Research Korner: HRM Case Studies

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY             This project report presented a detailed analysis of the human resource aspect of a Knowledge Management (KM) project launched by Bossini International Holdings Limited. It highlights the importance of the full cooperation of project team members, the importance of specifying their roles and accompanying responsibilities and how vital is information dissemination to project implementation. The paper commenced with an introduction and brief background of the KM project, followed by a full description of the project context, which included an account of the internal and external environment in which the project operates, the scope, duration, stages, objectives and issues surrounding it. A section on stakeholders enumerated and discussed their roles, influence, legal nature and management relationship in the project’s context. A figure was also provided for clearer illustration. The organizational structure was likewise illustrated and discussed that showed how the particular structure affected the project’s implementation. Further in the paper, team members’ roles and its accompanying responsibilities were discussed, as well as the stages of team development and selection process of team members. The paper concludes with some positive findings on the projects progress so far, and also identified a communication channel threat foreseen in the future. The recommendation at the end expressed downsizing as the suggestion for this potential problem in the communication channel.       TABLE OF CONTENTS DESCRIPTION                                                                                                PAGE NO. Executive Summary ……………………………………………………….          1 Table of Contents ………………………………………………………….          2 Introduction and Background ……………………………………………           3-4 Project Context ……………………………………………………………            4-6 Stakeholders            ………………………………………………………………            6-11 Organisational Structure ………………………………………………..                 11-13 Roles, Responsibilities and Relationships of             Project Team Members …………………………………………              13-15 Team Development and Conflict ……………………………………….                        15-16 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………..                        16-18 Recommendation ………………………………………………………..             18-19 References ……………………………………………………………….             20-22 List of figures and tables ………………………………………………..             23                   KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROJECT: BOSSINI INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS LIMITED I. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND             This report aims to present a detailed human resource management analysis of a project launched by the Hong Kong-based fashion retailer, Bossini International Holdings Limited. The paper was prepared in an attempt to bring about the essential factor that contributes to a successful project implementation, and that is, through the proper handling of the project team in terms of team development, conflict resolution and suitable role delegation. This paper highlights the importance of including human resource management in a project plan, in that with the inclusion, the project manager will have an idea of what can be expected from his people and what the probable project outcomes are in terms of the people involved in it. This report was organized through an initial background research on the organisation involved, which in this case, is the Bossini firm. After an initial background research, efforts have concentrated on the gathering of relevant information that will support this paper’s validity. Finally, all the facts and figures gathered from various sources were synthesized into a full report.             Bossini International Holdings Limited believed that staff and customer knowledge is an important potential source of competitive advantage ( 2005). With that in mind, the company, in 1994, established an inter-departmental knowledge management (KM) task force lead by an executive director of human resources and KM. The project aimed to tackle two fronts: customer intimacy, which would see service improvements through increased understanding of customer behaviours and purchase patterns; and operational excellence, which would attempt to boost efficiency through the reduction of manual processes ( 2006). II. PROJECT CONTEXT[1]             The nature of the project is an internal one, although involved are the staff (internal) and the customers (external). An examination of the internal environment would show that there are 4,300 people employed by the firm as of date[2]. This just means that the project is to affect 4,300 people in the course of its implementation. The customers, or the external environment of the project, is scattered in 18 countries around the globe, with four core markets located in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore. Because the actual number of customers is virtually impossible to determine, this project is aimed at all their customers from each one of the 18 countries in which they currently have branches. The scope of the project is company-wide, meaning the whole firm is involved in the implementation. HR executives, in particular, are at the forefront of this drive to improve knowledge sharing, while sales and marketing heads came up with suggestions that would help Bossini get to know its customers better. Ordinary employees have a part in this as well, because they are the actual people that were assigned to get essential customer information. The project is to last for as long as the company is in operation, because in effect, knowledge management will become a part of how Bossini does business from the time the project was launched.             