HBS (Harvard Business Studies) IT WILL BE CASE ANALYSIS Essay

HBS (Harvard Business Studies) IT WILL BE CASE ANALYSIS - Essay Example At the present time, over 90 percent of the workforce cannot run official duties in English. The CEO has set some punitive measures for those who will fail to achieve set scores – they will face demotions. As the program is rolled out, employees struggle to learn English. There are many challenges faced including loss of productivity, insufficient time to conduct studies, and internal resistance from managers. It is very clear employees are disgusted with the new policy and are only learning English to avoid being demoted or losing their jobs. Nine months to the deadline, the employees are growing desperate as they are realizing that it is increasingly becoming clear that they are not going to meet the set scores by the deadline. This has created anxiety and generally disrupted the workplace (Tsedal, 2011). In this paper, this case study is critically analyzed by examining the key communication challenges that are evident in the case study, suggesting alternatives to these cha llenges and showing why the alternatives will work. The challenges which are likely to be encountered in implementing the alternatives will also be highlighted. CASE ANALYSIS Key communication issues in the case study Radical changes in any organization require good preparation. In the case of this case study, the radical change was the change in the official language of the organization. The biggest communication challenge which can be identified here is insufficient of it. The manner in which the change in policy was communicated was clearly not the best. It was clearly going to draw resistance. Employees were never given time to internalize the new changes which were going to take effect. Everything around them was changed overnight including the menu language at the cafeteria. Hiroshi Mikitani relegated communication in this sense to a very naive position. According to Griffin (2003), communication should not be viewed naively as just a transmission of information. He argued tha t this notion often breeds â€Å"managerialism, discursive closure, and corporate colonization† (Griffin, 2003, p. 495). It is clear that Hiroshi Mikitani did not have the patience to engage his employees and collect their opinions on what they thought of the new policy. This challenge was similarly seen in the managers – the managers were clearly complaining and not on the side of their boss. The implication is that they had no prior information about the change in policy. This is a complete communication breakdown from the side of the CEO and such breakdowns often lead to very slow and reluctant adoption of new policies especially when such policies are radical. Alternatives to the challenges There are many alternatives that Hiroshi Mikitani could have used to ensure that his communication was welcomed. 1. There was a need to involve the employees – 2. Hiroshi Mikitani did not involve his employees in deciding on the new policy Their opinions did not seem to m atter to him and therefore by assuming this he was indeed communicating other messages such as they really do not matter to him. According to Tsedal (2012), engaging employees in decision making or in change of policies creates a platform to explain the rationale of creating a new policy. 3. The policy should have been implemented at the managerial level first It could set a great precedence if the policy was