Business Performance Assignment Sample

Answer 1:

Success of XYZ construction in achieving cultural excellence for business performance

In this section we will analyse the extent to which the case company has been successful in achieving a cultural excellence for improving the performance of its business. In order to conduct such an analysis of initiatives taken at XYZ Construction we will understand the details of cultural excellence approach as provided by Peters and Waterman and will then consider the changes introduced at the company in light of the key values as suggested for a culturally excellent company under the framework.

The Peters and Waterman Approach to culture excellence

Tom Peters and Robert Waterman provided an explicit approach of building relationship between{" "} organizational culture {" "} and performance. This approach is known as cultural excellence approach where some key excellent values are considered as necessary for the success of the management and the organization as a whole. These key values are discussed as follows:

Bias for Action

As per the views of Peters and Waterman (1982) the firms that are successful in their operations have a bias for action. In these firms it is expected that the managers make decisions even if they do not have any access to all the facts. It has been argued by Peter and Waterman that for several key decisions there will always be a non-availability of facts. A delay in making decisions in such important or critical situations is the same as never making a decision. Meanwhile, whatever business initiative exist in market may be captured by other firms in the market. In other words, these authors explained that organizations with cultural values are those that have a bias for action and thus are capable of outperforming in the market (Griffin and Moorhead, 2012).

Stay Close to the Customer

It is believed by Peter and Waterman that organizations where the customers are valued most are capable of outperforming in the tough market conditions. As customer is considered to be the best source of information about current products and services as well as a source of future ideas and innovations there is a need for a firm striving to achieve culture excellence to focus on its customers. A focus on customers will help in meeting the needs and demands of customers and pampering them when necessary and will surely lead to superior performance.

Autonomy and Entrepreneurship

It has been argued by Peter and Waterman (1982) that successful firms fight the lack of innovation and the bureaucracy usually associated with larger size. They do this by breaking the company into smaller, more manageable pieces and then encouraging independent, innovative activities within smaller business segments. Stories often exist in these organizations about the junior engineer who takes a risk and influences a major product decisions, or of the junior manager, dissatisfies with the slow pace of a product’s development, who implements a new highly successful marketing plan (ibid.).

Productivity Through people

Peter and Waterman believed that successful firms recognize their most important assets as their people including workers as well as managers and that the purpose of the organization is to let its people flourish. It is a basic value of the organizational culture and a belief that treating people with respect and dignity is not only appropriate but essential to success of the firm.

Hands-On Management

Peters and Waterman noted that the firm they studies insisted that senior managers stay in touch with the firms’ essential business. It is an expectation, reflecting a deeply embedded cultural norm that managers should manage not from behind the closed doors of their offices but by wandering around the plant, the design facility, the research and development department, and so on.

Stick to the Knitting

Another cultural value characteristic of excellent firms is their reluctance to engage in business outside their area of expertise. These firms reject the concept of diversification, the practice of buying and operating businesses in unrelated industries. This notion is currently referred to as relying on the company’s core competencies or what the company does best. Here it is noteworthy to consider the example of EXXON where Lee Raymond ascended to the CEO position of Exxon Mobil Corporation and promptly ended all of the investments made by company in alternative energy methodologies favouring the reliance on what Exxon knew best and that was{" "} petroleum .

Simple Form, lean Staff

According to Peters and Waterman (1982), successful firms ten to have few administrative layers and relatively small corporate staff groups. In excellently managed companies, importance is measured not only by the number of people who report to a manager but also by the manager’s impact on the organization’s performance. The cultural values in these firms tell managers that what is important is their staff’s performance, not its size.

Simultaneous Loose and Tight Organization

The final attribute of organization culture identified by Peters and Waterman (1982) appears contradictory. How can firms be simultaneously loosely and tightly organized. The resolution of this apparent paradox is found in the values of the firm. These firms are tightly organized because all their members understand and believe in the values of the firms. The common cultural bond is strong glue that holds the firms together. At the same time, however, the firms are loosely organised because they tend to have less administrative overhead, fewer staff members, and less rules and regulations (Griffin and Moorehead, 2012). The result is increased innovation and risk taking and faster response times.

