BSS064-6 Leading and Managing Organisational Resources Assignment Sample
Module code and Title: BSS064-6 Leading and Managing Organisational Resources Assignment Sample
Introduction
The consideration of sustainable leadership initiatives usually plays a significant role in terms of developing overall business activities within an organisation. As the result of implementing sustainable leadership, an organisation gets huge benefits with distinctive development of their performance as well as productivity, which also replicate efficient usage of resource management concerns. Conceptualisation of efficient strategies under the lights of sustainable leadership can also be supportive behind the development of innovation that can ensure long-term success along with business growth to a large extent.
The consequences of risk management are also implicated with sustainable leadership based on which an organisation might be able to ensure both short-term and long-term objectives of their business by ensuring a significant advantage. The prospects of cost minimisation can also be observed with the help of sustainable focus on empowering the resilience of the entire workforce by complying with the industrial as well as consumer trends. On the other hand, sustainable leadership can also play a formative role in terms of ensuring distinctive competitive advantage for a business while operating with intense market competition.
With regards to the evaluation of sustainable leadership and its implications in business, the present report would pay attention to the case study context of WeWork. The organisation usually operates in the arena of real estate by delivering sufficient office space for both entrepreneurs as well as individuals. Potential client base of the organisation includes entrepreneurs where the prime business objective is established with an intention of renting space from individuals and segmenting it to different spaces for customers.
Different challenges are being experienced by WeWork in their overall operations including the consequences of ineffective leadership, inadequate resource management aspects, improper corporate governance and others. The overall financial performance of the business has not been effective due to the different challenging aspects. In accordance with the case study, the first quarter of 2022 highlighted the aspects of quarterly loss for WeWork despite insuring growing demand for flexible workspace as well as rising revenue generation.
With regards to this concern, the present report would pay attention to critically enlighten the challenging sequences and its impact on the organisation with a concise and clear evaluation. Apart from that, valuable recommendations would also be made on behalf of the business in order to address the mentioned challenges.
Analysis of WeWork’s main challenges
Referring to analysing WeWork’s business operations few challenges have been identified such as poor leadership, lack of corporate governance and inadequate management, which will be evaluated further based on the case study along with few theoretical perspectives.
Poor leadership
It is not difficult to define leadership and the environment of leaders in this transforming business associations and marketplace (Guinan et al. 2019). However, it is difficult to overstate the significance of leadership and its importance in achieving timely business objectives and goals. While deciding the significance of leadership in business enterprise the standard approach is their rules and responsibility and the characteristics they hold up to (Sarabi et al. 2020).
In this regard, it has been discovered that WeWork is experiencing problems properly while managing leadership. Furthermore, former CEO Adam Neumann has been admonished for poor corporate governance and the company’s IPO has been postponed due to this leadership inefficiency. Resulting to this, the company has been facing few financial difficulties as they have run out of cash.
In this connection, visionary leadership will be an appropriate one that can be taken into consideration, as this leadership is the main aspect that refers to a long-term plan for the future (Ubaidillah et al. 2019). The visionary leadership has the ability to set a clear idea of the future while maintaining a better community and team that can merge with innovation and better plan orientation.
The most important quality of a visionary leader is forward thinking and plan-oriented, which can significantly allow an organisation to have an appropriate approach towards future operation and business stability without getting issues such as WeWork is facing (Mäntysalo et al. 2019).
From this viewpoint, it is possible to state that it is a leader’s role to enhance the defectiveness of business management as well as to choose an investor that can support market stabilisation. This will provide organisations with consistency in monetary assistance allowing for better business and management. Following Neumann’s departure, it can be stated that the organisation has faced difficulty in terms of operating collectively towards the right purpose due to lack of guidance and leadership.
Moreover, collaboration is the most important aspect in an organisation that can guide and improve productivity while enhancing teamwork capabilities and problem solving aspects (Mehrabi Boshrabadi and Hosseini, 2021). Through collaboration, an organisation can lead to efficient processes, innovation, increased success, improved communication and a proper aspect to reach towards the actual purpose of addressing organisational mission.
Lack of corporate governance
Corporate governance means that the organisation maintains control over its activities while improving company achievement with sustainable practices and truthfulness. With improved corporate governance, a company will be able to start creating transparent rules as well as control over leadership (Jiang and Kim, 2020).
