Strategic Business Plan Report

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MONASH BUSINESS SCHOOL

MGBF3684 Business Strategy

“Resources” or people?

Dr Sarah Lindsay

Strategic HC decision‐making

• SHRM: the use of HR practices to achieve a return on human capital

• Goals of SRHM – First order goal: viability of the firm – Second order goal: sustained competitive advantage (Purcell & Boxall, 2011)

versus – Thunnissen et al (2013):  To achieve individual, organisational and societal 

goals

• Best fit or best practice?

• Different approaches for different groups ‐ based on their strategic  value: – “high commitment” or “high road” – low commitment with flexibility and possible outsourced

Strategic tensions

• The language of strategy

• Labour productivity

• Organisational flexibility

• Social legitimacy

(chap. 1 Boxall and Purcell)

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• The language of strategy – What does it mean to say humans are “valued” “resources” or 

“investments” – How or what is valued – risks the commodification of humans – What is normal in the workplace

• Labour productivity – How much to invest and in whom?

– Employee motivation

• Organisational flexibility  Short‐run responsiveness v long‐run agility

• Social legitimacy  • Firms make use of human capabilities from the community 

and the state • Governments exercise their right to regulate employment • Individuals (workers, customers, citizens) exercise 

sanctions against firms

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“SHRM may benefit from a more balanced emphasis on meeting the

demands of other [non-owner] stakeholder groups with diverse needs,

interests and agendas”

(Lepak and Colakoglu 2006 p.29)

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MONASH BUSINESS SCHOOL

Security and Behavior – in & out of work

OH&S

• Mental health

• Bullying

• Violence

• Privacy

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The discipline of employees…

“security must be designed with the users in mind: individuals with unique motivations, emotions and

cognitions”

 Physical security – Identity theft

 The Internet of Things – physical objects & computer networks

 Hackers

DUPress, Centre for integrated research Series on behavioural economics and management

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Connectivity and behaviour – in and out of work

The managerial and unitarist orientation on the achievement of organisational goals needs to be expanded” (p.1757)

Taking a pluralist view of talent – implications for Human Capital

Multiple stakeholders – multiple goals or outcomes

Thunnissen et al 2013

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Revisit • Stakeholder: Individual or group with a legitimate 

stake/investment/claim on the firm

• Owed benefit of protection from harm

• Extent of duty owed is proportional to the investment

• Principles of stakeholder theory – Stakeholders can not be used as a means to an end (deontological) – Firms must be managed for the benefit of all stakeholders (utilitarianism, 

distributive justice) – Stakeholders have the right to pursue their own interests in the firm (rights 

theory, procedural justice)

• Often used descriptively or instrumentally (aka stakeholder  management)

• Stakeholder theory: best understood as a normative theory of business  ethics(an ethically pluralist theory)

Importance of OHS

Occupational health and safety (OH&S)

“The physical, physiological and psychosocial conditions of an organisation’s workforce, related to aspects of work and the work context”

Why is it a concern? Legally Economically Ethically Socially

Organisational benefits

• Improve quality of  work life

• Lower absenteeism  and turnover

• Increase productivity

• Reduce medical and  compensation costs

• Improve organisational  image

Responsibility for OHS

[compliance vs integrity]

– Adherence to minimum standards and improving workplace safety could provide large $ benefits to the economy and improve employee wellness

– But barriers to OH&S reform • Lack of commitment/reactive responses • Not integrated with business objectives • Seen as a cost • Conflict with workers compensation system, privacy, EEO • Inadequate govt funding and enforcement • Low penalties

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Current OH&S hot topics:

• Mental Health

• Bullying – Covert or overt workplace behaviour that results in harassment, includes 

yelling, screaming, abusive language, insults, physical injury, inappropriate  comments about a person’s appearance of lifestyle, constant belittling  comments (see Brodie’s Law)

• Occupational violence (physical or online) – Situations where a person suffers abuse or attack associated with the 

requirements of their position http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/most‐nurses‐attacked‐or‐faced‐aggressive‐patients‐ on‐the‐job/story‐fni0fit3‐1227061968627

• Employee privacy

The ‘right’ to privacy?

The example: An employee who accidentally sent her boss an SMS calling him a “complete dick” had her case for unfair dismissal thrown out by Australia’s Fair Work Commission (2015)

THE DILEMMA:

• THERE IS A LONG HISTORY OF EMPLOYERS PLACING LIMITATIONS ON EMPLOYEE OFF-THE-JOB ACTIVITIES.

