The German University in Cairo MBA section
City of Carlsbad, California Restructuring the Public Works Department Case Study Answers to Questions
Students: Marwa Mourad Mohamed Kotb Mohamed Ossama Lecturer: Dr. Ahmed Amin Course: Organizational Development and Change, Winter 2013
Question1: What is your diagnosis of the situation in the Public Works Department? The city of Carlsbad is an Oceanfront city of 75,000 that had an Emerging from worst recession in history of city Accordingly transitioning to more business‐like organizational structure was more preferable. The structure chosen was a Functional Organization one, The Public Works department formed by consolidating six previously independent departments into the below Structure: The structure supported the employees satisfaction with their jobs as the focus groups and the interviews conducted by the OD have shown however there was an obvious duplication of activities and resources between some departments under the Public wok director, in addition the intervention wasn’t explained to the employees which has created some kind of fear among the employees. The Public Works Director also acting as the City Engineer could cause problems: possible preferential treatment and conflicts of interest. Individual teams are too cohesive. This created a lack of teamwork, trust, and overall cohesiveness. There were no clearly defined roles, responsibilities, or goals. The Public Works Department seemed to lack a strategic component, more specifically a lack of functional policies, goals, and objectives. Overall, stakeholders viewed the changes as positive for customers and employees because it would allow the anticipated growth to occur in a cost effective manner.
Question2: How would you proceed from this point? Engage employees through participation and empowerment, since employees were suspicious of the reasons for the change, engage them in conversation to explain the reasons for change; ask for opinions and feedback. Facilitate teaching employees what the processes are for other departments so that cohesiveness can span across departments rather than remaining isolated within departments. Discover ways to enhance employees’ appreciation for the work of other departments and/or how the departments affect the work of the others through system models. In addition, one should use collection methods such as observation of employees at work, surveys and questionnaires. Because the Public Works department services the residents of Carlsbad, I would also include them in random questionnaires to find out how their service is working and how it can be improved. Allow the opportunity for a Matrix Structure which can encourage the elimination of redundancy between different departments and make more use of mutual resources and city assists. Question 3: What interventions would you recommend and Why? Since individual teams are internally too cohesive, but lack teamwork capabilities and flowingly don’t trust each other and their top management, one should seek interventions that emphasize the importance of teamwork and help to build trust and commitment of the employees not only to their divisions but to the Carlsband department of Public Works as a whole. Below are a few interventions that may solve this problem. Process consultation & Team building. This intervention focuses on interpersonal relations and social dynamics occurring in work groups. In this intervention the OD practitioner should help group members to diagnose their group functioning and find appropriate solutions for their problems of dysfunctional conflict and mistrust. His goal at this phase should be to allow them to diagnose their own problems to better deal with their conflicts in the future, and cooperate better with each other as a team. Since the MSA is newly formed the OD practitioner should improve the team cohesiveness by team building activities, through which the newly merged teams would get to know each other and cooperate more effectively to accomplishing their tasks. This should involve examination of the group's task, member roles, and strategies for performing tasks. Third‐party intervention. To solve the interpersonal relations problems in Public Work Department which may occur after the merger this intervention would be essential. Interpersonal conflict may occur due to substantive issues, such as disputes over work methods, or from interpersonal issues, such as miscommunication which lead to the individual departments not understanding the reason behind the merge and suspecting that it’s not to their benefit. Goal Setting in a Large‐group interventions. It has been communicated in the article that the Public Works Department was lacking clear strategic component, more specifically a lack of functional policies, goals, and objectives.
Hence, it’s essential to set clear and challenging goals to improve organization effectiveness by establishing a better fit between personal and organizational objectives. There should be large group interventions to communicate the goals and follow up on the MSA achievements as a whole. Integrated strategic change. Most importantly all the above mentioned interventions should fit within an organization overall strategy to improve the quality of service offered by MSA, and work for the benefit of its community and employees. It’s essential for MSA as a whole to set a clear mission behind its activities aiming to help the community, thus increasing employee job satisfaction, by motivating them to work for a purpose and a good cause. Technostructural intervention. It’s essential for Carlsbad Public Work Department to divide work into departments and coordinate among those departments to support its strategic directions. They also must make decisions about how to deliver their services and how to link the appropriate person to the appropriate task. Question 4: For your preferred intervention, develop an action plan for implementation. It has been noticed that the major problems that the Carlsbad Public Works Department was suffering from were related to its organizational structure. Several departments were operating with a redundancy of jobs with similar equipment, i.e. building, park, and street maintenance. In addition, it has also been noticed that some positions like the Director of the department were misplaced, which led to him doubling as a city engineer. However, one has to wonder which technostructural intervention should be implemented. It’s apparent from the current structure of Carlsbad Public Works Department is that it’s Divisional, where departments are divided according to the type of service they offer and not according to their functions. This structure ensures departmental accountability and promotes cohesion among those contributing to the service offered, which shows in the strong cohesiveness amongst the water district employees. However, the structures may promote allegiance to department rather than organization objectives, other problem is that in this structure the organization needs to be relatively large to support the duplication of resources assigned to the units, which is apparently not the case in Carlsbad Public Works Department leading to redundancy in functions and assets. Hence, it would benefit the Carlsbad Public Works Department to mix between the Divisional and Matrix Structure. Some of the facts apparent in the article would promote the Matrix Structure, like: 1. There is real outside pressures for a dual focus due to the department having many “customers”, if we may call them so, with unique demands demonstrated in the variety of services that the department offers, from Parks to Water and Firefighting, each requiring special set of skills and experiences. 2. A matrix organization is appropriate when the organization must process a large amount of information, especially when external environmental demands change unpredictably; while the organization produces a broad range of products or services. Which is the case with Carlsbad Public Works Department, due to the wide range of services it offers and the ever changing work load as the city grows. 3. There is pressure for shared resources, that is since the community demands vary greatly and technological requirements are strict, valuable human and physical resources are scarce. Hence, the matrix structure would work well in this case to facilitate sharing of the Department’s scarce resources.
This merge between the divisional and matrix structure should aim to maximize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of the current structures. The matrix structure can also be exiting and motivating, due to the enlargement as a result of it. Matrix structures can also maintain consistency among departments and projects by requiring communication among managers. The Action Plan Based on the above the restructuring problem should take the priority of the department hence the technostructural intervention is essential and has to be tackled immediately. However, before its implementation Department has to communicate its benefits to the employees; hence, Goal Setting in a Large‐ group intervention may take place first to avoid the resistance to change. In addition, the new structure has to compliment MSA overall strategy, hence, it doesn’t make sense to tackle the organization structure problem before forming a clear strategy for MSA as a whole and Carlsbad Public Works Department in particular. One should involve employees before the intervention ask them about their concerns to let them take ownership of the change and feel responsible for it. The company should also seek motivational methods to encourage the employees to accept the change. Next, there should be job analysis for each redundant job and assessment of assets that could be shared between the departments. After which the department could effectively reengineer its structure.
