NRMA Case Analysis

Flatten the organization's structure, comprising 4,700 employees

Appoint nine general managers to control the financial services and the motoring association

Fold the life insurance, financial planning, and investment operations into a new financial service division

"The restructuring was done to reduce costs, by merging departments and trimming staff members" (p. 1).

Embracing all of these changes was a desire to institute a continuous attitude of Total Quality Management (TQM.)

Any one of these would pose a challenge for the HR services of a company. All of them combined create a number of critical issues that can be discussed in an analysis of the company's human resources capabilities.

Difference Between Personnel Management and

Today, many large businesses are undergoing fundamental shifts in the environment in which they operate, a shift that challenges key executives to new thinking about business organization. One of the results of this new thinking is

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sirable, participation is probably preferable to assignment when you expect resistance to difficult challenges (Robbins, 1997, 54). We can assume that the organizational challenges that Willing and his key staff face can be defined as "difficult." The challenge that will face the HR manager is to remind Willing on a regular and positive basis that TQM is a growing process, and not an abstract goal. Drucker and Robbins both discuss, at some length, the concepts of setting "stretch goals." Although "stretch goals" have become used in many different situations, they are defined, for this case, within the boundaries suggested by Kerr (1995) who said [the challenge for managing people is] to find a middle ground. If you set easy goals, people may meet them but probably won't exceed them by very much. If you set extremely hard goals, people lose faith in them (Kerr, 1995, 8). Link Between Organizational Strategy and HRM Too often, company strategists tend to rely totally on projections and futures, without taking into consideration the "human capital expense." This is best explained by the simple suggestion that human beings resist change of any sort. And since organizations are comprised of humans, this resistance can be a
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Approximate Word count = 1786
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)