Classical and Human Resources Approaches - an Application on Australian Mines Limited - Assignment Example

Classical and Human Resources Approaches: An Application on Australian Mines Limited (AUZ) By: Student name Course code + name Professor’s name University name City, state Date of submission CONTENTS 1.0 TABLE OF CONTENTS….………….…………………………………………………….…2 2.0 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY….…….……………………………………………………….…4 3.0 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………….…5 4.0 BACKGROUND OF THE COMPANY……………………………………………………...5 5.0 METHODOLOGY AND TECHNIQUES APPLIED TO ANALYZE DATA AND INFORMATION………………………………………………………………………………7 6.0 CLASSICAL APPROACH FINDINGS FROM THE COMPANY…………………………..8 7.1 Classical View…………………………………………………………………………….8 7.2 Explanation and Justification……………………………………………………………...9 8.0 HUMAN RESOURCES APPROACH FINDINGS………………………………………....11 8.1 Human Resources View……………………………………………………………...11 8.2 Explanation and Justification………………………………………………………...12 9.0 RECOMMENDATION AND STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION...……………………...14 10.0 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………..15 11.0 REFERENCE LIST………………………………………………………………………...16 Executive Summary It is in the basic objectives and interests that any firm that bees want to gain reputable recognition in the radically changing international business environment. For this reason, extensive researches within various individual firms are being initiated in order to recognize the recommendable policies that firms should camouflage into in order to achieve this goal. This particular research is staged in the Australian mining company; Australia Mines Limited (AUZ) that is in an imitative stage as above; trying to diversify the firms operations that are majored in Nigeria, the Asia-Pacific region, and other areas such as Yargarma, Kasele and Tegina. Consecutively, it is the primary strategic objective for the research to review the firm’s management situations in the local and global environments such that each management situation is seen to borrow intuitively from the either the classical or the human relations and resources approach to management. Answering to the above-stated requirement, different research methodologies; including the qualitative and quantitative organization assessment, are applied to evaluate the data at hand and justify the research’s results. Apparently, the classical and the human resources approach emerged to be highly contradictory in their basic requirement of organization management. Indeed, they comprise of the classical and neo-classical antiques. However then, the research is objected such that it is to establish a balanced, neutral point at which an organization can stand on while applying both the management approaches, ensure adequate employee motivation, and achieve a specific project and organization goals. Therefore, upon the analysis, the research finalizes by identifying a number of strategic recommendations that firms such as the Australian Mines Limited and other result-oriented firms should implement. It requires no further commentary that at this acknowledgement and implementation of the strategies, the individual firms rises strategically and becomes competitive enough both locally and in the international arena. Classical and Human Resources Approaches: An Application on Australian Mines Limited (AUZ) Introduction This paper is purposely structured to answer into the business problems facing most firms ambitious at achieving their operations at the international arena. These problems include; how can a business expand to an international level? Which criteria should it use to identify potential regions for its investments? What degree of adjustment required and the new strategies that should be inputted along to the business’s normal administration? How best to conduct budget control and maintain the required human capital value? Or even which approaches best suit future successes of the individual organization? The paper stages its bearing along the Australian Mines Limited (AUZ) to configure typical solutions. AUZ is an ASX listed company that is interested in expanding its business of mining to the Asian-Pacific region, Africa, and every viable market place in the entire globe. To provide a way in, the paper presents the techniques used to extensively research on the existing technique that AUZ has been conducting its business along as well as those that the firm is planning to indulge in within the present future. Alongside with other qualitative and quantitative analysis methods, two major approaches; the classical and the human relations or resources approaches, will be used in the review to investigate the viability of these strategies. To the effect, the report finalizes by identifying a number of recommendable strategies that AUZ can employ into its operation in order to ensure fruitful and efficient strategic approaches on its quest to successful business. Background of the Company Australian Mines Limited is a mining company for gold and other metals (mostly Nickel) based in Australia. The company’s major asset is its wide-ranging 100% ownership of tenement holdings in the Northwest Nigeria’s Gold Province together with its extensive shares in mining projects in the companies surrounding the region; Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso (Bell & Thomas 