Roblem Solution: Geneone

Problem Solution: Gene One

Problem Solution: Gene One

Gene One is a growing company with many opportunities for further growth in the future. During the last eight years, Gene One has grown to become a $400 million dollar company. Gene One wants to continue this growth, and has decided to gain additional growth and funds by becoming and IPO. With this change Gene one needs to revaluate all areas of the company and find solutions to problems within the organization. The company has many opportunities for changes, which will enable them to reach the goals wanted and needed for the IPO. The key project is to find the best solution that will enable Gene One to reach their goals, and become better than Gene One's scompetitors. Gene One will need to review the solutions that they have come up with, and the additional alternative solutions that have not even been reviewed.

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

Gene One is a company that has several issues that need to be resolved before they can successfully become an IPO. By resolving these issues Gene One will hopefully, hit the growth goals set by Don Ruiz. The first apparent problem is the lack of leadership within upper management. The managers do not deal well with change, and are quick to be stressed and make decisions in haste. Additionally none of them have experience with IPOS and need further leadership to help them through this enormously stressful time. An opportunity for this issue to be resolved is for the managers and the organization to do an "upgrade." This would consist of them working on handling change and being able to address the employees fears and concerns, instead of ignoring them. "An adaptive culture exists when employees focus on the changing needs of customers and other stakeholders and support initiatives to keep pace with these changes" (McShane and Glinow, 2005, pg 483). This would allow Gene One's leadership to flourish and reduce the amount of conflict due to issues being resolved before they become a problem. As said earlier, management is not dealing well with the change, and therefore, the employees are not dealing well with the change. This results to a complete resistance to the change, which in turn is creating several conflicts between management, and the employees. "Conflict is a process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party (McShane and Glinow, 2005, pg 389). The decisions being made are being made with haste, and without thought. The problems are not thoroughly being talked through and therefore, the correct decisions or resolutions are not made. Gene One needs to work on conflict negotiations instead of allowing these small conflicts to grow and spawn off into further issues.

Another issue that Gene One has an organization is the lack of organizational structure. The creative department is responsible for developing two new technologies and six new innovative products that relate to the technologies created by Gene One. The structural problem within the creative department is the lack of support that Teri the Chief Technology officer gets. Currently Teri and Angela are the main employees who are putting out the technologies Gene One is known for. Yet Teri is being question by senior management in regard to her ability to continue to do a great job. Angela is feeling the stress of needed growth for the IPO and does not like what she sees, and resigns because of it. This is just one great example of how poor Gene One's organizational structure is. For Gene One to be successful at the IPO they need to reevaluate themselves and restructure the company accordingly. By doing so Gene One has just created opportunities for higher performance, more innovation, higher job satisfaction, and promotional opportunities. Additionally, within the organization structure, Gene One is having problems controlling the power and the politics within the company. An example of this problem is how the employees view Michelle, who is the Chief Financial officer. The employees feel that Michelle is a push over and will do anything asked of her, even if she is not in agreement. The problem here is Michelle truly is not this way. Michelle is passionate about the company and the issues Gene One faces. Problems like these will again bring in additional conflict that could be resolved. If issues like these are not resolved it could mean that a 3rd party will be involved just to help fix how others perceive their peers or management.

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

Within a company there are different types of shareholders, who have each share different interest and values. The dilemmas evolve when these interest and values are conflicting are self serving. In any company the top shareholder are the owners of the company. The owners have the highest interest, as this is their company and their money. As a private company they also have all the rights, or decisions, because they are the only shareholders in the company. Now there could be 3rd party investors, who would have the same interest, but would have fewer rights than the owner. The owner's values are additionally going to be high as they are the owners of the company and want to improve what the consumers are buying. In the Gene One synopsis, the owners always want to improve what the consumers are digesting, and help the farmers keep more of the crops that they are producing. Another group of shareholders are the employees of Gene One. The employees have their own interest separate from the owners, which is to keep their jobs, and get paid a satisfactory salary. This is not to say that they do not share the same interest of the owners, they just have additional self-serving interests. The employees do not have many rights, in decision making as a whole. If the company chooses to go down different paths, the majority of the employees can help with these choices, but ultimately do not have the final say, unless they are on the management team. The employee's values can vary, as they do in the Gene One case. Some of the employees will have high values and care about the company more than their fellow co-worker who is thinking more about themselves, instead of Gene One.

In addition to the owner's and the employee's of Gene One, are two important 3rd party shareholders. The first 3rd party shareholders are the customers of Gene One. The customer's interest is in the product that is being put out by Gene One. If the product is bad, the customers will no longer have any interest. The customer also does not have any rights, although