Ellen Moore - Living and Working in Korea free essay sample

Case Memo for Living and Working in Korea Problem Statement After Ellen been in Korea for a certain time, she found out that the Korean consultants were less experienced than expected. Besides that, tensions arose between her and the co-manager Jack, regarding who was given directions to the team and they escalated when the project fell behind schedule. At the same time, the Korean Mr. Song is blaming Ellen should be accountable for all problems, and Andrew needs to decide how to proceed so that the project gets completed. Analysis: Commitment Actually, the Korean consultants didn’t show too much commitment in the case. They used to work on control-narrowly defined jobs, implement the order and they never use to raise the idea of optimizing the work. They did their job follow the boss’s expectation in order to not getting fired, no any creative suggestion at all. Managing Interpersonal Conflict It seems two conflict parties have been established in the company, one is Korean, another is American. We will write a custom essay sample on Ellen Moore Living and Working in Korea or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Because Korean management clear mentioned they accepted to work with a qualified woman, however in the end, Ellen became a scapegoat, all of failure was imputed to her, and it was unfair for Ellen. Actually, for Korean management didn’t make a deep analysis to find the essential of the issue. Even though, Andrew will agree to replace Ellen, nobody knows whether it can solve all of problem at all. Disordered reporting line The reporting line is the most disordered what I have saw before. Overlap management: one staff have several superiors, for them it will be very difficult to deal when the superiors have different opinions. Skip grade reporting, one staff should report to someone and his or her superior at the same time, it will also be confused for staff who is the decision maker. The result might be everybody come the highest level people in the reporting line, however rest people will definitely unhappy about it. Recommendation Andrew has to meet with Korean top management to clarify the essential of the issue, make sure everybody has same understanding for current situation. Andrew should insist on Ellen is a qualified women which was proofed by Bahrain Project, and this project as well, e. g. good relationship with the consultants during Jack’s absence period. The problem is the communication between Jack and Ellen. The suggestion will be Jack and Ellen will have to meet once a week to talk about problems that arose. Every Friday they need to spend one or two hours on talking about what went right or wrong the past week. Everything what is said in this meeting will never be communicated to the other employees who work on the project. Nobody can get offended or compromised. Both of them will have to report the result to Andrew, Mr. Park and Mr. Song with other project information, including events, progress, problems, changes and difficulties. Due to the one month delay, all participants of the project need to meet in one big meeting to set targets, how to catch up the schedule in order to complete the project on time. Everybody at the meeting needs to know how serious the situation is and that everybody has to work harder to recover the lost time. The management of the company can implement awards to give incentives for people who would like to benefit from the extra work. Revised and optimized the reporting structure, the purpose is to have a clear reporting structure to make a effective communication, no overlap management and skip a grade reporting. All staff can easily take the order and implementation. To split current consultants to two teams and lead by Jack and Ellen respectively might be a good idea. It can let them compete each others, and performance will be comparable, it will be easily to evaluate who is doing better job.