2013). However, the company recent activities show that it is actively running projects in other regions such as Yargarma, Kasele and Tegina. Further, the firm has been identifying other rich regions of investment such as Nigeria which has rich deposits of gold. New Caledonia has regions very rich in Nickel presenting a chance for long term investments for the company, not to mention that the country is with AUZ’s sphere of interest (Wacaster 2008). Secondly; considering that AUZ listed among the ASX companies, it is a good reasoning that the firm has been reviewing all possible means to establishing an alliance with similarly ambitious companies that will help it achieve its objectives (Maclellan 2011). Being registered with ASX shifts a firm’s ownership from private to public by selling its stock shares to the public. Therefore, AUZ must have had to deal with all spheres of public realms starting from internal self-organization and employees, human resources, and human relations management as well as to external public relations. The fact that AUZ has already hit the global level of operation and all its operations depend on how best its human resources department best organize its artifacts, and the fact the international business and economic environment has been facing constant and consistent changes (as reviewed below) necessitates the firm’s management to re-suite its strategic approaches that best suit its future strategic goals. It has to adopt the best communicational strategies that address each and every aspect of its operation in the best means possible. In the same context, the Aston Business School fashioned a journal (2013) addressing this dramatically evolving business environment. The course of the journal explains that; “neither countries nor firms can avoid the extreme impacts and influences of the revolution.” As a result, all corporations are fighting their way up to gain international recognition and expanding their territories of trade. This is the probable reason for the formation of SMEs and ASXs within the last two decades. These corporations provide chances for companies such as Australia Mines Limited (AUZ) to fight their ascendancy to the international level and honoring chances for their expansion. However, without proper internal management, neither of the firms can survives the global radical changes even will all this help. Methodology and Techniques Applied to Analyze Data and Information By the aid of the various qualitative and quantitative methods of business assessment, the report ensures a proper review to the nature and scope of the firm’s approaches used in its central management. Specifically, a deeper light is shed on two contradictory approaches; the classical theories and the humanistic theories of organization. On one hand, the classical theories to organization efficiency believe in the ability of the entire business management to predict and control the behavior and workability of their workers while, on the other, the humanistic theories (human resources and relations) holds a rather dynamic method to conceptualize organizational communication. The latter goes over and above physical contributions such that it includes the cognitive, creative and emotional aspects of the employees. It embraces the social relationships as the heart of organizational management and allows workers to communicate suggestions, complaints, and opinions whole overall output is meant to increase and improve satisfaction and production. Yes, it could be true that these approaches are contradictory, but then, does it mean that a combination of the two is still harmful to the firm’s operations? No! Carlson & Heth (2010); two profound economic psychologists, once said, “The whole is different than the sum of its parts.” Joining the individual powers of these two approaches could be the best chance that AUZ has in order to survive the current globalization of markets and internationalization of finances. Classical Approach Findings from the Australian Mines Limited (AUZ) Classical View As from the past, organizational communication theorists viewed organizations just as mechanical instruments or machines which comprised of tangible parts; including the employee functioning and other individual resources. Similarly, and even so that a number of revolutionary changes could have faced organizational management at different degrees, the same case holds up to today. Neither firms; small, medium or international, have any chance to forego its mechanical instrument. Therefore, the only chance that remains to successfully propelling a way forward is identifying the best approach to deal with these instruments (Miller 2012). The classical approach is one of these effective approaches. Firms such as the Australian Mines Limited, who extend to the international field, have to deal with lumps of organizational instruments without undermining it basic goals and operations. This means that it has to employ all means possible to keep these instruments focused to the specific goals that the firm has established. Take, for example, the Yargarma, Kasele or Tegina projects that AUZ has been conducting in the recent past, or even the New Caledonia project in Nigeria. All these projects are being ran overseas, a fact that means that the firm has to deal with a workforce that is largely diversified: Employees who bear lots of socially, economic, and culturally different