Aotearoa Gold Mining Company Case Study: Organizational Changes
Question
Task: Write the Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study on organizational changes using credible sources.
Answer
Introduction
Organisational changes are inevitable, considering the dynamic environments through which, the organisations work (Doppelt, 2017). One major example is evident from the Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study that has to undergo organisational change due to certain recent changes in the environment of its operations as well as some future contract that the company has to fulfill. Additionally, external health hazards like COVID 19 has forced the change leader of the organisation to consider bringing considerable changes to the hazard management, risk control and health and safety departments of the organisation.
The purpose of this report is to analyse the Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study regarding change management for identifying whether their changes were successful or whether there were many gaps and flaws in the process.
Stakeholder Changes in the Organisation
In order to ensure the success of the new changes to the organisation, some stakeholder changes have also been necessary. The change leader has taken an active role in making changes to stakeholder roles and functions within the organisation to suit new policies and changes that have been proposed to be implemented in the company (Lozano, Nummert & Ceulemans, 2016). Further changes in stakeholders were necessary after it was found that most of the stakeholders were not abiding by the new set of rules and guidelines and showed poor performances considering the changes brought into the organisation.
Considering the impacts of the change and the results that the organisation faced, it can be said that the organisation has not handled the changes for all stakeholders very well. This is mainly because the company has not been able to gain the expected results from the change management procedures as implemented. The organisation explored in the Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study correctly identified that multiple changes were required within the organisational set up and hence, a change leader was assigned to review and undertake suitable changes accordingly. The change leader immediately got engaged with all the stakeholders identifying their issues and finding the main needs for introducing change management (Lozano, Nummert & Ceulemans, 2016). Accordingly, he also developed appropriate change management plan for each of the stakeholders. In addition to basic activities and roles of the stakeholders, he also developed new protocols and guidelines including healthcare activities guidelines, risk management and hazard management. Considering the COVID19 situation, he trained a group of young employees regarding safety practices related to the health and safety practices. However, the failure of the change management was evident from the fact that the performances of the stakeholders of the organisation were not up to the mark. Moreover, it was also identified in this Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study that none of the stakeholders are following any of the new guidelines introduced as a part of the change management process.
What are the key aspects of change process for improvement on the basis of Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study?
The overall performances due to change management in the organisation as illustrated in the Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study could have been improved by taking some additional initiatives forcing the stakeholders to abide by the new sets of rules, guidelines and protocols. Three key aspects of the change process that could have been changed are as follows.
Strict Protocols: It has been seen from the results that the organisation has been extremely lenient regarding the implementation of the new protocols. The organisation did not force anyone to abide by the new protocols and rules.
Monitoring: In addition to enforcing the protocols and the new changes, it was also essential to monitor the stakeholders’ activities especially in order to determine if they are following the new changes or not.
Communication: Other than the above two, another clear gap regarding the implementation of the changes in the organisation has been identified as the lack of suitable communication between the stakeholders and the management (Oppong, Chan & Dansoh, 2017).
According to McShane, Olekalns and Travaglione (2010), any change within the organisation requires through evaluation of the organisational culture iceberg. Of the culture iceberg, only the structure and language of the organisation are readily available for analysis and changes are forced on the organisation without considering the hidden factors of the ‘iceberg’, namely, values, assumptions and beliefs of the employees and other members of the management team. As a result, most of these changes often contradict their values and the changes remain unsuccessful as evident from this particular Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study.
According to Schein (1990), for determining the organisational culture for implementing the changes, the values and underlying assumptions need to be considered. These two factors play major roles in the success or failure of change management within the organisation.
Coming back to the Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study, the change leader did not take appropriate actions in determining or understanding the values and organisational culture and just went ahead to implement new changes that were not at all accepted by the stakeholders and employees who chose to stick to the value of their own as well as the organisation (Palthe & Kossek, 2003). In order to implement further changes, the change leader needs to analyse the culture iceberg in depth with more focus on the parts that are below the water that will provide him a way to understand how the stakeholders work and how the changes can be integrated within the system without causing any problems for organisational culture and values.
Communication and Stakeholder Management: Evidence from Literature
According to authors van Niekerk and Getz (2019), communication management is a very essential component of a strongly functioning organisation. For any organisation to be successful in terms of internal operations, it is essential for the organisation to maintain a strong communication network among all the internal stakeholders. Communication in this Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study does not mean random and casual verbal communication among the stakeholders; it means professional communication with streamlined flow of information among all the stakeholders from the lowest to the highest level and vice versa. This is to ensure all the stakeholders have clear knowledge of all the important facts and incidents going on and all of them are clearly informed of changes and rules.
Curran and Spillane (2020) mentioned that stakeholder management is important within an organisation for ensuring the stakeholders are completely engaged with the organisation’s operations in addition to collaboration and support with other stakeholders. The companies often have to deal with resistances from the stakeholders regarding any changes and hence, major changes need to be implemented gradually after detailed discussion with the stakeholders and ensuring their feedbacks are considered before proceeding to implement the changes. Proper communication is also important to ensure these processes take place in the best possible way and the stakeholders are completely aware of the new changes that the organisation is implementing.
Conclusion
In this Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study, the given organisation (AGMC) has decided to implement some changes in systems and protocols within the internal operations due to certain external and internal factors and change leader has taken an active role in making changes to stakeholder roles and functions within the organisation to suit new policies and changes that have been proposed to be implemented in the company. However, after eight weeks had past after the proposed changes were implemented, the impacts of the change and the results that the organisation faced were reviewed in detail and it was found that the organisation had not handled the changes for all stakeholders in the right manner. The identified root cause was that the company had not been able to gain the expected results from the change management procedures as implemented. The failure of the change management was evident from the fact that the performances of the stakeholders of the organisation were not up to the mark. Furthermore, as discussed in the Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study, it was also appropriately identified that none of the stakeholders were following any of the new guidelines introduced as a part of the change management process. The organisation did not have some strict policies in place that would have forced anyone to abide by the new protocols and rules. The new rules and protocols developed after the change management process were simply introduced and the stakeholders were asked to follow the same that they were not forced to follow as there were no new strict protocols and rules.
References
Curran, M., & Spillane, J. (2020). External Stakeholder Management and Engagement on Urban Construction Projects in Ireland. Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers-Management, Procurement and Law, 1-11.
Doppelt, B. (2017). Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for business, government and civil society. Routledge.
Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture's consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions and organizations across nations. Sage publications.
Lozano, R., Nummert, B., & Ceulemans, K. (2016). Elucidating the relationship between sustainability reporting and organisational change management for sustainability. Journal of cleaner production, 125, 168-188.
McShane, S., & Olekalns, M. M. and Travaglione, T.(2010). Organisational Behavior on the Pacific Rim. Australia: McGraw-Hill.
Nair, N., & Bhatnagar, D. (2011). Understanding workplace deviant behavior in Nonprofit Organizations: Toward an integrative conceptual framework. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 21(3), 289-309.
Oppong, G. D., Chan, A. P., & Dansoh, A. (2017). A review of stakeholder management performance attributes in construction projects. International Journal of Project Management, 35(6), 1037-1051.
Palthe, J., & Kossek, E. E. (2003). Subcultures and employment modes: Translating HR strategy into practice. Journal of Organizational Change Management.
Schein, E. H. (1990). Organizational culture (Vol. 45, No. 2, p. 109). Aotearoa Gold Mining Company case study American Psychological Association.
van Niekerk, M., & Getz, D. (2019). Generic Stakeholder Management Strategies.
