Critically Evaluate One Approach to Organisational Culture Change - Essay Example

?Critically evaluate one approach to organisational culture change Table of Contents Introduction 3 Brief Background of Yandex 4 Company Analysis of Yandex 5 Human Resource Strategy and Corporate Culture at Yandex 7 Organisational Development Framework and Strategy 9 Conclusion and Recommendation 11 Reference 13 Introduction A value chain model of business organisation includes multiple primary and supporting activities. The primary activities are core operational activities; whereas, the supporting activities are financial, human resources, R&D etc. In this respect, human resource (HR) related activities and strategies are one of the major and prominent factors for organisational growth and success, and in recent years, there have been improvements in HR philosophy. The companies are constantly trying to bring new developments and improvements within their organisation. In this respect, organisation development (OD) theories and models play very crucial role. OD helps to grow healthy culture in organisation which is very essential for bringing positive changes (Makin, Cooper and Cox, 1996, p.290). Besides, HR managers are focusing on developing “Value-Based HR strategy” in their organisations (Grundy and Brown, 2003, p.172). This paper will attempt to deal with HR related activities and strategies based on case study. Primarily, this paper will focus on organisational development (OD) and main objective is to frame and offer a set of plausible and actionable recommendation for developing OD strategies. In this process, a brief background and internal analysis of the company will be presented followed by a discussion on its HR strategy and corporate culture. This section is very necessary for understanding the underlying issues and major areas of improvement. Then, popular OD frameworks and related strategies developed by different scholars will be explained. Finally, based on company analysis and literature reviews for OD frameworks and strategies, recommendations will be framed. Brief Background of Yandex This paper deals with a case study of Yandex which is a popular and leading search engine provider. Yandex is a Russia-based company and provides internet and other related services. During 1990, the Arcadia Inc (now known as CompTek) is one of the major telecom equipment and networking distributors in Russia, started two informational search system called ‘Goods and Services Classifier’ and ‘International Classifier of Inventions’ and these two systems was the foundation for the development of Yandex’s technology. Later, in 1993, Yandex was developed as a Russian language search mechanism by CompTek (Yandex-a, 2011). Finally, in 1997, Yandex.ru website was launched. Gradually, the Russian search engine, Yandex.ru started bringing new developments and advanced services backed with innovative technologies. During 2000, it started running commercial advertisements through its search engine websites sites which turn to be a major source of sales revenues for the company. Currently, Yandex has become a major search engine for Russian speaking people. After the tremendous response from the domestic market, the company also decided to expand its market internationally. Hence, it started its new division in California, known as, ‘Yandex Labs’ and Vish Makhijani, the former executive of Yahoo is head of this division with the responsibility of business development in American market. Yandex’s organisational goal revolves around its core operational activities and its mission i.e. to offer high quality services to its customers. In order to meet this objective, Yandex aims to develop an innovative workplace which leads to enhance the labour productivity. In this process, self-management, goal sharing and loyalty form employees’ end are vital criteria. Company Analysis of Yandex In order to indentify Yandex’s internal strengths and weaknesses, internal analysis of the company is very necessary. Yandex is internet solutions and search engine provider in Russia and other international markets. The founders of the Yandex was able to understand the increasing popularity and necessity of internet search engines as Google and Yahoo were becoming very popular during 1990s. These two organisations are basically English language search engine providers and Russian people often found it difficult due to language barrier. This was a major opportunity for Yandex as it started offering search engine services in Russian language and soon, it became the largest Russian search engine and world’s second largest non-English search engine provider. As of 2009, more than 12 million internet users form the countries like Ukraine, Russia and other countries, used the Yandex search engine. By the end of 2009, it overtook the Google’s market share in Russia and become the leading Russian search engine provider. The following pie chart represents the market share for search engine in Russia as on September 30, 2009. Figure 1: Search Engine Traffic Generation in Russia (Source: Yandex-b, 2009) As per the above figure, Yandex is the Russian market leader with 57% followed by Google (23%) and Mail.ru (10%). In order to compete with key competitor, Google, Yandex has developed and expanded its