Analysis of HBS case on Charlotte Beers at Ogilvy & Mathers (Organisational behaviour).

          An organization, in its simplest form, is comprised of people brought together to achieve a common goal whether it be solving a problem, selling a product or providing a service. The existence of the organization is wholly dependent on the collective body of individuals involved and it is these individuals that are the driving force behind the success or failure of a company. The relationships that connect the people within the organization dictate how the culture is developed and perceived.

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All Organisations posses a distinct form of culture with some having more than a single culture. This culture is usually very difficult to measure, change and most especially change.

“Among the elements of social and cultural structure, two are important for our purposes. These are analytically separable although they merge imperceptibly in concrete situations. The first consists of culturally defined goals, purposes, and interests … The second phase of the social structure defines, regulates, and controls the acceptable modes of achieving these goals." (Merton 672,673)

The organisation is the background within which the HR function works. Understanding the deep nature of the organisation has to be the main goal for HRM as the nature of the organisation has a huge impact on how people are managed in the business.

An oganisation’s culture can be perceived as its style, atmosphere and personality. For Home Depot, it was all about ‘entrepreneural high spiritdness’ which gave the members of the workforc the freedom to decide what they preceived to be the best for the company.

Charlotte Beers became Ogilvy & Mather's first outsider CEO after its acquisition by WPP Group Plc in 1991. According to her memo dated May 19th, Beers' objective was to "re-invent" the mega-agency, whose inertia and complacency had eroded its competitiveness since the 1980s. In fact, Beer's tenure at Ogilvy constituted a re-creation of the agency, redefining its aims, processes, people, and structure in reaction to the demands placed by the changing advertising industry.

My initial impression of Charlotte Beers, based on the case study “Charlotte Beers at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide,” is that she is good at being her authentic self, and employs a number of leadership tactics, including charismatic leadership, coalitional leadership, and, to a degree, she appears to be attempting transformational leadership; however, it’s evident that there is something lacking in the end results of her attempts at revitalizing Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide (Ibarra & Sackley, 2011). Although Beers uses good communication with her senior managers in an attempt to build her coalition and get their buy-in on her vision of this concept of Brand Stewardship, and she does listen to feedback from her people, it appears as though she hasn’t been able to clearly articulate her vision well enough to bring it to that next level of “embeddedness” (Daft & Lane, 2015). The lack of support she ultimately receives from the senior managers is preventing Beers from becoming the sort of transformational leader she is striving to be, or even needs to be, in order to facility the types of revolutionary changes she’s attempting to instill in the organization. The majority of the company’s employees appear to be set in the old mindset of how advertising is successfully created, and there doesn’t appear to be much of a sense of community between the various office locations which span the globe. They’re lacking “followership.” If she is truly going to bring the concept of “Brand

Beers quickly exploited her charisma by instituting a process that conformed to Beer, Eisenstat & Spector 's model for effective organizational change. First, Beers immediately mobilized commitment to change through her videotaped appeal to all 7,000 Ogilvy employees, as well as in one-on-one meetings with executives. In addition, Beers gained valuable perspective by meeting with 50 clients in 6 months. In each instance, Beers relied on her charisma to coax shared "expectations and dreams" from internal and external stakeholders. Clearly, by asking each group what they can accomplish together, Beers sought a shared vision of how Ogilvy could organize and manage for competitiveness. Her rallying point: Brand Stewardship.

Beers first course of action at O&M was to pick a small group of change thirsty individuals, regardless of their current positions, to help her orchestrate the needed change. She only wanted the “people that got it” to help her clarify the vision O&M needed to recapture lost and win new accounts. She knew that this vision must be brand focused, but which direction was still unknown. Beers called for a secret meeting of these “thirsty for change” individuals in which they agreed upon Brand Stewardship as the focus for O&M’s vision. Even though there was a consensus as to this direction, many were still unsure of how it was to be implemented. Even after reading this case, Brand Stewardship is still an ambiguous term and perhaps on purpose. Beers’ leadership in the past came from her ability to

Beers recognized the need for a fundamental change in O&M to revitalize the organization. O&M was the world’s sixth largest advertising agency. Beers wanted to fully utilize the existing competencies and assets of the company to chart a new course for the agency. She wanted to bring the company out of the status quo and regain the

Beers wants to build on the legacy left behind by David Ogilvy since she feels that the company has all the right ingredients but is just not using its core strengths (the world wide offices and the creative people).

The fourth step into the creation of executable strategies relies in the alignment of resources, purposes, and strategical thinking contemplations into reality. The rationale of this step is to create

Brenda McCain, Human Resource Manager at the Westpark store, views her position as the primary contact for all human resource related topics and issues. She has developed policies and procedures as a guideline for the hiring process and spends a lot of time managing the human resource staff. Brenda’s primary responsibilities are interviewing and hiring applicants, assisting the trainer with the new employee training classes, and administering the performance evaluation and career planning processes. She is also the sole person responsible for all disciplinary actions, which include gathering the initial

According to Kurt Lewin’s change model (1947), there are three aspects of managing organizational change: unfreezing, change intervention and refreezing. By observing the change model, all four characters are seen to go through the freezing stage when they found the first cheese station.