backgrounds. Then, what is the expected utmost result if AUZ does not ensure that its workforce remains focused to the strategic requirements of the project? Definitely a fail, the firm’s management has to, in a leveled extent, ignore the consistently capturing employee complaints and emerging social issues and make them focus on the specific organizational goals. Explanation and Justification Classical management and its arterial requirements were developed during the 19th-century industrial revolution upon realization of the importance to enhance job specialization in organizational operations. The approach’s central objective is to ensure that organizational tasks and operations were performed in the best way while all the possible eruptive problems were eliminated. It consists of classical administrative school and a classical scientific school which both emphasize on the need to view organizations as machines. The machine metaphor requires immediate specialization, standardization, and predictability of the machine’s instruments and the constituent operations. After all, how can a firm achieve future appointed goals and objects if it cannot account on its instrumental status? The basic requirement of organizational strategic management is to ensure that the organization stays focused to its future goals which, of course, are a success oriented. The classical management model ensures this requirement comes to be by allowing the firm to create multiple levels and forums for workers to improve productivity. It establishes a hierarchical order of operations such that, the employees at the minimal levels have their tasks overseen by a higher level comprised of operation supervisors (Miller 2009). The latter is consequently monitored by an even higher level of managers. The workability of this theory is such that employees at each level are expected and required to perform tasks in accordance to specifically designed procedures that are viable enough to maximize productivity. In addition, classical approach focuses on the impersonal side of the business. Neither the employees nor the managers should allow their work be interfered by personal interactions and friendliness. At all times, the laid down rules have to be followed to the letter and hiring and extermination of employment should always be specific to the knowledge and skill that individuals hold. This is one of the means that the classical approach finds its way through to Australia Mines Limited. Operating in an external environment is at most times highly involving to the management. The external strategic managers and supervisors could find bias in their way by favoring their homeland employees and undermining the local natives. The results of such occurrence definitely hover and undermine the firm’s operations to the extent that they can face failure (Carlson & Heth 2010). There of the most profound communication theorists in the 19th century; Frederick Taylor, HenriFayol, and Weber, embarked on the classical approach as the most effective theory to organizational success. These theorists; individually specializing on the scientific management, administrative management, and bureaucracy and organizational structure respectively, used the classical approach as a means to enhance the ability of organization’s management to predict and control the behavior and actions of its employees. They demanded on the need to hold decision-making and control power at the top of organization hierarchy while minimizing input from the lower-level workers. The theory further requires that the management use the scientific knowledge and rules to guide employee behavior and finally, taking control and regulating organizational communication holds as the final stage towards decreasing misunderstandings and increasing predictability of all operations. The absolute result of engaging in the classical approach has a number of returns to an individual firm. For one, the workers feel that they have no control over their work affairs since the managers as supervisors have little care about the ideas and circumstances they possess. The worker situation is completely ignored and rendered unimportant while the management focuses only on the organization goals. At this situation, the business can focus and effectively propel towards its strategic goals. These components help the focusing to the job at hand but fail to the existing differences among employee relationships. Without proper review to other approaches to business administration, the business may experience extremely high rates of employee turnover. Employees become devastated by their working conditions and fail to develop proper relationships with the business or fellow employees and resolve to leave in search of a more involving and satisfying job. Human Resources and Relations Approach Finding from AUZ Human Resources View As effected before, Australia Mines Limited is a firm that objects to face global expansion as quick as possible. Its path to global expansion is filled with lots of interaction with a workforce with different origin and bearing immense diversity, and yes, it could have found a way to deal with the diverse situation by use of the classical approach. However, times are changing and technological, and market advances have become the only prominent aspect in the entire globe. This means that, if the firm still sticks to the indigenous methods