Organisational Culture Change of Yandex - Case Study Example

 Organisational culture change - Yandex Case Study Table of Contents Part 1: Using the OD framework proposed by Brown (2011:35), what OD strategy and interventions would you recommend to the Board of Yandex to support them in achieving their goals? Justify your recommendations with supporting evidence. 3 Part 2: What are the limits of our knowledge of this organisation? How would you propose to close this gap in knowledge? Justify your choice of methods with supporting evidence. 6 References 9 Appendix 10 Part 1: Using the OD framework proposed by Brown (2011:35), what OD strategy and interventions would you recommend to the Board of Yandex to support them in achieving their goals? Justify your recommendations with supporting evidence. Yandex is the leading search engine in Russia. The success of the firm is closely related to its strategic decisions and its structure. However, it is clear that certain interventions are required in order for the firm’s goals to be fully achieved. The update of the firm’s OD strategy would be a potential solution for the above problem. The OD framework developed by Brown (2011), see also Graph 1 – Appendix, can be considered as a quite effective tool for developing the particular task. Primarily, the involvement of this tool in the restructuring of the firm’s OD strategy should be appropriately justified; reference should be made to the firm’s goals. In accordance with the case study, the key goals of Yandex are the following ones: ‘to be able to respond to the needs/ questions of its users, to provide services of high quality, to give appropriate information and to build effective relationship with partners’ (page 4, case study); moreover, the expansion of Internet across Russia would be also considered as one of the firm’s targets; the achievement of the above target is depended on the perception of public on Internet, as influenced by the quality of services of existing Internet service providers and search engines – including Yandex – across the country. In its internal environment, the firm emphasizes on the existence of a friendly atmosphere, which will keep the employees motivated and inspired (page 4, case study). Freedom and independency in thinking and acting are among the key values in Yandex – in fact, the protection of these values is critical for keeping the creativity of employees at high levels. Despite the fact that the promotion of the above strategy has helped the firm to keep its performance at high levels, still there is a series of organizational issues, which need to be appropriately addressed. The change of the firm’s existing OD strategy would be the most effective way for achieving the above target. This change could be based on the OD framework of Brown (2011), see Graph 1, Appendix. In the context of this framework, the firm’s current strategy should be restructured at the following points: a) at the first stage, the need for change should be clearly defined – meaning that the firm’s strategic managers should understand this need and should be willing to support it; Yandex is a firm well established in the Russian market, controlling the 57% of the specific market; the profitability of the firm is high, being increased at a level of 80% annually (page 2, case study); moreover, its employees are chosen through a detailed recruitment process which guarantees that only candidates with the necessary skills enter the organization; from this point of view, the change of the firm’s strategy – in one or more areas – would have many chances of success, taking into consideration the exceptional relationships among employees and the high level of communication/ cooperation across the organization, b) emphasis should be given on the improvement of the relationship between the employees and the clients; despite the fact that communication and collaboration in the internal organizational environment is highly developed, in the firm’s external environment the following problem seems to exist: the relationship between employees and customers is not highly developed – customers’ loyalty is not adequately supported while the customer services sector has to be further improved; c) at the next level of the firm’s OD framework restructuring, the points of the organizational strategy which should be alternated have to be identified and evaluated – taking into consideration the quality and the volume of resources available, as explained above, d) at the next stage of the firm’s OD strategy restructuring, the plans and techniques involved in the particular effort need to be defined; having studied the firm’s current practices and efforts – and taking into consideration the findings of the previous stages of current process – the following suggestions could be made regarding the improvement of the firm’s OD strategy: d1) increase of formality across the organization; the promotion of ‘chaos’ has helped towards the increase of the employees’ creativity, but the effective management of this creativity requires the existence of clear mechanisms and rules, d2) allocation of tasks among employees; this means that each employee should be involved in the completion of a particular project – this scheme would include both employees that will work independently and employees who will participate in teams; in any case, the work will be categorized and each project should be assigned to a particular employee or group of employees; still communication and help among employees will exist but only at a level that the progress of each project is not delayed; in case that an employee does not feel able to respond to the needs of a particular (individual or group) project he can mention this fact to his supervisor - the specific project could be re-assigned and the participation of the employee to another project could be discussed. In this way, the firm’s managers will be able to have a clear view on the progress of the firm’s operations and the skills/ weaknesses of employees so that a more effective use of resources to be achieved, d3) emphasis should be also given on the relationship between the organization and its customers; the introduction of loyalty programs which will offer a series of benefits (sales on specific products/ services, tickets for cinema, reduction on price of IT – related products, use of advanced IT features through the firm’s website – for instance, web hosting (at low price compared the rivals), increased security, option for online payments and so on); up to now, there is no particular policy supporting the relationship between the firm and its customers; the increase of loyalty of customers, as achieved through the above policies, could lead to the increase of the firm’s profitability, meaning not just the Russian but also the international market, d4) in accordance with the case study, in 2008 the firm started its efforts to improve its position in the global market; changes in the firm’s website (language options, features, speed) should take place aiming to compete the other firms operating in the particular industry; e) in the context of the last stage of the Brown OD framework, the following issues should be addressed: a mechanism should be established, for instance a group of appropriately skilled employees, for monitoring the performance of the attempted changes and propose any measure that could help the firm’s new