• THESE LIMITATIONS CAN (LEGITIMATELY) VIOLATE THE EMPLOYEES EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY WHILE NOT AT WORK

Solution: properly crafted social media policy that has been effectively communicated to employees Values: espoused versus enacted

(Lucero et al 2013)

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/people‐human‐resources/industrial‐relations/46369‐employee‐who‐accidentally‐texted‐her‐boss‐ calling‐him‐a‐complete‐d‐ck‐loses‐unfair‐dismissal‐case/

Stress, well‐being & occupational (organisational) health in the 21st century

• Stressors – Job insecurity – Job design – work overload – Work hours – Control at work – Managerial style – Organisational change – Improper selection – Unsatisfactory physical work 

environment (heat) – 24/7 connectivity

• Stress reactions – Self‐report of distress and lower 

general health – Anxiety & depression – Fatigue, poor lifestyle – Absenteeism – Lower productivity – Bullying

“There are now fewer people at  work doing more and feeling  less security and control in  their jobs. Management in  particular have increased 

pressures trying to keep pace  and manage their workplace  against a background of rapid 

change”

(Sparks et al, 2001: 490).

(Sparks, Faragher and Cooper, 2001)

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SHR responses to HC wellbeing & occupational health in the 21st century

• Job redesign – Increase interest and levels of autonomy

• Development of career plans – Antidote to insecurity

• Performance management and counselling programs – Feedback to reduce uncertainty around job performance

• Award reform – Address issues of insecurity and long hours

• Employee feedback programs – Provide voice for frustrations and stresses in hope of creating change

• Consultative committees – Provide role for employees in work issues (and also potentially, conflict)

• Stress reduction and stress management programs – problematic internet use (PIU)/compulsive Internet use (CIU)/Internet overuse – Mindfulness (-> Mindfulness at Monash)

MONASH BUSINESS SCHOOL

MGBF3684 Business Strategy A critical diversity perspective on ‘the business case’

Dr Sarah Lindsay

Acknowledgements:

Professor Veronique Ambrosini, HoD Management

Professor Gavin Jack, Deputy HoD Management

WHY BOTHER? (???)

We argue that CDP is a threshold concept, central to developing students’ ability to navigate the complexity of making decisions, a sine qua non element of strategy implementation (Porter & Kramer, 2006).

From last week …

Stress the need for students to develop the students ability to assess critically the assumptions underpinning managerial actions and the impact of those actions on others

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• A critical perspective is defined as an approach “that aims at revealing organizational norms, in particular organized dichotomies, in order to make organisations more inclusive for groups” (Bleijenbergh & Fielden, 2015, p. 2/18).

• Enable people to navigate their own position but also to recognise and consider others

• Develops nuance and sophistication

• Critical diversity studies (CDS) is a composite of theoretical and empirical work that critiques the assumptions, intentions and effects of the managing diversity approach. For example:

• Zanoni et al. (2010): Sceptical. Argue that CDS is a response to how the BCD enabled corporations to reappropriate and weaken the equal opportunities and social justice basis of workplace diversity

• Prasad (2006): argues that DM initiatives are, wittingly or otherwise, ‘designed to fail’ since the maintenance of dominant group privilege is the hidden/unconscious agenda, perhaps even the ‘shadow’ (Prasad & Mills, 1997), of/ behind the diversity showcase.

• Prasad consequently encourages critical diversity scholars to ask how failure is designed into diversity initiatives, and to assess the value of DM in terms of the extent to which it destabilises the ingroup- outgroup binary oppositions that often frame social group/identity-based diversity discourses.

Critical management studies and critical diversity perspectives

Porter (1991): • ‘Heroic’/straight line approach to SM • Economic focus

In practice … D&I showcased as a competitive advantage (Thomas, 2004 - Diversity as strategy HBR)

(Porter & Kramer, 2011): • business should address social issues that intersect with business interests • to maximise return to both groups - shared value • Possibilities include:

• products and markets • productivity in the value chain • local cluster development

Diversity and inclusion as a component of strategic (HR) management – A timeline case study of Porter

( … )

The Hudson Institute’s famous Workforce 2000 Report (Johnston & Packer, 1987) predicted that ‘by 2000 only 15% of new entrants to the US workforce would be US-born white males’ (Oswick & Noon, 2014, p. 24).

