Blaze Mining Case Study: Ethical Perception of a Digital Study Assistant

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Introduction

Blaze Mining is a middle-sized organization that the family manages. The firm has been managed well, with various departments despite the key issues. The firm used to perform in the past, but over the past decade, there have been a couple of issues. Management and leadership have been one of the key issues that the firm has faced over the past. As a result, every department section has been assigned to a family member in charge of every action in the organization. In essence, despite of the challenges of diversity, ethical and restructuring in Blaze Mining is facing, there are key interventions like workshops and change of communication structures that will help issuing the appropriate remedies.

Problem Statement

Blaze Mining is facing a diversity, ethical and restructuring problem which has an adverse impact on productivity. For instance, the major reason for the challenge is because the firm has had conflicts over and over for the last decade. “In addition to digitalization the academic landscape has been shaped by internationalization” ( Siyin & Haibo, 2020). As such, poor organization management through conflicts is the major reason for failure in most of the current world’s downfalls many organizations have faced. There has been an utmost challenge in how Blaze Mining has handled the key management issues. Thus, this has created employee satisfaction and morale issues.

Poor leadership in the company has led to the company’s fall, affecting management and critical operation. Poor leadership has led to consideration of family members for top managerial positions leading to completion for seniority in the company. Further, family members are confident of their job security because the company governance policies allow only family members to head the organization. This approach affects the company’s performance because the appointment criteria do not test the competence of the appointees. Therefore, the organization must develop better structures that will change diverse management and leadership styles leading to improved company performance.

The notable company problem is diversity since family members or direct appointees manage it. This leadership approach leads to the appointment of departmental leaders who cannot perform their roles, leading to incompetence and poor results in their management area (Rosen et al., 2018). Incompetence could be considered the critical challenge affecting the company’s growth. For example, allocating top positions to family members does not guarantee that the subjects involved are competent, which affects the performance of the employees, leading to the department’s failure.

The major reason why managing Blaze mining has become a great challenge is because of poor communication that has resulted from family management. A significant number of employees do not listen to the top managers. For instance, the current management and leadership issues have clearly outlined the potential issues in the relationship between employees in the firm. Blaze Mining management has noted the decrease in productivity because of employee conflicts. There is a higher likelihood that the issues would have been caused by the family members who were the objective leaders of the organization’s departments. Additionally, there are concerns about ethical issues depicted by organizational leaders. Despite being of the same family, their poor communication might be considered as contempt of duties. Additionally, it is unethical for an organization to be managed by one family member.

Action Research

The action research, in this case, requires a set of processes that will aim at getting Blaze mining on the right track. The processes include planning how to solve the problem, implementing the plan, and assessing if the problem was solved. “Dewey’s criticism of the separation between knowledge and action as well as his other philosophical ideas are instrumental” (Roberts et al., 2021). For instance, the protocols that will be followed to ensure that, in the end, the issues facing the organization will be solved. Therefore, the organization has considered organizational development as their intervention to solve the management and leadership problems depicted in the Blaze mining company.

Interventions Type

Two major interventions will be applied to solve the key issues Blaze Mining has been facing over the past. Blaze will undergo both organization and individual types of intervention. Communication and restructuring of the leadership employees will be the major intervention types. Under the individual intervention, Blaze Mining will engage in better workshops that will include communication projects to help the various department leaders handle the critical issues the organization will face. In addition, the firm will need to reassess and restructure the employment system to reduce the conflicts under the organization intervention type.

Intervention Process

The intervention process will follow the company schedule because of the workshops conducted. However, the process will start with a need assessment form that will include all the key requirements of the whole project. Needs assessment phase will clarify the major challenges that Blaze Mining has been facing and highlight the major reasons why they need different addresses. The next phase will be the implementation and assessment process conducted at the end.

