Gap Analysis: Global Communications

Gap Analysis: Global Communications

Maria Villanueva

University of Phoenix

Gap Analysis: Global Communications

Business is though for the telecommunications industry due to high levels of competition and cable companies that have entered the market offering the same telecommunications services to consumers as well as complete solutions that include computers, televisions and regular telephone services. Global Communications is a company that provides telecommunications and is seeking a more aggressive approach in the industry in order to remain competitive. The company has decided to implement a global strategy in addition to focusing on local markets. The global strategy will seek to relocate some technical call centers to foreign countries in hopes to reduce costs for call centers by approximately forty percent.

This type of change in an organization generates many new issues and opportunities that affect the company and all their stakeholders as well as possible ethical dilemmas that may result from their actions. The mission and end-state visions should be clearly defined and have established goals that will allow management to specify, measure, attain their goals in a realistic and timely manner. Use of a gap analysis to view the company’s current situation and end-state vision will help the company to execute the change successfully.

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

The decision made by top management at Global Communication to expand their business globally creates new issues and opportunities for the company. The first of these issues includes implementing a global strategy to a company that is currently a local company. This strategy poses opportunity for the company to increase profits and revenues by relocating their technical call centers to India and Ireland. They can achieve higher profits and revenues buy paying lower labor wages to the foreign employees abroad. The global strategy will also allow the company to reach a larger and differentiated customer base. The second issue the company will face includes employee morale and reactions to the new global strategy. The new strategy will cause the company to lay-off many employees or reduce their pay. This may cause employees to become disgruntled causing employee moral to weaken. The issue of ethics is another issue to consider with the new change. Is it ethical for companies to take away jobs from their own country and give them to foreign employees for very low wages? Other ethical issues include economic effects of unemployment rates due to lay-offs such as those done by Global Communications. Finally, this decision poses the issue of effectively implementing this change in the organization. Now that all the members of Global Communications are in favor of the plan, how do they actually make it happen? It is often difficult for organizations to actually make changes and append to them once they decide on the change. They have a great opportunity to grow and become a more profitable company if their change is successful. All of these issues are important and should be carefully reviewed by top management to ensure that they are handled effectively and efficiently.

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

The stakeholders of Global Communications include the employees, shareholders, unions, perspective foreign employees, host countries, media and the public. All of these stakeholders have a general interest in the actions taken by the company that management should carefully consider for the success of the new competitive strategy as well as operating ethically.

The current employees at Global Communications are the stakeholders that will be most adversely affected by the decision to compete globally. Many of the employees will be laid-off or will receive as much as 10% in pay cuts if they relocate to the foreign call centers. Once the employees hear of the new plan, major problems may arise for the organization regarding employee moral and productivity. The employees may feel as if they are merely means to an end as they are so easily replaceable by lower paid foreign workers. Nancy Everhardt, Executive VP of small business and marketing suggests that the company offer a 15 percent retention bonus to offset the employee’s salary cut for the first year. I think that it would be fair to offer some sort of incentives to the employees who stay in order to keep employee morale and productivity high.

The shareholders of the company will also be affected by this change hopefully in a positive way thru higher revenues and profits produced by the global approach. However, this also creates a significant amount of risk for the shareholders if the change is not successful.

The union is also another key stakeholder in this case as their concern is that the strategy is a means to avoid abiding by contract conditions between the company and their employees. The union is displeased with the idea of taking away jobs from the local employees and giving them to people in other countries, in fact, they think that Global Communications decision is unethical.

The media and the public are also important stakeholders as they will view the decision to move globally either positively or negatively having an important impact on the reputation and eminence of the company.

Each of these stakeholders above has a valid interest in the decisions made by the company. The company should carefully take into the consideration their stakeholders concerns, right and interest to best accommodate their needs and the success of the change.

End-State Vision

The vision that Global Communications hopes to realize include becoming a truly global company in order to remain competitive in the telecommunications industry and create higher profits and revenues while decreasing operating costs of the call centers by almost half. This end-vision includes successful implementation of a global strategy that happily satisfies their stakeholders and encompasses ethical decisions.

The end-state goals include the implementation of the strategy including the steps of communicating the change to all the members of the organization and initiating the lay-offs. The company should appoint a committee to explain to the employees what is taking place and why the change is necessary. According to McShane & Von Glinow (2005), the importance of communication influenced the quality of decision making and effective problem solvers require information