This will further align the interest of stakeholders to have the financial power of rivals and influence a strategic advantage to the company. According to the case study of WeWork, the company is experiencing cost structure concern as well as lack of trust between many employees. An organisation’s cost structure inefficiency has the possibility to overshadow the quality and assistance, which can have a direct impact on organisational operations (Choi et al. 2021).
Referring to the aspect of corporate governance, the stewardship theory would be an appropriate one that can help in analysing the aspect of WeWork’s corporate governance. According to the theory, it states that steward project organisation can maximise stakeholders while focusing on improving the firm performance. Through this theory, the shareholders and stewards are the main aspect for motivation along with profits and in return, this also empowers trust among the organisation while protecting the wealth (Chrisman, 2019).
From this theory, it can be analysed that employees should be focused on offering individual tasks that can help them to act more autonomously while having ownership of their own work with diligence and intrinsic value.
With this example, the incompetence in governance that WeWork is facing such as poor decision-making can be understood, as is an emergence of absence of transparency, lack of innovation, which is significantly reflecting organisation towards poor corporate management and business operation. According to the case study, Mathrani has been attempting to implement layoff in a sustainable way to enhance the company structure.
Beside this, the business has also planned to attempt to build a reputation by pursuing tenants and negotiating with property owners. However, the plan has miserably failed due to the obstruction of the pandemic, which has taken over the company and reduced the revenue by 40%. From the gaining insights from the case study, it can be stated that the management and leadership has been significantly contributing to challenges to the firm. Moreover, the inefficiencies are also hindering employees’ performances, which are also degrading company operations.
Inadequate resource management
Resource planning is one of the crucial aspects that must be present in an organisation so that the resource manager can have an appropriate awareness about the overall assets with the regulation of shipments (ElMadany et al. 2022). With proper internal resources planning and management, organisations can enhance effectiveness with lowering the cost along with increasing productivity. Furthermore, with the contribution of poor corporate governance and leadership incapabilities it has directly impacted over the resource management at WeWorks internal workplace is totally inadequate.
According to the case study, the company was in the midst of the pandemic and was seeking ways to convince their customers through the utilisation of technology and innovation. Technology and innovation is one of the most influential with which business organisations can convince their consumers towards the attractiveness of products and services in this industry 4.0 (Mehdiabadi et al. 2020).
In reference to that, WeWork has announced their merger with BowX Acquisition Corporation establishing the intention of going public. Thus, the entire sales price of the merger was about $9 billion, as the company was getting ready to develop for the next stage of being a publicly listed corporation. The decision was made so quickly that it has entirely altered organisations internal utilisation of resources.
The concept of the resource allocation theory can be highlighted in this regard. The theoretical assumption reflects that a business should focus on distributing valuable resources in consideration with the factors related to its production. This aspect reflects a clear focus on effective allocation of resources as an integral part of helping a business to grow with success in the market (Farrell et al. 2020). In the case of WeWork, the consequences of internal resource management within the company have not been effective.
The prime limitation of the organisation highlighted the obtainment of limited pool of resources, which force them to decide balancing their resources internally. As per the case study, the company has eventually disclosed their desire to emerge as a take oriented business again under the shape of selling software namely WeWork workplace. In this regard, greater focus was kept by Mathrani in terms of critically assessing and realising the biggest challenge in terms of figuring out the internal resource balancing attribute within the business.
The overall evidence from the case study reflects inadequate planning for resource allocation as well as management within the business of WeWork that has been pushing them backward from ensuring future success. It also puts a significant question behind the effectiveness of organisational leaders in terms of considering valuable business decisions.
No clear communication can be notified in this case study that has been maintained by the organisation with their different departments that may be helpful to determine the availability and requirement of resources required for their services.
With regards to the overall analysis, the mentioned challenges are notified to profoundly influence the operations of WeWork. Moreover, an uncertainty can also be assumed on behalf of the business with regards to ensure future market success, which reflects lack of proper leadership within the organisation.
Evaluation of improving the resource management, enhance productivity and performance
Evaluation of inadequate resource management considering WeWork’s performance
In accordance with the study of Hamadamin and Atan (2019, p.1), the current business environment is extremely competitive and dynamic, where the competitive advantage of businesses depends on organisational physical as well as nonphysical human resources. This is indicating that proper decision-making to manage organisational resources has a great essential for ensuring business growth, as it allows companies to fulfil the requirement of business activities including human resources and other resources.