policies, as suggested above, to be improved. Part 2: What are the limits of our knowledge of this organisation? How would you propose to close this gap in knowledge? Justify your choice of methods with supporting evidence. One of the key limits of our knowledge on the particular organization is related to its structure and allocation/ distribution of tasks. The firm’s employee explain the above fact as follows: chaos is promoted across the organization since it helps the creativity of employees; moreover, through chaos, the cooperation among employees is kept at high levels – since there are no rules restricting the intervention of each employee in the tasks developed by another employee (pages 6-7 case study). At a first point, the above organizational strategy can be understood – and even justified – being related to the organizational culture; moreover, the above practice reflects the firm’s internal environment indicating the reason for its success. The fact that the performance of the firm has being increased the last 5 years by 80% - annually – proves that this unique strategy of the firm can be quite effective. However, the following issue should be highlighted: this lack of knowledge on the firm’s structure/ hierarchy and allocation of tasks may have a negative influence on the firm’s efforts to be expanded internationally; as long as the firm’s activities are developed within the Russia market and since customers in this market have accepted this practice, as the figures reflecting the firm’s annual performance prove, the above gap of knowledge could not be considered as a disadvantage, on the contrary it can be regarded as the firm’s key strategic advantage towards its competitors. However, from the moment that the further expansion of the firm is attempted – both in the Russian and the international market – the continuation of this practice could lead to severe organizational turbulences. The significant increase of volume of work, as resulted from the increase of the firm’s activities, could not be managed effectively without a specific plan of action in place. If tasks are not allocated/ distributed – as explained in the first part of this paper – then it is clear that severe problems could result both in the internal and the external environment, meaning the communication between employees (each employee would have to deal simultaneously with an extremely high volume of tasks) but also the communication between employees and customers. For this reason, the above gap of knowledge – which currently is part of the firm’s strategy – would be closed, taking into consideration that the firm’s expansion in the national and the international market is in progress. A series of strategies proposed in the literature - for facing such problems could be used. In accordance with McKenzie et al. (2004), the first priority when trying to cover any knowledge gaps in a particular organization is ‘to identify the knowledge resources’ (Zack 2002, in McKenzie et al. 2004, p.23). Natarajan (2002) also highlights the importance of knowledge mapping for facing effectively any problems in managing knowledge within a particular organization. The use of a strategic tool, the K-Gap Analyzer is suggested; this tool would help develop the following tasks: building an effective and well-synchronized knowledge strategy, developing a need analysis and identifying the investment required for acquiring the knowledge necessary so that the business objectives are achieved (Natarajan 2002, p.183). On the other hand, King (2009) notes that the development of an effective knowledge management strategy – which would help to cover any knowledge gaps – within a particular organization, should be based on the following processes: ‘socialization, i.e. the sharing of tacit knowledge between individuals, the externalization, interpreting tacit knowledge so that they can be understood by others, the combination, i.e. the conversion of knowledge to more complex forms and the internalization, i.e. the conversion of explicit knowledge to tacit knowledge’ (King 2009, p.218). In this way, the knowledge that the organization needs for its various activities – the tacit knowledge – will be gathered, processed and distributed by its employees, which will have a critical role in the development of the firm’s knowledge management strategy. The above activity would require the close cooperation between employees; it would also require the clear allocation of tasks to the employees – meaning that the firm’s existing strategy of promoting chaos in its internal would have to be abandoned. In accordance with Menkhoff et al. (2010) knowledge is no more related only to particular items, like in the past; it can have various forms, responding to specific needs and conditions. In the context of the organizational environment, the transformation of knowledge from ‘tacit to explicit and finally global’ (Menkhoff et al. 2010, p.169) is critical; indeed, without effective knowledge management strategy the development of the organizational activities is expected to be problematic, either in the short or the long term. The view of Menkhoff et al. (2010) verifies the necessity for an effective knowledge management plan, as the two plans suggested above – following the views of Natarajan and King. The importance of clear allocation of tasks – as part of knowledge management plans – is highlighted in the study of O’Dell et al. (2011) where emphasis is given on the identification of ‘the owners and stakeholders of high valued activities’ (O’Dell et al. 2011, p.34); this issue is also discussed in the study of Dalkir (2007) where emphasis is given on the existence of specific roles for the employees of each organization – if an effective knowledge management framework is to be developed within the particular organization. In other words, capturing knowledge is not the only requirement of knowledge management (Lytras et al. 2010); it is important that employees are assigned specific tasks so that they have adequate time to capture and process knowledge, to use it appropriately for completing the tasks assigned to them and distribute the knowledge they have acquired to the customers (Yamaguchi 2008) – through appropriate process. References Dalkir, K. 2007. Knowledge management in theory and practice. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann Lytras, M., De Pablos, P.,Ziderman, A. 2010. Organizational, Business, and Technological Aspects of the Knowledge Society: Third World Summit on the Knowledge Society, WSKS 2010, Corfu, Greece, September 22-24, 2010, Proceedings, Part 2. London: Springer McKenzie, J., Van Winkelen, C. 2004. Understanding the knowledgeable organization: nurturing knowledge competence. Belmont: Cengage Learning Menkhoff, T., Evers, H., Wah, C. 2010. Governing and Managing Knowledge in Asia Volume 9 of Series on Innovation and Knowledge Management. Singapore: World Scientific Natarajan, G. 2002. Knowledge Management: Enabling Business. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Education O’Dell, C., Hubert, C. 2011. The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons Yamaguchi, T. 2008. Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management: 7th International Conference, PAKM 2008, Yokohama, Japan, November 22-23, 2008. London: Springer Appendix Graph 1 – OD Framework of Brown (2011), source: Brown (2011, 35, as in Lecture Notes) Read More