Scripts

Unit 4
4.1
1 Stock levels have been low for two weeks now.
2 Why do we always have to check with the parent company before making decisions?
3 Yes, that’s fine. If you could just hold on a minute, I’ll need to transfer you to a supervisor.
4 We need to deliver this consignment on Friday.
5 The production line is operating at full capacity.
6 The Board of Directors has fixed the Annual General Meeting for Tuesday the second.
7 Can you e-mail head office as soon as possible and find out about the designs for the new
window displays?
8 I’m afraid all our engineers are out working on repairs at the moment.
4.2
1 Well, in some ways, it’s quite a conservative company, so some of the systems are a bit old-
fashioned. There’s still a lot of paperwork, so I suppose you could say it’s very bureaucratic. I
seem to spend a lot of time looking in files, both on the computer and in our paper archives.
2 Our department seems to be busy all the time. We’re always getting enquiries from
journalists and dealing with the broadcast media. I guess it’s because we have such a highprofile
boss. Although the company itself is quite hierarchical, our department is actually very
democratic – everyone is an equal member of the team.
3 It’s a big department, and we deal with a lot of employees. It’s everything from recruitment
and running training courses through to dealing with retirement. It’s quite a progressive
company, so everything is open plan – which is a bit difficult if I need to have a private meeting.
There are meeting rooms, but they always seem to be busy.
4.3
1 bureaucratic 7 centralised
2 decentralised 8 dynamic
3 impersonal 9 professional
4 caring 10 conservative
5 democratic 11 hierarchical
6 market-driven 12 progressive

4.4 (I = Interviewer, RR = Richard Rawlinson)

I: How do you analyse a company’s organisation?
RR: Well, we take a fairly broad view of organisation. We start with the formal structure of lines
and boxes – who reports to who, what their official responsibilities are. But it’s mu-, very
important to go beyond that and think first about their decision rights – what does the position
actually have the authority to decide? Who do they need to consult, who do they need to keep
informed, who do they need to have approvals? Third area is information flows. If you want to
understand how a company works, you need to know who knows what, so we look at
communications, information, the sort of data that is provided and who gets it. And then the final
area is the rewards, the performance management – not just who gets bonuses and what they’re
based on, but how do you get promoted and how do people get rewarded in all the other ways
that provide incentives in an organisation? We put all those four things together – the formal
organisation, the decision rights, the information flows and the incentives – and we call that the
‘organisational DNA’. So we put a lot of emphasis on understanding that.
4.5 (RR = Richard Rawlinson)
RR: If you want to start an analysis, we have a survey tool – it’s on a website, where you can
answer just a small number of questions about your organisation and then we compare that to
answers from about 40,000 other executives and we can recognise patterns, and that helps us to
say that your organisation is like these other organisations, and so we can get some learning from
comparable organisations. And we call that the ‘orgdna profiler’. It gives you a superficial view
and it’s a good place to start the conversation. But then we have to go much deeper. And we
usually organise both workshops with the executives and probes into particular aspects that
seem to be particularly interesting. So, for example, we might take a single major controversial
decision and look at how that was actually made, and really you often find that the reality is quite
different from the theory.
4.6 (I = Interviewer, RR = Richard Rawlinson)
I: Can you give us an example of how you’ve helped a company with its organisation?
RR: I recently did a major piece of work for a very large, global American company that was
organised by function. So Manufacturing had responsibility for all the plants around the world,
Marketing ran all the brands in every country. It was a very efficient organisation, but it wasn’t
very good at responding to the local markets, and so they decided that they wanted to move to a
geographically based organisation. So we had to figure out, first of all, what were the right
geographies – was every country a separate geography or are we going to put some together?
What are you going to do for Europe as a whole, as well as what you are going to do for Germany
and for Spain? Um, so we did a lot of looking at how the business operated, where products were
made, where they were shipped to, how competitors were organised. And we also had to spend
a lot of time thinking about whether we needed regional organisations or whether every single
business unit would report back to the headquarters, er, in the US.
4.7 (M = Maria, A = Alex)
M: Hello, Alex, great to see you again.
A: Hi, Maria. How are you?
M: Fine, thanks. I haven’t seen you for ages. We last met at that trade show in Geneva, didn’t
we? How is everything going with you?
A: Yes, we did … er great … pretty well at the moment, thanks. I’m still in the same department,
but I got promoted last year, so I’m now Head of Marketing. I’m in charge of 50 people.
M: Fantastic!
A: How about you? Are you still in sales?
M: Actually, no. I changed my job last year. I’m in finance now. I’m really enjoying it.
A: That’s good.
M: Yes, but the big news is, Alex, I finally passed my driving test! It took me three attempts, but I
finally did it and now I am going to get a sports car.
A: Really? That’s great! Well, congratulations!
4.8 (B = Bob, K = Karin)
B: Hi, my name’s Bob Danvers.
K: Hi, good to meet you. I’m Karin Schmidt.
B: Which part of the group are you working for?
K: I’ve just joined MCB. We provide all the market research. What about you?
B: I’m with Clear View.
K: I don’t know much about Clear View. What sort of projects do you work on?
B: Well, we’re basically an outsourcing business. We supply companies and organisations with
various services, including IT, office equipment, travel and even cleaning services.
K: I see. And is it a new company?
B: No, we’re well established. The company was founded in the mid-1980s, and we’ve been
growing rapidly ever since. It’s organised into four divisions. We have over 7,000 employees;
we’ve got our headquarters in London and offices in New York, Cape Town and Sydney – so we’re
pretty big.
4.9 (F = Frank, N = Nathalie, C = Christoph)
F: Christoph, I’d like you to meet Nathalie. She’s joining us from the Italian subsidiary. She’ll be
with us for the next 12 months.
N: Nice to meet you, Christoph.
C: It’s a pleasure.
F: Nathalie speaks fluent Spanish, so she could be very useful when you’re dealing with our South
American customers. She’s also very keen on sailing, so you two should have plenty to talk about.
C: Oh, that’s interesting. I’m sure you’re much better than me – I’m a beginner, really, but I do
love it. Let me show you where you’ll be working. It’s over here. By the way, would you like a
coffee?
4.10 (C = Carl, F = Françoise, JP = Jean Pierre, P = Paolo)
C: I suppose you’ve all seen the Vice-President’s message on the notice boards. What do you
think, Françoise?
F: Huh, it’s pretty typical, isn’t it? It’s all about how the company will benefit. What about us?
Don’t we count?
All：Yeah/Right/Exactly.
F: I mean, why should we leave this beautiful building, on one of the most famous avenues in the
world? We love it here. The move’s not convenient for me at all. If we go to Beauchamp, my
husband will have to drive 120 kilometres every day to get to work. He’ll soon get tired of doing
that. And what about my children’s education? Will the schools be any good in Beauchamp? I
have no idea. How about you, Jean Pierre?
JP: Well, to be honest, it doesn’t bother me. I’m really tired of living in Paris. It’s so stressful here,
everyone rushing around, trying to make money. I wouldn’t mind moving to a quieter area.
Beauchamp sounds quite nice, and the countryside outside the town is pleasant, I believe. What
about you, Paolo? Do you think the move will be good for us?
P: I am absolutely against it. It will upset families and cause a lot of problems for some staff. I will
have to sell my apartment if we move. I only bought it last year, so I will probably lose a lot of
money – I don’t think I will get any compensation for that, do you? You don’t agree, Jean Pierre, I
can see that.
JP: Well, you’re right, Paolo, it’ll cause a lot of problems, there’s no doubt about that. But the
company will benefit a lot, and that’s important, too. In the long run, the move will increase our
revenue, make us more competitive and keep us in jobs. That’s a good reason for moving, isn’t it,
Carl? What do you think?
C: Maybe, but I feel pretty depressed at the moment. I hope they’ll postpone the proposal.
There’s a lot of bad feeling about it. I tell you one thing, a lot of our best staff will refuse to
relocate. They can easily get another job here in Paris, they won’t want to move. They’ve got a
really good lifestyle, and they won’t want to give it up. The management will get a big shock if the
relocation goes ahead.