The loose structure is possible only because of the common values held by people in the firm. When employees must make decisions, they can evaluate their options in terms of the organisation’s underlying values to know whether the options are consistent with a bias for action, service to the customer and so on. By referring to commonly held values, employees can make their own decisions about what actions to take (Bruke, 2010). In this sense, the tight structure of common cultural values makes possible the loose structure of fewer administrative controls.

Changes introduced at XYZ Construction

As we are now clear about the basic values and essential elements of a culturally excellent organization, we will now assess the changes introduced at XYZ Construction as the extent to which these changes have been successful in using the concept of culture excellence in achieving better business performance. There were several initiatives that were introduced in the form of new working methods by the new Managing Director of the construction company. These initiatives and the resultant value in cultural excellence as achieved by the organization are discussed in following sections in detail.

The new managing Director of the case company realized the changing nature of construction industry as well as the increasing demands of customers along with considering the contemporary elements that are still prevalent in the industry. The construction industry was notorious for the antagonistic relations between the main contractors and subcontractors such as XYZ who specialise in one aspect of the construction process. It was realized by the Managing Director that the industry is attempting to change and conflict was being replaced by ‘partnership’ initiatives where contractors and subcontractors work in collaboration and in a team based manner.

This change in industry call for a focus on external partnerships that require internal partnerships and teamwork if they were to be successful. The fact made the Managing Director to introduce a participative style of leadership and management at the case company which was achieved through a detailed overhauling of the operations and culture of the company along with upgrading the management of the company.

These initiatives at the case company resulted in meeting the values of having a bias for action, autonomy and entrepreneurship, hands-on management and stick to knitting of the concept of culture excellence.

Further the Managing Director focused on this second value of changing the attitudes and behaviour of workforce as well as the managers to provide better service to customers. The basic idea was to achieve the desired changes in the organization through crucial activities of introducing new practices and techniques into the company and to change the attitudes and behaviours within the company especially those of managers so as to improve the overall performance of the company. He considered these are activities linked to each other where new practices such as customer care and customer partnering were not mere technical exercises while they required behavioural changes and new managerial skills. This resulted in achieving the value of ‘staying close to customer’ value of a culturally excellent organization.

In order to ensure better relationships among managers the senior management team of the company was broadened where key staff members were include who were not directors. This change was crucial for a hierarchical and status conscious company that was provided the opportunity of getting the benefit of knowledge and experience of staff of the company working at senior levels having strong competency in operations in construction sector. Therefore, the organization achieved the culture of getting results through and with people where the excellence is measured by the impact of manager on the performance of the organization. Here managers get to know the importance of their performance of their staff members and not the size of workforce.

The Managing Director of the case company also believed that the managers of the company need to change their behaviour and attitudes and upgrade their managerial skills in order to achieve the require changes in culture of the organization. He wanted to create a change program whereby any change designed to improve the performance of the organization had to promote and reinforce the behavioural and cultural change. To achieve this objective the Kaizen program was introduced in the organization to generate small scale improvements on a quick and low cost basis. The approach promoted teamwork and provided a confidence of delegation to managers resulting in empowerment of staff members allowing both staff and managers to acquire new skills. This again helped in achieving cultural excellence through implementing simple form of lean staffing and using Hands-On management technique along with autonomy and entrepreneurship at the case organization.

The customer care program initiated in the company was focused on engendering a positive view of customer by promoting joint teamwork. This initiative was new for a construction company but involved a combination of change and management development just as in case of Kaizen program where the focus was on changing the culture of the organization.

Along with these several other initiatives introduced including Investors in people and redesigning the role of supervisors in construction resulted in a simultaneous tight and loose structure of the organization ensuring that position holders have right attitude, required skills and competent behavioural skills to work in collaboration and close contact with customers as well as staff members.

Therefore, we have realized that the case company has been successful in making use of the concept of cultural excellence for ensuring better performance of the company. The changes introduced in the company has been able to focus on all eight major values of the framework of cultural excellence as provided by Peters and Waterman and thus help in ensuring organizational excellence by up gradation of managerial competency on construction sites and the promotion of development of a more team based culture in the organization.

