Gap Analysis: Global Communications

Gap Analysis: Global Communications

In an ever changing telecommunications industry Global Communications is trying to change its structure to keep up with the new industry. They have created a strategy for globalization that is not viewed by everyone as positively as the company would like. They are facing many obstacles in their pursuit for globalization. Global Communications has come up with a plan to outsource their call centers to India and Ireland. They are also planning on restructuring the remaining workforce. Unfortunately, this resulted in many layoffs and has cause friction with the union. This has raised several challenges and opportunities for Global Communication to become a leader in the telecommunications industry again.

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

There have been several issues and opportunities that Global Communications have faced in their attempts for globalization. First, the company has to expand on their products. It has been said that other countries have more advanced technologies then in the United States (Global Communication Scenario, 2007). This reason is why they are outsourcing call centers to India and Ireland. By moving their call centers to these countries will allow them to offer the customers for products and able to expand on their currents products. This will help raise their profits as well as their price of their stock. That is why this plan seems to be a must for the company to stay a float. The plan was approved by the board members as they believe this was a way for them to become an industry leader again.

While instituting their new plan will benefit the company as a whole it will hurt many of the employees. This means that there will be many layoffs and for the ones that stay will have to take salary cuts. Global Communication made a mistake with communication though; they didn't involve the union in the process. When the union found out about what was going to happen there was a great deal of tension. Global Communications failed to integrate the goals of the union into the new plan and in subsequent negotiations, clearly took a distributive negotiations approach which created a win-lose situation and caused conflict, as opposed to an integrative negotiations approach which creates win-win situations (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2003). This was also escalated because recently the union approved benefit and education cuts. When the union was approached with the plan and realized that there was no changing the companies mind these stressed that they will be seeking recourse through the government and any other available resource.

By leaving the union and employees in the dark for most of this process certain members of management were concerned with how this will affect the employee morale. One member of management Sy Rodriguez said "I am still concerned that this move will impact morale across the entire company. Our competitors will see this as an opportunity to come after our best people." (Global Communications Scenario, 2007). This can turn out to be a big problem for the company if after all the layoffs take place and the remaining employees may look for employment with another company. The employees may wonder how secure are their jobs if out of the blue the company decided to relocate some departments. This can turn into a threat from other companies to come in and reassure them that they may have security elsewhere. For those that stay with Global Communication has to wonder how much effort are they going to but into their jobs? Without having the support of the union things may get very messy. The union will back the employees instead of trying to work something out between the two like they have done in the past.

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

While implementing their plan for globalization Global Communications is have trouble balancing the interest, rights and values of some of the stakeholders. Upper management and the board being one of the stakeholders think that the plan is a most to keep the company going. They believe that the need to expand their products and technologies will be the only way for them to stay a top of the telecommunications industry. This will help increase the value of the companies stock and in turn will make the stock holders happy as well.

On the other hand, the stakeholder that will be affected the most and negatively was the employees. I am sure that the company knows that they are the frontline; these are the people who produce and maintain the products that Global Communications offer. There will be many people losing their jobs and ones that will have to take a pay cut and transfer in order to continue their employment there. Global Communication however, was didn't completely not think about these people. They tried to offer some bonus plans that by the time everything was added up it would be like there was no pay cut.

There will also be a great deal of tension between the company and the union now. When the company finally met with the union to go over the plan, the union stressed their displeasure