Aquarius Advertising

Aquarius Advertising

Aquarius Advertising is a medium-sized organization, offering four services, two of which dominate their service sphere. The advertising agency, as discussed in the case is very unstable as it is common to lose or gain clients quickly due to changes in consumer behavior and unexpected product innovation. Not only is the external environment of Aquarius Advertising unstable, but the internal environment is also unstable. Employees often overstep their job responsibilities. Tension between employees, particularly the account executives and their team, is apparent as people are stepping out of their particular roles and into those of their co-workers. Their technology, with reliance on direct communication between specialists and clients is different than that of other industries. Aquarius is focused on creativity and creating art that the client can use and appreciate. The organization ultimately seeks to create exceptional customer experience, increase flexibility with regards to environmental changes, and at reducing their response time to these changes. They also want to increase operation and communication among specialists from different departments, as stated in the case.

Although Aquarius has solid goals, must focus on creating effective communication channels to the entire workforce about the necessary organizational changes that it may need to go through to meet these goals as well as training and informing their employees of these changes. The culture of this organization doesn't facilitate open communication between employees and often exemplifies employees individualism and the lack of rules/procedures for boundary spanning and consequences for stepping on co-worker's toes. The specialists don't respect the vertical communication and job design while working with clients directly to build those relationships as they overstep their boundaries in terms of job responsibilities and design. There is a lot of informal communications between employees and clients, but lack of proper communication between those employees and their supervisors/other employees. The main emphasis is on sharing knowledge and techniques, technical evaluation of work, and development of professional interests with clients.

There are multiple design changes that Aquarius may undergo. I suggest, however, that they develop their company around a hybrid structure. I propose that they discard the Account Vice President and have each account executive report directly to the other Vice Presidents. This would allow for better communication flows in the organization and quicker response time to changes. The other departments (media, art design, etc.) would then report to the account executives on the progress of their projects. A few major departments such as finance, legal, policy committee, would report directly to the President, while also communicating with the Vice Presidents and Account Executives. I believe that this structure is the most appropriate