Research Methodology

Managers are an important and integral part of the organization. Their functions and roles while being in the organization have changed significantly from traditional times. Managers of modern times now have more challenges compared to traditional managers. This is understandable from a fact that the nature of the organization is dynamic. It keeps on generating newer issues and challenges, which managers have to do. Now, this is the place where there can be differences between the leadership of both average and great managers. An average manager is that, which does not possess the art of leadership that is now required to deal with a diverse and dynamic workforce. On the other hand, a great manager is able to not only manage his or her works but also motivate the workforce towards fulfilling their individual goals irrespective of the challenging situation they are asked to work into (Longenecker, Neubert & Fink, 2007).

The main purpose of this task is to understand the challenges and constraints, which modern managers face while making the communication, implementing strategies and bringing in the changes. It uses a case study on “SA Water”, which is a wholly owned enterprise by the Government of South Australia (Sawater, 2018). The learner has selected this organization because the nature of the business that the company deals with can have a huge number of issues ranging from employee motivation to diversity.  

This section covers the methodologies that are being used to fulfill the purpose of this task. First and foremost, the task deals with a range of concept and theories to understand the challenges that contemporary managers face in the organization. This is required to understand what the organizational theory is all about. It additionally takes the help of a few concepts and relevant theories to understand ethics and diversity from the organizational perspective. Apart from using concepts and theories related to a different form of organizational behavior, the study also refers to a case study on “SA Water”. It is like a combination of both theories and practice. This is indeed a very good way to be able to understand the challenges that contemporary managers face. From the perspective of a learner and also a job-seeker it is important that the individual is able to understand the importance of theories of organizational behavior o practical ground. This is like a guide to any fresh professional working as a manager or is aspiring to become a manager.

Vision and Values of the Organisation

Vision: “World-class water services for a better life” (SAWater, 2018, p.7)

Values: “Together we deliver safely and stand accountable, genuine and innovative every day” (SAWater, 2018, p.7)

The vision and the value of “SA Water” suggest that they require leaders with great managerial skills to deal with the company’s day-to-day work and to effectively communicate for any service related failure (Willis, Clarke & O’connor, 2017).   

According to Gareth Morgan’s Images of Organization, there are popularly eight metaphors that can be used to identify the organizational behaviors. As this section is intended to discuss only the culture and management styles practiced in the case study organization, two metaphors namely “Organization as Brain” and “Organization as Culture” will only be used (Ribbonfarm, 2018).

Organization as Brain: As the name suggests, the metaphor emphasizes the utilization of leadership skills. It means that leaders operating at the different managerial levels such as the top management, middle-management and first line management need to explore their leadership skills in identifying issues, the consequences and the possible counteractions (Sawater, 2018).

“SA Water” follows a very organized approach towards ensuring that quality management (QM) is ensured and also that effective communication could be put to action when required to address a crisis. To deal with all these, the company has formed many committees. These are (SAWater, 2018):

• People and Culture Committee:It supports the board of members and managers on strategies to deal with cultural issues. It encourages to follow a long list of policies such as government policy, relevant Board policies, regulatory requirements, business needs etc.
• Policy and Strategy Committee:This is formed to deal strategically with plans, issues and policies required to provide a quality water and sewage system to the community.  
• Governance, Finance and Risk Committee:It helps the company in fulfilling its responsibilities towards corporate governance. It also assists to take care of financial planning, reporting, legal compliance, external audit functions, risk management systems etc.

A structure designed in this way to deal with a number of organizational functions and address to a number of possible issues is nothing but an application of the brain. Behind this brain, there are managers working in the company who possess and exhibit leadership skills (Buckingham, 2005). These managers are actually forming one of the images of organizations as identified by Morgan that is the “Organization as Brain” (Edwards et al., 2015).  

Organization as Culture: Morgan though dislikes this image of an organization, still find this as an integral part of the contemporary organization. The reason for Morgan’s dislike to this metaphor is a fact that culturalists tend to become the extremists. Culturalists believe that this is the most important image of the organization.

