Abstract
Making changes to the very design of a company, including the leadership style adopted by the managers, the ethical principles and values that the decision-making process is based on, etc., is a challenging task. In order to become competitive in the global economy, Adventure Street, Co. will have to update its current management strategy, as well as reinforce the importance of corporate values so that the staff members could make decisions based on the firm’s ethical standards.
Introduction
In order to attain the specified goal, Adventure Street, Co.’s leaders will have to consider training as the basic tool for enhancing the employees’ and managers’ idea of corporate values and vision. Particularly, the issue of corporate social responsibility promotion will have to be addressed so that the employees could approach the key processes within the organization from the required angle and adopt ethically legitimate strategies.
Training Site
As far as the training site is concerned, it will be reasonable to carry out the training processes in the new office. Although there is no practical need for changing the environment, in which the staff is going to work, the relocation of the employees will allow for a faster and a more successful implementation of the training session (Brooks & Dunn, 2014). The reasons behind the specified strategy are quite evident; seeing that the staff will have to employ a different behavioral strategy and comply with different rules, a change in the setting is likely to serve as a boost for the staff in the acquisition of new skills: “Changes experienced in business setting are considered as a good sign in terms of business survival. Generally, changes are made during expansion and also while minimizing employment and maximizing use of resources” (Korrapati, 2014, p. 43). Indeed, the promotion of changes should be carried out on a company-wide scale; in other words, if the basic principles of the firm’s operations will have to be altered, the staff will have to be provided with a chance to survive these changes successfully by adapting to them gradually.
Concept Map
As the concept map provided above shows, the change in the ethical principles and values, which the choices of the company’s managers are guided by, can be viewed as the primary goal of the organization. Therefore, it is imperative that the managers of Adventure Street, Co. should learn to make company-related decisions based on the values of the organization, such as maintaining high customer satisfaction rates, complying with high standards of quality, etc. Thus, learning the new ethical principles and patterns for the future decision-making processes is the first step towards the promotion of the required changes in the company’s design (Nolan, 2014).
The rest of the principles, which the interaction of the staff will be based on, should be built based on the above-mentioned information regarding ethics and corporate values. As the map provided above displays, once the corresponding values are integrated into the organization’s design, the staff will open to the idea of changing the traditional behavioral patterns and, therefore, the entire process of decision-making.
Thus, planting the seeds of the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) into the organization’s design can be viewed as the third essential step in addressing the current organizational issues (Crane, 2013). Once the staff accepts the new values and ethical standards, the members of the organization are likely to accept the new principles of communication and information sharing, which the company will be guided by in the nearest future.
Speaking of which, the issue of communication and especially conflict management is also likely to receive much better development in the environment that incorporates the basic ethical principles as the standards for the staff’s behavior and decision-making. Additionally, the CSR concept, which the company will be powered by, is also bound to alter the very fabric of the company’s marketing; particularly, a new branding approach, which will be based on addressing the needs of each segment of the target denizens of the population (Guevremot & Grohmann, 2013), deserves to be mentioned.
Curriculum
It should be borne in mind that changes occur at a comparatively slow pace in a typical business environment (Hamilton & Webster, 2012); the specified characteristics of a traditional company can be explained by the fact that a range of processes, including production, marketing, financial transactions, etc., will have to be aligned with the new standards (Wood, 2012). Therefore, the above-mentioned standards for corporate management will have to be introduced gradually to the staff and the organization’s managers. The Adventure Street, Co. may suffer a significant shock unless the alterations in question are carried out in a careful manner; therefore, the general curriculum will consist of the design of the corresponding standards and values, the initial assessment of the specified aspects of the company’s operations. Particularly, tests will be run to evaluate the speed and efficacy of data transfer (Kerr, 2014), the outcomes of the current conflict management tools (Roche, Teague, & Colvin, 2014), the speed of data transfer within the organization (Doom, 2010), the company’s security rates (Helaey & Papelu, 2012), and the overall performance of the organization (ROE, ROA, net profit margins, etc.).
After the new standards of ethical behavior, communication and leadership are identified, the company’s staff will be introduced to the concept of CSR through a series of short lectures and a set of practical tasks (Butch, Martinsen, & Kovaas, 2015). Particularly, the staff will be suggested to address several scenarios, which involve specific ethical dilemmas, such as the issue of non-disclosure of company’s data versus the customer’s demands to provide a specific piece of information, the choice between the informing the manager on the issue of faults in products and being blamed for the specified flaw, etc.
The second stage will incorporate another short lecture on the significance of an accurate and timely information acquisition, analysis and transfer in the organization. Particularly, the staff will be provided with the tasks involving retrieving and analyzing specific pieces of information, as well as passing the analysis results to one another via e-mails, phone conversations and other tools at the staff’s disposal.
The third stage will require that the information, which the staff will have acquired by the end of the lecture should be memorized and used later on as the basis for the further decision-making processes. The specified goal can be attained by designing a series of practical tasks, which the staff will have to accomplish based on the guidelines provided.
The fourth stage can be defined as the analysis of the lessons learned in the course of practice. At this point, the possible misunderstandings and misconceptions will be discussed with detailed instructions on the instances, in which the staff may experience certain controversy, including ethically challenging dilemmas. Eventually, the fifth stage will allow for summarizing the knowledge acquired in the process and conducting a grand assessment of the employees. The assessment results will be compared to the ones that were retrieved prior to the start of the training program.
Lesson Overview
The lesson will involve three key stages, i.e., a brief test on the information that the staff members and managers learned in the course of the previous session, the provision of new information, the provision of the theme-related tasks that the staff members will have to accomplish within a designated period of time, and the further discussion of the test results. Seeing that the first lesson will not be linked to any previous studies, the general assessment of the staff’s concept of CSR, as well as their idea of corporate values, ethics and their role in the organization, will be carried out. The final lesson, in its turn, will end with a massive assessment and the following discussion of the training outcomes. Particularly, the staff members will be provided with a questionnaire inviting them to share their experiences and impressions that they have had in the process of training.
A standard lesson will take approximately an hour; therefore, the lecture will have to take no longer than ten minutes. The lecture is going to involve the use of basic tools for getting a message to a large audience across; particularly, the tools such as an overhead projector for displaying the essential PowerPoint slides. The specified tool will allow for making the lecture as clear as possible and represent the essential information in a visually pleasing manner. In addition, the participants will be provided with notebooks and pencils for making notes in the course of the lecture.
The next stage that will involve the practical application of the newly acquired knowledge will take around thirty minutes and can be split into explaining the task to the staff and the actual accomplishment thereof.
Finally, the analysis of the training outcomes will have to be carried out during the final lesson. In other words, attest similar to the one that will have been conducted four weeks prior will have to be administered to the target audience. After the results are retrieved, they will be compared with the outcomes of the first assessment, and the corresponding conclusions will be made.
Conclusion
There is no need to stress that the Adventure Street, Co. will need major changes in its design, as well as the leadership strategy, in order to become competitive in the contemporary economic environment. The specified design for training and acquiring essential tasks can be viewed as a perfect way of promoting the principles of corporate social responsibility among the staff, as it involves a detailed analysis of the problems that the company members are most likely to face in the realm of global economy.
Hence, it can be suggested that the organization should make the process of training as close to real-life situations as possible, so that the staff could train the corresponding skills in a manner as efficient and expeditious as possible. The adoption of the specified training session must be viewed as crucial in the light of the fact that the company members will have to learn to operate in an entirely new environment and follow a set of completely different knowledge management principles, not to mention a new ethics code, which the organization will also have to adopt.
Reference List
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