizations and their linkage in the process:

Taken from: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3172/3103083494_0600157206.jpg

Learning organization is well interrelated with the concept of organizational culture: as we already know in earlier topics, the culture of the organizations influences many common behaviors and lifestyle of workers specially in the workplace. For this reason, the degree of acceptance to change of one organization is going to depend of the strength of weakness of organizational culture and Pareek (2004) proposes some dimensions of the organizational culture that are related with learning organization directly:

-      Openess

-      Confrontation

-      Trust

-      Authenticity

-      Proactivity

-      Autonomy

-      Collaboration

-      Experimentation

The learning barriers have their roots in the following causes:

-      Organizational structure (division of labor)

-      Information systems (communication processes)

-      Strategy (scope)

-      Information systems (limited cognitive capabilities of human decision makers),

-      Information systems (communication processes)

-      Information systems (media)

-      Organizational culture (emergence of subcultures)

-      Organizational structure (standard operating rules).

2.  Informal Learning chart by Jay Cross:

Available at: http://elearningargentina.wordpress.com/page/2

“A company has a great influence on planning, structuring and controlling the learning activities of their employees with that way of learning. But it shows that formal learning alone is not flexible enough to react on fast changes taking place in today’s companies’ surroundings. Learning at the workplace needs both formal and informal learning approaches.” (EBSCO database: Supporting Informal Learning at the Workplace, Pieter De Vries, Heide Lukosch: Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands)

I agree with this affirmation made by the author, because nowadays we have to understand that we are living in a constant changing world that cannot wait for our reaction to changes until we are prepared or until we are trained enough. This concept of training are well formed in the formal learning as the principal key of success with this formal structure, and we can see how the companies spend much money in order to give key concepts or show right ways for conflict resolutions or change reactions. However, sometimes they do not realize that what their employees need is a complete training, mixing both kind of learning structures: formal and informal learning.

As we can see in the chart, an organization needs both sides: they need old people who train and guide new people in the company that come with new ideas but need to be oriented. Also, the company needs some structured patterns that orient the organization to the accomplishment of the company’s vision and proposed goals, however, the company needs a degree of flexibility and openness to new changes and proposals from the changing world through a learning process.

There are other topics from the structures that have to be taken into account in order to address a company for a good way with strong goals, but adapting and fitting the organization according the changing requirements in order to compete and survive.

Informal learning is a cooperative action while formal learning often takes place as an individually (or lonely) activity. Many activities at work require collaboration with other people, so employees are used to this way of working and learning