“SA Water” is very well informed on cultural issues that are potential barriers to the accomplishment of projects. The managers working at its different levels have responded to it with effective measures and plan of actions. One of the examples showing that the company is seriously concerned with cultural issues is their attempt to ensure that there are no gender-pay gaps in the company. Hence, “SA Water” claims to have proudly achieved the milestone and ensured that there are 0% gender-pay gap in the company. Interestingly, the gender-pay gap stood around 15.3% for the same period for Australia (SAWater, 2018).

Organisational Theory

The company does so many things to accommodate a diverse workforce. It leads the way for others in Australia towards ensuring a no gender-pay gap. There is an action plan that is followed in the company to ensure an inclusion of diversity. The plan is known as “Inclusion and Diversity Action Plan” (SAWater, 2018). This action plan is aligned with the South Australian Government policy for people with disability. Hence, the company is able to see various issues related to disability. The company gives equal employment opportunities to all with any present, past or future disability. In this way, the company is saying no to biases being commonly done with people with disability.

As “SA Water” pays equal attention to a number of functional domains like ethical governance, diversity, culture, management etc., the company can be considered as following one of the Morgan’s metaphors that is “Organizational as Culture”. “SA Water” does effectively take care of the organizational culture but does not consider this as the whole thing the company only want to do.

There is an evidence of “Plato’s Theory of Management” in the case study company ‘SA Water’. The theory says that organizations need to be focused on listening to the customer, promoting the organizational culture, following shared goals and conducting universal training (Berry, Broadbent & Otley, 2016). “SA Water” looks to be as focused on promoting the organizational culture as it can be evidenced in their achievement of a 0% gender-pay gap in the company. Interestingly, the overall gender-pay gap in Australia is nowhere close to this feat. It only means that “SA Water” knows well how to effectively attract, manage and retain a diverse workforce. However, this practice at “SA Water” goes up against the “Theory of Core Competencies”, which encourages to retain the areas of strengths and outsource the rest others (Amanchukwu, Stanley & Ololube, 2015). On contrary to this, “SA Water” neither outsource any activity nor does it compromise with areas such as ethical governance, inclusion and diversity, management and others. The decision-making at “SA Water” is rather in the line of the “Triple Bottom Line (TBL)” (Rambaud & Richard, 2015). Every single decision that they make is analyzed before it gets implemented to see whether it is in the line of economic efficiency, social responsibility and environmental performance.

There is an evidence for “SA Water” that it follows a functional structure. There are divisions being made based on different functional domains such as the follow (Sawater, 2018):

• Business Services
• Customer Delivery
• Communications & Engagement
• Governance & Regulation
• Strategy, Performance & Innovation
• People & Safety

Ethics and Diversity

Since “SA Water” follows a functional structure, there also exists a chain of command between each one of the components of the structure. There is an evident relationship between the board of members and the “Government of South Australia”. The structure additionally provides the decision-making rights to each one of the members in the structure. For example, Anna Jackson who is responsible to take care of ‘Communications & Engagement’ is entitled to make the decisions. The decision-making process also involves seeking an approval from the CEO, the Board of SA Water and so the “Ministry for Water and the River Murray” and the Government of South Australia.

 “SA Water” does follow multiple channels of communication to establish an effective communication with stakeholders. It uses various modes of communication that also include communicating through digital methods that customers prefer to interact with. It has developed two “Customer Advisory Panels” that take care of customers’ feedbacks. These panels react fast to these feedbacks and communicate to the management. A “Work Order App” is designed to enable customers sharing their valuable feedbacks. The company maintains a user-friendly website where customers can access the needful information. The company also offer an “interactive map” to allow customers to know where the water mains are. It also conducts several meetings to interact with executive level professionals. People those who represent the organizational structure rarely miss these meetings (SAWater, 2018). It means everybody from the top management to the line-management is serious about the communication (Rodrigues, Azevedo & Calvo, 2016). This is how “SA Water” manages communication with customers and its stakeholders.  