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Answer 2:

Avoidance of resistance or opposition at XYZ construction

Every program associated with introduction of a change in the organization involves some kind of resistance or opposition from the staff members as well as managers at all levels. However, we have seen from the case example that XYZ Construction faced very little resistance or opposition from staff and managers when a series of changes were introduced across the organization including the working style, philosophy, culture and approach of the organisation as a whole. In order to understand the reasons of such least resistance we need to understand the meaning of change management and the essential elements of an efficient change management program to avoid resistance or opposition from staff members and managers.

Change management and its essential element

Change management is not a single process but a set of processes that are used for ensuring that the changes that are significant for the organization are implemented in a manner that is systematic, controlled and orderly in nature. It is necessary that the human aspect of resistance to change is overcome in an efficient and timely manner so that the achievement of organizational goals of transformation becomes possible in a positive and systematic manner. It is to be noted that the change to be introduced in an organization can be missionary, strategic, operational, technological, etc.

However, every type of change requires a transition from the old set of behaviour to a new expected set of behaviour or working style and that too in a smooth manner (Palmer, 2011). Every organization planning to introduce a change at the workplace requires such implementation without any element of resistance from the staff members. However, such a state of non-resistance becomes possible only when a well-structured approach is applied to manage change. The change management program of an organization comprise of processes as well as management tools required to make changes across the organization.

Further, the role of management holds a key importance in the process of change management. It is the duty of company’s management to facilitate and enable change as desired (Sirkin and Keenan, 2006). The management has the responsibility of identifying the processes that have become obsolete and suggest new methods of working which will prove to be effective for generating better performance of the organization. Then the management has the responsibility of identifying and estimating the impact which the suggested change can bring for the organization as well as for staff members and managers at the individual level. Such an impact should be studied in detail at various levels and the analysis should be based on technical level, work processes level, attitudinal as well as behavioural level (ibid.). This methods of introducing change will help the employees to embrace the change and avoid imposing of change by the management.

Such a detailed analysis and study will help the management to get the feedback from individual employees on the proposed change clarifying whether employees are able to understand the need and benefits of the new or changed processes to be introduced in the organization. This will follow a participative approach where instead of resistance the change, staff members at all levels will help in collaborating for efficient implementation of the change. A major fact to be noted here is that there is a necessity of bringing a behavioural change in order to ensure efficient implementation of change management and introduction of new methods without much of resistance (Palmer, 2011).

The management of the organisation planning a change should keep human resource issues more central than technology issues when we are considering a behavioural change which is the necessity of every change process. As per the view of Davenport (1997), “Change incurred by process innovation is not only broad, but deep, extending from the vision of managers to the attitudes and behaviour of the lowest level of workers. Its significant behaviour component makes process innovation based change qualitatively different from other forms of large scale restructuring.”

Therefore, if staff members and managers are able to understand the benefits of the changed processes for individual as well as for the organization then they will become a part of the change management process and will make it successful in every form and at every level of the firm. Here we need to consider that it is the inertia due to which people resist to change, therefore, there is a need to have a force which is greater than this inertia so as to motivate people to adopt the change making managing change a key activity of every manager.

Change management with a series of linked changes

Now, we need to consider the issue of a change management process where several different changes are being introduced on a simultaneous level. Under such a situation there are changes that require some other changes to be made so as to make the original change possible and acceptable. For instance, in order to ensure staff empowerment at every level in the organization a series of changes will be required including a proper reward system, participative decision making, motivating managers to depend more on delegation, changes in routine work, etc.

These individual changes can be considered as achievable and relatively small in size but on a larger level when considered as a whole system of change these will act as a transformation change across the organization. Here managers need to consider the fact that such a series of change will result in getting into contact with different groups, interests and power relationships within the organization where different types of negotiations and navigations may be required to resolve various issues and managing resistance.

Here it is necessary that managers responsible for change avoid focusing on a single change issue and not making effort to understand the way other changes are related with each other and the manner in which they can have an impact on the staff members. It is required that change manages remember the key to such a change management is to navigate through multiple changes at the same time and at the same pace.

Nature of Cultural change

The change introduced at the case company was cultural change. Culture change occurs when individuals and business organizations are faced not only with a change to the way of doing something, but also a change to a way of thinking and acting based on new and unfamiliar customers and standards (Kotter, 2003). This type of change needs a complete understanding if is to be managed efficiently. Such change programs focus on the “human” side of the organization, such as a company’s general approach to doing business or the relationship between its management and employees. A shift from command-and-control management to participative management is an example of cultural change, as in any effort to reorient a company from an inwardly focused “product push” mentality to an outward-looking customer focus.

