Solving the management challenge in ARCBS
The management theories and frameworks such as PESTLE and SWOT analysis are applied to unveil insightful patterns and identified the management challenges in ARCBS. In this report, I will restate the problem that were found in ARCBS and explain the focus of the research question and how it is relevant to the underlying reason for ARCBS’ problem. I will also identify and justify the gaps found between PESTLE and SWOT Analysis. The purpose of this report is to analyse deeper on finding out what the real management challenge is and suggest how to solve the real management challenge. The main focus is to apply latest management thinking to determine the latest information in the management research.
My main research question is on how can the organisation improve the effectiveness of its educational efforts so as to solve its problem of inadequate supply of plasma? The research objective is to solve the inadequate supply of plasma in ARCBS. To solve this, I will narrow down the research question and identify the underlying reasons for ARCBS’s problem.
The problem found in ARCBS is that there are an inadequate supply of plasma (Appendix 2). It was identified that there was a lack of new and returning donors in donating blood. There was a lack of awareness about the need for more diverse blood donors (Australian Red Cross Blood Service, 2016). It was reported by World Health Organization that voluntary non-remunerated donation of blood and blood components are facing challenges on achieving its strategic goal of maintaining sustainable donor base (World Health Organization, 2009). ARCBS did not manage to raise enough awareness to effectively communicate with donors, diverse people and communities.
The reason of why there are a lack of awareness are due to ineffective educational efforts by ARCBS. There are underlying causes of ineffective educational efforts are that ARCBS focuses too much on their research and development rather than placing emphasis on researching on retention of donors. They do not have right people to do research on retention of donors but more focused on engaging with donors through relationship management systems, DonorConnect (Red Cross Blood Services, 2016). However, the system will be more effective for younger segment as older donor might not know how to use the system and communicate. This shown that ARCBS have inadequate understanding on how to communicate to donors.
Employees are not expertise in communicating with donors and they do not know how to react when there are changing demographics of the new batch of donors. Employees are more focused on strategy than leveraging their knowledge and efforts in motivating the donors. Employees do not know what to do during rapid change in situation. They focused on other projects such as human milk bank rather in focusing on awareness campaigns. Ultimately, ARCBS are lacking of manpower resources, insufficient skills and knowledge in existing employees. They are unable to put the right people into right job.
Research Question
The root cause of the problem were identified after narrowing down the problem that ARCBS is facing. ARCBS are lacking of manpower resources as they are unable to recruit enough employees and their existing employees are equipped with insufficient skills. ARCBS focuses more on internal and external capital and less focuses in human capital (Steane & Guthrie, 2008). Hence, they are unable to put the right employee into the right job resulting in lack of effective educational efforts.
In my research, I want to focus my research on how ARCBS should do to solve the lack of manpower resources, improving existing employees’ skills and allocating right employees into right job equipped with sufficient skills. To solve the root cause, I will solve the ineffectiveness of educational efforts by ARCBS. First, I will look into the internal aspect such as knowledge management and knowledge sharing. After narrowing down the problem, the certain gaps were identified in theory which did not address the underlying root cause of the problem.
The frameworks such as PESTLE, Porter’s five forces and Strategic capabilities applied in assignment one are to analyse the internal and external factors affecting the organisation. In these theories, it did not address the issue in better understanding of complexity of problem found in the organisation. Thus, we will need to look into concepts such as organisation culture, management practices and VUCA to help address the new updated management challenge.
VUCA is an acronym stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity conflates four distinct types of challenges (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014).
Volatile attributes to where situation is unstable for unpredicted duration. In situation like natural disasters and terrorism, it can happen anytime without warning for unknown duration affecting ARCBS which PESTLE and P5 did not address. For example, Australia is slightly affected by terrorist which could cause delays in processing and transportation of blood supplies (Brook, 2016).
Uncertainty attributes to when there are lack of information, the event’s basic cause and effect are known (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014). For example, ARCBS increased their marketing and education efforts, their awareness campaigns throughout Australia generally should get an increase in donors or donor pool. With right marketing strategies, theoretically will have an increase in the donor pool. However, there are a lack of information such as the percentage of increase, so the result is uncertain.