Role of a Consultant in Organization Development (OD)

Consultants are mainly reached to help an organization solve a given challenge using their knowledge, skills, and experience which influencing the performance of the company. Thus, consultants will assess specified are of an organization, identify the problem and suggest approaches to address it. “Organizational skills include the ability to redesign organizational structures to increase both productivity and accountability” (Meier, 2021). Additionally, the consultant will review the management process of the whole process. Despite giving suggestions on the appropriate approaches to solving a given problem, such as leadership and management in Blaze mining company, the consultant will regularly monitor the progress and make relevant corrections.

Competence of an Organization Development Practitioner

An Organizational Development (OD) practitioner has five primary roles they play in an organization during the OD intervention program. They are regarded as efficient designers especially mandated to make plans quickly, business advisors, and credible strategists in making a decision. Additionally, they have considered organizations informed consultants and systems change experts. Considering the case present, an OD must have organizational skills. They will be mandated to analyze the organization, state the problem, and suggest possible approaches to increase productivity.

An OD must differentiate the people skills to ensure proper communication between the client and him to improve his understanding of the organization assigned. In the case of Blaze mining company, their skills will enable them to solve the good relationship and communication challenge depicted by designing a model which improves people skills (Meier, 2021). For example, when approaching the issue of family members in the organization, there are many expected challenges. As such, it will be essential for the OD to develop better skills that will give advanced and fair solutions.

Lastly, they must have processing skills where they can understand some sub-processes in the organization. When they notice a small process that affects the results negatively, using their skills, they will reverse the process and retain good results. The major aim is to revert and have the best management and leadership protocols. For instance, in the Blaze Mining company, the issue of leadership and communication is the major cause of the many conflicts. Therefore, the OD will have to create a fair way of handling such issues to solve the major issues affecting the organization.

Ethical consideration

This intervention program will necessitate close encounters and socialization with people during data collection. Since this is a family-headed business, there will be siblings who will give negative responses regarding their mates; thus, the first ethical consideration will be data privacy (Greiff et al., 2022). The approach will reduce family members’ conflict and prevent worsening the existing communication problem. The information regarding the issues to be addressed will be kept confidential to the company. The major reason will be to help the company from conflicting the families, which might cause a crisis in Blaze mining. Therefore, information regarding the family cases will be kept confidential.

All data collected should be collected voluntarily without cases of threats or blackmail. The leaders in management will be requested to deliver their cases of the story. There will be convictions or any forced act in solving the key issues. The major role of the information will be to bring back peace and not destroy it in the end. For this reason, every piece of information will have to be kept private to ensure every company has achieved all the required outcomes. Thus, all the company staff must be informed of the ongoing intervention and goals of the study to give relevant information to help the company grow.

Recommended research methods

The researchers will strive to obtain more information about the organization to solve the problem. This will necessitate the use of various research methods to solve each challenge. The primary method will be observations, where they will constantly monitor the outcomes of each implemented plan and gather more information. For example, “Ineffective care coordination and the underlying suboptimal teamwork processes are a public health issue.”(Rosen et al., 2018). Alternatively, the researcher will follow the suggested process for a needs assessment form. The needs assessment process will help determine the correct issues affecting the company and how the company expects them to be solved.

Secondly, they will conduct surveys of the company and analyze its performance before and after implementing the control measures. Since the company is divided into organizational groups, the focus group will help gather more information from each group, especially those performing poorly. Alternatively, the performance index of each employee will be assessed. The indexes will help identify the key departments with underperformance issues. The list will also help create the key intervention programs that will help rectify the organization’s current state. Lastly, they will use secondary data about the organization from the library and other sources. Hence, these sources of information will help create better grounds for a good project after implementing the intervention.

Data collection

This study should be considered a qualitative exercise aiming to improve this organization’s performance. Various data collection methods such as interviewing and observation will be used to collect data from the staff. For example, the department leaders and the members will be subjected to questions to collect data to give recommendations. There will be themes that will be created; performance, satisfaction, and morale of the employees. The themes will help make collecting data from the organization easy. Thus, the appropriate data collection methods should be focus groups, questionnaires, observations, and in-person interviews.

