Topic: contingency theory

Order Description

– Analyse and identify the assumptions, ideas, and interpretations underlying the approach to understanding organisational problem. Critically evaluate those

assumptions.
– Research how adequately you believe these theories have explained the problem you have chosen, or similar relevant problems (what is the argument, how have they

framed the problems, what tend to be the assumptions etc)
Integrate your analysis with contingency theory only

Name of the organization: Information Planet
http://www.informationplanet.com.au

Look for the organizational problems that can be analysed with contingency theory for this company. Avoid using the problems which has already been analysed by other

theories below.

Please see below the paper which this analysis will be part of. Please write the 3 pages accordingly:

1. Executive summary
Information Planet is an international medium-sized company for supporting customers to study, work and travel overseas, with 150 employees in 25 offices in over the

world. Its head office was established in 1996 in Sydney, Australia by Mauricio Pucci and Alexandre Pucci. In this essay, we only focus on the head office (HO) which

is located level 5, 285 Clarence St, CBD, Sydney and has 25 employees. The main goal of the HO is to assistant customers to choose the best Australian college and

university to study based on their need. Additionally, it also supports customers to find jobs and travel in Australia. The main objective of this assay is to examine

the design and recent organizational structure of the HO and analyze issues that influence its development. Theories have been applied for the evaluation are Economic

Theory, Contingency Theory and Institution Theory.
The methodology was used to evaluate the data was using face-to-face interviews and information on the website of the HO. The interview was firstly conducted with Ms.

Renata Ilonciakova-the operations manager whose goals are to give clear information for her employees working better and to develop effective communicational channels

for employees within the organization and between employees and customers. After that, we continued to make the interview with Mr. David Garcia- the America and Spain

manager whose responsibilities are to provide information related to Australia for American and Spanish students and conduct application procedures for these students

to stay there. Through these interviews, we explored that main issues affecting the operation of the HO were long working hours, different interdepartmental

communication, the flexibility of the current organization structure, unclear rule and polices and ——–(write the problems to be analyzed by contingency theory).

For information on the HO website, we used it to more understand the operations of the HO and also to determine which theories are the most relevancies for the

analysis.
According to organizational management perspective and our group’s judgment, we suggest some solutions to help the HO solve these drawbacks. First of all, it is

(summarizes the recommendations)
2. Introduction
The structure of an organization plays a vital role for deciding whether that organization operates effectively or not as it defines how organization’s decisions are

made and how each employee functions and performs to achieve common goals of the organization. For these reason, it is suggested that exanimating the development of

the structure of an organization should be maintain to ensure that the structure still runs proficiently. In this essay, our group applied some specific management

theories to examine the current structure of the Information Planet in which we focus on its Head Office (HO), also a branch of Information Planet in Sydney. The HO

has been run since in 1996 by the brothers of the Puccis with the primary purpose of ‘helping Brazilian friends to study, work and travel around Australia (Information

Planet 2013). Until now, it expands the operation and is in charge of providing the information for all students around the world, with 25 employees fulfilling its

goals. The two interviews with the operations manager and the America and Spain manager gave more information on the current design of the HO and its future plans.
First of all, methods employed to gather the information will be described. Secondly, the information will be analyzed base on Economic Theory, Contingency Theory and

Institution Theory which will explore issues and problems existing within the HO. Finally, suggestions will be highlighted.
4.3. Institutional Theory (IT)
In the literature review, institutional theory is associated with the question of why organizations look so similar (Dimaggio & Powell 1983; Miles 2012). As Miles

(2012, p.145) cited Lincoln (1995), it is related to structures and processes of an organization which obtain meaning and succeed stability in their rule, rather than

depend on their efficiency in reaching desired ends of the organization. In other words, it concerns governance structures, social arrangements, norms, rules between

the environment around and the organization, in which it can keep employees engaged with the organizational goals and also maintain safe environment for investors to

put money on. Therefore, applying the institutional theory into the HO will gain a deeper understanding how efficiency of its structure and how it fits with laws,

rules, regulations and social norms which is essential for its existence and development.
Currently the HO is in the process of re-constructing the organization in which they have still used hierarchical design to manage their staff and they are also trying

to change this structure become flatter like heterarchical one. For the former, like other organizations, to make the firm is managed and performed effectively, the HO

is divided into different departments, such as marketing department, sales department, finance department and information technology department. In addition, the top

manager of the HO-the operations manager supervises and controls all work in the organization. Every two week, she has an online meeting with other managers in all

branches of the company in over the world to discuss what is going on and give strategies which they will conduct in near time. After that, on next day, she transmits

such information and demand for her subordinates to know and follow. Then, these subordinates will share information and put duties for their employees fulfilling.

Therefore, with this structure, all people in the HO have clear goal to fulfill. However, it also causes laziness and passivity amongst employees at the bottom layer

of hierarchical structure as they just need to obey rules and finish demands of their manager rather than be active to create innovation for the organization. For the

latter, the operations manager is trying to make all employees feel the office as home and employees as equal members of a family. In fact, she allows her employees to

give feedback directly which encourages them more involved in the decision-making process of the HO, and employees between departments also have more opportunities

cooperate to fulfill the common goals of the organization (Dyer & Chu 2003). However, as the IP is employing these two structures at the same time and is only in the

first stage of using heterarchical design. Therefore, employees get information from different directions, with ranging from their managers within their department to

other managers in the other and even from their all colleagues. This could make information distorted and employees feel overload to receive information.
Furthermore, after deeper analysis, it can be argued that the HO is lacking clear rules and policies. As mentioned above, the HO is in the process of restructuring the

organization in which polices and rules of the HO are also being changed to make it adjust to the renovation. The HO is trying to create a consistent rules and

policies form not only applied for itself but also for all other branches around the world, which can be assured that all the management process will save time and

easily manage as well as information will be clear for both their employees and customers. Nevertheless, as rules and policies are changing continuously, this makes it

impossible for employees updating the information. Sometimes, they feel ambiguous to follow or apply these updating rules.
Finally, taking these drawbacks apart, the HO has conducted institutional theory successfully through rewarding system. As Chiang and Birtch (2007, p. 1294) cited

