We are a team of consultants, working to deliver a report to a client
We will develop a solution to an organisation problem. The solution will include the development of a:
Taxonomy
And a process model

Organisational Analysis Group Report

PLEASE READ THE DETAILS ON CANVAS UNDER THE ASSIGNMENTS TAB – the below is a summary

The task

• We are a team of consultants, working to deliver a report to a client
• We will develop a solution to an organisation problem. The solution will include the development of a:
  • Taxonomy
  • And a process model

The brief:

• Review the various functions and sub-functions of the mining company, and develop a proposed organisational structure (a taxonomy) that addresses the challenges outlined.
  • Present it diagrammatically and include in the report
  • Defend the proposed structure by drawing on the perspectives of Functionalism and Social Relativism, and displaying your awareness of the strengths and limitations of these perspectives
• Propose a consultative and implementation process by which the mining company
  • explore the feasibility of the proposed structure and evolve it, if necessary;
  • implement the solution decided upon.

• Your consultative and implementation process is to be represented as a process model, and included in your report. You are to defend your proposed process, by drawing on the perspectives of Functionalism and Social Relativism, and displaying your awareness of the strengths and limitations of these perspectives.

Report Structure (more detail on canvas)

Total 4,000

• Introduction (approx 250 words) – Americk
  • Orient the reader (your client – that is, the Mining Company) to the purpose of your report, and what it contains.
• Problem statement (approx 500 words) – Howard
  • The problem statement should be an incisive and engaging statement of the problem. This section conveys what you as a group have identified as the problem, and will be derived, in part, from your literature review. Remember that what an organisation believes to be the problem may be vague or miss the mark. Having thought about the case critically, and having examined the case via the perspectives of Functionalism and Social Relativism, your group will have a different way of seeing the problem.
• Literature review (approx 750 words) – Mark
  • Explore the literature on: organisational taxonomies; organisational structure; process models; functionalism; and social relativism. You should include the Hirschheim & Klein paper (the “Four Paradigms” paper), and the functionalist and social relativist readings from Assignment 1.

Your literature review should ‘problematise’ the challenge you have been set by the client. Having reviewed the literature, what will be some of the main challenges that you need to keep in mind, as you develop your solutions? What will your client need to be cautioned about? Are you able to alleviate some of these challenges through your solution design? Now that you understand the advantages and limitations of functionalism and social relativism, how might they be drawn on, to help you design your solution?

• Solution development and proposal (approx 500 words) – Callan
  • Linking back to your problem statement, present your group’s solution: your organisational structure (taxonomy) and your process model for consultation and implementation. These must be presented as diagrams, and accompanied by a detailed description. Put yourselves in the client’s shoes – orient them to your solution, and tell them how it meets their needs / helps solve their problem.

Describe how you developed your solution, and why it is robust (i.e. grounded in the literature, informed by different ways of thinking).

• Discussion and conclusion (approx 1,000 words 750 & 250) – Vicki
  • Detail the strengths of your solution, and its limitations, drawing on the functionalist and social relativist paradigms. How did these paradigms help? How did they hinder? What are the consequences of drawing on only two perspectives (rather than four)?

Identify the implications for the client, going forward, and detail the risks associated with not thinking about the implementation of the solution from multiple perspectives.

• References (excluded from word count)
  • References must be in RMIT Harvard style:
  • You should draw on and cite within your report enough citations to support your arguments and convince your client. For group work, each individual, at the minimum, should identify three additional scholarly references (these are in addition to the readings from Assignment 1)
• Appendix: group reflection (approx 1,000 words – included in word count) – Americk
  • This is a crucial part of your report and should not be treated as less important than the body of the report.
  • Your group reflection should detail what you have learned as a group throughout the assignment. Draw on the functionalist and social relativist paradigms to aid your reflection.
  • The following questions may assist:
    • Did the group tend to be accepting of different perspectives? Did the group actively encourage multiple perspectives? How so, and what effect did this have on the functioning of the group and the quality of its work?
    • What were some of the challenges associated with reconciling different points of view? How did the group handle these challenges?
    • Did a particular perspective dominate, and what effect did this have on the group and the quality of the work?
    • How did group members’ disciplinary backgrounds affect their input into this assignment, and the overall result?
    • Did the theory on functionalism and social relativism influence the way the group work? Did you apply this theory to your own group processes, in order to produce the required work?
    • ……..add any other questions that you feel are helpful.

