The Alcan Organization focusing on the General System Theory and Social-Technical Theory - Case Study Example

Alcan Organization Introduction   Alcan is an IT Organization based in Canada with its head office at Montreal along the Sherbrook and Stanly streets (Dube, Bernier, & Roy, 2009). It is one of the world famous cutting-edge enterprises having a remarkable combination of skilled and talented workforce with advanced technology, innovative products, as well as a decidedly focused customer-culture (Foster, 2007). The enterprise has operating facilities across 61 countries with a work force of about 68,000 employees (Dube, Bernier, & Roy, 2009). The organization takes the leading position in production of raw materials, fabricated products and primary metals. Its four principal business groups include Bauxite and Alumina, Primary Metal, packaging and the engineered products (Foster, 2007). The four business groups are the main revenue contributors for the organization. The enterprise is involved in creating and selling of a variety of products, which include bauxite, automobile iron, sheet ingot, and aluminum recycling services, forging stock (Dube, Bernier, & Roy, 2009). This paper discuses the Alcan Organization focusing on the General System Theory and Social-Technical Theory, Organizational Success, Failures and Consequences, Communication Policies, STS Practices, and Application of Theories within the Organization. General System Theory and Socio-Technical Theory General systems in an organization involve several systems, which work together. The socio-technical system involves a proper blending of the social and technical systems in an organization (Girard, 2005). This is a combination of technology and people. Alcan Company consists of four groups of prime systems, which are responsible for managing the different types of units within each particular group (Girard, 2005). The first system is the Alumina and Bauxite business group. This group has the responsibility of getting bauxite through purchase or extraction, then having it refined into grades that are smart. The grade that is smart is then used to produce primary aluminum. This group consists of refineries that supply smelter-grade alumina to the primary metal group of the company and a global networking of bauxite mines. Alcan Company operates about eight bauxite mine and the seven smelter-grade refineries of alumina, seven alumina plants all over the world (Girard, 2005). The second general organizational system is the Primary Metals group. This group consists of the Alcan aluminum and facilities smelting, and installations of power generation for the company. This unit manages to employ about 20,000 individuals in the whole world. The unit produces various forms of aluminum. These are used in many markets like the foil; transportation; automotive beverage; construction; building; machinery sector; and consumer goods. The processing of Alcan’s aluminum is done in the twenty four smelters of aluminum that are operated or owned partially by the company (Girard, 2005). The third general organization system is the engineered products unit. The headquarters of this group is in Paris. The system produces fabricated and composite aluminum products that are used for different purposes (Girard, 2005). This unit employs about 12000 workers at 37 Alcan network offices, 50 service centers, and 48 production facilities in the whole world. Aluminum used in producing products that are engineered is bought from the primary metal business unit and suppliers who are third parties (Girard, 2005). The last general organization system in Alcan Company is the packaging unit. This system is responsible in the manufacturing of food packaging, medical, and beauty and pharmaceutical. It gives out products by use of engineered films, paper, aluminum, paper board, and plastics. This is one of the company’s units that generate a lot of income (Girard, 2005). The STS principles of Alcan Company include; the company is proactive and innovative in using technology thus enable, sustain and deliver the value of business; the company developed its people on a daily basis, competencies and skills; reduction of complexity, leverage, diversity economies of scale; making information be reusable, protected, shared, and compliant; buying and integrating materials before being built; and managing infrastructure such as a utility. The IT management team made a blue print be used in the management of IT. The initial technological plan was directed towards the alignment of IT and strategies of the business. This plan developed a vision of IT in the whole company. This plan laid the basis for application of the philosophy of shared-services (Girard, 2005). Following this new plan, the management services that appeared to be common to every business had to be done using the support of the central unit of organization that was in support of mechanisms of internal billing. In this regard, services of IT, human resource, and financial services, due to the centralization of the services that were shared led to the promotion of shared competencies, economies of scale, standardization, consolidation, low-cost expertise access, standardization, and competencies. The socio-technical system showed out the desire of the senior IT management in bettering the IT services with strategies that are corporate. These services proposed the setting up of a structure of government that clearly identifies the roles of all the stake holders within the management of IT. This organization also proposed the reduction of complexity and diverse technology, development of a partnership that is preferred with service suppliers globally and to improve the security of information within the company. STS, therefore, developed a technological infrastructure that met the diverse needs of the business groups, and develop corporate architecture that is effective in order to keep on supporting the legal systems. This plan made the company’s desire of repatriating management of services of IT so as to get the tools that are indispensable for its management globally. Organizational Success, Failure, and Consequences Over the past five years, management technological information in Alcan has been extremely complex. The organization’s multiple acquisition has established a fragmented environment of IT that is diversified. This environment leads to a negative effect to the efficient and effectiveness of the processes of the business. For