There are many shreds of evidence to show that “SA Water” has an ethical organizational culture. One of such is the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The company is inching closer to its target of 1990 tonnes of greenhouse gas emission by 2050. As of 2016-17, “SA Water” achieved 265015 of 371447 (SAWater, 2018). It shows their ethicality towards reducing the carbon footprint impact. Another instance is of delivering a safe and sustainable water to consumers despite being into challenging circumstances. The major challenge was mitigating the impact of the flood on one of its bores in Oak Valley (SAWater, 2018).  

“SA Water” embraces diversity through various strategies such as through the “Inclusion and Diversity Action Plan”. With this action plan, the company has finally reached a 0% gender-pay gap while the home country Australia still struggles to reach a 0% rate. This action plan is generally aimed at attaining the following outcomes (SAWater, 2018, p.41):  

• Economic security and employment
• Inclusive and accessible communities
• Rights, protection, justice and legislation
• Personal and community support
• Learning and skills (SAWater, 2018, p.41)
• Health and wellbeing (SAWater, 2018, p.41)  

Conclusion

In addition to all these, the graduate program conducted in the company allows women to apply for and work in non-traditional areas. This is also to encourage an increment in the participation rate of people belonging to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander. To address attitudinal behavior, they are constantly focused on increasing the participation of people with disability. These few pieces of evidence just show that “SA Water” effectively applies strategies to promote a diverse workforce.

Conclusion: 

In summary, this can be concluded that managing a workforce is not an easy task these days as it is being understood from the case study organization. The way leaders of “SA Water” manages their works requires real managerial and leadership skills. “SA Water” deploys many management theories in practice, which enable the company to make bigger impacts in different organizational domains like communication with customers & stakeholders, inclusion & diversity etc. There are shreds of evidence for that the company embraces organizational theories such as those mentioned in this report. It also looks evident that the company follows its values, which is to deliver genuine and innovative services while holding accountability for the safety.

The one point of recommendation for “SA Water” will be to invest more in the “Training and Development Programs” as this is necessary to develop and retain skilled professionals.

References: 

Amanchukwu, R. N., Stanley, G. J., & Ololube, N. P. (2015). A review of leadership theories, principles and styles and their relevance to educational management. Management, 5(1), 6-14.

Berry, A. J., Broadbent, J., & Otley, D. T. (Eds.). (2016). Management control: theories, issues and practices. Macmillan International Higher Education.

Buckingham, M. (2005). What great managers do. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 33(2), 3-10.

Edwards, G., Schedlitzki, D., Turnbull, S., & Gill, R. (2015). Exploring power assumptions in the leadership and management debate. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(3), 328-343.

Longenecker, C. O., Neubert, M. J., & Fink, L. S. (2007). Causes and consequences of managerial failure in rapidly changing organizations. Business Horizons, 50(2), 145-155.

Rambaud, A., & Richard, J. (2015). The “Triple Depreciation Line” instead of the “Triple Bottom Line”: towards a genuine integrated reporting. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 33, 92-116.

Ribbonfarm. (2018). The Eight Metaphors of Organization. Retrieved from https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/13/the-eight-metaphors-of-organization/

Rodrigues, A., Azevedo, C., & Calvo, V. (2016). Internal communication in organizations: practical instruments to help the shift change. Millenium-Journal of Education, Technologies, and Health, (1), 105-114.

SAWater. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.sawater.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/193644/SA-Water-2016-17-Annual-Report-With-financial-statements.pdf

Sawater. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.sawater.com.au/about-us

Willis, S., Clarke, S., & O’connor, E. (2017). Contextualizing leadership: Transformational leadership and Management?By?Exception?Active in safety?critical contexts. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 90(3), 281-305.