Organisation Structure
Discuss about the Integrated Management System Approach To Corporate.
The following report has been prepared in order to assess the management and the inherent structure in place in a particular company. The importance of management and the structure of any company cannot be ignored in this vast and dynamic world. The operations conducted by the organisation and its employees is a reflection of the goals, management and the structure in place at the company. In this report, Telstra has been taken as the reference company, about which vital information has been discussed and analysed. The primary purpose of this report is to know and understand the intricacies of the inherent working of any company and the role of the various important functions, which are carried over by the different sections of any organisation. Through this report, various important aspects of the working of Telstra has been discussed such as the performance management, products and services provided by the company, its competitors and various other vital sections of the company.
Background & Strategy: Telstra is one of the most widely known Australian telecommunication of the world and one of the largest in the Australian sub-continent. It works as a telecommunication as well as a media company. It has a long history which originated from 1975, where it was just a government department along with ‘Australia Post’. It is now a fully privatised company and is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia (Telstra.com, 2018). The company has achieved gigantic level of success only because of its strategies. Providing quality customer services, putting greater emphasis on the value and growth and focusing on the core activities of the company are some of the most prominent strategies of the company.Products and Services:The Company mainly produces goods which help in connectivity and goods which have a close link with the entertainment industry. Mobile phones, mobile broadband connectivity services, tablets are some of the many products which are delivered by the telecomm giant.Competition:Australia’s telecomm sector has always aimed at providing quality products and services at affordable prices. Over the years, the island continent has experienced oligopoly market structure. Mainly three players are in the telecomm market; Telstra, Optus and Vodafone. Optus and Vodafone have continued to give tough competition to Telstra. Various key developments have taken place in the telecomm industry because of the actions of the telecomm companies. These include investment of more than $ 5 billion, Introduction of 5G by Optus are some of them (Telstra.com, 2018). Due to their stiff competition, the new competitors have not been able to enter the market.
Organisation Structure:The organisation structure is one of the most important aspects of any company or organisations’ working and functioning. It ensures that the working of the company remains at an optimum condition and each and every section of the organisation provides his or her towards the working of the organisation.
In the case of Telstra, it has been seen that the company has engaged into employing bureaucratic organisation structure. For such robust operations, which expands across nations and continents, bureaucratic setup is needed and is very essential in nature. For the telecommunication industry, bureaucratic organisation structure is necessary (Telstra.com, 2018). The large scale operations which spans across various countries and for the continuous operations related to telecomm operations, bureaucratic organisation setup is useful. The complete organisation structural setup of Telstra has been provided below:
The company mainly uses a fairly moderate level of decentralisation of authority. This decentralisation is very essential for the efficient and smooth working of the company. When the operations of telecommunications expand across continents, every time the CEO is not available, therefore, delegation of powers and decentralisation of authority of the senior management are done. This saves the precious time of the top management and they could only concentrate their efforts on the important matters of the company. Mainly the revenue and the profit and the cost centres are the main responsibility centres which are followed in the company. They are engaged in ensuring that the revenue and the costs centres and their activities and objectives are not compromised at any point of time. The managers of each these two centres are entrusted with the mammoth task of maintaining the performance of the company. These two are the main arenas on which the working of any organisation depends. If the revenue or the cost deviates from the prescribed path or the projected figures, the management must take immediate action and must ensure that it is not repeated.
Literature review
Social responsibility is one of the most important aspects of any business organisation. It has become the need of the hour and now it has become one of the foremost responsibility of each and every business organisation. Be it small or big, service or manufacturing industry, social responsibility has become an integral part of the working of each and every business organisation in today’s world. Be it even the telecomm industry, societal responsibility has now become more than necessary. It is in the form of various forces; market driven or leadership driven etc. It is also driven by the strategy of integration (Baron, 1995), where it is stated that organisations act in a socially acceptable behaviour when they align their objectives and ways of working in accordance with the norms of the stakeholders and the society at large.
In today’s ultra-competitive world, the companies have found a way of earning profits by taking part in the societal development functions. The companies, today have to balance the profitability of their respective companies along with the responsibility of exploiting the societies. CSR or Corporate social responsibility as it is widely known, has now become the way, companies manage their own businesses with a view to make a healthy and positive impact on the society at large. In this regard, the telecom companies like Telstra, Vodafone or Optus have not lagged behind. These companies have now become conscious about their societal contributions. They now have a separate wing, which exclusively deals with the job of carrying out the various functions related to the betterment of the overall community. Companies today, especially in the Australian Sub continent, have come up with various organisations, which would cater to the environmental and societal needs of the whole community by including all the companies of the community (Baumann et al., 2013). It is done in order to foster the brotherhood of tackling the problems of the society. Many companies have increased their participation in the Australian Business Community Corporate Responsibility Index, with a view to contribute to the welfare and benefit of the society. Telstra has always shown exemplary behaviour in the case of societal well being and welfare. The Telstra community has been dutifully contributing for the benefit of the society at large. In the past couple of years, the company has shown exemplary behaviour in terms of donating approximately $1,561,280.27 amount of money and raising funds for the tsunami victims, back in the year 2004. It was well received by the international community at large.
