Bratton and Gold (2003) point out that culture and capacities of an organization which develop from the way the organization manages its employees create the organization’s competitive advantages. However, it is not easy to reach such advantages because people’s behavior is affected by their personalities, values and so on thus usually unpredictable. Take the Corporation, the company in the case study, as an example, it fails to manage people. The context of the case is the implementation of a new computer system, which is expected to upgrade the data flow in the whole organization and then reduces administrative cost and creates competitiveness for the company. To accomplish this project, it requires the collaboration and team work among many individuals and departments. However, the lack of political skills, conflict solving skills and attitude toward conflicts as well as ineffectiveness of a group result in the failure of the project. The aim of this paper indicates, analyzes and assesses these issues through three various aspects including politics, conflict management and group management.
POLITICS
Robbins and Barnwell (2006) view politics as the attempts made by groups and individuals in a particular organization with the aim of supporting for or opposing rules, policies, objectives or decisions in which the outcomes directly influence on them. Those coalitions and individuals have different interests and hence use political games to achieve their own goals (Bolman & Deal 2008). These battles can cause destructive consequences. Therefore it is crucial to manage politics to keep organizations far from unnecessary struggles. In the case, the change agent, Barbara Mitchell who suggests the installation of new IT system has to cope with many stakeholders with various interests. There were many politics problems and this leads to dysfunctional outcomes of her project. In this paper, model of five stakeholder types and suggestion for
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