Gap Analysis: Global Communications

Gap Analysis: Global Communications

This paper is about the case study of Global Communications Company (GC). Currently they are under a great deal of economic pressure. Their stocks have depreciated 50% in the last three years. Local, long-distance and international markets are competing in the same line of business, making it harder each year to stay on the edge of the telecommunication business.

The Global Communications senior leadership team decided to make some business changes. The first business change was to introduce "new services, primarily to its small business and consumer customers, who will now be served in both local and long-distance markets across the country" (GC Case Study). This will be achieved by creating alliances with a satellite providers, partner with a wireless providers and allowing company information on the main frames to be accessed remotely. To cut cost and improve profitability they planned to become global with its resources.

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

The Board Committee notified Katrina CEO the outsourcing project was approved; this entails to outsource GC's technical call centers to India and Ireland. When she presents this news to the senior management many issues were arisen. These issues included active listening, interpersonal barriers, communication channels, personal barriers and media richness. From the issues opportunities will be identified. Effective communication is important in the business environment. According to McShane-VonGlinow in chapter 11, communication is used to coordinate employees, fulfill employee needs, support knowledge management, and improves decision making.

Media Richness: This project lacked face to face communication with all the senior leadership team during planning of business changes. This situation clearly identifies that there is an issue with their communication. GC can also see this as an opportunity to improve on the way they communicate among each other. If all members of the team involved plan and coordinate together, then product development can "presents several ill defined issues" before the project is ready to be implemented (McShane-VonGlinow).

Communication Channel: During the planning phases of the outsourcing project there was no representation from the Union. Maria the vice president of the Union received word the telecommunication centers were going to get shut down and outsourced internationally through a grapevine rumor. Vice Presidents of a company should not receive information by rumors, should be in the front like of business knowledge. GC should monitor and influence by example on effective communication. This will help minimize the amount of "grapevine rumors' throughout the organization. Many rumors that aren't true could be a way to "informally bounce ideas off others (Kreitner-Kinicki p.541).

Active listening: Maria was an active listen when it was time to represent herself as an advocate of the Union. This way she handled herself shows that Maria has an opportunity to improve her listening skills. If she took the time to work out her thoughts before becoming assertive, she could allow herself to clear her thoughts before she presented her opinions to her co-workers. To be a good active listener one "should Ð''seek first to understand, then to be understood'" (Kreitner-Kinicki p.523).

Interpersonal Barrier: Maria displayed aggressive behavior with her tone when she was in the meeting with Joel and Katrina. Her comment to Katrina that she needed to reconsider the strategy on outsourcing was an opinion and could have been said in more assertive manager. Using an assertive tone can represent Maria's display her opinions that she care about the employees rights. According to Kreitner-Kinicki on page 529, being aggressive often can lead to displaying taking "unfair advantage of others".

Personal Barrier: When Maria learned of the project she should have contacted other senior leaders or the CEO right away. Instead she waited until she received an email from Joel, and demanded a meeting. Maria should practice listening with understanding opinion. This way she can "reduce her defensiveness and improves accuracy in perceiving" (Ch. 15 Kreitner and Kinicki ) GC messages.

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

There are many stakeholders in this case, they is the union, employees, senior leadership and the board of directors. The Union's interest's is to ensure that earnings and conditions are governed by rules applied consistently across GC Company. Their rights are to support and protect the GC employees of any wrongful business transactions against them. Both the President and the Vice President of Union see an ethical dilemma with this outsourcing plan and believe that the employee values have been violated.

The Technical Call Center Employees' interest's are to do their jobs at GC and get paid and compensated for their services