Investigate the management/organization of a company

Posted: August 13th, 2013

Investigate the Management/Organization of a Company

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Investigate the Management of a Company

Introduction

Any successful company has to implemented core purposes and values that remain constant while business strategies and practices change with a view of adapting to the evolving world. The dynamic of stimulating progress and preserving the core are what make companies such as Boston Consulting Group able to achieve long term and superior performance. Corporate success is dependent on how the vision, culture, mission, and strategies have been structured. Similar to many other organizations, the management at Boston Consulting Group focuses on increasing of stake hold value.

Question One

The Boston Consulting Group is a worldwide firm that works in the field of management consultation that serves as advisor to numerous institutions, businesses, and governments to develop high value opportunities, transform enterprises, and address crucial challenges. Corporate success has allowed the company to establish eighty offices in forty-three countries. Judging by its size, the company is among the largest private corporations residing in the United States. The Boston Consulting Group was founded by Doolin Henderson who had many years experience at Westinghouse Company purchasing department. Henderson, who was later employed by the Boston Company, went on to start a solo telephone-consulting unit and gave it the name Boston Consulting Group (Boston Consulting Group, 2002).

Henderson oversaw a plan for employee stock ownership in 1975 where amassed employees made the company separate from Boston Company. All the shares were bought out in 1979. Henderson founded the company in 1963, and since then, he has been dedicated to apply innovative strategies to assist companies in improving their performance, organization design, and operational excellence for the last 43 years. Currently, Rich Lesser is the chief executive officer and the sixth President since January 2013. He oversees the management of 2,600 consultant staff and over 4000 employees working in global offices (Boston Consulting Group, 2002). The presence of Boston Consulting Group in Europe is greater than in North America with rapid growth in the Asian region.

In 2011 and 2012, Fortune Magazine ranked the company second in a top-100 list for best companies that people can work for, and it was ranked fourth in the same list in 2013. Consulting Magazine has also been listing the company among the best organizations to work for since 2001, and it received a perfect score for its index on corporate equality. The Working Mother magazine also rates Boston Consulting Group the best company where working mothers have been able to get employment for the last six years. The Boston Consulting Group has a vision of being regarded as a reference management consulting and project management firm by other companies (WetFeet.com, 2003). It has committed itself to creating of a long lasting value for its stakeholders, innovative and positive attitude, customers and consultants’ knowledge, and a high entrepreneurial spirit.

The company has a mission of providing its clients with valid solutions that deal effectively and challenging through efficacy, pragmatism, and quality of customized approaches, passion, and excellence. The company works to create a relationship with its clients based on the shared fulfillment principle, mutual trust, and better integration of skills and human resources. The Boston Consulting Group is looking to accomplish the mission of assisting large and small organizations to maintain their competitive edge. This applies to various diversified business sectors assisting people in developing a positive attitude and their professional skills using right solutions to improve social welfare and offering contribution to sustain social development.

Question Two

Organizational culture in any management-consulting firm is fundamental since it determines how long the consultants will stay in the firm, their comfort level, and career fulfillment. The organizational culture in Boston Consulting Group emanates from its mission and vision statement (Stern, Stalk, & Boston Consulting Group, 2008). How the management overlooks the firm in the future has significant influence on its cultural environment. The company’s recruiters in this regard work to employ consultants with the drive to meet management goals. In addition, the firm sets a culture that enhances social skills among the employees. For example, consultants sometimes go mountain biking or surf together, attend Christmas parties, and go on leisure trips. These scenarios provide opportunities of getting to know each other better.

Boston Consulting Group organizational culture is also based on physical resources. In this regard, the technology and office in use are influential factors. The consultants in the firm are required to dress up appropriately mostly when dealing with clients to maintain the company’s image. Furthermore, the organizational culture has its roots in the management structure. In this regard, the executive management in Boston Consulting Group is mandated with the task of developing a strategic business plan to ensure that the employees understand the mission statement and resources that are allocated accordingly to various projects, initiatives, and departments in the firm (Business Week, 2007). The executive management also establishes objectives and goals to be achieved by the company.

