Understanding Organizational Challenges - Example

Article critique Author’s name Institutional affiliation Organizations are a combination of human beings, Technology, Science and other social aspects. Therefore, proper and successful management is essential in having a competitive advantage. The article “The critical challenges facing New Zealand's chief executives: implications for management skills.” By Hutchison & Boxall (2014) presents the challenges faced by New Zealand in the years two thousand and eight to two thousand and nine during the Global Financial Crisis. The environment under which an organization works determines how strong management skills need implementation (Singh, D. and LaBrosse, 2011). The article’s main aim is to present the main challenges faced by most Chief Executive Officers in an array or firms, public entities and Non- Governmental organizations and their implications on skills of Management. This essay therefore basis its main argument on the essence of understanding Organizational challenges in order to have sound management skills for competitive advantage. New Zealand suffered a great loss after the Global Financial Crisis experienced in many counties. It also faced a huge impact from environmental disaster caused by an earthquake in two thousand and ten. Although there was only one fatal case reported, there were records of many buildings destroyed (Kids, 2016). Transport, electricity and phone lines also faced destruction. Liquefaction led to loss of water hence most schools and business premises closed down. New Zealand, a country with an approximate population of four point five million has most of its companies as foreign owned. Automobiles have the least spread of entities, which limits the utilization of people with such skills. The low production towards New Zealand’s economy has led to low wages on their employees and as a result, brain drains as people search for greener pastures in foreign countries (McDonnell & Burgess, 2013) The Article has presented a comparison between New Zealand and Australia whereby the latter outweighs the former. The writer supports the articles view of the expected changes in business environment because of globalization, technological advancements and megatrends in general. These have shaken the equilibrium in the existing businesses. The research, which used a methodology encompassing leaders from diverse organizations, is remarkable. The use of both qualitative and quantitative research increased authenticity of the findings. The main business risks put into consideration in the questionnaires presented to the respondents (Hutchison & Boxall, 2014). Form the findings; it is clear especially in the private sector that market risks are the challenges. This could be mainly because they are profit oriented and must be productive in order to achieve their goals. The public and private sector indicated that economic climate is their biggest challenge since they are not profit oriented but to serve the people. They mostly depend on the taxes levied on citizens and fundraising or grant especially the Not- for profit Organizations. The latter depend also on contracts from the government but if the wages of most revenue payers are low then they pay little (Hutchison & Boxall, 2014). With this regard, most contracts get cancellation and the Not- for Profit Organizations strains their available resources including Human Resource to meet their se goals and objectives. The Christchurch earthquake influenced negatively on improving cost especially for the public and Non- profit sector. The writer supports this claim from the article because most Not for Profit Organization and Government Ministries divert most of their resources towards disaster response when need arises. It is the role of Most Non- governmental Organizations to respond to environmental disasters in the country they serve or even in other countries (Werker & Ahmend 2008 p. 74-75). They target mostly alleviating the marginalized in the society since they face the greatest impacts of most disasters. Factors, which place the poor at a vulnerable situation is their places of settlement especially near riverbanks or seas or informal settlements mostly situated near formal settlements to provide cheap labor to the middle and high social class. This article has various strengths in that it used a diverse range of respondents with respect to all forms of organizations to gather its findings. It is a great tool in getting to know what most managers face in the private, public and Non- Governmental sectors (Singh, D. and LaBrosse, 2011). This provides a baseline to understand the main challenges hence finding common solutions becomes easy. Strength is the emphasis on how disaster can affect the economy of a country. This is a revelation to many other nations with regard to the need for disaster preparedness and excellent mitigation measures. These include financial resources, excellent evacuation routes and great networks with all disaster response teams. The one weakness of the article is that it focused on contacting its research on Chief Executives from well-known organizations in New Zealand. It did not put into considerations the upcoming companies that are in one way or the other struggling with Organizational management and Human Resource challenges. The writer believes that retirement of the aged in the workforce is one of the challenges facing New Zealand especially during the low economic climate era. Once they retire, they create a vacuum for recruitment, hiring and training. These pose more challenge incurring resources for in service training and orientation to the job (Boxall & Purcell, 2011). The initial employees, though aged, had the skills that could cut costs on more training. Even though the young are energetic, they pose a challenge with hoping from one place of employment to another in seek for job satisfaction. On the other hand, the baby boomers are already satisfied with their place of