Jason Shum Business IA Outline

1. Title page

2. Acknowledgments

3. Contents page

4. Executive summary (abstract)

5. Introduction
- ABC accounting firm is an accounting firm with branches in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong
- Their cheap prices have made them an attractive alternative for large enterprises
- However, leadership is a great problem as this is their first time dealing with large enterprises. They are all relatively inexperienced.
- Have yet to change their leadership style, organizational structure to accustom to this new business model change

6. Research question
How can the current organizational structures and leadership styles be improved upon to allow further growth?

7. Procedure or method
Since the topic is mainly concerned with human resources, most of the data will come from surveys and interviews with staff and managers. There will be a general survey for staff asking general questions related to training, perception of senior management. There will also be a department specific survey to ask about the staff’s perception of their department manager. An organizational chart will also be created based on interview results and observation.

Secondary research will be in the form of financial accounts and client list. Analysis of the client list is to determine the relative percentages of each type of client and also their relative percentage of revenues (unsure if info can be provided by company because of confidentiality).

8. Main results and findings
- Presentation of the average survey results with graph.
- Client list breakdown. Percentage of each type of business.
- Management style
Label each manager according to Blake’s grid.
Cosec department: (6.83,6.67)
Account department: (7.29, 7.29)
Audit department: (8.75, 9.25)
Admin: (7.75, 7.75)
Trading: (9, 9)
- Show increase in bigger corporations as clients in recent years (unsure if info can be provided by company)

9. Analysis and discussion
- Determine whether there is relationship between indicators of good working environment has link with management style

- SWOT analysis
Strength
- Overall, ABC shows good staff morale and good relationships with staff.
- Very loyal which means low staff turnover ate.
- The staff is highly independent. Each person has their own projects, rarely share projects between staff. Benefit from continuity since new workers can replace old ones fairly quickly
- Business is diversified. Clients of certain departments usually come from business of other departments.

Weakness
- Lack of communication between top partners and workers
 Especially important if decision making is centralized. Partners need all the information to make a good decision
- Training is not widespread within the company
 Quality of staff is not very high
- Slight problems of communication in parts of the company. Can worsen if more people become involved since company is already so small

Opportunity
- Bigger clients will allow to them grow professionally as a business. Start to get higher-end customers which will let them charge better and become a more recognized firm.

Threats
- Might damage reputation if big clients are not handled well enough.
- Bigger clients will require more people to work on. Collaboration can be time-consuming and a possible source of errors.
- Staff are more likely to make errors because of increasing technicality of projects
- Partners are constantly under pressure because of staff mistakes’

10. Conclusions and recommendations
- Senior management should communicate vision of company verbally by resuming staff general meeting
- If want to take on more complicated projects, will need to hire better staff or train current staff
- Senior management needs to relish control and make it more of a decentralized structure so that the partners won’t be always so over pressured.

11. Evaluation
- Human resources are very dynamic, unlike products or finance. Slight changes here and there can already make huge differences.

12. Bibliography and references

13. Appendices

JCK Organizational Chart

Individual Assignment - Find an organizational structure on a company website. Compare it to the ten diagrams in the previous activity. Describe the structure using appropriate business vocabulary.

The organizational chart JCK shows a centralized structure with the partners in the middle of the organization chart. The commands always originate from the centre as the partners are always the one who decide which staff to delegate the task to. Delegation also occurs in that each of the partners directly supervises specific departments. This arrangement helps to clarify the lines of communication, chain of command and accountability for the performance of each department. Overall, JCK is a tall organization with five hierarchal levels, even for a relatively small organization. This contributes to a smaller span of control which can be seen as each management level has at most three subordinates who are under their direct management. Since the jobs are typically not that difficult or complicated, most staff can work independently on one job. Occasionally, there are some bigger jobs which require collaboration between a staff and a supervisor, explaining the arrangement of only one staff under one supervisor/assistant manger in the Accounting and Comsec department.

There is also evidence of delayering and downsizing in the organization. In the audit and trading department, the staff is directly under the manager because the intermediate levels of supervisor were removed. This helps to speed up communication between management levels. Although the organizational chart shows a centralized structure, the consultancy department does take on some qualities of a matrix structure. Since the consultancy department does not have staff of its own or have any specific or defined product, it pulls staff from various departments to work on the specific job at hand. This allows for a flexible project team that plays to JCK’s strengths since it has staff specializing in many different areas.

Interview result has informed me that the organizational chart already represents the “official” structure of the organization. Often, staff report directly to managers for jobs that require special attention or even directly to a partner. Even with the existing delegation of departments among the partners, partners will cross their jurisdiction to work with staff on special jobs that involve multiple departments. In conclusion,