Reference no: EM132068182

Assessment task:

1. Re-read the case study.
2. In your group, decide on a name for your company.
3. Assign consultancy positions for each member
4. Prepare your Group Behavioural Contract - see instructions below
5. Use your work for Assessment 1 to plan and describe an activity that you could implement in your aircraft company. The planned activity will be based on the case study and one only of the following concepts covered in Assessment 1. Your activity should be designed to address an issue in your chosen concept: 
   

   5.1 Diversity Management,
   5.2 Culture,
   5.3 International Performance Management. or
   5.4 Training and Development.

Choose oneof the four concepts for your group, anddesign your group Planned Activity as an interactive session, including all members of your intended audience. For example, present your Planned Activity in a way to present to a potential group of employees or attendees at a work conference how to deal with your chosen concept within a workplace. Your group might choose Culture as the concept for your Planned Activity and therefore the activity should deal with various cultures within a workplace, and your presentation should demonstrate to your audience how to implement this activity.

Make sure you use appropriate and current (ie beyond 2007) literature in your presentation, citing at least 15 references (remember to draw on your work from Assessment 1, where you should already have identified appropriate literature).

Working in your group:

Once you have joined a group you will complete a Group Behavioural Contract, and the conditions of this contract will apply. For instance, the contract will require you to complete a conflict resolution process, and if a member of your group has made no contribution to group work, your group is empowered to enforce the contract. This may mean the group will request a member leave the group. You are expected to self-manage your group, to ensure all members develop skills in managing group challenges. All members of the group are required to participate equally in the research, the preparation and the group activity presentation.

Overall Assessment 2 will be based on:

• Part A - Report - Group Behavioural Contract
• Part B - Recorded PowerPoint Presentation - the Group Activity and Presentation Skills of the presenters, as well as meeting all elements of the marking criteria.

Ideas for Group Activities

You may find this book (available as a pdf file) useful for activity ideas.

Pike B., & Busse C., (2004) 101 MORE GAMES FOR TRAINERS: A Collection of the Best Activities from Creative Training Techniques Newsletter, HRD Press.

Preparing your Group Behavioural Contract:

Prepare and submit a document detailing how your group members plan to work together. Discuss amongst your team how you are going to collaborate, what your expectations are of each other, what milestones you agree to, and what plans your group has to resolve conflicts (for example, if a group member fails to meet your agreed expectations).

Document your agreed group rules as a Group Behavioural Contract, presented in a professional manner.
The Group Behavioural Contract must be a professional document with headings and sub-headings. Each section must be in paragraph form - do not use dot points. Use the following sub-headings (this part dose not include wordings, but it is mandatory):

1. Group Name
2. Name and email address of each Group Member
3. Group Leader - this is the person responsible for submitting work on behalf of the Group.
4. Motivation and Expectations- what each Group Member expects from working with this Group
5. Ground Rules for Meetings - for example, you may have a rule that the group engages in a group forum every three days.
6. Agreed Communication Strategies - for example, your group may decide that communications will be via group forum, emails and text messages.
7. Timeframe ofAgreed Milestones - for example, what actions must be done by what date, and the group member responsible for each action
8. Processes for Identifying and Dealing with Conflict - for example, set out the procedure you will follow to manage a group member who does not contribute.
9. Group Signatures - Each group member should add their own name to the bottom of the contract, in lieu of a signature.

When you completed the first part of your Group Behavioural Contract, then you must write 500 words from the theory, related to the case issues in your chosen area per student.

Find the template in here: Template for your Group Behavioural Contract

Note: The Behavioural Contract is a compulsory part of this assessment, and will contribute towards the total marks. Refer to the Assessment 2 marking guide for details on the assessment criteria. 

Preparing your Group Presentation:

Your group report should be submitted as a narrated PowerPoint presentation - that is, a Powerpoint file, with a recorded voice-over for each slide, exported as a video file.