On the contrary, the absence of proper decision-making to manage resources has a great potential to negatively impact organisational performance, as it can be a barrier to the way of running the business with ease. In this regard, considering the case study, it is evident that in WeWork, there is an issue of proper decision-making regarding organisational resources.
This issue has been negatively influencing the overall resource management of the organisation and resulting in financial loss. This is because the case study has clearly illustrated that the organisation recorded a financial loss of an estimated US$ 504 million in its US ground.
The case study has clearly projected that the organisation needs to improve its initiatives regarding resource management. Relating to this concern, from the perception of the resource-based view theory, businesses need to develop unique as well as specific core competencies, which can assist them to deal with market competition (Assensoh-Kodua, 2019).
Considering the perception of this theory, the current situation of WeWork strongly depends on the management of its organisational resources and developing specific core competencies, which can help it to overcome barriers and be sustainable in the competitive marketplace.
Hence, the organisation could have taken initiatives for improving its resource management emphasising monitoring responsible managers for managing resources in order to ensure proper productivity and performance improvement.
Considering the issue of taking proper decisions in the resource management of WeWork, it can be stated that there was a lack of visibility in the overall management of resources. Hence, increasing transparency and visibility of organisational resources along with overall resource management has great relevance in terms of properly managing organisational resources (Ivanov et al. 2021).
Based on this, responsible managers for managing resources at the organisation could have taken proper initiatives for the maintenance of proper documentation and informing departments regarding different projects and budgets to enhance transparency.
On the other hand, the improvement of cross department collaboration could have also helped the organisation to improve the overall resource management process. This is because cross-departmental collaboration improves the excellence of teams, which positively influences organisational performance by improving team performance (Li, 2018).
WeWork’s productivity and service evaluation
As per the opinion of Hasan et al. (2018, p.1), the growth of productivity has the ability to ensure the improvement of financial resources of an organisation including revenue growth, which is extremely beneficial for improving overall organisational performance. In terms of productivity, WeWork depends on renting spaces for offices and selling spaces to entrepreneurs. In other words, the organisation is operating in the market with a simple business model, which emphasises office spaces for making profits.
It is observed that the organisation has witnessed issues in terms of public offerings that decreased its revenue growth rate. This is indicating that the organisation is lacking efficiency in terms of satisfying its consumers with products and service offerings. In contrast, the improvement of consumer service for ensuring customer satisfaction is extremely essential for businesses to ensure financial stability (Juanamasta et al. 2019).
Relating to this issue of the organisation, in need for proper training in the development of employees is noted. This is because employees are considered as one of the most essential aspects for ensuring the improvement of productivity and services, which have great relevance in terms of ensuring customer satisfaction (Bolton et al. 2018).
Additionally, Mathrani has observed that the organisation has taken various quick decisions, which have not resulted in positive support for the company. For instance, the decision of WeWork to merge with BoX Acquisition Corp has not helped the company to increase its revenue. This issue is indicating the need for a great focus on the improvement of decision-making along with productivity for ensuring competitive growth.
Organisational leaders play a significant role in taking adequate decisions for the performance improvement of an organisation (Ibrahim and Daniel, 2019). Hence, organisational managers of WeWork could have critically analysed the overall situation of the company before taking decisions like the merger with BoX Acquisition Corp.
On the other hand, the improvement of productivity within the company is extremely important, as it has already faced issues in terms of providing proper services to its customers. For the improvement of productivity, organisational managers of WeWork need to be focused on the overall process of achieving the most potential output from business activities.
Evaluation of corporate governance of WeWork
According to Bae et al. (2018, p.1), the elements of corporate governance have a strong influential power of sending positive signals to the marketplace, which is beneficial for business success. On the other hand, the case study illustrated that WeWork has witnessed challenges regarding corporate governance. In particular, the organisation witnessed issues in managing corporate governance including some aspects such as profitability, cost cutting, and global restructuring.
Additionally, it is also evidence that the organisation has not been able to ensure proper collaboration among employees, which is also indicating a lack of proper governance. Considering a lack of trust and collaboration among workers, Mathrani has realised the significance of emphasising both of these aspects, along with proper decision-making for executing layouts to improve organisational cost structure.
The study of Kremer et al. (2019, p.69) indicates that organisational leaders need to encourage employee trust and influence them to work collaboratively and share their valuable ideas with each other, which ensures a culture of knowledge sharing. Relating to this, the improvement of trust and collaboration among employees of WeWork is essential for creating a culture of knowledge sharing, which can be ensured through proper corporate governance.