Complexity indicates that there are available data but the nature and volume of information is overwhelming (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014). ARCBS do not know how to make sense of it with the huge amount of data. ARCBS can try to monitor and make sense of the changing demographics, related motivation based on certain things but there are complexity. For instance, becoming the first time donor and returning donor, there are plenty of information to analyse as there are many different type of personality, education levels, related motivations, and etc.
Narrowing down the problem that ARCBS is facing
Ambiguity attributes to unclear situation where you face “unknown unknowns” (Bennett & Lemoine, 2014). For example, synthetic blood is new R&D efforts which is a new product that ARCBS never try out before as it only at the research stage. It is not at the development stage but only theoretical research. Therefore, there are many possible permutations and outcomes.
Conclusion of VUCA
In assignment one, the data was based on year 2015 to 2017 which does not think about future and did not take into account of how rapidly the external environment is changing. There are gaps existed in PESTEL and P5 as it does not consider the ever-changing of the external environment. For instance, natural disaster and technology risks. All lead to volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity which limited the data that we are analysing to come out with management challenge in assignment one. I will apply VUCA in next section to address them.
The strategic capabilities identified in assignment one was very static as it was based on what organisation currently has. PESTLE and P5 are also analysed based on current data which did not consider the future. In briefly, the strategic capabilities addresses the current opportunity and threats but not considering the future opportunity and threats which requires a change in strategic capabilities. For instances, Kodak failed to change their strategic capabilities as they saw the future opportunity of digital photography but unable to develop new skills that is required for such opportunity (Mui, 2012). In assignment one, we mentioned strategic capabilities concept does not require to think about what capabilities that the organisation need. As a result of a rapidly changing of external environment, ARCBS are required to develop dynamic capabilities. I will address the need of dynamic capabilities to be developed by organisation in next section.
The experience of thinking strategically in a VUCA environment was relate in terms of the difficulties and challenges associated with assessing and understanding ever-changing and uncertain environment (Moore, 2015).
PESTEL and P5 does not explain about natural disaster and terrorism will affect the prices to fluctuate. ARCBS did not come out with contingency plan such as stockpile. Although ARCBS have inventory storage to store blood related products and frozen plasma that can keep for 12 months for emergency purposes, but still unable to solve inadequate blood supplies (Australian Red Cross Blood Services, 2016).
ARCBS do not have exact information on the number of donors, the result is uncertain. The tools used did not analyse on the gaps of how awareness campaign are useful in attracting new donors. It will impact on organisation and influence the information provided to stakeholders. ARCBS should focus on human capital and integrate important data for analysing purposes to come out a report and make sure that the message are delivered to diverse people and meet the needs of the stakeholder. (Johnson, et al., 2017).
The focus of the research question
PESTEL analysed on demographics change in Australia but did not address about the rapid change of demand in blood related products which will affect the donor pool. To address the complexity, ARCBS should focus on educational efforts and knowledge management in analysing changing demographics patterns and gather useful information of the first time donors and returning donors to provide analysis on why people are not motivated to donate.
P5 did not consider on how new and successful R&D can provide opportunities to the organisation. As ARCBS are maintaining high stringent control, this refrain employees from trying and creating new products as there are many possible permutations and outcomes. This requires critical thinking skills to overseeing the consequences and implications.
We look into VUCA help to address the gaps identified in the existing tools is relevant to the research question. This emphasise on knowledge management and sharing that are associated with assessing and understanding ever-changing and uncertain environment (Moore, 2015). By increasing knowledge management and knowledge sharing will lead to greater collective of knowledge within the organisation. ARCBS can better organise the knowledge, better able to share experiences and insights across the functions. This allow ARCBS will be more responsive to volatile events, complexity that are arising in rapidly changing of external environment and better understand of technology risks.
The term dynamic capabilities refer to the organisation’s ability to develop competences, integrate and reconfigure the internal and external organisation skills, resources and competences to achieve congruence with rapidly change of external environment (Teece, et al., 1997).
