KBR Technology and Engineering Analysis

KBR Technology and Engineering AnalysisIntroduction to the caseKBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root) is a global Infrastructure strain Venture. With 57,000 employees operating world all-embracing, its a lending machinateing, construction and military service company. Supporting the hydrocarbon, heartiness, civil infrastructure sectors and government services, its subscriber blood line is based on project concern activities. Headquartered in Houston, Texas it operates from its locations in Australia, Africa, UK, Asia and the oculus East. It enjoys an eminent and whizz of the leading market positions in the infrastructure sector.KBR serves its customers through six strategic business units Upstream offers engineering related services for energyProjects Downstream serves business clients in the petrochemical coal gasification markets KBR Services provides construction and maintenance support services KBR Technology Manages Intellectual Property Rights. KBR Ventures Provides Finan cial and circumspection services to its partners. Government and Infrastructure (GI) offers construction, engineering and project oversight services.Leveraging from its GI business expertise, KBR formed a Joint venture with Carillion, another company, creating target Defense. Aspire Defence is to deliver Project Allenby/ Connaught. Project Allenby happens to be the largest infrastructure project, in scale, to be awarded by the Ministry of Defence to the private sector.Aspire defence has three business wings* Aspire Defence Limited (ADL), responsible for Service Deli rattling.* Aspire Defence Capital Works (ADCW) delivers the construction.* Aspire defence Services Limited (ADSL) delivers facilities and provides service steering support to the project.Our study is to analyse the organization of such a diversified business venture. The report is to study the organisational behavior and swap wariness systems in place. Our focus would be on Aspire defence.Q1). Leadership and the l eadership style used by the company and its relationship with the leadership theories you ar old(prenominal) with?Leadership is amongst the intimately important things by which an organization is run. Its the most celebrated of the management traits. Effective leadership is the ability to successfully integrate and maximize visible(prenominal) resources within the internal and external environment for the attainment of organizational or societal goals (Ogbonnia, 2007).Leadership styles refer to the leaders decisiveness qualification behavior, which is resultant of the philosophy, bewilder and personality of the leader. Leadership styles may be classified as follows (Lewin, Lippitt,and White, 1939)* Dictator Leader uses fear and threats to impose his decisions.* Autocratic Centralised decision making.* Democratic Partcipative decision making.* Free Rein Maximum liberty catered to individuals.KBR follows a flat organizational structure, meaning on that point are only a fe w layers between the decline stoolers and ownership. Modern Organizations are continuously becoming flatter, with the leadership shunning their lazy dependence on the hierarchy to get the management selective information together and therefore disseminating the leadership decisions down the vertical. KBRs hierarchy suggests a Senior Management Team which wants to be involved in the minutest of the business functionalities. They are dynamic enough to delay costs and to increase speed of response to customer desires and market changes.Over the years, KBR has done very puff up to grow from a small fabrication business to one of the most respected, diversified conglomerates of Britain. Its success suggests that the leadership has been effective to maintain the balance between becoming flatter and the social distance required in order to take the big-picture view to make structured business decisions.ADSL seems to follow a democratic leadership style. Due to lesser hierarchies, empl oyees tend to be egotism directed, taking initiatives and applying intuition to their daily operations. With ADL solely responsible for service delivery ADSL and ADCW entrusted with project execution, the delimitate up provides a frame cream where each and every use is involved in the decision making process. With the organization slowly moving towards a matrix structure, the management has a very quick access to the overlay functional squads. These teams with specific knowledge of different areas of the business venture, provide important in projects to decision making.As with many modern organizations, the leadership style can be explained by the Situational Leadership theories, wherein the management acts on contingency and takes on a leadership style which a particular situation demands. They are completely flexible. view the source of the organizations horti last and its implications on the workforce and the organizational surgical process.Cooke and Rosseau define Organ izational culture as The ways of thinking, behaving and believing that members of a social unit pee in common.Organisations are viewed as independent, its goals differing from those of its members.There are three main sources from which an organization derives its culture* The national culture* The Vision, Management style of its founder.* The temperament of Business.Matching individuals to organizations is an important part of success to any business. The match between people and the organizations they work for, is determined by the type of organizational culture that exists. The expiration to which an organizations values match with that of an individual is the prime determinant of the employees work.An organizations culture basically defines an employees role. Being aware of the organizational culture at all levels is important because it is the culture that defines appropriate and inappropriate behavior. In some businesses, for example, creativity is stressed. In others, the status quo is valued. Some cultures are more socially oriented, while others insist task-orientation.Corporate performance depends a lot on this match between the individual and corporate values. Effective management involves maintaining a balance between the 2.The core values of KBR are intrinsic to its organizational culture, built upon the highest standards of safety, transparency, disciple, financial accountability among others.KBR has developed an organizational culture where its fundamentals are based on