Problem Solution-Global Communications

Running head: PROBLEM SOLUTION: GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS

Problem Solution: Global Communication

University of Phoenix

December 4th 2007

MBA500

Problem Solution: Global Communications

Global Communication (GC) was struggling to survive, when telecommunications industry was under tremendous economic pressure. Global communications came up with two solutions to survive the issue. One was to introduce new services and the other was to implement cost cutting measures, resulting in job cuts and reduction of salary to employees. This had created dissatisfaction among GC employees and had impacted the image of the company, who always projected employees as their back bone.

This document gives an idea about the issue and opportunity associated with the financial turmoil in GC, their stake holders perspective, alternate solutions based on the benchmarking research, analysis to identify an optimal solution for the current issues, the risks and mitigation plan associated with implementing the optimal solution, and how to define and measure the metrics for the effectiveness of optimal solution.

The three solutions considered in optimal solution analysis were Business Intelligence implementation, identification of new services and cross training. Based on the end state vision and optimal solution analysis, BI solution is considered the best because it is a comprehensive solution and can remediate issues associated with multiple areas of GC. Every solution implementation has its own risks; the table on risk provides the risks associated with all the solutions and the corresponding mitigation plan. The overall implementation of BI solution takes approximately 32 weeks. Based on the implementation tasks, both technical and business teams need to invest significant amount of time in identifying the business case for solution, creating risk and mitigation plan, doing the GAP analysis, defining the business requirements, prototyping, training, roll out and support. A solution implemented has no meaning unless there are ways to measure its effectiveness and improve on its performance. In order to measure BI implementation effectiveness in GC, there are metrics and target metrics defined based on GC’s end state goals. Decision makers need to be appropriately vigilant in making decisions. “Vigilance occurs when the decision makers carefully and conscientiously execute all six stages of decision making, including making provisions for implementation and evaluation.” (Bateman & Snell, 2004).

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

Global communication is under a financial crisis because of the stiff competition from its competitors. The stockholders have lost their trust in the company and doubt if the company will be able to bounce back from its crisis. The leadership team is coming up with two new strategies to save GC from the crisis. The first approach is to introduce new services and the second approach is bringing cost cutting measures moving some of their technical call centers to India and Ireland. The outsourcing approach has created quite a stir among the workers union and was against GC’s values. The vice president of the technologies workers union, Maria Antez is upset because she is not informed about the decision in advance and she learned about it from some other sources. The globalization strategy is the major issue with the employees because this would result in some of them losing their jobs and their salaries being reduced by 10%. Though the leadership team is concerned about the employees their major goal is globalization and increasing the profitability. The GC leadership team attempts to achieve its goal by a win-lose strategy which is the basis of the problem. This situation can be considered as an example for distributive negotiation. “A distributive negotiation usually involves a single issueвЂ"a вЂ?fixed-pieвЂ™Ð²Ð‚"in which one person gains at the expense of the other. For example, haggling over the price of a rug in a bazaar is a distributive negotiation. In most conflicts, however, more than one issue is at stake and each party values the issue differently.” (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2003, p.71). The leadership team was also discounting the future as they came up with two decisions for a survival during the current economic crisis. They should ideally focus on longterm goals also for sustainable future growth. “Often decision makers engage in discounting the future. That is, in their evaluation of alternatives, they weigh short-term costs and benefits more heavily than longer-term costs and benefits.” (Bateman, Snell, 2004, p. 15). The Leadership team speaks of its obligation to its employees and its employee friendly atmosphere, but when it came to a critical situation they do not seem to be much concerned about its employees and their welfare. This shows lack of business ethics “Ethical leaders are thought to be honest and trustworthy. They show concern for people and are open to employee input. Ethical leaders built relationship that are characterized by trust, support and respect for their employees. In terms of decision making, ethical leaders are seen as fair. They take into account the ethical impact of their decisions, both short term and long term, on multiple stakeholders.”(Trevino and Brown, 2004, p 75).

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

The key stakeholders are the GC leadership team, the workers union and the stockholders. The GC leadership team is responsible for the survival and profitability of the company and for the decisions they make. They are also responsible for the employees who have been the backbone of the company. They need to make a decision keeping in mind the welfare of its employees. But the decision GC had come up with had negative impact on workers. GC had always projected its employees as their back bone, but the decision taken by them is conflicting with their own values. Workers union is concerned about the employees and is responsible for them, but GC