As reflected in the case study context, corporate governance within the organisation has not been effective where a sequential gap in the leadership decision-making was notified. According to the case study, WeWork management did not focus on the pandemic related circumstances and its potential influence on the business. However, 40% revenue decline was notified as per the case study due to this reason, which ultimately forced the business to consider cost optimisation on an immediate basis.
In this regard, the concept of the stewardship theory of corporate governance can be highlighted. The theoretical assumption reflects to act in a responsible manner by arranging the stewards of the assets to be controlled in order to maintain a strong relationship between business success and satisfaction (Keremidchiev and Nedelchev, 2020).
In the case of WeWork, a complete violation of this aspect can be notified where the management did not put adequate focus on ensuring accurate planning with regards to the future circumstances. Due to this reason, the pandemic was able to push the business behind with a declining revenue generation, which also questions their effectiveness of maintaining competitive growth in the market.
According to the overall evaluation of problem circumstances experienced by the business of WeWork, clear gap of sustainable leadership can be reflected. Apart from that, both the corporate governance and management efficiency within the organisation can be put under stake with due respect to evaluate their efficacy for insuring flexible business performance and growth.
Conclusions
According to the above-mentioned information, it has been concluded that WeWork is one of the organisations that are dealing with issues in their internal working environment due to inefficient CSR policies, which might result in them losing clients and employees affecting the overall business. Thus, it has been concluded that WeWork has mostly struggled with incompetent governance of leadership, poor resource allocation, and a lack of corporate governance.
Additionally, there are a number of factors, including falling out on the IPO, the prior CEO stepping down, insufficient resource management, and executives with weak decision-making abilities. Furthermore, inadequate cost control and a lack of employee loyalty are only two of the issues that have made it difficult for WeWork to compete in the market.
In light of these difficulties, it has been concluded that better resource management, productivity improvements, and process improvement can be achieved by concentrating on making and keeping smart decisions regarding the management of organisational resources in addition to having access to reliable data and information.
Aside from this, one of the factors that may successfully increase corporate performance and productivity is enhancing customer service and bringing about customer happiness. As a result of the study, it is stated that WeWork must take into account a few key areas in order to efficiently run their company operations.
Recommendations
WeWork is being advised to focus on a few recommendations in order to continue operating successfully in the future based on the difficulties and problems it has encountered while conducting business.
Motivating employees to provide improved efficiency and boost performance.
It is obvious that there would be a lack of enthusiasm among employees due to poor management and corporate governance, which can immediately affect business productivity and services. Therefore, it has been assumed that poor motivation affects the workforce as a whole and the effectiveness of organisational management (Paais and Pattiruhu, 2020).
Consequently, it is recommended that WeWork evaluate the benefits of employee motivation in the workplace, which may increase their productivity and enhance the services they provide to potential customers. On the basis of that, it might provide them with the ability to increase employee engagement rate.
Implementing significant initiatives and policies within the workplace
The management has the potential to improve overall performance and employee engagement by implementing substantial initiatives and policies inside the workplace (Hudson et al. 2019). At WeWork, there is a lack of trust among the staff members, which might negatively affect the organisational culture and impede production.
Therefore, it is recommended that WeWork embrace significant policies and activities to maintain a healthy workplace that can enhance performance and productivity across all areas of their business operations. The rate of creative thinking and a collaborative work environment will, however, also rise.
Keeping records of the performance and management initiatives
WeWork is seen as having inadequate resource management, according to the research’s overall findings. On the basis of such a scenario, it can be recommended that effective management and performance record-keeping be put into place within six months.
As a result, it will provide them the chance to identify any mistakes or problems with WeWork’s management. Additionally, keeping records can reveal if managers are efficiently managing their departments in accordance with their tasks and responsibilities (Kocielnik et al. 2018). Moreover, it will also help in improving a sense of transparency across the organisation.
Coordinating the structure of the firm with the intended business goals
It may be said that effectively matching organisational goals with business structures can foster stronger collaboration and a shared pursuit that can increase the likelihood of achieving the goal sooner (Chowdhury and Shil, 2019). According to the case study, WeWork intends to transition to a tech-based firm. As a result, it is recommended that the organisation concentrate on an incredibly creative viewpoint in corporate management and operation to enable the structure of the company to somehow be appropriately linked with its purpose.
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