of handling its workforce, it might end-up facing a prompt fail. These changes are such that they require organizations to view their human resources in a different perspective, a perspective that will see human resources as a unique asset that by all means (and not just as some mechanical instruments), can provide sustainable competitive advantage (Miller 2012). The fact that AUZ is a member of the ASX such that firm’s ownership shifts from private to public by selling its stock shares to the public means that it has to have its resources organized properly in order to attract the external public adequately (ESCAP Virtual Conference 2010). Further, the external realm of business such as the shareholders and partnerships requires that the firm have all its current and future strategic goals in place and already running. The former requires positive and long-lasting assurance of the probability to achieve these goals in real-time. However then, how else best can an organization achieve all these requirements if not through proper motivation to its workforce? It is only by embracing all aspects of the human resources and relations approach and upholding its basic requirements. Explanation and Justification The human resources and relations approach completely contrasts the classical approach in that instead of viewing organizations as machines and embracing employees only as tools of physical labor; it now views an organization as a ‘family.’ The approach necessitates that individuals cannot always gain motivational satisfaction by financial gain, but by the individual desire to achieve higher order needs which may include other interpersonal relationships and self-actualization (Millet et al. 2011). Treating an organization as a family actuates maximum production, especially when all needs and satisfactions of the employees are achieved. In conjunction with the human resources (HR) departments, the approach combines both the human relations artifacts and the classical approaches simply by recognizing and acknowledging that while individual labor is extremely necessary in accomplishing organizational goals, it is important to consider the feelings for the individuals providing this labor. The approach also emphasizes organizational success through collective gaining where individual ideas and thoughts are highly welcomed and open for discussion in various established organizational forums. Truly, it is the employees who face the specific operational requirements in every project and in areas where they have specialized in for a long time. Therefore, their thoughts and recommendations appear to be of great assist to the management and in plotting future successful strategies. It is the strategic plans employed by the human resources department that will overly support all the strategic initiatives, be it quality assessments, diversity management, workforce motivations, quality management, meeting customer expectations, and even workforce staffing (Plunkett et al. 2013 p. 86). Yes, the latter becomes the driving wheel of organizations’ strategic plans. It helps to conquer all human resources planning process including staffing, enabling strategic partnership, offering administrative expertise, and as well, forecast and foster the firm through all the change milestones. The existing market environments are such that, no firm or organization is likely to survive the international business arena if at all it is planning to stride all alone in its business. Therefore, partnerships emerge to be of utmost importance to all organizations and that how the HR department becomes of extreme importance to the firms strategic plan (Carlson & Heth 2010). The human resource planning will use its ability to provide administrative expertise, and its interaction with a diverse workforce, and markets to recommend to the organization’s management, which other firm best suit to be an effective partner. At that, the human resource expertise will be able to foster proper recruitment, selection, development, training, and salary negotiations not only for the organization’s workforce, but also to the organization’s selected partners, and maintain its role all through the constantly changing market conditions (Brandenberg 2014). Many firms today operate under the umbrella of human relations and resources approach. It is a good thing since the latter ensures that all organizations; formal and informal, uphold and achieve all the six most relevant elements of organizational communication. It ensures not only effective communication and profitable cooperation and partnership, but also the best means to incentivize both the internal and external realms of a firm’s business. The latter further respects the elements of authority in firms such that supervisor-manager-employee cooperation and communication occurs flawlessly while increasing employee productivity and retention rates (Miller 2012). However, the Human relations approach has a number of limitations. Embracing the approach risks the workforce becoming extremely social to the extent that instead of relying on known scientific facts and hard data during decision-making, they become easily swayed by personal opinions and emotions. Similarly, the extended supervisor-employee relationships make it difficult to reprimand poorly performing employees or even dismissing them once the company invests in them. Recommendation and Strategy