Evaluation

The evaluation will comprise of one outlining the suggested change, assessing it, making it possible and just, and ending the process of repeating the exercises until the problem is solved. The evaluation process will be conducted at the end of the entire project (Rosen et al., 2018). More especially, it will be a performance measure after all the major interventions have been implemented. Furthermore, the evaluation process will help identify the key areas that the project never altered. Hence, evaluation is the essential process in the whole organization change program.

Intervention timeline

Since the program has been limited to 3 months, there will be constant monitoring and full assessment of the progress at the end of every month. Thus, the planning should take less than a week to give time to implement the phases. Additionally, the time will be used to assemble all the required resources for the project to be completed in time. The program closure should be a week before the general meeting with the stakeholders to give adequate time to prepare the report.

Anticipated Resistance to the Change and the Process for Reconciliation

Despite progressing well, change will face resistance because it will affect all company employees. The resistance will be due to quick and impactful changes to which the staff will be exposed. This change could be considered a shock because some will have difficulties adapting or affect their performance. The anticipated change, in this case, is development change which aims at creating teamwork, establishing better communication, retraining them to fit the new system, and relationship building. However, not all people will welcome this change, with the first resistance being a change of position, especially demotion and dismissal of some family members in the company (Sartori et al., 2018). Their resistance will be instigated by entitlement and family shares in the company. The staff could resist some of the changes, especially retraining and change of schedule, which will ensure they increase their productivity.

Hypothesis

The hypotheses will be based on the key outcomes expected at the project’s end. The two hypotheses will be created based on the project’s suggested interventions. Since the study was to improve the performance of the company using the Organizational Development approach, the existing problems must be depicted. Thus this project should identify the existing company problem which has been explained as the family ties leading to poor communication. The study should further explain the steps to be taken to enhance the performance of the problem by solving the identified problem.

Validation

The intervention structures are expected to work well, and the employees will build good relationships. For example, the workshops will enhance good communication between the employees to create a perfect idea of how they will relate with each other. Alternatively, the workers will boost their morale and motivation to work through the knowledge earned at the workshops. Furthermore, restructuring the organization to shift the family members from the many departments will also help in controlling the conflicts that may arise in the organization. Therefore, there is an expected improvement in the general performance of the Blaze Mining Company.

Conclusion

The blaze mining company was facing performance challenges instigated by the company’s approach to leadership. The organization was developed under single-family management, and most leadership positions were directly given to the family member and preferred appointees regardless of their competence. This management style caused a serious problem with the organization seeking help from the newly appointed CEO to mend the mess. The CEO was forced to action research and intervention measures by pointing out steps to implement organizational change. This case study necessitated an understanding of the roles of consultants, competence and ethical consideration during the research. Assessing the whole scenario, the CEO was to create teamwork, establish better communication, and retrain them to fit the new system and relationship building, thus ensuring the company’s success.

References

Greiff, P., Reinken, C., & Hoppe, U. (2022). Ethical perception of a digital study assistant: Student survey of ethical values.Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computer Supported Education. Web.

Meier, K. S. (2021). The skills needed for OD practitioners. Work.Chron.com. Web.

Roberts, K., Casey, M., Coghlan, D., Cornall, C., Hudson, C., Stokes, D., & Carroll, A. (2021). A scoping review protocol to map the evidence on the use of action research methodology by healthcare professionals and in healthcare team settings.HRB Open Research, 4, 68. Web.

Rosen, M. A., DiazGranados, D., Dietz, A. S., Benishek, L. E., Thompson, D., Pronovost, P. J., & Weaver, S. J. (2018). Teamwork in healthcare: Key discoveries enabling safer, high-quality care. American Psychologist, 73(4), 433-450. Web.

Sartori, R., Costantini, A., Ceschi, A., & Tommasi, F. (2018). How do you manage change in organizations? Training, development, innovation, and their relationships.Frontiers in Psychology, 9. Web.

Siyin, G., & Haibo, T. (2020). The teaching reform of counseling psychology based on constructivism learning theory. Theory and Practice of Psychological Counseling, 2(12), 884-890. Web.

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