SOLUTION NOTES & THOUGHTS:

The company needs to be restructured in a way that allows for oversight of each mining site to be centralised and monitored by a single office. Each mining site can have its own structure & local office that reports to the centralised office, but the company needs to operate from one location. A single structure across the company would simplify operations from a management perspective, but each mine site may have different needs that a uniform approach may not address. [Functionalist vs Social Relativist approaches]

Social Corporate Responsibility (CSR) needs to be addressed at both the top & bottom levels, and monitored according to a single set of guidelines/principles. Accountability sits with the company, but actions are carried out by the workers at each site. If the company wants to seriously address the activist concerns raised by Share- and Stake-holders, then a CSR policy needs to be put in place by the Central office that can be carried out at each mining site.

The Functions of the company need to be simplified. If they are incomprehensible on paper, a person attempting to navigate the bureaucracy will get lost before any meaningful work is achieved. A simple hierarchy would allow easy navigation, but would be more rigid in how the company responds to a situation. A more complex solution could allow for more individualised responses at each site, but may not allow for simple management from the Central office. [This is the diagram we need to draw up ]

The global aspect of the company adds extra issues, with each region having its own special needs. Not all mines sit within the same region, climate or nation, so geopolitics and geography matter as much as geology. The company also mines different minerals so the mining process at each site has different requirements and restrictions

[Taxonomy Diagram Thoughts]:

This diagram is looking like it will be huge and very complicated. Any suggestions to simplify it are very welcome! To properly address the Functionalist & Social Relativist approaches we may even need multiple Taxonomies to propose.

-Group company functions according to “Central Office” “Regional Office” or “Local Office” to draw the taxonomy diagram. Departments could exist across multiple offices and in many locations.

-Break Functions up according to departments. Centralise all departments in one location with sub-departments in each mine site as needed. Taxonomy diagram becomes a rigid hierarchy with each department reporting up the chain

I think that we should be organising it based on department then split it based on department to present the structure. Also, i think each human function (e.g. HR, legal etc.) should be represented at each site. They all should be working towards the goal of mining (as this is their main function, and thus their goal is to support this and be able to so sustainably). No definitely not, it could be one or two people, so everyone has an onsite rep, however they should have open communication (maybe like a digital platform of sorts) to talk to the other members of their function at each site, so people don’t feel isolated from the rest of the team. And i think there should be flexible working arrangements so people from different functions can be working at different geographical sites

There should be measures in place for cross site communication – maybe a blog or intranet so people can stay up to date with each other and also be able to find out what is happening in other business functions, or a directory to find a relevant contact.

I definitely think there should be an environmental impact person at each site – and a team at all the mines so they can be socially responsible and respond to growing shareholder concerns

Problem Statement

The business model has had significant growth in recent periods. Although the organisation has expanded substantially and has multiple departments operating in different stages of development in such a short period, the business model’s separate departments have not been able to integrate smoothly together as a whole; meaning that the organisation does not have a common guideline on how the individual site is managed. As a consequence, the individual sites are unable to drive economic scale, thus hindered the organisation’s growth as a whole.

As the result of not being able to build a well- integrated system, the organisation may suffer from other issues such as wasted employee productivity, inefficient data management and ultimately losing customers. All these challenges, if not resolved properly, will all lead to reduction in revenue and have a negative impact on both the shareholders and the stakeholders.

In this case, both of the shareholders and stakeholders within the organisation are affected. In the shareholders view, the organisation has not been able to maximise their capital; for shareholders such as the community, are concerned that the organisation is not operating in a socially responsible way including causing all kinds of pollution. As a result of community’s concern, it drives the organisation’s reputation lower.

In order to reconstruct the business model, a universal guideline for the organisation to run individual sites needs to be rewritten more smoothly and efficiently.

Literature Review

Organisational Taxonomies

Organisational taxonomy mainly refers to the hierarchical arrangement of organisation entities (SOURCE). Administration or organisation, used for the document classification as well as for other information. Subsequently, it has been studied that taxonomies could virtually cover any kind of conceptual or physical entity that are processes, products, human groups, fields of knowledge and others (McKelvey,1982). Correspondingly, the organisation taxonomies are highly utilised in the “information systems” superficially in the management of knowledge and content, as an approach for promoting the sharing of information and also permits quick access to correct information (SOURCE). Hence, it has been suggested that organisational taxonomies possess the potential of influencing the management system of the organization in an optimistic manner (SOURCE). Subsequently, organisations reliant on taxonomies are found to be massive competitors for the heavy systems of data mining as well as the software of behavior analysis in the application of “contextual filtering” it is utilised for the routing of consumer requests. Hence, taxonomies have the potential of reducing the communication barrier that may occur in organisations. As Hirschheim and Klein (1989) suggested that “Neohumanist” influence in the process of development was found to be visible in identification that there could be barriers of communication under the coalition that should be addressed through the fairness standards.