Change management and least resistance at XYZ Construction

Considering the changes introduced by the new Managing Director of XYZ Construction we can say that the company went through a cultural change where it was necessary to focus on the human side of the whole program. The Managing Director of the case company took care to ensure participation and involvement of staff members as well as managers so as to avoid any serious resistance and timely acceptance of the new methods introduced through the change process.

To achieve this target, the first priority of the Managing Director was to introduce the element of participative management across the company where the staff members working at senior levels were involved as members of the senior management team of the company. Such a move provided the staff members and managers an opportunity to understand the needs of the changes and benefits to be derived from changes by actually participating in introducing new methods and working styles and decision related to their implementation.

Further, the managing Director introduced Kaizen program where teamwork was necessary and provided confidence to managers to delegate and empower their staff members. Such an approach again involved staff members and managers actually to the new programs and they were in direct control of the change process without any imposition from the management of the company. The approach followed at the case company followed a well-structured approach to change management involving the people who were going to be affected by the changed processes. This helped the company to avoid any resistance and it faced little opposition from staff members as well as managers as both the parties were directly involved at each step of change implementation.

The focus of the change management at the company was on people management where management provided full support and facilitation to enable change without much of resistance. Through this approach a regular feedback and reaction of individual employees on the change was available through which necessary changes to the process became possible bringing in least resistance from employees. Further, the change process focused on behavioural change which has been considered as an essential element of every change process of Davenport. This is another factors that resulted in least resistance from staff members and managers.

Finally, as discussed in last section a change process should consider the other changes required to be nested under the main change process, the change management process followed at the case company ensured that a series of changes required to bring a behavioural change in the company are considered and managed simultaneously. As the aim was to bring a transformation across the organization, the change management process focused on making routines of employees, empowering staff members, recognizing talent of senior experienced managers, following a skill based approach and changing the hierarchical structure of the organization so as to achieve the revolution in the form of changed process and changed people. These elements and focus on human side integration is the major reason of least resistance and opposition to change at the company.

Answer 3:

Approach followed by new Managing Director

There are several techniques through which management introduce organizational change at various level in the organization. However the techniques for managing such changes are developed and refined by specialists of organizational development phenomenon. This phenomenon has been used by the new Managing Director of XYZ Construction as he focused on organizational development through the introduction of a new management style at the company and not limiting his focus on a single change management issue of the organization.

Organizational change and organizational Development

Organizational development is defined as a process to diagnose the problems of the organization by considering the incongruences between environment, structure, processes and people (Yaeger, 2013). Some people argue that this definition is loose and too broad in nature, however, this openness of the concept of organizational development provides the required flexibility to the procedure.

The implementation of organizational development at an organization is specifically associated with the results expected of the business operations. The focus of OD has always remained on building of leadership and capabilities of leading the organization (Yaeger, 2013). These elements of OD are clearly visible in the interventions at XYZ Construction where the focus was on developing future leaders through participative style of management and involving senior managers to the management team of the organization so as to align the managerial effort with business result of better performance and improved productivity of the organization as a whole.

Change can be associated with some short term manipulations for achieving immediate financial gains, but organizational development is a complex phenomenon that includes change as one of its components. Using organizational development for the purpose of short term gains can result in significant failures as it provides an adaptable and real-time discipline for living systems requiring information sharing to govern next moves and adjustments. It is interactive, relational, participative and engaging in nature.

There are several change techniques including education and communication, participation and involvement, facilitation, emotional support, incentives, coercion and manipulation. Each of these techniques have its own merits and demerits that can be assessed and used as per the need and required benefit of the organisation. However, in case of XYZ Construction the new Managing Director has not focused on one of these change management techniques while have followed a much broader approach where a series of actions have been taken to improve the overall effectiveness of the organization along with the wellbeing of its members.

These actions are taken in the form of interventions to ensure employee empowerment and a participative style of management introduced in the organization. The Managing Director of the company started the process by analysing the issues and problems faced by the company and identified its needs and plans an intervention which involved the whole group creating the demand for an organization wide structural change. It is to be noted that organizational change is merely an instrument that helps the manager to reach the ultimate goal of organizational development where a total transformation of the organization is expected. This is not limited to introducing a single change or a combination of changes in the organization, but goes beyond that and introduce new concepts and methods of working so as to take the performance of employees and that of the organization to a whole next level.