Case Study
Tony Page is an independent consultant who teaches, writes about and facilitates change in
companies, government and public services around the world. He works with the leaders of large
organisations on subjects including strategy, leadership behaviour, culture, and organisation
development.
Case study commentary (I=Interviewer, TP= Tony Page)
I: Tony, how well is Instep dealing with the issue of relocation?
TP: Well if Instep were Apple or Microsoft or Google, they wouldn't have a problem, because
their staff would move with them wherever they went in the world. However, in this case, the
staff are going to have to choose. Do they like Paris more than they like the company? So far, the
company boss is doing one thing that’s right, which is asking questions before making up their
mind. However, there are several things that are mistakes. Principally, the mistake is they're
driving too fast towards the relocation, before staff have understood the reasons why or had the
opportunity to consider their options. Where this leaves them is in the position of children, or
victims, and the effect of this afterwards is a reduction in their motivation, a negative attitude,
and this of course impacts on the bottom line or the profits of the company.
I: What typical stages do staff go through in such reorganisations?
TP: Well, whenever a company initiates a major change of this kind, whether it be
relocation, merger or reorganisation, this clearly has an effect on staff that goes beyond their job
into the whole of their lives. This means that every individual will take some time to adjust.
Beyond that we know quite a lot about the process of adjustment and this has been described as
the change curve. Initially, for each person their energy drops. Following this, they go through a
series of quite negative emotions, including first of all denial, where they say, this isn't happening
to me; to an angry phase where they're, um, irritated and frustrated and affected by it; through
blame, where they say it's someone else's fault; to guilt, where they start to blame themselves;
and then to a position of sadness, where they’re just unhappy about what's happening but they
have realised that this is real.
From this point, when they start to make a decision about which way they go, their optimism and
confidence starts to re-emerge. The message for the company here is that you may have made a
decision to move, but each individual has to make a choice for themselves before they have
adapted－a choice whether to stay in Paris or whether to go to Beauchamp.
I: What are the risks and opportunities that companies face in such situations?
TP: Well let's begin with the risk. The risk, of course, is that because staff join a company with
certain expectations and something very unexpected comes along like this relocation, that this
becomes a massive distraction and it affects motivation, performance and even whether people
are willing to stay with the company. You could lose your talent. When it comes to opportunities,
this really is a big opportunity for Instep to clarify the situation they are in. The pressures they
experience in terms of cost, in terms of market competitiveness, and if they can achieve out of
this a shared understanding in the workforce as well as a clear decision to move, then they have
the possibility that individuals will come to work each day ready and motivated to do what's
needed.