delivering benefits to its customers, shareholders, communities it serves and to its employees. Such an organizational culture has helped KBR to be premier organization delivering projects and services to a global marketplace. Culture acts as a constraint on the actions of managers and workers.Explore how the culture of an organization has bushel on both the leadership and the organization structure of the organization.Culture within a company has a huge concussion on leade rship and the decison making process. Of all the implications, an organizations culture determines the leadership styles and whether the decision making is top down or bottom up. In a top down approach, the leadership is autocratic. Decisions are taken and merely passed down the channels without any inputs from the technical experts who, mostly, are at the bottom of the organization structure. In a bottom up culture, decisions are partly taken by the actual job floor, within their scope. In such a set up, innovative ideas are generated and the company usually fares well because it harnesses the power of many.Entrepreneurial setups, like KBR tend to have a flat organizational structure. Organizational cultures derived from the nature of businesses also define the organizational structure. Heavy equipment manufacturing set ups and Investment Banks usually tend to have flat structures. This is so to allow the management to control the dynamically changing market trends and customer pr eferences which are very important for them. On the other hand an FMCG company usually has a tall structure. Primarily because of their long distribution, acquisition and logistics chain and because the customer preferences are middling stable.Explain the issue of motivation theories, the motivational policies used in the case and its impact on the individual and organization performances.Stephen P. Robbins defines motivation as The processes that account for an individuals intensity, direction, and assiduity of effort toward attaining a goal. Motivation, in the modern Organizational context is one of the most important and underlying factors which drives every employee performance. Different scholarly theories have been put forward in the understanding of motivation and its effects on organizational efficiency. The most recognized of these are the Maslows Need Hierarchy Thoery, Douglas Mc Gregors Theory X and Thoery Y, Frederick Herzbergs Two Factor Theory.Maslow states that inna te in every employee is a hierarchy of needs- Physiological, Social, Esteem, and Self- Actualisation in order. He explains that as and when each need is substantially fulfilled, an employee looks to occupy the next need on the Grid. To retain the most able of its talent, an organization has to dynamically map its personnels competency and their satisfaction levels. Calculated incentives have to be offered to compensate the next level. Douglas Mc Gregor states that there are two states of human psychology and every compensation structure has to be devised keeping them in mind. Theory X is to be followed by the management when it feels that its employees pessimistic- they dislike work, avoid responsibility, have little ambitions and must be conyinuously supervised. Theory Y is to be used when the employees are upbeat they like work, are self directed, need little supervision. Frederick Herzberg states that certain factors result in job satisfaction, the absence of these result in job dissatisfaction. He exalted them as Motivators responsility, recognition, challenging work, among others and Hygiene factors such as salary and job satisfaction. Motivators give positive satisfaction and hygiene factors do not motivate. But, if absent result, they lead to dissatisfaction.KBR and ADSL have good motivational practices in place. Firstly, it offers its employees a place in an organization that has been growing at a very impressive pace. This results in the employees creation secured of their jobs and a chance to grow along with the organization. In tough economic conditions, like the present, job security is amongst the most important motivator which drives an employee performance. It offers a wide range of career opportunities. With clearly defined job specifications and responsibilities, it allows the employees to work in their areas of excellence. KBR recruits the most competent of the managers. Many a times, the primary reason for high attrition rates is t he management. With high caliber people in the management, its employees will have the right direction.Such motivators, amongst others, have resulted in KBR being a place where employees work to their full potential. Efficient workforce has resulted in KBR now being one of the most admired business conglomerates.Examine the nature of a team, its structure and how it has an impact on the organization performances.A team in an organizational context is simply, individuals on the job(p) together towards a common business goal. There are a number of factors that define a teams structure and its success.Leadership An effective team leader should possess the management skills to establish and maintain a positive working environment motivate the team to take a positive approach towards the goal.Communication Clear communication without any noise.Established roles The team should have clearly set up goals and each members role within the framework.Teamwork is an important asset to any org anization. Effectively managed teams improve business efficiency. The postulate that whole is more than the sum of its split works well in a team space. Some of the positive outcomes of effective teamwork are* Absenteesim becomes a lesser problem.* Decision making is quick.* Tasks are accomplished in a harmonious way.