Implementation As much as the two approaches discussed above could seem contradictory, each of them has its vital importance: A group of advantages that makes the organizations that embrace them to thrive in their realms. However then, take machines or any other combinatory components that help the world grow. It is from a varied and leveled combination of individually useless elements that results in the production of the world’s most powerful components of the operation (Millet et al. 2011). Therefore, if any firm; including the Australian Mines Limited is to consider engaging in strategic planning for its future success, and then it should consider leveling and variedly combine both the classical and the neoclassical theorems of organizational management. The firm should adjust its structure such that it is both impersonal and mechanistic while, at the same time, it embraces the social system of management (Miller 2012). At this level, the management ensures that there is adequate interaction in the manager-supervisor-employee hierarchy whereas the system is cautious enough not to let the social realms invade the way of conducting and supervising business. Secondly, AUZ’s management and the management systems in other global firms should consider conquering management in that they should ensure there are strict rules managed by and autocratic system while there is a democratic process always to be followed. The latter eliminates biasness in situations such as during the employment of work termination for employees. Similarly, as long as the workers and employees remain to be the driving force in both local and international firms, management should consider embracing both the human resources and relations, and the classical approach to affect the work goal of the employees. The outcome is such that the employee experiences maximum remuneration and rewards (United Steelworkers 2007) and can comfortably attain the assigned organization goal (Miller 2012). Conclusion The ultimate reason for such research is to enhance the competitiveness for firms in the international markets not to mention how radical and demanding the market has grown into. Therefore, the research above quoted the Australia Mines Limited and its management situation both locally and internationally just as an example of the managerial situation that many small and global organizations are facing. The actual lesson is that any firm that bees has to identify potential areas of investing in the international podium and apply all the appropriate approaches to organizational management such that they are able to adequately motivate the individual employees and at the same time attain the specific organizational goals and close their projects successfully. However, no blind moves should be engaged, adequate research must be done on how suitable on how suitable a particular approach is in a given management situation (The United Nations Organization 2013). At this level, it is my grand moment to inform that the firm will already have attained competence necessary at the international business and economics. References Aston Business School 2013, ‘With the increasing globalization of business and the revolution in communications, no company can afford to ignore the international dimension’, The International Business and Economics (IBE) Journal, vol. 12, pp. 45-67 Baker, D 2005, Staffing, Management: Meeting and exceeding customer expectations, 8th edn, Texas Christian University, Texas. Bell, B., & Thomas, V 2013, ‘Australian Mines Limited: Further assays received from Nigerian drilling program’, Australian Mines Limited (AUZ), vol.5, pp.45-65 Brandenberg, D 2014, Human Resource Planning Activities, Viewed 24 August 2014, . Carlson, N. R., & Heth, C D 2010, Psychology the Science of Behavior, Pearson Education Canada, Ontario CA ESCAP Virtual Conference 2010, Mining activities in New Caledonia, Viewed 24 August 2014 Maclellan, N 2011, Selling nickel to Asia- New Caledonia mining challenge French control, The New Caledonia Business Magazine. Mayhew, R 2014, Examples of HR Functional Activity, Demand Media, Viewed 24 August 2014, Metal Bulleting 2001, Nickel gleams again in New Caledonia, Viewed 24 August 2014 Miller, K 2009, Organizational communication: Approaches and processes, 5th edn, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, Boston, MA Miller, K 2012, Organizational Communication: Approaches and Process, 6th edn, Wadsworth, Boston, MA Millet, B., Boyle, M., Robins, S. P., & Judge, TA 2011, Organizational Behavior, 6th edn, Australia, Pearson Australia, French Forest, NSW NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2013, New Caledonia - Information Paper, Viewed 24 August 2014, Plunkett, W. R., Allen, G. S., & Attner, RF 2013, Management: Meeting and exceeding customer expectations, 10th edn, South-Western Cengage Learning, Mason, OH Technology.Com 2014, The Goro Nickel Project, New Caledonia, Viewed 24 August 2014, The United Nations Organization 2013, Concluding session, Special Committee on Decolonization approves two texts on New Caledonia, Tokelau; hears appeals to heed criticism of its work. United Nations Organization The World Bank Report 2010, Viewed 24 August 2014, United Steelworkers 2007, Steelworkers and Global Union Partners Announce Unity Accord, Viewed 24 August 2014, Wacaster, S 2008, The Mineral Industry of New Caledonia, USGS, 2008 Minerals Yearbook Read More