Global Communications

Global Communications

As Global Communications headed to the media announcing their new strategy, many doors were opened to see the facts, analysis and goals behind that strike. GC’s scenario illustrated the conflict between decision making elements in which a dilemma might occur as a result of ignoring some of the values and opportunities.

“Too much competition” that was the problem as defined by the company. Typical continuing problem in an industry that continuous change is part of its characteristics. Issues are opportunities as described by the problem solving model. And when issues grow, opportunities must be the same. However, when that model skips some steps it turns to dilemmas opportunities.

The situation that GC went through demonstrated the impact of neglecting values and any of the stakeholders. Any company at the end is that combination of values, interests and rights which are driven by common goals. Tough decision like outsourcing in GC’s case might be taken after exhausting all options in solving the situation. Also should be a result of exercising other options that fail to generate acceptable solutions. Unfortunately, the decision and discussion between the senior team reflected the opposite of most of these concepts.

“Make the decision-making process a collaborative, rather than a competitive” (Snell, 2003, p.84) creates common goals and absorbs any conflict between any of the values involved. Once this chain is broken, GC’s situation in facing the union and Government actions would be a good example to read.

Situation Analysis

Issue and Opportunity Identification

The term that describes the big picture for what happened to Global Communication, is lack of planning. It was quite shocking that the senior management team was discussing the “challenges” in a meeting a day before announcing the new strategy. Unfortunately, avoidable mistakes led to the fact that GC struggled in their negotiation with the union to discuss the impact of their decisions.

The entire process was based on personal assumptions and imaginations. However, keeping stakeholders in the dark made the situation a mess. Even with incompetent management team like GC, stakeholders’ involvement in the situation would alert any overlooked aspect of potential risk or dilemma. GC even failed to weigh the union as a partner even after the union support to cut some benefits to help the company’s growth.

The major issue in GC’s situation is their inability to analyze their own industry. Global Communication and for the same reason “Helping company growth” had the union dropped health and education benefit.