Each group member should contribute about 5 minutes of the final presentation, and introduce yourself as you start your audio narration (for example, "My name is Jillian, and I am presenting this next section...").

It is up to your group to decide the best method to work collaboratively on the same document. You will have access to a group discussion forum (only your group and the teaching team can view your discussion), where you can discuss and share files.You can also use Zoom (web-conferencing software) useful for real-time discussions, as long as your group members can organise a time that suits everyone.

You may also like to use OneDrive to share your PowerPoint file (as La Trobe University students, you all have access to OneDrive). If you choose this option, make sure that whoever sets up the OneDrive folder remembers to share access with the rest of your team, and with your lecturer!

Submitting your Group Work:

Only one member of the group is required to submit on behalf of the group, and each group member will receive the same marks. Remember that your submission must comprise two files - your Group Behavioural contract (Word document), and your group's video (of your narrated Powerpoint Presentation), detailing the activity you plan to implement in your company. The LMS link will allow you to submit both Video and Group Behavioural contract separately. Therefore, do not forget to submit both video presentation and Group Behavioural contract .

Note: the LMS has a file size limit of 100MB. Your video files might easily exceed this, so you may need to upload your videos to YouTube (as unlisted video), and then type the URL of your video to the Group Behavioural contract and submit this file to the LMS link.

How to Record Your Group Presentation:

Watch the following video for help on how to prepare a video of a narrated PPT presentation, plus tips on how to share files within your group.

Watch the following video for help on how to upload a video as unlisted on Youtube:

Useful Links:

• Access OneDrive (log in using your La Trobe student account)
• Tips on using OneDrive to share files
• Access Zoom web-conferencing (log in using your La Trobe student account).
• Tips on using Zoom for live meetings
• How to add a recorded narration to your Powerpoint slides.
• Example narrated Powerpoint presentation, saved as a video file.
• Uploading your video file to YouTube

Last modified: Sunday, 29 April 2018, 9:48 PMCase study: 'No Name' Aircraft

CEO Adam O'Meara of 'No Name' Aircraft has become increasingly concerned about organisational profits. He's worried that a company takeover is imminent. O'Meara realises he needs to maximise shareholders' return on investment and obtain a high share price or this international company may be at risk and, of course, this means his job could well be on the line. 'No Name' operates out of Australia and has subsidiaries in three countries - China, Singapore and Vietnam. 'No Name' build and sell aircraft to 50 countries around the world. Numerous parts of the aircraft are produced in China and Vietnam and most of the design engineers operate out of Singapore. Aircraft are assembled in Singapore and also Australia.

Culture

'No Name' home country (Australian) teams are not working well and there is a communication breakdown between integrated teams and across teams and management. The culture at 'No Name' has developed into one that is very negative and workers have adopted the mantra 'near enough is good enough'.Staff give the impression they would resist any attempt to make change. This kind of culture extends to communications between Headquarters and the subsidiaries.

One of the home country management teams has identified quality as one of the major problems at 'No Name' and this is directly related to parts from China and Vietnam. Aircraft require small to large modifications even after they have been delivered to customers. Customers, both government and non-government, are complaining about the lack of quality, once very important to 'No Name'. A number of stakeholders have sent O'Meara letters warning that unless quality is improved within six months, they will withhold partial payments and some are quoting percentages - certain customers say they will withhold 100 per cent and others are quoting 50 per cent.

One supervisor at 'No Name' is responsible for a sub-design team of 9 people, another is responsible for 11 people who are the wire harness assembly team, and another team of 6 sets the harnesses in place in the aircraft. These are just three of over 50 teams that make up the assembly of an aircraft. There is no integration across the teams. Ben Brown, a member of the wire harness assembly team, notes '.....the other teams make it really difficult for us to complete our job. We all get in each other's way. There's a lot of resentment'.