There is a need of dynamic capabilities to be developed by organisation and it is relevant to my research question on knowledge sharing and management. ARCBS do not have better sense of environment and seizing opportunities in the future. ARCBS have to develop knowledge sharing and the entire organisation will likely to become better as a whole, regardless people leaving the organisation. Once knowledge is captured and formalised within the whole organisation, new people joining would have access with the same kind of knowledge and expertise. The entire organisation are more likely to become better at seizing opportunities, more responsive to opportunities and threats.
In assignment one, there was a big gap because ARCBS did not consider about its strategy. ARCBS did not really consider its organisation structure, systems, etc. all the things that made up of entire organisation. They were very focused on strategic capabilities, that is why 7s framework as part of my addition research shows that there are other components are considered when doing internal analysis.
Gaps in the existing tools and concepts
The diagram from 7-S framework maps the interrelated factors that influence an organisation’s ability to change and to understand the complexity of organisation (McKinsey&Company, 2017). This model emphasize on coordination rather than structure in organisational effectiveness. In assignment one, there is no discussion on organisation’s shared values. 7-S framework is relevant to research question because knowledge sharing or knowledge management is not an isolated initiative to solve the problem. The initiatives needs to be able to cover all other parts of the relevant S and must be aligned back to organisation’s shared values.
In ARCBS, they are facing a skills gap and lack of dynamic capabilities. There are a significant gap between the skills needed and the current strategic capabilities. It is important for organisation to recognise where the skills gaps are as employees do not have the right skills to support organisation’s strategies and goals. There are lack of dynamic capabilities, ARCBS did not have broader and deeper skills to sense the opportunity and seize the opportunity in the rapidly changes in external environment. For example, the efforts given for awareness campaign are not able to motivate the donors to donate.
ARCBS is very functional with different departments from HR, finance, R&D, and etc., it is hard for them to integrate and work together. They have to think about changing different organisation structure will help them to work together and change in their system the way to incentivize employees into change. All components should be align with organisation shared values and solve the problem in the organisation. Hence, ARCBS initiatives should manage knowledge sharing between different departments and addresses the ineffective educational efforts in ARCBS.
ARCBS shared values inclusive of collaboration, safety, integrity and accountability. Once identified the skill gaps and structuring gaps, ARCBS can invest in upskill and combining the right skills from different departments to provide holistic perspective to strategy making and align with the organisation shared values.
Siemen is one of the company who are facing similar problems of lack of knowledge sharing, poor IT infrastructure, and technology risks in ever-changing of the external environment (Probst & Davenport, 2002). They adopted similar theory such as dynamic capabilities and 7-S framework to solve its management challenge. Siemen had demonstrated fully integrated knowledge management into their organisation strategy, organisational culture and business practices (Halawi, et al., 2006). Siemen re-structure itself around two important factor: knowledge and people. They solved its management challenge by creating a living network of knowledge amongst all employees, encouraging participation. Siemen also uses a knowledge-sharing tool called “Know-How Exchange” to connect experts and employees to update their knowledge and also cultivate its organisational culture in promoting sharing of knowledge (Probst & Davenport, 2002). Ultimately, Siemens business units became more knowledge-based, effectively supporting their tasks and accepted by majority of employees working towards their shared values. ARCBS should use the same method as Siemen adopting knowledge management to solve the problem of ineffective educational efforts.
Conclusion
The frameworks used to identify gaps such as VUCA, Dynamic capabilities, 7-S framework explained how the organisation can improve the effectiveness of its educational efforts so as to solve its problem of inadequate supply of plasma. The importance of knowledge management is critical in organisation effectiveness which helps to design organisation’s strategy and structures. As mentioned, the root cause of the problem are because ARCBS are lacking of manpower resources as they are unable to recruit enough employees and their existing employees are equipped with insufficient skills. Hence, they are unable to put the right employee into the right job. Once ARCBS effectively manage and transfer their knowledge to both new and existing employees, they do not have to worry about lacking of manpower resources as they can leverage their skills through knowledge management and sharing. This will help them to equip with right knowledge and skills to communicate with the donors and solve the inadequate supply of plasma. Finally, ARCBS will be more responsive to problem caused in rapidly changing of external environment and addresses weaknesses found in assignment one where ARCBS are unable to retain the knowledge and unable to share to new employees.
References
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