(TIỂU LUẬN) assignment 2 organisational problem solving group report

BUSM2301B – Organizational Analysis
Semester 3 – 2020

Assignment 2: Organisational
Problem-Solving Group Report
Lecturer: Qui Nguyen Ngoc
SG – G07 – Team 7
Members: (s3820598)
(s3877650)
(s3878025)
(s3828023)


2

Table of Contents
I.

Introduction

3

II.

Probem Statement

4

III.

Literature Review

6

IV.

Solution Development and Proposal

8

V.

Discussion and Conclusion

11

VI.

References

14

VII.

Appendix: Group Reflection

16


3

I.

Introduction:
Our client is a global mining company and has their offices located across many continents, such

as in Latin America, Alaska, Congo, Asia, and four mines located in Australia. The company has
grown significantly in recent years due to its acquisition of diverse development companies. However,
because of the decline in the management of firms in the mining sector and the sector's additions, it
has yet to achieve the goal of optimizing the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR)
activities by promoting the organization's integration.
CSR is a topic of concern in society. Specifically, for our client's mining industry, it affects the
society from business decisions and operations with solving social issues, ethics, protecting the
environment, protecting society as well as protecting human rights and responding to customer
concerns. Throughout the report, we will analyze the problems the company is facing. Additionally,
this report explores the aspects of solving the problems faced by the mining industry. For this, it
needs to improve collaboration with communication among all departments within the company to
promote CSR and to utilize CSR to create a social impact that is profitable for the business.
Therefore, through research, we will provide the best solutions based on theory and practical
research in the industry with our new process model for the company to ensure that they can satisfy
the community and stakeholders' requirements about behaving socially responsible.

Besides, this report also consists of our research and proposal based on the two perspectives of
“functionalism” and “social relativism”, which we think are the most suitable for solving the problems,
due to their strengths and limitations.


4

II.

Problem Statement:

The client is having many problems with the organizational structure. However, we believe that the
main issue which the mining company needs to consider carefully is the lack of corporate social
responsibility (CSR) performance. Currently, the company doesn’t have support from society, which
can create lots of problems regarding the environment and community. This challenge may affect the
company’s performance as well as its operation process in general.
A mining company relates to digging and drilling into the ground to get the desired minerals, which
could have negative effects on the earth, groundwater system, and the natural landscapes nearby.
The CSR will support our client to be aware of its business impacts to all aspects of the society
including the economy, society, and the environment (Zorrilla, Buck, Palmer, & Pellow, 2009).
Understanding the role of CSR in a specific industry could be easy to identify and generalize it to the
organization. Nevertheless, finding the most effective way to implement it in real life is a difficult issue.
It needs the integration of all departments as a whole to participate and enhance the society and
environment (Jenkins & Yakovleva, 2006).

Our client is doing business not only in Australia but also in many other countries from Africa to
Asia. Moreover, there are various phases of the development in companies that our client has
repurchased. That makes the organization lacking in integration as a whole. Different business units
may have different perspectives. They only focus on their responsibilities and use their ways to
approach the goal as well as social responsibility. The lack of collaboration will create mismatches
between teamwork, social factors, environmental factors, political factors, mission, and business
model (Hashaw, 2020).
From the issue of lacking integration, it may put more pressure on the company to meet the needs
of stakeholders. The pressure will force our client to perform better, reduce the cost, and increase the
necessary resources to standardize as a multinational organization. Besides, an effective CSR
integrated with business strategy can utilize the significant resources inside the company. Additionally,
our client can maximize the benefits to society and financial performance with a specific practical

5

framework. As a result, this integration will support the mining company to achieve both social and
business impacts to maintain its reputation to the community (O'Brien, 2001).

In an organization, constant communication and a sense of trust are believed to be important
factors to pursue an efficient collaboration of all parties (Rothouse M.J. 2020). Therefore, a lack of
communication between departments can strongly fail cooperation. As suggested by Rothouse M.J.
(2020), one of the reasons was due to the lack of interpersonal skills of the managers, which makes it
hard to open communication within a team and among all the teams together. Intending to legitimate
the profit, they only focus on their internal affair and productivity to achieve the mere goal. Moreover,
not equipped with enough knowledge can also lead to a lack of communication among employees, as
people tend to avoid the matter that they have no sense of. Hence, as the idea of CSR may not be
explicit to some people, with the help of communication, the corporation can enhance their potential
and improve their social responsibility.