The interventions considered for the case company involved the top management and was an effort that started from the top of organizational pyramid by expanding the senior management team of the organization. This did not involve any change in management of the company but broadened the scope of senior management team and broadened the duties and responsibilities of members of the organization handling senior level positions. Thus, there was a changing of the entire organization and modifying the way in which it is related with the internal and external environment through bringing a refinement in the structure and functioning of the organization. Such a process requires the collaboration or organizational leaders which was clearly considered as a starting point at XYZ Construction’s transformation.

Patterns in the change process

Change is typified by certain patterns that affect organizations similarly (Schein, 1995). Lewin’s model of change process is one of the most powerful models on human systems. The fundamental description of change as presented by Lewin has been incorporated into many organizational models in their attempt to understand and direct the process of systematic change. In his model, Lewin has provided three stages to bring about change in any system namely unfreezing, changing and freezing (Schein, 1995).

Unfreezing is the process by which people become aware of the need for change and efforts are thus made to ‘unfreeze’ current behaviour. Changing means to move from the current state to the future desired state. It may include change in behaviour or attitude, resulting in organizational shakeups. The aim is to move in position direction and may include the techniques of restructuring, changes in roles and change of jobs. Freezing involves stabilising new behaviour and the ways of freezing may include awards, recognition rewards and so on.

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Schein (1995) has further developed Lewin’s three stage process model and thereby provide an example of a contemporary approach of organizational change. For Schein, unfreezing is the process of creating motivation and readiness for change. The second step for Schein changing is to help people to see things differently and reach differently in the future. The third step, refreezing involves integrating the change process through personal refreezing and relational refreezing.

Considering the case of XYZ Construction and the transformation planned and introduced across the organisation, we can say that neither Lewin’s change process not pattern of change as provided by Schein applies to the case company. The new Managing Director of the company did not imposed any change in the present state of employees for which they have to go through the state of unfreezing and become aware of the need of a change. Rather, the director introduced a new style of management by empowering senior managers as well as staff members by getting involved in the intervention so as to facilitate the new management style and making people comfortable working with each other.

Further, there was no such state where employees were asked to change their present working patterns or bring a change in their behaviour or attitude towards their work. However, the director ensured a focus of employees on better relations with customers and getting into the actual process of making decisions which improved their behaviour and provided them a positive outlook towards understanding and fulfilling the needs and expectations of the customers of the organization. There was no forced change in the state of operations or behaviour of people where they would have been required to move to a new state of expected performance levels.

Finally, we can say that as unfreezing and changing were not expected under the process initiated by the director, there was no state of refreezing also. The managers and staff members of the organization acquired a new style of management where the focus has remained on participation, sharing of ideas, innovative thinking, team work and collaboration an customer centric approach without bringing any significant change in their present state or styles of working or behaving in the organization.

Emergent and planned change

In the case of XYZ Construction the management of the company realized the need of a series of changes and developments required to be introduced in order to achieve excellence in the operations of the company. The company planned to bring a transformation in its culture, performance as well as structure for which the new director took some significant decisions to improve the competitiveness and become highly competitor in the business. In order to achieve the goals of such transformational management the firm developed new cultures and concentrate on factors that could improve the behaviour and attitude of staff members as well as managers.

Empowerment of employees is a factor that is critical for the successful implementation of knowledge management. The empowerment of employees helps them to comprehend and contribute towards organizational productivity and performance by making them motivated to put extra effort in resolving issues at workplace and learning new concepts and acquiring latest skills required to perform their duties efficiently (Chen, 2012).

However, empowering employees is no change but a development of the management styles through which more power is transferred in the hands of staff members making them empowered enough to take key decisions related with their job and responsibilities. Therefore, we can say that the managing director of the case company introduced a new management style but did not introduce any change to transform the organization for better performance.

This was done without touching the existing state of affairs and working style and attitude of people working in the organization but by giving them much more power and freedom along with flexibility to take key decisions related with their teams, work groups and individual performances. Such power helped in empowerment of employees without introducing any change but by adding a new style of management to the existing operations of the company.