* Morale remains high.How effective do you think the company approach to people management will be in ensuring improved results and enhancing the change management process?ADSL and KBR have good human resource practices in place. With a global presence and diversified role offerings, it is amongst the most admired work places. The KBR culture nurses autonomy and independent thinking. At the same time, all its projects being team based, it is a place to excel in collaborative, team based activities. It has systems and practices in place for managing change in a systematic and planned fashion.The company treats its employees as its main assets. This is evident from its sophisticated people management culture. Historically, the biggest resistance to change has been the workforce. By managing its people well, it is assuring them continued growth and prosperity within the organization. This will result in change being utilize in a smooth fashion.Explain the way individual and organization behaves, linking this with the relevant theory that you are familiar with. How would these impact on any organisations change process?Individual and organizations are both separate entities. For an organization, its primary goal is the maximization of its stake holders value. For an individual, the personal goals could be earnings, social status, comfort, among others. These goals are naturally conflicting in nature. Individuals perceive Organizational goals, culture and values as impeding to their own goals.Organizations are lastly made up of individuals, whose behavior and goals will ultimately stir organizational behavior. Individual traits that usually influe nce organizational behavior are the individual values, ethics, attitudes, personality and culture. These traits may influence organizational behavior, particularly squashy in people responsible for creating the corporate culture, for example, the top management (Robbins and Judge, 2006).Individual values and ethics are one of the biggest determinants of organizational behavior. Individual personality is also one of the determining factors. Some of the personality factors which may influence organizational behavior are positivity/negativity, optimism/pessimism, work/social (Penner, Midili, Kegelmeyer, 1997). Cultural differences as well, affect organizational behavior. All these behavioral traits have negative/ positive impact on the Organization. For instance, an Asian employee, who expects a high power distance from their direct line might not work well under a Europeon management, which is more democratic. On the other hand, due to many caste systems in their home countries, the y work well with teams of diverse backgrounds.The individual traits described above affect organizational behavior, the larger effects of these are likely to be from the top management. Effective management requires an understanding of these influences at workplace and to absorb them.Workforce is, perhaps, the biggest resistance to organizational change. Organizational change generates anxiety and resistance in employees, making it difficult to employ organizational change (Folger and Skarlicki, 1999). Any management personnels ability in achieving maximum benefits from change depends majorly on how effectively they create and manage an environment that minimizes resistant and encourages sufferance (Coetsee,1999).In order to facilitate a smooth migration from the old to the new, organizations must be competent in effective change management. The process of change management mainly involves in having those involved and affected to accept the proposed changes.Explain how the company has managed its change process and how it has benefitted from this management process?KBR has been responding to change quite well. The firm has undergone drastic changes to its approach since it began operations in 1901. It has diversified in scope and in scale. The business has changed from a small pipe manufacturing firm to a manufacturing conglomerate.The firm has been subject to change in line with the changing market trends and business needs. Looking back at the number of acquisitions and divestments that KBR has made, it can be said that change management has been a planned and phased transition at KBR.The firm has benefitted from this change. It has been able to tap the growing manufacturing industry and establish itself as a premier enterprise in the area.Put forward some recommendations for future improvementThe recent economic downturn has been amongst the most dreaded global disasters of recent times. The fundamentals of many established companies have been questioned and quite a few have failed in these testing times. Infrastructure, after financial services, has been the worst hit. There will be an enhanced compress from the stake holders for better performance. Competition will be intense and businesses will be on the look out for innovative ways to help can business. Risk management is of utmost importance.I believe ADSL has to beef up its risk management team. With a deal as long as 36 years, the business will surely see even more volatile periods.Firstly, ADSL has to concentrate on managing its partners better. It has to look to strike deals with its suppliers and hedge its risk exposures. Oil is one such example. There were times when Crude Oil prices rose to as high as over $50 a barrel. An year later, these prices softened by around 40%. Surely, if it had signed a forward delivery contract with its suppliers, it could have absorbed such a massive price change. It has to re engineer its financial flows of the deal. With 36 years of cas h flows to happen, there is a high exposure to exchange volatility and inflation. It has to start implementing change in its Network management.A lot of companies, especially the banks, have been laying off its staff in big numbers. With the economy set to get better over the next two quarters, these companies have started a hiring spree all at huge costs. ADSL should concentrate more on retaining its most able talent and not respond to curt term market implications.KBR and ADSL have been responding to change, whether triggered by internal or external factors, quite well over the years. But, there is scale for improvement. The company, with its geographical spread, has leveraged the economies of scale. But there are a lot of economies of scope that it could exploit. Its been in existence for over a century and with its cash rich treasuries, it could diversify into a much bigger conglomerate.KBRs recruiting policy allows entry to all levels of the company. Though this might work goo d for junior and mid level management roles, it does not hold good for elderberry bush management. KBR has to change its behavior towards this area and concentrate more on succession planning. Successful companies have firm succession plans and many huge conglomerates do allow outsiders to take on senior level positions. The same has to be adopted at KBR. This becomes even more profound in the current scenario when information and data security is of prime importance.BibliographyOgbonnia, K.S. ,2007. Political party system and effective leadership in Nigeria A Contingency Approach. 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