The project started with Andrew Ling, regional Information Technology (IT) manager for Bossini collecting a ‘wish list’ of projects from various departments. The business value, effort and costs of each were spelled out in the list, and the priorities of each evaluated in terms of their alignment with the vision of upper management ( 2006). Next came the collaboration of this ‘wish list’ with an information system designed by Ling’s IT team to fit the unique needs of the retail group. This system became the central tool for facilitating the project, which came in the forms of a dual-level dashboard for senior management and key users (which provides precise, daily sales, profit and margin information for each of Bossini's outlets and compares these figures to those from previous years and stated targets and displays the performance of individual garments, helping managers pick out trends before they peak and to anticipate inventory excess or shortages), a B2B platform to link Bossini to its manufacturers and suppliers and a revamped intranet, which enables employees to swap best practices, access daily news on the firm and its competitors, and file applications for leave electronically. The company is currently in the stage of introducing these changes within the company. Activities such as training that facilitates the change process on the operation and system levels are being given to Bossini’s employees.             Objectives of this knowledge management project are: (1) empower staff to connect with their clients; (2) to secure the commitment of all business units and establish a feedback loop that ensured progress was regularly tracked; (3) to bolster Bossini's information assets; (4) to increase productivity gains and the eliminate much of Bossini's bureaucratic tangles that would foster a more pleasant work environment conducive to retaining staff. The new server and hardware investments for the SMS gateway associated with the B2B project totaled around US$8,000. Hardware and software costs for the traffic counting module ran at only US$6,500-$9,000 per shop. Technical issues in the form of implementing the traffic counting module, registering discrepancies between the number of people counted entering and exiting shops in the early stages were met by the project, but the IT team responded to them by tuning the technology in order to come up with 95% accuracy. III. STAKEHOLDERS             A formal definition of stakeholders would show that they are ‘individuals and organisations who are actively involved in the project, or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected as a result of project execution or successful project completion’ ( 1998). A study result suggests that the value of including multiple stakeholder groups may not be in creating a strategic plan that precisely meets legal or administrative mandates, but rather in building consensus ( 2001). Project stakeholders, according to , usually include the project manager, the customer, users, team members within the performing organisation, and the project sponsor (2000). An identification of the stakeholders and determination of their needs and expectations is important to ensure a successful project ( 1996). In this particular case, Figure 1 would illustrate the major stakeholders involved in the Bossini KM project, both internal and external. FIGURE 1. Major Stakeholders                               The diagram clearly showed the groups of people who have a stake at the projects success or failure. Figure 2 would show the group’s interrelationship.   FIGURE 2. Stakeholders’ Interrelationship                         The illustration above shows how the stakeholders interact with each other. The stockholders and the management come in contact with each other in meetings to discuss the possible benefits of the project to the stockholders. The stockholders could then voice out their opinion, either in support or in disagreement. The management also deals with their employees, particularly the Human Resource Department, who supervises the training of staff to acquire of the skills needed to operate the new system. The management also deals with the suppliers, principally the purchasing department, for procurement of the new hardware for each Bossini store needed to facilitate knowledge management. The management likewise interacts with the project team members[3], to monitor the development of the project. The employees relate to the customers, in that they are the main point of contact to fully knowing customers’ needs and preferences, which they will relate to the management so that the latter could align their plans with the findings of their employees. The employees cooperate with the project team members by being the media that carries the project’s purposes to action. The project team members report to the management for the project’s progress and ask for their additional support if needed. The team communicates with the employees how the project will be carried out, basically informing them how the system works. Hand in hand with them in this information dissemination is the Human Resource Department who supervises over employees’ training. The legal nature of the stakeholders’ relationship with each lies in their common bond in the law, which is the contract between them. The management has an employment contract with the employees, supplier contract with the suppliers, project contract with the project team and a legal relationship with the stockholders. Their relationships in the particular project is thus bound by such contracts, contracts whose stipulations need to be followed to avoid legal disagreements and hassle-free facilitation