Running head: Human Resources

Development of Enterprise Annuity in China

Lynn Shi

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor

BMGT 6221 A

Dr. Marilyn Byrd

February 2, 2011
 The School of Business Administration at Old State University (OSU) experienced smooth

development by leading of Dean Barnes. Dean Barnes is good at “doing the same things better”,

which is the evaluation of Dean Barnes’s performance in this school. In contrast, his successor,

Blake, who has the excellent background of marketing, is an absolute reformer. In this case study,

I would like to introduce what is situation in the School of Business Administration at (OSU), and

analyze what effects was produced by the new strategy of the Blake to OSU from aspect

following:

Facts Surrounding

Blake built a Strategic Planning Committee (SPC) to evaluate the external and internal

situation of this school, after that, SPC recommended 7 methods to explore new markets, which is

Blake are most wanted. Furthermore, Blake indicates his big decision to move the direction of this

school. However, these conducts of Blake lead to some negative effects form some members of

this school, because he ignores the action about Human Resource Management (HRM) in his each

step of the strategic planning. HRM policies must assist to strategic decisions of achievement. so

strategic decisions affect HRM policies working-out. According to our textbook, HRM should

pursue to ensure that the company’s recruiting, selecting training, appraising, and compensation

systems are producing the employee competencies and behaviors the company needs to execute its

strategic plan. Therefore, in this case, this school hired Blake because he met this school’s new

strategy which is that they want to explore a new market. The mission of Blake is to achieve this

goal, but they only focus on the innovation, and ignore keeping the original market. In this way,

The HRM policies affect the implement of strategy. Below is to identify the problems and causes

of the problem in this case:

Key issues & Evaluate Dean Blake’s strategy and HRM policies

First, composition of SPC is flawed, because they did not have any Human Resource people,

so it did not have any support by HRM policies. There is no people knows the structure of this

school, and their recommendations could be support by enough human recourses to implement.

By this problem, I think, SPC did not accurately evaluate the internal environment.

Second, Dean Blake built new criteria for recruiting, but he did not consider it would produce

conflict by new criteria and old criteria, and how to balance them.

Third, with the transition of the school’s direction, the faculties of existing lose their

advantage which is good at teaching fulltime students. Therefore, some of them think that it would

be threatened by this new strategy, which makes them produce some suspicion and opposition. In

this case, it can not form consensus between employees’ individual value and the new strategy of

this school.

Evaluate the process of strategy and human resources changes

The 7 recommendations by SPC reporting are good marketing strategy, but it is lack of a support

by human resources. We could analyze the data of this case, the recent data of 2007 indicated that

this school have 85 faculties and 2517 students, and is average 30 students per 1 faculty. Most of

these faculties taught the full-time students all the time, and they did not have experience to teach

adult students or some coursework. Therefore, how does ensure the quality when these

recommendations are implemented? Even though Dean Blake will recruit 5 positions, and asked

existing faculty to use the new criteria of appraisal, I do not believe that the new employees can

implement the new strategy independently, and existing faculty could teach the new course

without any training.

Furthermore, these new HRM policies of Blake did not communicate with faculty about the new
appraisal of performance, and he did not try for understanding and endorse from them.

Listing & Evaluation Alternative Courses of Action

It should have a humane resource person as a member of SPC, and his or her responsibility is that

to research the staffing could support how much size of the new course. Meanwhile, the HR

person should make a training plan which for existing faculty to improve their ability about

teaching adult students. Most importance, the HR person should deeply communicate with

existing faculty, which makes them to understand and accepted the new strategy. These HRM

policies could help the new strategy better to implement.

Resistance of the Strategy be Overcome

Dean Blake should build a communication channel in the internal environment, to deeply

understand operating situation while makes employees understand the reason of changing. That

means it would be eliminated by market if the school do not change, and employees would lose

their job when the school be eliminated. This is a chain reaction, so employees must to endorse the

new strategy and cooperate it. At the same time, most of employees want to get proper promise

before the origination moving to a new direction, and make them have voice in the new strategy.

These methods could help Dean Blake overcome the resistance of the strategy.

Conclusion

According to our textbook, HR’s role in formulating strategy is to identify, analyze and balance

the firm’s external opportunities and threats and its internal strengths and weaknesses. Therefore,

in this case, the new strategy is excellent for external, but it evaluation of internal is lack of data

support. Dean Blake should recognize to enhance the analysis for internal situation.

Reference