In addition, Boston Consulting Group has a division on contract management that creates, organizes, and analyzes agreements consequently providing compliance reviews on the firms’ established indentures. The contract management is adjunct to executive department and provides a legal piece advice to clients in accordance with the firm’s law practices. A practice manager is given responsibility over the contract management division with the right of coordinating assignments and giving the consultants assistance on difficult situations. When the client signs the contract, the practice manager develops a project plan and assigns various stages with necessary resources depending on requirements. As the client’s work develops, the practice manager reviews the progress and determines whether further resources should be injected into the task, and then adjusts them appropriately.

Other than the practice manager, the organization structure in Boston Consulting Group includes subject matter experts, analysts, and senior consultants. Every consultant possesses specific skills suitable for the project. Even though the project can be conducted by the project team, consultants usually work independently.

Boston Consulting Group Organizational Structure

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Question Three

The Boston Consulting Group has committed itself towards the creation of long-term value for its stakeholders. It owes this vision to an innovative and positive attitude, customers and consultants’ knowledge, and a high entrepreneurial spirit. It envisions of being regarded as a reference management consulting and project management firm by other companies (WetFeet.com (Firm), 2003). The company has a mission of providing its clients with valid solutions that deal effectively with their challenges through efficacy, pragmatism, and quality of customized approaches, passion, and excellence. In addition, Boston Consulting Group has a mission of creating mutual trust with its clients based on the shared fulfillment principle and better integration of skills and human resources. The company plans to accomplish the mission of assisting large and small organizations to maintain their competitive edge. This applies to various diversified business sectors that assist people in developing a positive attitude and their professional skills using right solutions to improve social welfare and offering contribution to sustain social development (2003).

In this regard, it is important to understand that achieving of the above vision and mission statement requires having skilled management and professional staff who perform their duties with integrity and professionally. For this reason, Boston Consulting Group is greatly recognized for its professional development graduates. Internally, the company has a committee that inculcates career progress by employing holistic approaches in evaluating their employees for promotion. All employees working for the company are required to meet the career progress director twice every year for performance evaluation (Business Week, 2007). All incoming classes are assigned a representative who works with consultants throughout their tenure. This ensures that Boston Consulting Group achieves the professional development it seeks.

Approximately 80 percent of employees recruited in the company are MBAs including advanced degrees and undergrads from top global schools. About 250-270 new consultants were hired in the previous year in America, and more than 1000 worldwide. Boston Consulting Group is achieving its vision of global growth, and its current 2 billion dollar financial status has a strong outlook (Business Week, 2007). Recruits with advanced qualification are taken as generalists or consultants. In other words, Boston Consulting Group does not employ candidates with advanced degrees to specialize in specified areas. Rather, these generalists can be posted to any department and perform random tasks such as the airline industry or finance.

Where new recruits do not have MBA qualification, they are subjected to a three-week program that imparts them with teachings on business concepts and skills. In addition to this training, non-MBAs are given the opportunity of receiving extensive job training through the help of an apprenticeship model, learning business concepts, and models (Stern et al., 2008). However, the training is carried out through functionally due to the diversity of the projects. Every project is assigned a manager and partner known as the management team. Primarily, the training process is designed to foster employees who are sound with the company’s mission, vision, and culture.

Question Four

If I were a member of the senior leadership in Boston Consulting Group, I would change the organizational culture by focusing on bi-directional communication. This would involve establishing a communications campaign designed to unite and motivate employees with a common goal, the goal of achieving the company’s objectives. Primarily, the campaign would involve the management with listening to employee complaints, discussing and implementing necessary changes regarding those complaints. In addition, I would inculcate the sense of agreement among core values between the management and workforce. Strong and unanimous core values work to benefit and anchor company culture.

Ultimately, I would reset the culture with a view of growing a positive and strong culture in sync with the core values of the firm. Hence, the organization management would focus on making the diverse cultural backgrounds of the employees to co-function harmoniously. This would involve establishing a mandatory program where consultants would be required to attend and learn the different cultural backgrounds and their implications. I consider this an important strategy that would prevent office conflicts since employees can unknowingly offend the culture of others when performing certain activities. Conflict free environment favors proper execution of corporate goals and objectives.