6

III.

Literature Review:

When it comes to resolving the issue of this global mining company, two paradigms can be
taken into consideration. One of them is the functionalism paradigm, while the other one is social
relativism. Moreover, to run the organization properly we also need to have a suitable organizational
structure and process model. In this report, we will illustrate the importance of organizational structure
and process model in a business and how Functionalism and Social Relativism can contribute to the
improvement of the corporation’s CSR so that the organization can satisfy the environmental
awareness and community requirements.

The functionalism paradigm illustrates a perspective which is drawn from the sociology of
regulation and attempts to perceive its subject matter from an objectivist point of view (Burrell &
Morgan, 1979). In the scenario in which our client is required to become a socially responsible
corporation, a functionalism approach will result in the company being strictly managed by the
employers and obligations, which helps the employees work in order and avoid being in conflict or
reducing their profit. However, since functionalism only seeks ideal profitability the client may overlook
the reaction of the customers towards their CSR and the upcoming related campaigns, which can
lead to a profit deduction. Moreover, as each department in the company only aims at the expected
goal, it leads to a lack of interaction among all departments, which may cause conflict to happen in
the future. As our client is performing the functionalism approach, we suggest that they should


7

consider another kind of approach to not only enhance their CSR activities but also increase their
wanted profit.

On the other hand, the application of the social relativism paradigm is a good tool for the
company to pursue an interactive system. According to Burrell and Morgan (1979, p.28), the social
relativism paradigm is the one that ‘sees the social world as an emergent social process which is
created by the individuals concerned’. Apparently, the interaction between all parties plays an
important role in helping the organization legitimize the objectives. Therefore, as an approach to the
solution, the implementation of this paradigm opens a way for integration within the client to develop
CSR as it emphasizes the cooperation of all departments as well as the consumers as they are, with
the help of the management, are the ones who make sense of the system. However, through joint
activities, different opinions and perspectives are highly collected. This can lead to confusion when
making decisions and can be an obstacle on the way to achieve the final goals.
Organizational structure is 1 of the 2 key factors that determine the success of a business.
According to Chanki & Catarina in 2020, an organizational structure is “the total of the ways in which

the work is divided into different tasks, achieving coordination”, and “impact on important outcomes in
the workplace”. So, companies must focus more on the structure for more effective work when it can
help companies easily organize workflow, make sure important tasks are completed on time, and
communicate and operate more efficiently (Sheila Kloefkorn 2014). Moreover, when doing an
organizational structure, we need to keep in mind the fact that employees will be affected by the
structure of the business and they are the main factor that decides the success of the business.
Therefore, in order to improve the CSR of the business, the mining company should make a logical
and clear organizational structure so that all related departments could work efficiently together.
On the other framework, the Process model is “a set of related tasks performed to achieve a
defined business outcome” (Wenhong & Y. Alex 1999). Then, we can know that a business process
model is a solid network in an organization to run the company. Therefore, when making a business
process model, the company should keep in mind all the types, elements, objectives, and perspective
of the model. Moreover, when selecting a business process we need to be concerned about “the
three constructs, namely objectives, perspectives and characteristics” (Wenhong & Y. Alex 1999).


8

Besides, companies when doing a process model need to take notice of the pitfalls of it when Michael
Rosemann in 2006 had reported 22 potential pitfalls of the process model that many companies might
fall into.

IV.

Solution development and Proposal:

Regarding the problem identified previously in our problem statement, the organization is under
the pressure to fulfill corporate social responsibility. CSR has been one of the most important areas in
environmental and social accounting research (Belal & Momin, 2009). Additionally, by presenting the
concept of CSR, the organization can achieve environmental, social, and economic sustainability, as

well as maximize the possible profits. Therefore, we must ensure that the corporation can respond to
the environmental and community pressure by leveraging the collaboration and communication
among all the departments to tackle the issue.
Thus, a new process model is suggested. This proposed model will illustrate a new system in
which more collaborations between the departments to improve the productivity and manifest the
CSR performance is carried out. In the previous process, each department is in charge of one
process which its sub-functions mainly manage. This results in the problem that one department has
to conduct many tasks at the same time which may cause the results to have flaws and be inefficient.
Therefore, in the new process model, the first thing we want to solve is the problem of no effective
cooperation between the parties of the client. After the reallocation, departments are expected to
share their workload with the ones which have suitable and connected sub-functions to impulse the
efficiency and quality of the product. For example, in the original system, the Planning and
Coordinating department has to take care of too many processes before the construction of mining
starts. Consequently, it’s highly recommended that the budget needed for the project be planned and
considered by both the Planning and Coordinating and Finance. As the ideas are shared and
discussed, the final price can be decided more easily. Moreover, the action of conducting studies for
future mining activities can be done by the collaboration of the R&D (Research and Development)
and the Planning and Coordinating. The findings collected by the R&D team from the sub-divisions
like Engineering, Geology, Exploration provide the Planning and Coordinating team with thorough