of the project. In the stage of project planning, the Bossini management already considered stakeholders. The management strategy used by the organisation was a communications campaign. This was done to ensure that the major stakeholders and their interests are identified and strategies are developed to engage them. In this campaign, which extended not only to the internal but also to the external business environment, the project team set out to inform the management first. In Ling’s words, ‘The communication among top management, department heads and IT was done… and we drove things to happen on the basis of regular meetings’ (as cited in 2006). Employees were engaged in the project through regular dialogue, which Ling deemed as essential in ensuring the various IT-related initiatives under Bossini's KM system. Additionally, the regional IT manager also said that they also implemented some tools to facilitate communication, such as a project dashboard that could be accessed from the corporate Internet so that users knew the progress of each project. Change management strategy was also used through involving users at the beginning to design new processes and walking them through system prototypes. In the management of change, the focus of managers should be on communicating information that will serve to unfreeze the system through reducing the restraining forces rather than increasing the driving forces ( 1988;  1988). There was a project manager to ensure user commitment and accountability. The success of the project can subordinately lie in the determination of the respective roles and degree of influence that each stakeholder has on the company project. Understanding these two factors helped Bossini in easier facilitation of the project plan. The roles and respective levels of influence over the project outcome are shown in Table 1 for better illustration. There are three levels of influence for the purpose of this report: (H) – high; (M) – medium; (L) – low. TABLE 1. Stakeholders’ Roles and Levels of Influence STAKEHOLDER ROLE LEVEL OF INFLUENCE 1. Stockholders Main source of project resource/fund H 2. Management Major decision makers H 3. Employees Carry out project into action H 4. Team Members Oversees project H 5. Suppliers/Manufacturers Hardware Source M 6. Customers Project recipients and major source of information needed for the project H               Table 1 showed that stockholders, the management, the employees, team members and customers exert a high level of influence on the outcome of the KM project. The stockholders, because in their hands lie the project’s lifeblood. If they disagreed with how the project is carrying on, they could withdraw their support anytime, which could cause serious hindrance for the project. However, should they choose to cooperate, the project will have a considerable potential of becoming successful. The management, as they have a hand on most every major decisions to be made with respect to the project undoubtedly exerts a strong influence on the project’s outcome. The employees and the IT team members are the key players in this project. Without people to carry out the project’s objectives, the efforts exerted by the IT team will be futile. This is the role that employees play. How they implement the KM system within Bossini will determine the output of the project. The IT team members, in this case, are the people at the helm who control and monitor the project’s activities. How effectively and efficiently they carry out their responsibility directly affects the results of their project. IV. ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE FIGURE 3. Project Organizational Chart                                 According to , the management's responsibility within an organisation is to continually carry out three management functions: 1) planning; 2) controlling; and 3) organizing (as translated by  1949). It is in the organizing function that the design and decision upon the most appropriate organisational structure for achieving the organisation's goals is found ( 1993). An organisational structure institutionalizes how people interact with each other, how communication flows, and how power relationships are defined ( 1987). In line with this, the project management organisation is an integral part of the existing management structure, and must be compatible with it ( 1981). It is in these theories that the project structure of the Bossini group was based. Figure 3 was structured based on the interview by . Following is an excerpt from the interview: ‘The project structure, Ling notes, was designed to secure the commitment of all business units and establish a feedback loop that ensured progress was regularly tracked. “The communication among top management, department heads and IT was done… and we drove things to happen on the basis of regular meetings”,  says’ (2006). The organisational members involved in the project, are: (1) the management; (2) the stockholders; (3) the manager of the KM project, Mr. , who is, at the same time, the Director of Information Technology of the Group who is responsible for the overall strategic IT planning, IT service and project execution for Bossini; (4) Mr. ’s IT staff; (5) the HR Department, led by Mr. and assisted by the various branches’ staff; (6) the sales and marketing department, both headed by Ms.  (in the organisational chart, though, the sales and marketing departments were separated because it functions as two individual departments) supported by the staff from both departments in the 18 branches worldwide; and (7) the 4,300 employees of the company who will carry out the project. The KM project team essentially consists of: (1) the project manager (Mr. ); (2) the IT team (who are also company employees directly under the supervision of Mr. ); (3) the employees; (4) the project sponsors (in this case, the Bossini management and stockholders took care of the expenses incurred by the KM project, so they will be taken collectively in discussion) and; (5) the administration people (composed of the sales, marketing and HR departments, which will be also taken as a group). ROLES, RESPONSIBILITIES AND RELATIONSHIPS OF PROJECT TEAM MEMBERS             As mentioned, Mr. , his IT department staff, the employees, the project sponsors and the administration people compose the KM project team. Since this project is basically internal in nature, there was no outside participation in the selection of team members. The main idea was to keep the team as involved as possible. Once information was disseminated within the company and support was gained from the various Bossini departments, the project rolled out smoothly.             The main roles of a project manager can be categorized into three: delegation, authority and responsibility ( 1995). ‘The delegation process involves assigning tasks to others, providing them with the authority needed to execute those tasks, and then holding them accountable for the results ‘ (1991). According to , authority may be defined as the ‘probability that a command with a given specific content will be obeyed by a given group of persons’ (as cited in  2002). ‘A leader must have authority to perform his or her function. An important aspect of leadership is general acceptance of the person at the helm. True leaders do not need to constantly impose their authority directly’ ( 1994). On the other hand, a popular definition of responsibility is that it is the social force that binds you to your obligations and the courses of action demanded by that force (’s 2006). Gathering from Mr. ’s interview, his role in the KM job is to spearhead the whole project. His general responsibilities derived from this role were as follows: (1) to oversee and supervise the whole project operation; (2) regularly review project status reports; (3) conduct regular meetings with the project team; (4) make the decisions critical to the success of the project; (5) focus on change management to help the company cope up with the new system and; (6) coordinate with sponsors for project funding.             The IT department people’s role is to implement the project’s objective. They were basically in charge of: (1) information dissemination within the company regarding the KM project; (2) identifying the employees’ training needs and work hand in hand with the HR department concerning it; (3) integrate the new technology within the firm premises vitally required for the project and; (4) identify risks and work with project manager in remedying it. The employees’ role in the KM project is to carry it into action. With the role comes the responsibility of: (1) participate in the training programs to equip themselves of the necessary skills; (2) give feedbacks regarding the project; (3) attend the meetings set by the project manager and participate in the discussion and; (4) make use of the new technology according to the objectives set by the project. The project sponsors in this case the management and the stockholders, are the major decision makers and the major source of fund/resources for the project, respectively. Their main functions are: (1) approve funding if the need arises and if deemed worthwhile; (2) participate in the periodic project; (3) assign personnel as project points of contact; review and; (4) make decisions within their jurisdiction that could contribute to the project implementation. The administration people play the role of coordinators in this KM project. Their responsibilities as coordinators are: (1) to be at the forefront of the drive to improve knowledge sharing and; (2) to come up with suggestions that would help Bossini get to know its customers better. The reporting relationship in this arrangement could be inferred in Figure 3. The lines used to connect the boxes has no arrow pointing up, down, right or left, meaning communication goes in every way. But the vertical positioning of the boxes denote their reporting relationship. Meaning, the box below should report to the box or boxes above it. For instance, employees should report to everyone else in the char, as they are at the bottom. The IT team needs only report to the project manager, and in some cases, the project sponsors. As with any project team, leadership is in the hands of the project manager. As mentioned, delegation and authorization lies in his hands. Responsibility, however, is a shared thing by all project team members, and each is accountable for their actions. TEAM DEVELOPMENT AND CONFLICT             Four stages of team selection and development were adopted to select project team members and allocate roles. As discussed by , these four stages are: forming, storming, norming and performing (1995-1997). The forming stage is basically the testing stage, the transition from individual to the team member while the storming stage is where the project objective is made clear to all project members. The norming stage is the established stage, where the project manager moves from his administrative role to a supportive role. Finally, the performing stage is where the team is already highly committed and eager to achieve project objective and the level of work performance is high ( 1995-1997). Team members were selected in the basis of their capacity and current company responsibilities that could contribute to the success of the project. As there are no outside participants, there was only the need to determine which among the organizational members would be affected by the project, thus making them project team members.             