CASE STUDY #2

Modenna P. Daclan

MOTHER LONDON CASE STUDY

Guide questions:
1. In what ways have the different forms of capital contributed to the success of Mother?
2. Explain the role of people management practices in supporting these forms of capital.
3. What risks and problems might Mother encounter in the future in the people management area
and how might these be overcome?

RATIONALE

Mother London is a creative organization employing around 280 people and part of Mother Holdings,
which has 20 companies with around 700 people including freelancers. Mother’s main outputs are
producing commercials for television, and cinema as well experience events and some online output.
Not experienced an experience event is the actual term – highly participative marketing events. The
company is characterized by a series of core principles which reflect the beliefs of its founders and have
a profound effect on how it is managed and structured and the relationships it has with its employees
and clients. Mother emphasizes on the quality of output is reflected in what is referred to as the ‘Holy
Trinity’ within Mother – essentially a statement of values which underpins how they work which is
characterized by a highly collaborative style of working which involves both specialists and non-
specialists being involved in the creative process. In particular, there is a high degree of flexibility and
permeability between the various skill groups. Staff often perform multiple roles and will move
frequently between different teams. Mother draws to develop its creative output. In particular, we can
consider their human, social and organizational capital.

ISSUES

1. Mother draws to develop its creative output with the use of their human, social and
organizational capital. These different key areas in capital has contributed differently on the
success of mother. It is evident that Mother is completely reliant upon the quality of their
human capital for their success, indeed they can be said to adopt a ‘talent- or people-centric
approach’. The staff themselves have very high reputations in the industry built up over many
years and they are highly skilled and experienced. They tend to employ staff who have gained
some experience elsewhere and are attracted to work at Mother because of the people who
already work there. In the words of one senior manager, ‘they need to have a passion for
creativity, they need to be inquisitive, be up for a challenge, have an edge about them and a
conviction about what they do’. However, they also need to be ‘tenacious and get stuff done.
They need to be right and left-brain people. And although they need to be ambitious – they also
need to have humility. On the area of social form of capital, Mother dwells on their core
principles and to the ‘Holy Trinity’ of values mean that the culture of the organization plays a key
part in Mother’s success. The fit with the organization culture, which gives priority to creativity,
 is absolutely essential. Mother believe that without this core principle and the “Holy Trinity” it
would be impossible to convert the knowledge, skills and experience of its staff into valuable
client outputs. The result is a high level of emotional attachment to the work produced. Lastly, in
terms of organizational capital, Mother an organizational structure that is flat with only three
levels, but more importantly there is a high level of interaction between the partners and more
junior staff. One distinctive characteristic is the way in which staff is physically located, not only is
the work space open plan but many staff are not physically located within what in a more
traditional organization would be their function or department.
2. People management practices plays a vital role in supporting these various types of capital.
Mother needs to cross organizational boundaries to match the activities of human capital it is
seeking to manage. In Mother’s case, people management responsibilities are shared between
three groups of staff: Discipline Heads; the HR team and the Partners. I think the
interrelationship of this three groups of staff are what contributed best to the success of Mother.
3. The risk that can be encountered in people management area is that these various forms of
capital which are critical to organizational performance involves developing superior practices in
key areas such as recruitment, selection, training and team building designed to ensure the best
people are employed and these staff develop high levels of skill. However, it is also unlikely to
generate competitive advantage in the practices themselves because they are easily copied
(Mueller, 1996). Another risk on this process is that in training and development there is mixture
of of formal and more informal training opportunities. Although a budget is set aside for formal
training for each employee there are no formal, routine training programmes. Instead, bespoke
training is arranged for employees as needed. Much more emphasis is placed on the opportunity
for relatively junior staff to work alongside much more senior staff, with this process there might
be overlooked areas in training needs analysis that could not be meet since the identification of
training is done not based on individual or employees area of specification that needed to be
addressed in the training and seminar. Another identified risk is the annual system for appraising
performance to be carried out by the line managers. This meeting involves discussion of the
previous year’s performance and changes to the reward package. However, any changes in salary
have to be approved by one of the partners, with this there is a tendency that the decisions of
partners could not be politicalized and would end up in biased decision.