9

knowledge to come up with a precise plan. Hence, R&D can help the strategies be set up and
developed properly.

As the system is now processing better with the cooperation of the divisions, the way to perform
an effective CSR becomes easier. However, only integrating all the parties of the corporation is not
enough for efficient CSR, as the communication between our client and the community, as well as
among the departments is also essential. Thanks to the Communication department with the help of

the Services department, the company can easily broaden its approach to the community, which
leads to public participation and consultation with them. Accordingly, by attracting public attention, our
client can leverage social influence marketing to promote their products, which helps them not only to
improve the efficiency of their upcoming CSR activities but also to optimize CSR to aim to profit
maximization for the company. Besides, all collaborations of departments in preparation for the
project will provide a better understanding of social knowledge and environmental problems, as they
can support the others in research, which will also help the client to carry out better CSR
performance, based on the new process model.


10

V.

Discussion and Conclusion:

First of all, we believe that the biggest strength we have from our solution is a connected system
with more interactions among the parties participating in the process of a project. This process
illustrates the application of the social relativism paradigm as it highlights the importance of
continuous interactions of the participants which is the key for objectives to be legitimized
(Hirschheim & Klein, 1989). Hence, all departments under the company collaborate, creating a
system in which every part links together to maximize productivity. According to Vintró &
Comajuncosa (2009), the purchasing decisions of consumers will be influenced by how the company
can fulfill its product and service expectations. Therefore, the weight of communication between our
client and consumers is noticed and the immediate solution is conducted. With the process of


11

communicating, many findings and discussions will be shared, a better understanding, sympathy, and

support from one department to the others will be performed, the managers can have a variety of
perspectives from not only within the working environment but also the external forces to have better
knowledge to make modifications and supply better guidance. On the other hand, by having a specific
manager to direct particular departments of similar functions and having sub-functions collaborate, a
certain goal can be easily defined so that each team knows and focuses on their main assigned task.
This shows the functionalist perspective which has the system working to achieve the final targets profit maximization and an effective CSR performance (Hirschheim & Klein, 1989).
However, there exist limitations. By applying the social relativist characteristic, different
perspectives are collected. However, this may lead to confusion and no unanimity in mindset. If the
manager is not rational enough to come to the best decision, in the end, disagreement and conflict
among the departments when cooperating will affect the process as a whole. Receiving too much
feedback from different sides will place pressure on the company to behave in socially responsible
ways properly. Furthermore, because with the functionalist view, the main concern is the prespecified
end and the system is designed to contribute to this end (Hirschheim & Klein, 1989), the real
performance throughout the whole process may not be performed. That means the employees may
have known about the specific goal of the task they have and will only just care and try to finish it
when the due date is near only to achieve the goal but the quality of the result cannot be guaranteed.
Hence, if the quality of the product doesn’t meet the consumers’ expectations, the performance of
efficient CSR will be affected.
In summary, the methodology of using only the social relativism paradigm in combination with the
functionalism paradigm can complement each other yet is still not ideal and realistic.
Though the application of functionalism can have the client to have a specific aim to move
forward, it can become a system lack of consideration with the employees since their opinions may
be taken for granted and all they have to do is following the goal. That’s when the use of social
relativism is needed to help all participants have their rights to speak up and share different
perspectives. On the other hand, while with the social relativist way, collaboration and discussions
can be conducted to boost efficiency and productivity, too many different ideas collected at once may
distract the prespecified target and downgrade the quality. Thus, functionalism is applied.
However, to achieve success in the industry, applying only two paradigms, which are
Functionalism and Social Relativism, is not enough. The use of only two paradigms that follow the
“order” will only keep the organization improving and moving forward from the existing flaws without

making any changes. If our client wants to become successful in the long term, we believe that it
would be more ideal to leverage all four of the paradigms as the company can have a holistic
approach as well as avoid having limitations in the way they would develop. It would be impractical for
a corporation, especially a global company like our client, to solely keep following one model for