Therefore, we can say that the managing director of the case company did not brought any change but simply introduced a new style of management into the organization so as to achieve the benefit of improved performance at all levels in the firm.

Answer 4:

Issues highlighted in case study

In the case study of XYZ Construction there are several issues that have been highlighted demanding a change in culture of the organization. The case explains that the organization operates in an environment that is highly hostile and aggressive in nature. The construction industry is being characterised with several issues of bitter and frequent conflicts between contractors and subcontractors. Various issues highlighted in relation to case company are discussed as follows:

Autocratic management

The company has remained managed through an autocratic style of management where employees feared the managing Director of the company. The Managing Director of the company was a firm believer of tight control and thus company failed to have any participation of managers or staff members in the decision making process.

Hierarchal approach

The managers at all levels were following a bureaucratic culture and thus company held a very hierarchical and status conscious status where senior management team did not involve any experts or experienced people from the workforce of the company.

Lack of Empowerment

The case study reveals that the staff members as well as managers of the company were lacking any empowerment. The attitudes and behaviour of managers at senior level of the company lacked any customer orientation and was following a traditional approach of non-collaboration between contractors and sub-contractors. This scenarios resulted in lack of loyalty among employees and thus the company had a high attrition rate.

Lack of teamwork and Cooperation

The strict autocratic management of the company resulted in a poor management and a lack of cooperation within the company. There was a lack of cooperation between contractor and subcontractors and there was no belief in partnership approach. Further the company was lacking a positive approach towards team work which is of high importance in the context of South Africa where a multi-cultural workforce exist in every organization. A lack of team work further hampered the cooperative spirit of employees leading to poor performance of the company as a whole.

Lack of customer oriented approach

The members of the company did not had any customer orientation which resulted in poor performance of the company. Customer orientation was never considered as necessary for overall performance of the company and the two were viewed as separate activities.

Analysis of transformation process at XYZ Construction in South African context

The new Managing Director of the company initiated a transformation process where the focus was on bringing key changes in culture of the organization. Transformational change in the first place is the task and challenges of the uppermost echelons of organizational leadership, such as the board of directors and top-management teams. This is the level from where we need to see and experience the inner-organizational drive and commitment to transform and these transformational issues go way beyond the boundaries of the organization itself (Swanepoel, 2010). Transformation is something that must ultimately permeate through the organization and leads to change leadership which is distributed throughout and shared by all organizational members.

This fact is well considered by the Managing Director at XYZ Construction where transformational changes were focused on employee empowerment, starting from top management, giving power to well experienced senior managers and moving towards a participative decision making philosophy.

Transformational change has to be top driven, though, and in particular also in South Africa where we need the corporate will to champion the deep and broad change required to help us and the rest of Africa become a more inclusive and sustainable country and continent respectively (Swanepoel, 2010). In South Africa it is to be noted that the society is still in transformation where management need think and act very differently in order to ensure sustainability in the region. This type of transformational change is thus rooted in organisational survival and issues pertaining to sustainability in the increasingly competitive and global world (ibid.).

Several studies in the context of South Africa has reported that the management in organizations of the region is conservative and traditional. Based on a legacy of racial discrimination, organizations often have employment practices that are discriminatory and have adversarial employee relations. A study conducted by Hofmeyer, it was found that South African organizations were generally over managers and under led where management styles were often seen as rigid, bureaucratic, directive and task oriented, and sometimes decision making was over centralized; and leadership aspects such as direction, vision and effectiveness were often seen as lacking (Jackson, 2009).

Further the elements of consultative management has been found by some researchers but there were no traces of participative management in South African. Organizations are generally hierarchal, centralized and rule bound having an element of consultative management to some extent.

Most of the studies investigating the link between culture and performance found empirical support for a direct link. The researchers that explored this link either used a general measure of culture or several dimensions of culture or focused on types of culture that they related to performance measures of their own choice (Jackson, 2009). The results of these studies presented a broad picture of link between different culture dimensions and performance measures. Dimensions of culture that were found to be positively related to performance measures include those that are more externally oriented toward the relevant business environment and internally oriented ones. Examples of externally oriented dimensions are market, customers, innovation, outcome orientations and results. Internally oriented dimensions are team, humanistic task and quality orientation and entrepreneurship.