Mr.  deals with the issues that are associated in the project environment. For example, the introduction of this new technology in the firm caused some organisational members to resist. This was remedied through widespread information dissemination that aimed to make everyone involved understand the benefits of the project. Another issue was the skepticism over the impact of the KM project in the overall company performance. This issue did not subside until after the hard figures came out, which gave evidence that indeed, KM was a worthwhile project. CONCLUSION An analysis of the project structure showed that the Bossini Group chose to simplify the whole project management process that resulted to its successful implementation. In the words of , ‘the greatest hazard to any system is to initiate controls so complex that they limit or decrease efficiency and effectiveness of the project’ (1981). Proof of the success lies in the figures after the project was launched. ‘Total turnover rose 5.4 per cent in 2004, the first year the changes were introduced, while operating costs plummeted over 8 per cent. Gross profit rose over 20 per cent, while the average amount of time garments spend languishing in the company's inventory dropped from 50 to 37 days’ (2006). It was found out that transformation within the company is possible through close coordination and involvement of most organizational members. A noticeable increase in employee retention rate was also one of the results. This was largely due to ‘productivity gains and the elimination of much of Bossini's bureaucratic tangles’, which fostered an environment conducive to employee retention ( 2006). Given the success of the project from the time it was launched, Mr.  was encouraged to effect some changes within the IT department. He said, ‘…we gradually migrated our old platform from a client/server architecture to an open standard architecture based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition and service-oriented architecture, with new hardware based on high CPU performance and storage area network features for better resilience’ ( 2006). Additionally, the KM project also won Bossini a Management Information System (MIS) Asia IT Excellence Award for Best Knowledge Management. In analysis of the KM project and how it was carried out, the fact that stood out was the amount of involvement within the company. Mr.  made sure that each person involved was advised of the nature of the project and in the employees’ case, were given trainings to better equip themselves of the needed skills to carry out the project’s objective. Every issue was attended to in the quickest possible way and efforts were made to continuously develop the system for the company to maximize the benefits they gain from the project’s implementation. One threat to the project’s continuous success was shown in the large scope of team members. The communication channels could be affected with the size of the team. As illustrated by . , ‘on a two-person team, only one connection must be maintained in order to coordinate the efforts of the team members. On a three-person team, the number of connections grows to three. With four people, it grows to six. With five people, it grows to ten’ (2002). Further according to , some of the following are effects of a large team: (1) project managers on large projects spend disproportionately more time on administrative chores than project managers on smaller teams and greater chance of communication breakdown; (2) there is a need for more office space, desks, and equipment; and (3) less attention spent on the needs of individual team members (2002). RECOMMENDATION For the threat to the project’s continued success, it is suggested to downsize the number of people within the project team. For example, the administrative departments of sales and marketing could be removed, only providing back-up support for the project, and not necessarily an integral part of it. Often, downsizing has led to not-so-satisfying results for the firm, as costs might have been reduced, but so were revenues and so a second round of cost reductions was needed, so the better alternative might have been to balance cost-reduction initiatives with revenue-enhancement initiatives ( 2001). A constant review of the project is also imperative, for changes happen continuously, and there may be a need for certain modifications in the way that it is carried out in order to maximize benefits gained from it. Otherwise, the KM project spearheaded by Mr.  was superbly carried out within the Bossini Group. It is also a strong recommendation that this focus in the human aspect of project management be adopted by companies who wish to achieve success in their project implementation. The importance of proper people management was succinctly stated by , ‘project management has been described as organized common sense, but it really goes beyond that. It requires a particular set of skills that people who are good technically don't always have. That's why they get in trouble when they're put into the position of managing people’ (as cited in  2004).                                     REFERENCE   LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES DESCRIPTION                                                                                            PAGE NO. Figure 1 – Major Shareholders ……………………………………                    7 Figure 2 – Shareholders’ Relationships ………………………….                   7 Table 1 – Shareholders’ Roles and Levels of Influence ………..                   10 Figure 3 – Project Organizational Chart ………………………….                    11

HRM

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This project report presented a detailed analysis of the human resource aspect of a Knowledge Management (KM)...