services. Yandex is committed to serve its consumer by offering constant better services by incorporating innovative technologies in their operational activities. The primary mission of the company is to offer answers to all the question of its users and hence, it has increased its area of services. Yandex’s other popular services are Yandex.News, Yandex.Market, Yandex.Fotki, Yandex.Traffic, Yandex.Blogs, Yandex.Money and Narod. Moreover, it has also introduced other supporting services that make the internet searching easier. For example, Yandex.Server and Yandex.Bar are popular applications for browsing and searching, and these applications are free for its users. The increasing popularity of Yandex search engine has attracted many customers who post their advertisement through Yandex’s websites. In this respect, text-based adverting was the major source of revenue for Yandex. In order to increase, its sales revenue, it has also launched Yandex.Direct which helps people in placing text based advertising in Russia. Nearly 60000 advertisers are associated with Yandex.Direct and their advertisements are exposed to more than 10 million users. This has led to an immense revenue growth for Yandex as its revenue crossed 300 million in 2008 from 72 million in 2006. Human Resource Strategy and Corporate Culture at Yandex Primary focus of this paper is on organisational development of Yandex which is directly related with HR activities and core corporate culture of Yandex. Therefore an analysis of its HR strategy, policy and corporate culture is necessary to understand basic areas of improvement for organisation development. Yandex strives to develop a flexible and friendly work culture in its organisation. The entire business related activities are managed and controlled by the team of twelve managers and Arkady Volozh is Chief Executive of Officer and one of the Directors since 2000. Technology is the main essence of its business and the management have tried to define its corporate culture which encourages technological innovation because they perceive a programmer’s tasks as an art. Therefore, they do not want to regulate their employees and their task for encouraging their innovative mind for better ideas. The entire organisation emphasises on team work that prioritise the self-expression and passion for innovative works. The company has to deal with a number of Western of investors and hence, they have to follow a strict accounting, decision making and planning practises. The work culture of Yandex involves two main principles that have enhanced their work and team spirit within the organisation. Firstly, the company has understood that each task is interrelated with each other and hence, each employee can join others in their project. This encourages employees to engage in group discussions to reach at proper solution. Secondly, in a project, the management tries to involved maximum number of employees. If proper employees are not available, then they do not rush to buy a program, but instead, they recruit necessary employees. The HR activities of Yandex mainly includes three major areas i.e. recruitment, motivation, and training & development. In order to recruit people, Yandex primarily focuses on three main aspects that include decision making ability being a fighter, work sensitive and willing to start form scratches. Besides, it follows normal steps for recruiting employees. In order to motivate, Yandex offers full freedom to its employees for example stress is given on completion of tasks not on office entry and exit timings. Bright office interiors are very vibrating that reduces employees’ strain and the company also offers other benefits and good compensations to its employees. Training and development is another major task for Yandex as programming tasks required high technical expertise. For senior designation, Yandex prefers internal recruitment, as it does not require any training. Yandex mainly deals in latest technology and hence, it order to develop a relevant workforce, it has opened ‘Yandex School’ in 2007 that offers education on data analysis and computer science. The students of Yandex School are the potential employees of Yandex. The primary priority for bringing further organisation development in the Yandex is to develop and maintain a favourable organisation culture. Organisation culture is the foremost criteria for a company who always tries to introduce innovative ideas. Moreover, culture of an organisation determines the quality and level of job satisfaction, motivation etc. Job satisfaction and motivation lead to increase employees’ loyalty that also helps them to contribute their innovative ideas in the growth of organisation. Organisational Development Framework and Strategy Managing organisation has become very challenging tasks in post-modern era as managers and decision makers have to take a number of considerations into account. In this process, they want to achieve higher level of organisation developments (OD). OD is a strategic approach for bringing major improvement within an organisation. Rouda and Kusy and defined OD as “an effort, planned, organization-wide, and managed from the top, to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization's processes, using behavioral-science knowledge” (Rouda and