Using the video case study explain on which extent the organisation keeps their side of the empowerment bargain?

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Coursework: Using the video case study explain on which extent the organisation keeps their side of the empowerment bargain?

         Nowadays, a new business process emerges, the empowerment. The context is that managers are working in pair with employees. Managers give opportunity to the staff to give their ideas, and being more involved in the firm as a whole. Its mean more confidence and trust in each other. Does the empowerment way is a threat against the organisation?

 The aim is to discuss the extent to which the organisation is able to keep their side of the empowerment “bargain”. Therefore, the following study is supported by the “Alliance and Leicester Building society”. It occurs in the banking sectors and this firm is a call centre on which the empowerment is present. The two mains actors are the managers on the first hand, and the Customers Service Agents (CSA) on the other hand. The customer service aim is to deliver a rapid answer to the client needs. The CSA are operating directly with the clients while managers are trying to improve the service efficiency. By improving efficiency it means implant and developed the empowerment. Different stages are identified in the firm.

Firstly, there is the involvement process characterized by participation and managers attention to the CSA ideas. It is followed by the professional relation in the firms, between managers and CSA. The customers’ relation, like the greeting to the clients and how it is managed. There is an important and crucial step, which is the IT (information technology) point, materialized by the monitoring system. It is named as an “empowerment tool”. Moreover, there is a surveillance point, with tape record and office structure. Then the work atmosphere and CSA job feeling and future career.

Beginning with a brief explanation of the empowerment origin, the following study (of the Alliance and Leiceister empowerment process) aims to focus on the previous empowerment stages to explain if the Control leads the organisation to keep the power of the empowerment “Bargain”.

The call centres can be classified as the perfect example of the globalisation consequence. The globalisation was huge on the past 20 years. Companies grow and expand abroad. The market was not local anymore but international. As much as the firm grow, the competition increased in the same time. The firm were obliged to open their capital to rich investors and the market is now driven by the productivity and efficiency. As it was proposed, shareholders are now driving the firm goals and controlling the managers (Fama and Jensen).Globalisation has driven the shareholder control against organisation.

“It is time to stop paving the cow path” (Hammer and Champy, 1990) explained that globalisation and shareholder control had increase the importance of productivity and efficiency. This means that new way of working was necessary, and it is called the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR). BPR is the launches of empowerment with training offers, forming process teams, flatten hierarchies and measurement of results. Greater empowerment leads to flexibility (BPR). In fact the BPR is emphasized in the Alliance and Leicester building and the different empowerment stages as well. The firm can be classified as a post-bureaucratic one’s, internal relations which are fast, flat and flexible.

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The first stage of empowerment is the CSA involvement, a frame in the building entry said “today is a new opportunity to bring your idea” illustrate it. The CSA are invited to participation meeting in which they speak about subject like “corporate image” and managers collect the staff ideas. The question is to know if the CSA have really the skills to give an efficient participation. The CSA are employed because of their socials skills and not real corporate knowledge, add to this they are also trained on social competencies (Callaghan G, Thompson P). It emphasize that while managers ...

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