Incorrect (Edelman, Fuller, & Maradrita, 2001) but it brought diversity into a strategic, economic frame, by positioning diversity as valuable to organisations:

– Externally, through access to new markets;

– Internally, through:

• performance innovation; and

• as a new, better approach to equal opportunity and affirmative action

( … )The business case for diversity

Diversity activities regularly  showcased in organisational 

reports and websites, yet little change in real terms

Equality is a deeply unfashionable term in  practitioner literature & strategic  management is silent in this regard 

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Top 20 US fortune 500 - employee representative groups (ERGs)

Power implication: in self-identifying as a minority, individuals reduce themselves to one salient category, & reinforce the distinctions and power imbalance. In some ways, even making decisions about which identity is most salient is problematic.

Do you join all, or some?

Does identifying self into a (sub)group requires you to locate yourself as a minority - and be treated as such, reinforcing the status quo?

“Diversity networks are formally established to counter the power of the informal old boys’ networks in organisations. Diversity networks as diversity tools are relatively easy for organisations yet they render people from minority groups

responsible for solving their own isolation and career difficulties; the focus on community building may met the need for social support but fail to address deeply embedded inequalities in the workplace” (Benschop et al., 2015, p 17/29)

Consider this:

Problems with the business case for diversity:

• Short‐term

• Blinkered view

• Dangerous arguments

• Flawed assumptions 

(Noon, 2007) 

(libguides.bc.edu)

(linkedin.com)

The distinction between the two concepts needs to be clear, because utilisation in this form sets inclusion up to fail.

• Diversity: conceptualisations of single, social identity categorisations for example, race, gender, age etc.

• Inclusion: is a concept without consensus on the nature of the construct or its theoretical underpinnings. Shore et al. (2011, p. 1265) define inclusion as “the degree to which an employee perceives that he or she is an esteemed member of the workgroup through experiencing treatment that satisfies his or her needs for belongingness and uniqueness”.

Practitioners widely and academics occasionally conflate the terms diversity and inclusion:

Example: 2015 publicly available documents from the top 20 US companies in the Fortune 500:

Inclusion does not merit a separate category in the reports, instead is married to diversity. The term is not defined. The only practitioner exception to this pattern is AT&T which distinguishes between diversity as demographics and inclusion as culture.

Diversity AND Inclusion?

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There may be an ongoing shift in workplace diversity fashion from the ‘diversity’ approach to an ‘inclusion’ approach, speculating that:

“More recently, the debate has taken a new direction, as academic commentators and consultants are making a clear distinction between diversity and inclusion” (p. 26).

The research direction recently emerged to investigate this is the climate for inclusion (Dwertmann & Boehm, 2016; Nishii, 2013), with important implications

Oswick & Noon (2014)

Diversity: recognizing the value of differences within

the workforce and managing them for

commercial advantage

Inclusion: the “effective management” of differences, concerned with the processes

that incorporate differences into business practices.

Climate of inclusion Nishii, (2013): Fairly implemented employment practices that:

• do not bias against women • lack stigmas associated with expressing feminine identity • have a propensity to value the perspectives of men and women equally

signal to employees that being a woman is not associated with having a disproportionately small share of social value. In contrast, when gender-based status differences are salient, people will be motivated to derogate others on the basis of gender in order to enhance their own status.

Dwertmann & Boehm (2016): A climate of inclusion is invoked when: • Existing norms promote the commitment of resources to all group members

regardless of disability status

• Support for group member uniqueness and belongingness

The role of position status is important. Climate for inclusion = a culture for subordinates not to discriminate against their supervisor with disabilities, but not the other way. Status, influence, and power may protect supervisors against sanctions from violating the social norm, because subordinates may be hesitant to voice their opinions

( … )

• There are differences between diversity and inclusion and there is a need to consider and respond to each as distinct but related areas of strategic management

• Countervailing tensions along the dimensions of age, gender and inter- and intra- organisational variation limit not only strategic alignment but also the materialization of the gains vaunted by the RBV and the business case arguments

• A pragmatic approach to workforce diversity was adopted in order to keep abreast of D&I policy developments and to be viewed as socially responsible organizations

• Long-standing views with regards to ethnic social classes known as caste persist. Legitimacy of these attitudes needs to be tackled both within and outside these firms.

• Ought to be championed by organizational leaders as well as members of staff

• RBV and business case need to adopt a broader internal-external lens if the goals of attaining a diverse and inclusive firm is to be achieved (p. 212).

The last word? Donnelly (2015):