Ice Fili

Unit Title: Managing in the Global Business Environment

Lecturer: Dr. Mervyn J. Morris

Student Name: Leschenko

Student Number:

Managing in the Global Business Environment - GSN401

Case study of the Kyrgyz-Swiss Health reform Support Project, implemented by Swiss Red Cross in Kyrgyzstan

(Central Asian country of the ex-Soviet Union)

INTRODUCTION

As soon as an individual is born, he or she immediately becomes a part of an organization with one or more leaders. During early childhood, family is your primary organization and parents become your leaders and managers. Later, other organisations may include the kindergarten or year level in school and your teacher would become a leader. As soon as an individual becomes an adult, a person chooses a profession and starts doing whatever she or he would like to do in the life. In other words, all our life is spent in organisations of various types.

Researchers spend much time analysing relationships between the employers and employees. Managers try to adopt various theoretical managerial models which are directed by improvement of productivity to ensure that an organization functions in the most effective and efficient way. In this paper I will analyse the Kyrgyz-Swiss Health Reform Support Project, implemented by Swiss Red Cross in Kyrgyzstan (Central Asian country of the former Soviet Union), where I was employed as Office Manager for five years.

The project was a quintessential example of an international organization: it was managed by Swiss employees and staffed by the local Kyrgyz population. It is important to note that Kyrgyzstan was a Soviet country for more than 70 years. Due to the regime changes, Kyrgyzstan is a very multicultural country and currently has two official languages, Kyrgyz and Russian. Hence, the project I worked on, the Kyrgyz-Swiss Health Reform Support Project, was very multicultural: it was comprised of staff from a variety of nationalities, including Russian, Kyrgyz, Ukrainian, German and Swiss.

I will now turn to an analysis of the success of the project, first utilizing Bolman's and Deal's organisational frames . Bolman and Deal maintain that:

the Structural Frame emphasizes goals, specialized roles, and formal relationships. Structures are designed to fit an organisation's environment and technology. Organizations allocate responsibilities to participants ("division of labour"). Then they create rules, policies, procedures, and hierarchies to coordinate diverse activities into a unified strategy. Problems arise when structure is poorly aligned with current circumstances.

When discussing this with reference to the Kyrgyz-Swiss Health Reform Support Project, the first year of project implementation was not overly successful. The project implementation was stalled by poor communication between the managers and employees, time was wasted, the project work did not serve to advance the project outcomes, and finally the operational goals for that year were not reached .The project was poorly "aligned" with the existing environment and circumstances. Originally it was planned to deliver the planned activities without considering the actual needs to population and local norms and standards. Next years all these mistakes and shortcomings had to be corrected and it resulted in budget exceeding, which could be regarded the only negative outcome. The main positive thing about this process was the project employees started to work more productively as soon as the originals plans were changed after considering their ideas and inputs and they started to implement those project activities that were beneficial to local population (and the project employees were the part of the local population). In addition, they sought to implement a Western organisational structure to a project which was based in the former Soviet Union (SU), which the "Soviet" employees (Kyrgyz, Russians, and others) were not comfortable with. The "Soviet" employees (Kyrgyz, Russians, and others) did not reject it completely, but they did not accept it as well. For 70 years the cultures within countries of the former SU were accustomed to command, most of the population were afraid to take any initiative and to be responsible for their actions. The culture of punishment under the USSR meant that everyone was so afraid of making a mistake that they did not want to take the lead and initiative. The considerable cultural differences had a significant impact on the implemental on the project.

The project manger (who was German) was not able to understand the subservient behaviour of the Kyrgyz and Russian employees. His understanding was that when the Soviet Union collapsed, Soviet working culture had adapted to Western organisational models. Though top-down reforms had begun, the working environment in the former SU really needed bottom-up reform as well. Hence, the project manager would delegate certain responsibilities relating to the project implementation, and we the "Soviet" employees would be feel that they had to constantly obtain approval for their actions relating to project implementation.

The project manager was a very smart leader and his leadership style turned out to be very effective in solving the problems we faced. As theory says: "leadership as a process, the use of non-coercive influence to shape the group's or organisation's goals, motivate behaviour towards the achievement of those goals, and help define group or organisational culture" . When applying this theory to the situation in the Kyrgyz-Swiss Health Reform Support Project, it is obvious that the project manager was aware of these organisational difficulties from the outset. However, the project manager understood that this situation occurred due to cultural difference, rather than negligent or inattentive work practices He decided to talk one-on -one with each staff member, and afterwards he held a general staff meeting where he explained to employees the project goals, plans and his expectations from the employees. His favourite phrase was that "we are all human beings and we can make mistakes" and "by embracing our problems we can move further, after analysing them and taking the appropriate lessons". All these