It Isn’t So Simple: Infrastructure Change at Royce Consulting

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Table of Contents

Abstract
Description of the Case
Analysis
Action Plan/Recommendation
Reference List

Abstract

Royce consulting is an international company that provides consulting services to other companies in different parts of the world most of them being large corporations. Royce consulting has over 165 offices in over 65 countries with staff running different assignments for their company as well as on behalf of clients. The firm has contracts with clients at different levels in terms of the duration of the contract.

The paper describes the Royce consulting case besides offering a detailed analysis of the case based on parameters like its strategies and goals, its external environment and responsiveness, and its structural design. It further gives appropriate recommendations on what Royce consulting firm can do to perform better.

Description of the Case

Royce consulting is a renowned company that provides its consulting services to a good number of other companies. The company has almost 70 offices in various countries. Since Royce follows its traditional strategies of getting labor, it recruits its workers straight from college ready to train them.

After five to six years, they are promoted to a managerial position each with an individual office. This arrangement has escalated Royce’s fixed and variable costs. It therefore has to be sorted in a way that will control the spiraling of costs thus calling for a need for infrastructural change.

Analysis

Royce’s organizational goals and strategies are clear. They have been used to guide in the organization’s decision-making. One of the goals was the need for Royce to constantly expand its operations beyond the current market.

This successfully led it to recruit, train, and promote its workers continuously within a certain traditional framework model so that, at any moment, there are adequate personnel to work on different contracts in different countries (Mantere & Henri, 2012, p. 174: Daft, 2006, p.540).

A well-guided path to promotion has been formulated as a guarantee to workers. This can be seen as an incentive to spur its performance further. In its strategy to keep workers happy, Royce conducted interviews in its new proposal to change the office system to hoteling to find out the workers’ views and opinions on the same.

This was a good move for Royce consulting, as it allowed the company to prepare its workers psychologically for the new changes by making them feel as part of the decision-making process.

Hoteling system was a cost-cutting measure that would allow the company to restructure itself while at the same time cutting some of its fixed and variable costs (Venhor, 2007, p. 40: Daft, 2009, p.539). This strategy would enable it keep up with its goal of profit making in the future.

The external environment for Royce, though a challenge, does not overwhelm it as an organization. Royce has prepared itself to tackle the ever-expanding market by continuously recruiting new workers straight from college. This has enhanced its human capital capacity by enabling it deploy staff to different assignments without over burdening them or putting them under a lot of pressure (Sofia, 2011, p. 238).

This has enabled it secure the confidence of its clients in terms of service delivery besides beating off any prospective competition from its competitors. Due to the increasing costs of operation, Royce has taken a proactive nature in its planning. It has come up with a way of cutting internal costs to cover up the escalating external costs.

It has also embraced technology by “employing the use of the compact portable computers and the use of proprietary software, as well as the use of electronic filing system” (Rene & Agnes, 2012, p. 450). This has allowed workers to operate from virtual offices.

The organization has acted as a leader in confronting external challenges by being on the forefront to introduce changes for sell to staff for the betterment of the organization, as well as simplification of operations by staff.

Borrowing from the matrix organizational model, the structural flow at Royce can be described as a hybrid system because it borrows from other defined structures to suit its way of functioning. The firm has partners at the top, site managers, administrative staff, and then other lower-ranked staff.

As Daft (2009, p.539) points out, this structure, as adopted by Royce, is not consistent: it varies from site to site depending on the requirements of the given site or client. Therefore, in a way, it may distort the communication channel from the top going down ( Andy, Xiaolan & Allan, 2012, p. 312). The structure seems to be working well since the highest level has associate partners who work in tandem with the top management.

They also work with managers to staff different sites and projects. Therefore, there is a form of direct communication. The only problem with this structure is that it may take some time to collect an opinion from the different managers before a decision is made.

This acts as an impediment to decision-making, which will later affect deadlines. Besides, the introduction of the hoteling system with new technology should take care of this problem.

Action Plan/Recommendation

My recommendations on the organizational goals and strategies are that the goals and strategies adopted by Royce so far are feasible in its pursuit of success and profitability. As an action plan, the goal to cut costs should be pursued as long as it is good for the firm. My recommendation to the effects of external pressure is that Royce should invest in research and development for it to be abreast with emerging trends.

This holds because the external environment is fluidly dynamic. Only a robust research and development team will keep Royce in touch with the latest world. The structural organization adopted by Royce should be maintained because, so far, it has worked for the firm. However, there is the need to polish over time to fit with the emerging needs of the firm.

Reference List

Andy, C., Xiaolan, F., & Allan, H. (2012). Organisation Structure and Innovation Performance in Different Environments. Small Business Economies, 39(2), 301- 317.

Daft, R. (2009). Organizational Theory and Design. London: Cengage Publishing.

Mantere, S., & Henri, S. (2012). Reversal of Strategic Change. Academy of Management Journal, 55(1), 173-196.

Rene, T., & Agnes, A. (2012). Effects of Managers Work Motivation and Networking Activity on their Reported Levels of External Red Tape. Journal of Public Administration and Research Theory, 22(3), 445-471.

Sofia, A. (2011). The Effect of Business Strategy and External Environment on Management Control Systema. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 2(13), 236-244.

Venhor, B. (2007). Business Strategy: External environment. Journal of Business Management, 3(1), 39-42.

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