The teams work to specifications for their area only, and working relationships within and across teams are suffering. The communications both laterally and horizontally are compromised and staff members are complaining about not receiving adequate instructions. Adam O'Meara is worried so he has called upon an internal group of executives to advise him.

Line managers in Australia are responsible for communications between Headquarters and the subsidiaries. However, O'Meara is constantly receiving emails from China, Singapore and Vietnam seeking clarification on numerous points.

Diversity management

Diversity management at 'No Name' is confined to a simple policy that says everyone in the organisation needs to be respectful of race, age, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, physical abilities, religious beliefs and other philosophies.

There are issues at 'No Name' related to embracing the rich value of working with diverse people. Firstly, at headquarters there is an intolerance towards working with employees from different generations. Senior staff are intolerant of working with apprentices and working relationships are strained. Secondly, there is a lack of recruitment of people with disabilities in China. Managers are actively ignoring job applications of people with disabilities, even when their skills are above and beyond other candidates. O'Meara fears repercussions of this recruitment discrimination in the form of legal action from rejected candidates with a disability.

Human Resources (HR) does not have a clear set of practices to help employees understand each other. Clearly, the interactions amongst staff are influenced by the perceptions of each other but HR does not appear to have considered the importance of how people perceive each other. At 'No Name', employees need to better understand each other, to have effective communication and to value the diversity that exists throughout the company.

Diversity needs to provide practices that involve an appreciation of other cultures and ways of knowing more about people within headquarters, each subsidiary and across the subsidiaries. Practices have to ensure there is no organisational discrimination so that people can work together in harmony. 'No Name' needs to realise that managing diversity can create a competitive advantage and be of benefit to a number of different areas of the organisation.

International performance management

There are numerous performance management issues across 'No Name'. International performance is closely connected to international performance appraisals but these are lacking at 'No Name'. Performance reviews are conducted by HR in Australia but there are no performance reviews conducted at any of the subsidiaries. There is no formal performance appraisal process for expatriates.

Headquarters takes a very ad hoc approach and does not take into consideration the economic factors that impact on business targets. One manager, Frank Collins was heard to say 'we are under so much pressure in Australia because of high costs and even higher expectations'.

At headquarters decisions are made that affect each of the subsidiaries. For instance, headquarters will issue a decision and make an order for Singapore to produce a certain quota of parts only to find out there is a surplus of the same parts in Australia. Clearly, the implementation of decisions for the subsidiaries result in conflicting performance outcomes.

Fundamentally, there is no policy that underpins performance management at 'No Name'. There are no clear measures. O'Meara told the HR Manager 'It's time we had better performance measures.....we need to measure to manage. Someone will need to travel to China, Singapore and Vietnam and make sure we have consistency.....of course, we need to take into consideration culture and local practices'.

Training and development

As a function of HR, training and development should be concerned with every aspect of the organisation's activities. Expatriate training for those leaving Australia to work in China, Singapore or Vietnam is limited to half a day. HR refers staff to their online resources and assumes that every person has the same needs when they agree to work in another country.

There are no feedback avenues for employees to comment on the effectiveness of the expatriate training.

One employee, a mechanical engineer Alice Morgan, previously commented about her move to Singapore 'there is no training available to help you integrate into your new surroundings once you arrive. People do things differently here and it took me a long time to get used to with no training'

The level of performance at 'No Name' indicates there's a very strong rationale for focusing more on training and development across the organisation.

There is no systematic workforce planning and management development programs at 'No Name'. Management development programs within an organisation work to internally identify and recruit potential managers, and develop their knowledge and skills through career development plans to meet organisational needs. This ensures a clear and effective succession plan for all key management roles. Employees are unaware of their career prospects with the company as career development plans are not utilised. Senior management do not develop junior employees to take over their role for fear of being sidelined for promotion. This lack of professional development has meant that a number of key employees earmarked for promotion have been poached by other companies.

Last modified: Wednesday, 4 January 2017, 1:00 PMthe topic is international performance management