Collectively several authors through various studies have promoted the idea that strong cultures are a prerequisite for high performance. Overall, the results of the reviewed studies suggest a contingency type relationship between culture, performance an internal and external firm context (Jackson, 2009). Certain kinds of cultural orientations have a positive effect on financial and nonfinancial performance measures. Among them are more open. Adaptive, customer, mission achievement, people, innovative and quality oriented cultures. Other kinds of culture orientations such as bureaucratic and hierarchical tend to have a negative impact on performance.

A major characteristic to be considered in South African context is the cultural diversity of the country. The country have diverse racial and cultural groups that make the topic of culture sensitive and complex in the nation. In South Africa if employers are aiming to achieve a competitive advantage, there is a need of redefining and repositioning the organization constantly so that they can deal with the increasing need for cultural diversity in various areas within the environment of business (Swanepoel, 2010). A big challenge to seek human knowledge and intellectual capital is faced by employers in South Africa which is to be met through recruiting people from different cultures and making efforts to retain a competent workforce (ibid.).

Further in South African context the diversity can be managed at workplace through emphasizing on team work and group performances. A team of people coming from diverse cultures can help in improving the performance trough different capabilities in solving problems and skills of making decisions (Jackson, 2009). Employees are required to offer opportunity discuss the issues the issues with team members and share ideas and work effectively for the achievement of organizational goals in collaboration with each other. Such management of cultural diversity will help organizations in South Africa to achieve several advantages as interest and need of different customers can be met with the help of a diverse team (ibid.).

For instance, Deloitte concentrates on some key elements of retaining talent for long term careers so that the company is able to offer exception experience in working along with a regular learning environment and a constantly evolving corporate culture (Deloitte, 2013). It is believed at Deloitte that while operating in South Africa it is necessary that these principles are followed as a guide to change implementation in the region so as to create equal opportunities for all in the workplace (Deloitte, 2013). The company transformed its working culture fully to represent the diverse nature of South African community.

It is to be noted that the situation in South African workplaces is very much different from that prevailing in countries such as{" "} USA ,{" "} UK {" "} or{" "} Australia . In South Africa the small but powerful white minority acts as gatekeepers for the majority group while managing the flow in the organizations. The managers in the region have learned to face the situation.{" "}

As per the view of Leonard and Grobler (2006) the programs related with transformation at workplace in South African organizations are required to extent much beyond the individual level. There is a need to concentrate on deep structural changes along with economic advancements. In South Africa it is much more necessary to manage people and their expectation from employers to be fair and more equitable dispensation so as to achieve the real meaning and aim of{" "} diversity management {" "} leading to the aim of transformation in an organization.

Transformational changes in corporate houses refers to the infinite procedures that need significant changes in behaviour, attitudes an mind-set of people resulting in profound change in organizational cultures (Leonard and Grobler, 2006). Such changes that are transformational in nature are associated specifically with the redefining of values of the company, dramatic restructuring and changes in the business re-engineering.

However, in the context of South Africa there lies a political connotation with the activity of corporate level transformation. The transformational leaders face the challenge of dealing with transformational agenda of government as provided under EE act as well as meeting the changing needs of business environment (Jackson, 2010). The EE act directs the leaders to consider the concept of societal empowerment where non-Whites are included in mainstream economic activities. There is a challenge of giving preference to non-Whites or taking decisions on the basis of key principles of diversity management that can have better effect on performance of employees as compared to forced employment of people from minority groups (ibid.).

Motivating employees and offering them a more realistic approach to planning career along with a greater sense of self-directed leadership can help in better performance through reducing anger and frustration of minority sections.

Considering the unique challenges of South Africa, the Managing Director of the case company has taken some efficient decisions while designing the change management program for the company. An emphasis has been placed on empowering staff members as well as managers and providing recognition to senior level experienced managers so as to ensure efficient management of the company. The Managing Director has not relied on EE act only and has move beyond to introduce participative style of management so as to remove the issue of hierarchical structuring of South African organizations that is a major cause of poor performance of organizations (Leonard and Grobler, 2006). Removing such barriers will help the employees at all levels to come in mainstream management of the company and have a voice in decision making which will foster employee empowerment, loyalty and motivation to achieve organizational goals.

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