Course Code: MGN 313 Course Title: Management Practices and Organizational Behavior

Course Instructor: Honey Kanojia

Academic Task No.: 01 Academic Task Title: Apply your Skills: SIA Corporation

Date of Allotment: August 25th, 2019 Date of submission: August 30th, 2019

Student’s Roll no: 60,28,29,31,32 Student’s Reg. no: 11607179, 11612732, 11612762, 11612229, 11612995
Evaluation Parameters:

Learning Outcomes: We learned about the following outcomes:

1) We got a basic idea of what a learning organization is, and how its crucial in the industry and the
market as well.
2) We got to understand about the SIA’s transformation and were able to perform some useful
analysis.
3) Got a better understanding of how the markets work as well.

Declaration:

We declare that this Assignment is our individual team’s work. We have not copied it from any other
student’s work or from any other source except where due acknowledgement is made explicitly in the text,
nor has any part been written for us by any other person.

Student’s
Signature:
Peer Rating:

Evaluator’s Comments:

General Observations Suggestions for Improvement Best part of assignment

Evaluator’s Signature and Date:

Marks Obtained: Max. Marks: …………………………

 APPLY YOUR SKILLS: SIA CORPORATION

INTRODUCTION
Headquartered in the Midwest, SIA was an umbrella organization offering a wide range of insurance
products to commercial customers of all sizes throughout their country. They were also reportedly
increasing as a multinational corporation throughout the world.
Over the years, they tried to diversify into various types of insurance by absorbing smaller companies
until they then consisted of more than 30 separate business units. Each of their business had its own
hierarchy, characterized by strong top-down administration and the well-defined rules and procedures of
its own.
The rules were typically of the insurance industry where virtually every employee possessed specialized
knowledge about a narrowly defined market niche.
Upper level management had shown some serious concerns about some crucial matters like they found
out that SIA’s refined division of labor into technical specialists needed to give way to a collaborative
learning organization. The aim was to make an organization where employee empowerment and open
information made it possible for a single underwriter to be knowledgeable about a variety of products.
As the world was progressing on, it was quite clear that SIA’s Corporation couldn’t keep on ding their
business in an old-fashioned way.
The newly appointed Chief knowledge Officer Mr. Jerry Seibert fully realized that his new position in the
newly created management department is going to be a big challenge for him. So, what did Jerry do now?
He oversaw the development of software that allowed any SIA employee to post a query, have that
question directed only to those employees with relevant expertise, & then receive an answer.
But the question is, did it get successful? Let’s discuss this in the below mentioned categories.

ISSUES
We have tried to explain the entire scenario in the introduction part. Now let’s look at the following
points.

Some of the main issues which SIA’s committee found out are as follows:
1) The biggest challenge for the Corporation was to modernize their business standards and to move
ahead, as per the continuous changing trends of the world.
2) As stated above, the main issue which SIA’s committee found out was that they needed an
environment which would support the collaborative learning among the people.
3) They found out that their employee possessed specialized knowledge about a narrowly defined market
niche, but they were not sharing it with their co-workers in a way that would benefit them and the
Corporation, as well.
4) Later on, a veteran SIA underwriter, clued Jerry that the restructuring process is not going up to the
mark or as per their expectations because many employees thought that the restructuring process would
only lead to a notice of dismissal from their employment state.
5)Also, instead of sharing the information employees saw their own highly specialized knowledge as a
kind of job insurance policy which have been clearly mentioned by Ms. Rachel Greenwell’s statement to
Mr. Jerry Seibert as:
“I know that’s not what your knowledge-sharing efforts are about and that their fears are
unfounded”.
She further stated:
“But you’ve got about 9,999 other employees who are at least willing to entertain the
possibility that sharing what they know isn’t in their best interests”.

FACTORS WHICH ARE INFLUENCING SIA’S DECISION TO BECOME A

LEARNING ORGANISATION

Let’s first understand what we mean by learning organization. In business management, a learning
organization is a company that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms itself.
Now let’s look at various factors which promotes a company or corporation to move ahead towards
becoming a learning organization.

1)SOCIAL FACTORS
* Learning Organizations develop as a result of the pressures faced by modern organizations. It enables
Corporations to remain competitive in the market or the business environment.
* It also helps them in maintaining their status of being different, highly organized and gives them an
image of Corporation which sustain and adapts as per the needs in the market.
* It increases the market trust as well.
* Strengthens sense of community in the organization.

2)POLITICAL FACTORS
* The ability to reconfigure actions based on needs and environment avoids an issue of conflict between
the government agencies and the corporations.
* It also avoids a tradeoff between the two.

3)ECONOMIC FACTORS
* Maintaining levels of innovation and remaining competitive.
* Improved efficiency.
* Increase in team work could lead to increase in efforts by the employees, which would ultimately help
in increasing the revenue and the profits of the company.

GROUP’S ANALYSIS AND THE POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

The team first decided to understand the problem from its core, so we all decided to be in the shoes of the
employees and understand how all of us would feel if something like this would have happened in the
organization in which we all are working.
*ANALYSIS
We felt that as the change was immediate and we were not prior informed or we were not ready about
how to deal with the problem then we all would have felt the same way, as the employees were feeling.
We also might have needed an assurance that anyways our job security is not under risks. It has always
been said that the change is difficult, so maybe we needed support of HR’s to adapt to this change.
*SOLUTIONS
The possible solutions for the problem are described as follows:
1)Mr. Jerry Seibert and his team should have organized meetings, conferences and maybe personal
gatherings to make the people understand about this change and why this is all about.
2)He should have insured the employees that if they are going to share their views with one another they
ae not going to lose their job. Also, he should explain them that how this change would be beneficial for
the company.
3)Appraisal sessions should be organized to praise the efforts of those who are willing to share their views
and making a collaborative environment among the organization.
4)Those people could also get a salary hike or can be awarded as the best employees of the company.

POSSIBLE CHALLENGES FOR THE SIA TO MAKE THE TRANSITION FROM

A HERARCHICAL TO A COLLABORATIVE ORGANIZATION
Let’s take a look at the challenges:
1)SIA may find it hard to embrace personal mastery because as a concept it is intangible and the benefits
cannot be quantified; personal mastery can even be seen as a threat to the organization. This threat can be
real, as Senge has said that:
“To empower people in an unaligned organization can be counterproductive”.
In other words, if individuals do not engage with a shared vision, personal mastery could be used to
advance their own personal visions. In some organizations a lack of a learning culture can be a barrier to
learning.

2) Resistance to learning can occur.

3)In addition, organizational size may become the barrier to internal knowledge sharing. When, the
number of employees exceeds 150, internal knowledge sharing dramatically decreases because of higher
complexity in the formal organizational structure, weaker inter-employee relationships, lower trust,
reduced connective efficacy, and less effective communication.
4)Also there are two drawbacks with the learning organization concept as well. They are as follows:
* Focuses mainly on the cultural dimension and does not adequately take into account the other
dimensions of an organization.
* Favors individual and collective learning processes at all levels of the organization, but does not
connect them properly to the organization's strategic objectives.
REFERENCES
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_organization
*New Era of Management book written by Richard L. Draft (Cengage learning)