instance, Alcan had to deal with about 1,000 systems of information where by 400 of them dealt with the financial data. The manual heroic effort that was expected to give out management and financial information was a mish-mashed technology which made the management of Alcan and the government regulations application such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to be more costly to the company. A number of technological initiatives placed in the business groups like the projects for implementation of the integrated SAP software package had no intergroup company coordination. Apart from these, initiatives and IT projects which affected the common processes within the business groups were coordinated inadequately (Dube, Bernier, & Roy, 2009). For instance, the evaluation of the risks of the project such as the transformational planning appeared to be extremely insufficient. The internal expertise, on the other hand, was inadequate at the project’s scope. Alcan convoluted structure showed out the challenges of management of IT in a context of incomplete integrations and multiple acquisitions for many years. For example, the Pechiney acquisition made the company find itself in two groups of infrastructure. The outcome of this operation the resources of Alcan were redirected to the planning of the infrastructure. The effect of this was that the former people of the company made the plan, and the Pechiney individuals executed the plans leading to coordination difficulties, insufficient knowledge and skills, and a number of IT management frustration in each group of business (Dube, Bernier, & Roy, 2009). Other than the challenges of Alcan Company, there were some developments that were promising. The IT services and the shared institution services were the priority list of management. Some business groups made efforts to lower down the system diversity. A whopping progress was made on the standardization and consolidation of the information and technology infrastructure in regard to the global e-mail and network. Communication Policies and STS Practices Alcan Company gives out both informal and formal communication policies that are consistent and coherent in all levels of the organization (Girard, 2009). In this case, the communication addresses the company’s needs through the provision of the services that are most comprehensive. This communication policy offers a full array of telecommunication service like those involving the fiber or cable for implementation of data or voice, telephone maintenance, and equipments of core networking or wireless (Girard, 2009). Alcan Company has all the experience, people, experience, equipments, and is highly determined to meet the telecommunication challenges of all the organization level. To start with the structural cabling policy, Alcan Company has installed the CAT6, CAT5e, and fiber optic cable, which provides all the organizational levels with the base of all the relevant communication. The company provides installation that is certified by the standards of EIA/TIA that normally has an RCDD on the staff (Girard, 2009). This company utilizes the equipments that are high-tech to test the cables in each organizational level in order to identify any upcoming communication problem. The company also uses the digital phone system policy, which facilitates easy migration and expansion of the organization (Girard, 2009). This is a powerful tool as it facilitates consistent and coherent communication within the organization. In addition to this, company has wireless communication policy in each organizational level. This policy enables data and voice networks to the extent of each organizational level’s reach to new or existing infrastructure. The company has the conferencing equipments that enhance the video and voice conferencing for multi- point and point to point communication hence reducing the expenses of traveling within the organization thus efficiency. This is in line with practices of the socio-technical system of Alcan Company (Girard, 2009). Apart from this, company has the automated call distribution equipment which helps in monitoring the incoming route calls in a manner of enhancing the customer’s responsiveness thus maximizing the employees’ productivity in each organizational unit (Girard, 2009). The company utilizes the call accounting machine that gives each organizational unit the capabilities of tracking all calls hence facilitate the toll-fraud tracking within the company. From this communication services, it is evident that all the policies of communication at Alcan Company are consistent and coherent in all organizational levels. However, these policies of communication are equally consistent with the STS practices within the company (Girard, 2009). Application of Theories within the Organization The writer holds personal ideas on how the organization might use the general systems, the Social Technical Systems (STS) knowledge, as well as application in fostering organizational improvement and positively leveraging the future of the Alcan Organization. In line with this, the writer is of the idea that the Alcan Organization builds a solid competent team that would provide the much needed support in helping bring reforms within IT management. For instance, before the arrival of the new chief IT officer, the Alcan IT departments had been faced with a myriad of challenges. One of the most significant challenges was incompetence among the staff members (Dube, Bernier, & Roy, 2009). While referring to the group that dealt with financial and other, the writer said that the group failed to show any sign of coordinated leadership for the corporate, financial application and hence there lacked overall architecture for those designs. This was because the competences for the group were not aligned with projects in progress. This, therefore, necessitated outsourcing of experts. It is also said that prior to the arrival of the new chief IT officer, the Alcan organization had about 900 workers working in the IT. However, about 80% of the annual budget was spent on outside services including outsourcing and consulting (Dube, Bernier, & Roy, 2009). Therefore, building a solid, competent team can forester organizational improvement and positively leverage the future of the Organization. Additionally, the writer holds the opinion that it is necessary to build cohesion, develop a common vision with the aim of finding effective ways of working together as a team (Dube, Bernier, & Roy, 2009). Group coordination is thus seen as a tool that would ensure group coordination, and it is a way through which the Alcan Organization would realize its future prospects. Previously, every business group managed its own IT department, and there was lacking coordination amongst individual, business groups. IT initiatives and projects affecting processes common to the four business groups were not well coordinated. This made evaluation of projects risk insufficient. It is also said that no IT people had at one time been told to corporate with each other. They always struggled to meet demands of each specific business group. The writer in this case holds a view that increasing coordination amongst the IT entities is one way of fostering organizational improvement and positively leveraging the future of the Alcan Organization. The writer, as well is of an idea that there is the need to have clear direction and the specific mandate that can help promote efficiency and effectiveness in the way IT department executes its programs (Dube, Bernier, & Roy, 2009). This will go a long way in fostering organizational improvement and positively leveraging the future of the Alcan Organization.  Conclusions   Alcan as a mature IT organization has undergone major transformations in trying to cope with challenging competitive business world. In doing so, it has ensured there are Transformation along General System Theory and Socio-Technical Theory, enhanced communication Policies and STS Practices, and effective Application of Theories within the Organization. With all this in place, the Alcan Organization has remained on course for many years. It is currently the leading Aluminum producing company in the world basing on its streamlined IT system management (Foster, 2007).  Annotated Bibliography Dube, L, Bernier, C, & Roy, V. (2009). Taking on the challenge of IT management in a global business context: The Alcan case – Part B. International Journal of Case Studies in Management. 7(2), 1-12. The authors discuss the challenges of managing IT management in a business. They summarize the challenges of implementing changes in Information Technology department of the Alcan organization, as well as the change in management style owing to the coming of the new chief officer in charge of IT. The authors indicate that poor management leads to reduced effectiveness and hence low production. This source is particularly vital because it provide an overview of how change in management style can be healthy for a growing organization. Dube, L, Bernier, C, & Roy, V. (2009). Taking on the challenge of IT management in a global business context: The Alcan case – Part A. International Journal of Case Studies in Management. 7(2), 1-10. The authors discuss the challenge of implementing and managing IT in the Alcan Organization. They discuss the transformation that Alcan organization undergoes with respect to Information Technology. The article summarizes the historical background of the Alcan organization with a view to indicate the challenges the organization has had to experience as a business entity that is trying to impress IT. The source is particularly vital in the light of research presented because it provides an overview of the structure of the Alcan organization, its historical background, as well as the transformational challenges especially when implemented Information technology. Foster, B. (2007). Alcan IT Organization. Retrieve on 5th June 2012 http//www.iwaysoftware.de/applications/alcan. The author presents the Alcan Organization as an IT Organization. The author focuses on the Alcan organization giving much description about its locality, as well as its management. The article covers a range of IT business units cutting across the challenges the organization experiences while implementing key changes within it. In essence, this source is helpful in getting an overview of the environmental organization of the organization the Alcan organization as far as IT department is concerned. Girard, R. (2005) Can Alcan claim to be the best: It’s Corporate and social responsibility in question. International journal Canadian Aluminum Giant’s Profile. 7(2), 1- 50. The author presents the Alcan organization as being the best IT organization in the world. The organization holds both social and corporate responsibilities. The author of this journal focuses on general system Theory and Socio-Technical Theory as applicable within the Alcan Organization in making sure it is a world leading IT company. Additionally, the author of this article discuses the successes, failures, and consequences of the Alcan Organization. This source is helpful in getting an overview of general system theory, social technical theory, successes, failures, and consequences of the Alcan as an IT Organization. Girard, J. (2009). Alcan Inc. The Simon Fraser University journal 7(3), 1-3. The author discuss the Alcan Organization describing it an organization that empress IT. The article touches on many issues that affect the Alcan as an IT organization cutting across its successes, failures, and consequences. This article serves as a helpful source in getting an overview about the challenges, successes and consequences of the Alcan Organization. References. Dube, L, Bernier, C, & Roy, V. (2009). Taking on the challenge of IT management in a global business context: The Alcan case – Part A. International Journal of Case Studies in Management. 7(2), 1-10. (Article with three authors/Article in a journal with continuous paging/ Article with no DOI)   Dube, L, Bernier, C, & Roy, V. (2009). Taking on the challenge of IT management in a global business context: The Alcan case – Part B. International Journal of Case Studies in Management. 7(2), 1-12. (Article with three authors/Article in a journal with continuous paging/ Article with no DOI)   Foster, B. (2007). Alcan IT Organization. Retrieve on 5th June 2012 http//www.iwaysoftware.de/applications/alcan. (Article with one author/Article without DOI-URL as home page used) Girard, J. (2009). Alcan Inc. The Simon Fraser University journal 7(3), 1-3. (Article with author author/Article in a journal with continuous paging/Article with no DOI)   Girard, R. (2005). Can Alcan claim to be the best: It’s Corporate and social responsibility in question. International journal Canadian Aluminum Giant’s Profile. 7(2), 1- 50. (Article with one author/Article in a journal with continuous paging/Article with no DOI)   Read More