Kusy, 1996). Therefore, OD is an approach that helps to change an organisation in systematic and planned way. In order to bring positive changes in organisation culture, Brown has identified three major tools. First tool is ‘information’ and management must offer necessary information or provide full authority to gather necessary information to their employees. In this respect, management must follow ‘open-book management’ for teaching employees “to understand accounting and financial statement and to use that knowledge in their work planning” (Brown and Harvey, 2006, p.100). Second tool is ‘support’ and each department and employees must support other departments and colleagues respectively. Finally, ‘resources’ are the tool that must be available to all the employees for executing their knowledge and expertise in a given project. These resources are necessary funds, staffs, remuneration, materials and equipments (Brown and Harvey, 2006, p.101). Many scholars have offered their views and ideas for implementing and developing OD strategies. OD intervention is a specific approach for bringing desired changes within an organisation and it provides direction in the process of OD by explaining “who is to be changed” and how (Rothwell and Kazanas, 2003, p.265). Many company practise OD interventions and most common of them are “the role analysis”, “inter-personal peacemaking”, “process consultation”, “team building,” “survey guided development”, “the organisational mirror” and “strategic planning interventions” (Rothwell and Kazanas, 2003, p.266). Yaeger and Sorensen have identified three levels in OD interventions. The following figure shows these three levels. Figure 2: OD Intervention Levels (Source: Yaeger and Sorensen, 2009, p.102) All the above stated levels must work together for better changes in organisation. In order to develop and implement OD intervention strategy, Cummings and Worley have developed the following model including necessary phases starting from diagnosing till evaluating. Figure 3: OD Intervention Implementation and Evaluation Feedback (Source: Cummings and Worley, 2009, p.190) Conclusion and Recommendation This paper has focused on the organisation development intervention for the Yandex, a popular Russian search engine providing company. Technology is the base of the company’s strategic framework, organisation and corporate culture. In order to develop a growth oriented organisation, the company focuses on employees’ freedom for motivating and for encouraging their mind to think innovative ideas. However, for incorporating better changes in organisation development, Yandex must needs to follow a comprehensive OD intervention strategy. In this process, it can follow the model given in figure 3 for bringing positives changes in its organisation culture. However, at first, it must identify and determine key objectives. The objectives for Yandex must include improvements of services by increasing the organisational performances and enhancement of customer satisfaction. In order to achieve these objectives, Yandex must follow a set of guiding principles. In other terms, these principles are the tools for incorporating changes. These guiding principles are given below. Indentify and determine the priorities and improvement actions. Try to make better and optimum use of technology. Try to encourage employees by offering decision making authorities for developing better ideas of working. Management and employees must identify and embrace organisational diversity. Try to develop the collaborations of internal and external workings. Try to develop effective management systems for supporting workforce. The above stated principles must be incorporated while implementing OD intervention strategy. In this process, the responsibilities of senior management teams and Board of Directors are very crucial. Moreover, they also need to monitor and review the changing culture of organisation as it may deviate from the pre-defined objectives. Reference Brown, D. and Harvey, D. R. 2006. An Experiential Approach to Organization Development. 7th ed. Pearson Education India. Cummings, T. G. and Worley, C. G. 2009. Organization development & change. 9th ed. Cengage Learning. Grundy, T. and Brown, L. Value-based human resource strategy: developing your consultancy role. Butterworth-Heinemann. Makin, P. J., Cooper, C. L. and Cox, C. 1996. Organizations and the psychological contract: managing people at work. Wiley-Blackwell. Rothwell, W. J. and Kazanas, H. C. 2003. The strategic development of talent. 2nd ed. Human Resource Development. Rouda, R. H. and Kusy, M. E. April 05, 1996. Organization Development: the management of change. [Online]. Available at: http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~rouda/T3_OD.html. [Accessed on February 17, 2011]. Yandex-a. 2011. History of Yandex. [Online]. Available at: http://company.yandex.com/general_info/history.xml. [Accessed on February 17, 20111]. Yandex-b. November 23, 2009. Yandex – Russia’s Largest Internet Search Engine and a Leading Internet and Technology Company. [Pdf]. Available at: http://download.yandex.ru/company/mini_book_v20.pdf. [Accessed on February 17, 2011]. Yaeger, T. F. and Sorensen, P. F. 2009. Strategic organization development: managing change for success. IAP. Read More