Article analysis about organization effectiveness - Essay Example

In practice, it has been made clear that the promotion of collaboration across the organization could not be achieved unless a series of social tools is established (Brill 1). Through a series of strategies that is described in the article of Brill IBM has been transformed to a social business, a fact that has highly enhanced its effectiveness. It should be noted though that the development of the above process has been rather slow, having started in 2005 and being still in progress. The process of IBM’s transformation into a social business needs to be analyzed in order to understand the potential value of social tools in increasing organizational effectiveness, a concern for many firms in the international market.

One of the first issues that IBM had to address in order to become a social business has been the potential response of employees to the relevant plan. As Gentile noted, there are people who ‘voice and act on their values’ (Gentile 2). In the context of organizations this means that ethical behavior can be critical for the success. In IBM, the increase of collaboration has been, necessarily, depended on the ability of the organization to change its culture, emphasizing on knowledge sharing and the use of advanced technology.

According to the case study, these efforts have been welcomed by employees in IBM, a fact that significantly contributed in the success of the relevant plan (Brill 1). During the development of the plan, the following problem has appeared: would employees in IBM be able and willing to respond to all the plan’s demands? It is explained that the transformation of IBM into a social business would requite major changes, such as the improvement of employees’ responsiveness to customers’ requests, the adoption of new technology and the decrease of time required for the delivery of products (Brill 1).

The firm’s managers have adopted the following plan for achieving these targets: a) ‘internal social tools’ (Brill 1) have been implemented so that employees working in the sales department have access to critical information regarding the products’ availability and characteristics (Brill 1); in this way, the ability of these employees to respond to customers’ requests has been increased; b) tasks are assigned to employees according to their organizational profile which has been enriched with additional information, than usually, such as ‘spoken languages, interests and work experience’ (Brill 1); through this policy, teams of appropriately skilled employees have been organized across the firm allowing the increase of organizational effectiveness (Brill 1); c) a Shared Activities depository has been added in the firm’s internal network (Brill 1); through this depository employees can be informed on the projects currently in progress and can ask for their involvement, in case they feel they can respond to its demands (Brill 1).

Social tools are used for helping employees communicating internally and exchange critical information on various tasks (Brill 1). It is noted that the promotion of Social in the firm’s internal has not been limited ‘to the establishment of Facebook and Twitter accounts for employees’ (Brill 2). Rather emphasis has been given on the gradual change of the firm’s culture, ensuring that IBM will meet all requirements of a