work and dedicate all their acquired skills to give the best. With increasing technological advancement however, the aged may find some challenges operating them. These insights place a company at the verge of deciding whether to recruit retirees to increase their sales or recruit newly graduated candidates and divert resources to making they fit for jobs coupled with measures to retain them. This point however, cuts across all sorts of uncertainties including handling financial crisis. There is also great essence in managing all stakeholder relationships. This ranges from shareholder, to directors, boardroom, employees and the environment under which the organization is. Weak stakeholder relationships render an entity possibility to closure due to losses. The ethics of the society deserve respect under the legal requirements of environmental conservation. In addition, managing the internal resources especially the employees in times of crisis is essential. This is because at such times employee turnover can increase more that it has ever The writer agrees with the thesis statement that there is need to understand organizational behavior in order to cultivate excellent management of both external and internal environments. This mainly discourages the traditional way of management, exhibited by bossy managers. There is need to understand the reasons behind employees’ actions and the impacts external shortcomings or external crisis affect their performance (Avcan, 2001 p.255). This is because the way employees treat other stakeholders has a greater voice regarding attainment of competitive advantage. This article is has back up from various other researches. According to Alexander & Miesings (2004), an organization can maintain a good relationship with the stakeholders by keeping its side of bargain. This entails providing quality services and maintaining good Corporate Social Responsibility. According to Murphy (2007 p. 58), the forms of leadership adopted by managers are depended on the external environment. Newzealand culture respects the need to give employees to express themselves, focusing on outcomes and having an innovative attitude. These are key elements, which if well utilized by most Chief Executive officers in their organizations can create high levels of outputs efficiently. Allowing employees to exploit their potential in problem solving or rather contemporary employee involvement even in times of crisis keeps them motivated and ready to fight for competitive advantage of the particular firm. A research by Jones (2001) showed that pulling out motivational strategies to maintain workforce are essential in ensuring that external challenges do not cause employees to seek employment elsewhere. Just as China has to focus on training their less qualified employees, New Zealand has to emphasize on inventing strategies to keep their workforce. Conclusion In Summary, the article provided a clear analysis of the implications of research done in over two hundred organizations. The country, which faces various challenges after the Global Financial Crisis and Christchurch earthquake, has suffered a lot in winning its economic competitiveness back. The main challenges facing most organizations raised include management of stakeholder relationships, impending unexpected crisis and internal resources. These are mainly the main reasons why the country has been deteriorating economically. For it to get back to the global competitive world there is need to enhance their stakeholder relationship especially the employees to reduce employee turnover and brain drain. These can be cultivated by creating motivating strategies and contemporary employee engagement. Disaster preparedness is indispensable to reduce diversion of the already strained resources to curb the effects. Adopting new technology in the past-paced globalized world is a key strategy in gaining competitive advantage. New Zealand also needs to be innovative and create their companies rather than having more investors that are external. There is need to exploit the local potential, talent and resources with minimal outsourcing. This will earn it a great fortune in restoring its global competitiveness. References Alexander, C.S. and Miesing, P., 2004, January. How important are stakeholder relationships?. In Allied Academies International Conference. Academy of Strategic Management. Proceedings (Vol. 3, No. 1, p. 1). Jordan Whitney Enterprises, Inc. Aycan, Z., 2001. Human resource management in Turkey-Current issues and future challenges. International Journal of Manpower, 22(3), pp.252-260. Boxall, P. and Purcell, J., 2011. Strategy and human resource management. Palgrave Macmillan. Hutchison, A. and Boxall, P., 2014. The critical challenges facing New Zealand's chief executives: implications for management skills. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 52(1), pp.23-41. Jones, J.T., 2001. Managing People and Change: Comparing Organisations and Management in Australia, China, India and South Africa. School of Commerce, Flinders University of South Australia. kids, 4. (2016). 4 September 2010 Canterbury earthquake for kids. [online] My.christchurchcitylibraries.com. Available at: http://my.christchurchcitylibraries.com/canterbury-earthquake-2010-for-kids/ [Accessed 20 Sep. 2016]. Singh, D. and LaBrosse, J.R., 2011. Developing a framework for effective financial crisis management. Financial Market Trends, 2011(2). McDonnell, A. and Burgess, J., 2013. The impact of the global financial crisis on managing Murphy, L., 2007. Leadership in New Zealand: the impact of gum boots, the haka, buzzy bees and number 8 wire. New Zealand Journal of Applied Business Research, 6(1), pp.47-61. employees. International journal of manpower, 34(3), pp.184-197. Werker, E. and Ahmed, F.Z., 2008. What do nongovernmental organizations do?. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22(2), pp.73-92. Yang, H.O., 2007. Human resource management in the hotel industry in Taiwan. Read More