The company has also been progressive on the domestic front by providing benefits of about $160 million to the low income Australians, through a wide variety of concessions and goods and services. Telstra has also been a aggressive defender of the environment, after all the environment is the sole provider of all its mining activities and iron ore related activities. The major impact of societal welfare and corporate social responsibility has a major bearing on the working of the company (Ramli, 2014). Various kinds of ethical issues have cropped up due to the extensive implementation of the corporate welfare principles. Moreover, being the largest telecomm operator, Telstra takes special emphasis and interest on the proper application of the welfare schemes of the company (Homburg, Stierl and Bornemann, 2013). The major ethical issues revolve around the vast amount of corruption and bribery which has engulfed almost all the sectors of the economy. Although, most of the telecom operators have a recognized “code of ethical conduct” on their websites which frankly states about the ideas of rejecting bribes, attaining illegitimate favours and various other favours, but actual practices prove otherwise. Many officials of telecomm companies indulge in various kinds of unethical practices to gain competitive advantage, favourable company policies and the endless quest for profits by the management. Sikka (2010) refutes such practices by disagreeing and putting forth the point that the policy of ethical conduct does not prevent the systematic pressures to create ever increasing profits and gaining competitive advantages over the competitors. The impact of societal responsibility upon the telecomm industry is profound and with the fact that consumers are becoming more and more conscious about their needs, desires and rights, engaging in corrupt practices will prove to be harmful in the long run of the business.
Performance Management/ Rewards: It has always been the aim or the primary aim of Telstra to provide optimised delivery of applications. It aims to deliver and provide better end user experience for most of the operations provided. The company uses two most important ways of ensuring this:
- Managed WAN optimisation: It is a cost effective method of improving the applications of the enterprise, without being dependent on the strength or the location of the staff.
- Application Assured Networking: It helps in providing visibility on various kinds of network issues. It does so by turbo charging real time applications, should they require more bandwidth.
Telstra uses a performance improvement process which forms the crux of its successful management and expansion in the Australian telecomm industry. The staff management process, which is applied in Telstra, has a bad reputation attached to it. It has consistently been a cause of the fear and angry amongst all its employees and workers. There have been numerous cases of suicide as a result of which, complete faith cannot be put on the management gauging process, which is at place in Telstra (Asif, 2013). This has cause significant amount of controversy about the performance management system at place in Telstra. The Australian Industrial Relations Commission has repeatedly criticised it for a long period of time. It is only because of the primary reason that, it is linked with suicide, bullying and incessant intimidation. The performance is measured by two different ways, one by way of consumer satisfaction and other by way of maintenance of a series of cultural behaviour. The Telstra reward system can be termed as beneficial and useful for the top management, but sadly it is not that much useful or beneficial for the employees or the normal workers of the company, because of the atrocities of the performance management system, which is in place in Telstra.
Recommendation and Conclusion: Telstra’s Board of Director’s performance measurement system includes customer satisfaction and cultural behaviour in accordance with the company’s principles and culture, but it should be updated to include a robust and healthy employee performance assessment mechanism, which could lead to a fall in the number of controversies regarding the amount of work pressure and suicides. This is because Telstra has acknowledged the importance of providing the world and its employees and workers a glimpse of a better future and quality connectivity in the future. Further as better employee maintenance can lead to cost savings and a great amount of competitive edge to the telecomm giant. In an overall scenario, Telstra has created a world class telecomm sector and has garnered the support of the Australian masses by providing quality service in the communications market. It has also a fairly decentralised structure, which helps in decision making. The company only has a backdrop in its performance management process, which has led to the creation of undue pressure on its employees and worker, which needs to be corrected as soon as possible for the overall betterment and development of the company.
References:
Asif, M., Searcy, C., Zutshi, A. and Fisscher, O.A., 2013. An integrated management systems approach to corporate social responsibility. Journal of cleaner production, 56, pp.7-17.
Baumann-Pauly, D., Wickert, C., Spence, L.J. and Scherer, A.G., 2013. Organizing corporate social responsibility in small and large firms: Size matters. Journal of Business Ethics, 115(4), pp.693-705.
Cheng, B., Ioannou, I. and Serafeim, G., 2014. Corporate social responsibility and access to finance. Strategic Management Journal, 35(1), pp.1-23.
Chin, M.K., Hambrick, D.C. and Treviño, L.K., 2013. Political ideologies of CEOs: The influence of executives’ values on corporate social responsibility. Administrative Science Quarterly, 58(2), pp.197-232.
CWU union. (2018). Telstra introduces new on-line performance management system. [online] Available at: https://www.cwu.org.au/Telstra-introduces-new-on-line-performance-management-system.html [Accessed 12 May 2018].
Homburg, C., Stierl, M. and Bornemann, T., 2013. Corporate social responsibility in business-to-business markets: How organizational customers account for supplier corporate social responsibility engagement. Journal of Marketing, 77(6), pp.54-72.
Khatamianfar, A., Khalid, M., Savkin, A.V. and Agelidis, V.G., 2013. Improving wind farm dispatch in the Australian electricity market with battery energy storage using model predictive control. IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy, 4(3), pp.745-755.
Ramli, D., 2014. Telstra inks eHealth deal with Medgate. The Australian Financial Review.
Ramli, D., 2015. Optus mobile subscriber base falls as Telstra, Vodafone step up competition. The Sydney Morning Herald, 13.
Telstra.com.au. (2018). [online] Available at: https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf%20C/ar-other-information.pdf [Accessed 12 May 2018].
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