12

improving their CSR activities and earning profits from the beginning without having any changes and
alternation, or being affected by external elements, such as community and stakeholders. Therefore,
we suggest that our client take the idea of performing all four paradigms, depending on the
occurrences, to extend their profits and influence under consideration for further success.
By using the Radical Structuralist paradigm, our client can help make a connection between the
management and the employees and obtain their support for the company as it can fulfill their
expectation of an ideal workplace. Accordingly, the employees realize that there will be someone to
understand their circumstances and solve the conflicts between different classes happening in the
company by putting himself into the worker’s shoes. As the company can tackle the relationship
issues from the workplace, their workers can be guaranteed to be satisfied with their job and
contribute more to their company, in this case, which is helping to improve the company’s CSR
activities and profits. Yet, the radical structuralism “has a tendency to oversimplify”, which is that it
can’t see the conflict arising from the coalition. As a result, this comes back to the problem of lacking
collaboration among employees, which requires the company to think of another solution for the case.
Therewithal, by using a Neo-humanism approach, it would help the corporation to have more open
consultations between employees, or company and community, and allow for a deeper
comprehension of the information that is not seen on the surface. This information or knowledge can
benefit the global company by helping to improve their both internal and external operational
processes to deal with the CSR problems, including their ability to work with different cultures and
integrate the employees from various parties for the success of the company. With such information
or knowledge, alternation can be made to further enhance more potential processes for CSR or
advocate certain impacts to industries that could be life-changing and possibly reduce the

dissensions seen in companies due to the lack of information, which usually leads to the lack of
communication. Nonetheless, neo-humanism may not benefit the client, as it aims to the human
factor more than the profits and believes that it must be the organization to serve people.
Consequently, the company should thoroughly consider which approach to use.
We must look into all four approaches of the paradigm and see how each of the approaches can
help the company to deal with the problem they are currently facing, which is the inefficient CSR
model. It's always advantageous to look at multiple perspectives from all possible ways and
implement them for the potential solutions to maximize the wanted results. It’s also crucial for the
company to look into conflicts and how we would solve them or reduce the chances of conflict arising
in the company, affected by both internal and external factors. As using all four paradigms to
approach the matter, there will be some problems in the way of managing the company, as the
paradigms don’t follow the same pattern. That is the reason why the corporation needs to carefully
decide which paradigm should be used in which context to solve the possible issues.


13

VI.

References:


Burrell, G. & Morgan, G. 1979, Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis,
Heinemann, London



Chanki, M., Catarina, M., Georgina, R. & Ayse, K. 2020, ‘The role of organizational
structure and deviant status in employees’ reactions to and acceptance of workplace
deviance’, International Journal of Conflict Management



Hashaw 2020. What Is Organizational Integration?, Hearst Newspapers, viewed 1 Januarry
2021 < />


Hirschheim, R. & Klein, H. 1989, Four Paradigms of Information Systems Development,
Communications of the ACM, vol. 32 (10), pp. 1199 – 1216



Jason, F. 2020, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Investopedia, viewed 1 January
2021 < />


Jenkins, H., & Yakovleva, N. 2006, ‘Corporate social responsibility in the mining industry:
Exploring trends in social and environmental disclosure.’ Elsevier, 271-284.



Michael, R. 2006, ‘Potential pitfalls of process modeling: part A’, Business Process
Management Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 249-254.



Michael, R. 2006, ‘Potential pitfalls of process modeling: part B’, Business Process
Management Journal, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 377-384.



Rothouse M.J. 2020, Establishing Trust and Authentic Communication Among
Organizational Teams, Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Innovation in Organizations.
Palgrave Pivot, Cham., viewed 31 December 2020 < />


Sheila, K. 2014, Why organizational structure is so important for small búinesses, Phoenix
Business Journal, view 1 January 2021
< />


Vintró C. & Comajuncosa J. 2009, CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN THE
MINING INDUSTRY: CRITERIA AND INDICATORS, Dep. of Management, Universidad
Politécnica de Catalunya, viewed 1 January 2021, < />

14

script=sci_arttext&pid=S0012-73532010000100003&fbclid=IwAR3rqgwU4N_n1BUxPr_sV9rE7-hhpjk-3L2iCu9_RT0qRFJb0NEK3E5tCw>


What are Economies of Scale?, n.d.,Corporate Finance Institute, viewed 29 December
2020 < />


Wenhong, L. & Y. Alex, T. 1999, ‘A framework for selecting business process modeling
methods’, Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol. 99, no. 7, pp. 312 - 319.