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Organisational Structure

Organisational structure is defined as the system which outlines the specific activities direction in the organisation for acquiring the organisation’s goals (SOURCE). According to Hirschheim and Klein (1989), the paradigm of radical structuralism is focused on the need to transcend or overthrow the limitation that is found to be placed on the current organisational and social arrangements. Similarly, it focuses mainly on the analysis and structure of relationships of economic power (Joseph and Gaba, 2020). Moreover, the structuralism paradigm is reliant on the perception that by the utilisation of the disincentives, persuasion, incentives, parties from a conflict can lead towards the settlement that is negotiated.

Process Model

Choubin et al., (2020) presented that process model are constructed under particular languages of modeling through the utilisation of “numerical solvers” for solving the equations set that describe the chemical and thermophysical conversion function of technology for the provided ‘decision variables “set as well as the parameters of the unit model. Correspondingly, the process model is known to be the balance of “workflow description and diagrams of workflows” (SOURCE). Besides, the diagrams of the workflow are considered to be the most expressive and powerful aspect of the model’s process. A diagram is known to be the first thing to be noticed and wants to view as well as diagram offers the comprehension of the text. Subsequently, they are also found to be beneficial due to the fact that it contains little space, conveys information, tasks, participation, and sequences.

Functionalism

The functionalism paradigm is described as the approach which seeks for offering a significant rational description of social affairs (Read and Menon, 2019). In addition, the functionalism paradigm is identified to be concerned with offering an explanation of the social order, satisfaction, social integration, status quo, consequences as well as rational decisions (SOURCE). It also seeks to explain how the separate elements of the “social system” connect for forming an “integrated whole” (Hirschheim and Klein, 1989). However, it has been presented that functionalism has not been a specifically successful factor for the comprehension of societal and organisational life. It is mainly because individuals consist of free will as well as their observation is not considered as neutral.

Social Relativism

Social relativism is described as the paradigm that is acquired for comprehending the “social phenomena” and it mainly involves in describing the social globe from the firm’s agents viewpoint who are identified to be a direct part of the process of social reality development (SOURCE). Moreover, the paradigm of the social relativist is evaluated to be seeking for the explanation under the realm of a person’s subjectivity and consciousness, as well as under the reference model of the social actor in opposition to the action of the observer (Hirschheim and Klein, 1989). Hence, institutions and social roles exist as the expression of the meaning that an individual attaches to their world (SOURCE). Correspondingly, social relativism is the phenomenological and hermeneutic analysis of the individual’s understanding in their process of finding a solution for problems (Iofrida et al., 2018). It is mainly the idea that the values of a culture are not considered inherently bad or good, they are just found to be different (SOURCE). As one culture may value earning and working hard, while other cultures may value the creativity in work and having leisure time.

References

Choubin, B., Rahmati, O., Tahmasebipour, N., Feizizadeh, B. and Pourghasemi, H.R., 2019. Application of fuzzy analytical network process model for analyzing the gully erosion susceptibility. In Natural hazards gis-based spatial modeling using data mining techniques (pp. 105-125). Springer, Cham.

Hirschheim, R. and Klein, H.K., 1989. Four paradigms of information systems development. Communications of the ACM, 32(10), pp.1199-1216.

Iofrida, N., De Luca, A.I., Strano, A. and Gulisano, G., 2018. Can social research paradigms justify the diversity of approaches to social life cycle assessment?. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 23(3), pp.464-480.

Joseph, J. and Gaba, V., 2020. Organizational Structure, Information Processing, and Decision-Making: A Retrospective and Road Map for Research. Academy of Management Annals, 14(1), pp.267-302.

McKelvey, B., 1982. Organizational systematics–taxonomy, evolution, classification. Univ of California Press.

Read, J. and Menon, T., 2019. The limitations of inertial frame spacetime functionalism. Synthese, pp.1-23.