Delery and Doty (1996), and Huselid (1995), reward is considered as one of the most positive method for managing and motivating employees to achieve best performance

and outcomes for the organization. In the HO, bonuses are preferred in rewarding staff members who have illustrated excellent performance in their job. Especially,

people in sales department will get bonus for their exceeding sales goals. As a result, it is likely that, this systems has being run effectively to motivate the

employees and create the loyalty amongst them, which has made the turnover of the HO remain stable over years.

Economic theory:
For understanding how the company develops and integrates its capabilities in order to achieve its competitive advantages, we will use the Resource-based view (RBV)

theory. RBV is a theory which shows that how the company is doing in terms of its achieving the goal.
Information Planet involves its employees in separate duties. As a result it is more effective to support their customers need. They have decentralized the work for

each of their team member. For example from data entry to counseling they have nominated person who knows what should be done next. Operation manager and also the

Latin America manager also revealed that employees are experienced with their work. And, it takes a little time for them to come up with the outcome. As it has been

found from many literatures that job specialization can increase the efficiency of a company (Mcshane & Von Glinow 2012), Information Planet is doing exactly the same

to achieve its goal as well as to maintain its competitive advantage.
However, from the interview it has come out that the company is intending to restructure its organization as well. This is because presently it is a hierarchical

organization. And, as we know in a hierarchical organization it takes usually a lot time in terms of taking quick decision and also keep up with pace of controlling,

monitoring and implementing diversified duties. This structure often interferes with the company’s pace to change in an unwanted way. For example, when deciding to

become a representative of an institution, feedback may go to different unit head to become a decision. As it would take time, eventually the company might lose market

share or even the employee might lose their enthusiasm due to the late planning. RBV is related to two components, such as value creation and resource value capture

(David, 1982). By restructuring Information Planet will try to add some value to the goodwill of their company and also the company will evaluate value of its internal

resources as well.
From the interview we also got that employees at this organization sometimes need to work for more than usual hour. For most of the other employee in other

organization usually works for eight hours. But the employee at Information Planet works for nine to ten hours a day. Now, theoretically RBV should have significant

impact on Human resource management as well as on number of routines. As it is a small set up company in Australia with huge work load, the employees their have to

work for few more hours than usual. As RBV has significant influence on human resource and on its number of routines the management of information planet can hire one

or two more people to come up with the actual office schedule. As the company still does not have any concrete human resource policy that’s why the employees over

there need to work for more hours. But, as it has been discussed above the company is restructuring, this problem will be sorted out. Economic theory of management

suggests that important aspect of correlation between resources and capabilities is the ability of the organization to foster cooperation among members (Grant 1991).

This shortfall of working extra hour will be overcome by the company soon after the restructuring.
Moreover, from the interview we came across that information sharing between finance department and sales department takes high time than as usual. As it is evident

from most of the companies that the consistency between sales and finance department do not go well in the maximum case. However, RBV can solve this issue as well. As

this is not a big issue all the company need is to identify their information as an asset. Especially finance and sales department have to look after the information

which has common purpose. Both the department has to identify it as their common asset. RBV precisely analyses the asset that information planet possesses to feat its

latent benefit (Jay 1991).
Economic theory henceforth helps the organization to recognize reasonable benefit and also help the organization to take the right way to achieve its goals and

objectives.

Conclusion:
After analyzing it can be said that Information Planet is a company with a high achievement and customer oriented organization. Their main focus is to serve the

customer with necessary information and with what actually customer wants. Since its incorporation it has always given to the customer positive attributes. It has

created a feeling for its customers that no matter what happens or what it takes they are there for them to help out. However, after critically observing we found that

there are some issues that may prevent Information Planet to achieve its maximum goal, in other terms which may create a hindrance in the way of its productivity. It

can be said that the major issue is the restructuring the organization, working more hours than usual, inter department miss- communication, etc. There is a tendency

of overlooking the inter departmental communication asset. However, these problems have been analyzed through management theories like; contingency theory,

institutional theory and economic theory. The restructuring will help them to get what they are looking for. As it will help them to take decision quickly, it will

help them to understand the external and internal factors affecting their business and also this will help them to get a concrete human resource policy which will help

them for the time being to get the maximum outputs. However, to get the maximum outputs and to focus on the customer they may conduct a market research on a regular

basis. Though this will not be very easy to conduct on a regular time frame. However, all the managers working in Information Planet should have a nominal

contemplation to get the organization to the desired place.
Now, the purpose of this write up is to look for how well this organizational structure performs and provide recommendation to several shortfalls after analyzing

economic, institutional and contingency theory. As we have tried in this write up coming up with few recommendations, these recommendations can vary from person to

person, hence the limitation of this paper is the suggestions for the problems drawn. Another limitation that we faced during this write up is the particular nature of

its business. This would surely set out the commonly followed application expected in an organization.
Nevertheless, Information Planet is doing great in its field with its limitations. We believe that if they conduct market survey or research on a regular basis in

order to find out the pros and cons of their organization then it will be more helpful for them to get maximum outputs from its management perspective. However,

conduction research on a regular basis may not be easier for any organization. Hence, in this regard, manager of the organization should be more vigilant to come up

with new ideas and instant decision to keep up with the pace of constantly changing management system as well as decision.

PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT 🙂