Zorrilla, C., Buck, A., Palmer, P., & Pellow, D. 2009, ‘Protecting Your Community: Against

Mining Companies and Other Extractive Industries’, A Guide for Community Organizers,
Global Response, viewed 29 December 2020
< />fbclid=IwAR0yMvFl-Jl0gFICkjd6wT2T8rZ2bkPCnQHBao_5GyuWogAD8Dr7EbS7kA4>


15

VII.

Appendix:

Figure 1: Mining company’s Organizational Chart
Group Reflection:
When our group started to do the assignment, we read the question, but it appeared to be
difficult to understand. Therefore, we had a meeting and had continuous discussions among the
group members and asked for advice from classmates, the lecturer, or even the school tutors to have
a better understanding of this group assignment. While our group is working, there are many ideas
such as the member telling the others their idea to collect the useful ones and come up with the final
best way to do the report, based on multiple perspectives. More importantly, some of our team
members have very good ideas, they will look for useful information, such as articles, data and
research from numerous different people to make the group work more effective. Conversely, if the
whole team does not contribute, the performance of the work decreases because you lack teamwork
skills. Besides, to help the progress avoid time-wasting, we separated the needed parts of the report
and required each member to do their given task equally, so that everyone would contribute to our
assignment. For example, Phuong would take responsibility for the two first parts, Hoang did the
literature review, while Vy and Anh were responsible for the solution and discussion parts.


16

Moreover, our team always listens to each other's opinions. Each person has their own way of
thinking. Consequently, there would be no right or wrong answer when we debated, instead we
attempted to find the most suitable method for the job. After we have listened carefully to our
teammates' opinions, comparation and addition would be added to our opinion and ideas. If someone
is sure of everything, then they could boldly suggest new ideas to the team. Our team members are
always confident in their opinion. However, Phuong is afraid that her opinion is wrong, so she is afraid
to show her own opinion. Yet, the others in the team would encourage her during the progress, and
even when someone was wrong, our team still listened and corrected each other. When an individual
is encouraged and facilitated by growth. Then they will try more at work and contribute more value to
the organization. Last but not least, as a team leader, you must scientifically organize your work. Ms.
Vy always proactively arranges, manages work, and solves problems arising in the group. She always
ensures fairness among members so that work is not interrupted for any reason. what. For example,
not all of the best members did more parts, the other members did the easier or lesser parts. Our
team allows the members to show their best. There was no dominant perspective, since we all
respect the others’ ideas, and tend to collaborate the ideas logically to solve our client’s problems
instead of using only one perspective. Therefore, each member can rely on the experience applied by
the whole team in common work. In addition, my team regularly observes and pays attention to help
members work scientifically and on schedule.
Throughout the work, every member gets along and has discussions well with each other. All
are responsible, dedicated, and hard-working. We started to work right away after receiving our tasks.
Whenever someone made mistakes, the others would share their ideas and he or she would willingly
listen and correct. However, due to the arising pandemic and physical distance, sometimes it was
hard for all of us to gather to work together at the same time. Despite that, all members still tried their
best to communicate through SNS, have our joint file on Google Docs so that all members can take
part in writing and modifying the assignment together. Members were all responsive, trying their best
to participate in the meetings, give ideas and Even when all the members were busy with their own
schedules and works from other courses, or even during our Christmas holiday and New Year Eve,
we still worked hard and found time to finish our assigned tasks on time. As a result, our assignment
was finished on time.

17

One more thing, as we were going through the assignment, the theories on functionalism and
social relativism had influenced us a lot. When we are working together, we split the assignment into
parts and everyone has their own task. But, as the assignment is connected, we decide to work
together to find the answer to the question before going into the writing part. Besides, while working
together, we contribute a lot by talking and less texting so it helps our workflow run smoothly. By
having perceived knowledge from the functionalism and social relativism approach, we acknowledged
the importance of information along with human interaction for an effective progress and working in
order.

First Name

Student ID

Parts Contributed

Contribution

Hoang

s3820598

All

100%

Vy

s3877650

All

100%

Anh

s3878025

All

100%

Phương

s3818023

All

100%

Signature