The Neymar Case in FC Barcelona - Coursework Example

THE NEYMAR CASE Introduction The 21st century introduced an alarming number of pressures on organizations globally triggering the opportunity and demand for organizational management to restructure itself to organizations sail through the new challenges. All segments of an organization’s management are experiencing the challenges but the most affected, and one with the most opportunities of inflicting change is the human resources unit. Owing to the uncertainty of events in the [business] world, the new demand is for managers who apply amongst others leadership skills in responding to key issues which may greatly affect their organizations so the effects felt are minimal and harmless. An effective response to crises includes leadership involvement, application of human resources initiatives, and restructuring the organizational structure. To elaborate on this effective response and mitigation process, this text will be developed adhering to the defined outline of the need to effective response, and will apply the recent FC Barcelona crisis which went viral with the globe pointing fingers at the club accusing it of fraud in signing Neymar. The text will address the issue and suggest on what was the best way to deal with the matter in terms of handling the arising issues and restoring trust and calm to all involved stakeholders. Neymar, a promising Brazilian soccer star has been a treasure many clubs have been aiming at netting and when FC Barcelona succeeded in signing him, it was expected to be the start of big things. However, it was unknown that the move was indeed suicidal for the club after claims of fraud during the signing of the star emerged. As Minder (2014, n.p.) reveals, the issue was that the club’s management had misappropriated funds during the process, stating that 57 Million Euros were spent on the signing whereas the actual sum known to have been spent was 86 Million Euros. To make matters worse, it is said that about 40 million of the said amount was paid to an organization affiliated to Neymar’s father, raising eyebrows as to the transparency of the entire process. Events following the dark turn of events were the Spanish court giving a green light for the case to proceed against the club’s tax defrauding accusations, and the club’s then manager, Sandro Rosell resigning in early 2014. What went wrong and which are best measures to prevent recurrence and restore FC Barcelona’s flawed glory? In a business context, the management of FC Barcelona had failed in its mandates thus contributing to the said outcome. The violations of the management codes included conducting a signing without clearly set parameters, unaccountability of the club’s funds involved in the process, and the responsible parties, which is the president, running away rather than addressing the issue by coming clean on what transpired. Concisely, the transaction violated the rules or business codes of conduct and ethics which dictate that all transactions and processes should be transparent and legal, and every event must be accountable for to the last bit (The Economist 2012, n.p.). This marked a turning point for FC Barcelona, that is changing time, and this is where the human resources initiatives, management restructuring, and leadership come into foreplay as the following section will highlight. The first measure the human resources can take in restructuring the entire organization management to launch the change process. Organization structure becomes the problem when it is evident that its level and styles of operation create obstacles which restrain the attaining of the organization’s objectives. In the case of FC Barcelona, the obstacles created by the organization’s structure included the president’s lack of transparency in terms of accountability, which translates to a non-democratic running of affairs. There was also the issue of misconduct by overlooking FIFA’s ethical codes which relate to this previous point in that acquisition of players should be fair and not involve bribery as was the case with Neymar’s father involvement. Again, not involving the entire stakeholders in the signing meant the organization’s structure was a one-sided ideology, of which it may be assumed that the involved parties execute the fraudulent transfer for personal gains. Finally, the overall turn of events must have affected the club directly whose name was likely to be tarnished thus affect the performance of the players and reduce its fan bases. In achieving change, the human resources fraternity must have modest aims which must be overly ambitious. This is to say that for the structuring of the organization to succeed, then everyone involved must believe in the change. As sense has it, belief is not enforced but comes through motivation and stimulation of healthy simulation to see everyone embrace the idea of change. In the case of FC Barcelona, restructuring the change should not be made to appear like punishment, rather, all parties involved should learn that it is for their own good in preventing recurrence of the problem. As Hitt, Ireland, & Hoskisson (2009) state, in creating the ambition and embracement for the change, there must be an understanding of the organization’s culture which is the founding or “personality” values of the organization. Better put, these are the beliefs, values and means that persons within the organization deal with each other. Understanding the organizational structure requires understanding of the external and internal interactions of the organization as these are bound to be affected by external reactions, then there is understanding the history of the organization and how it has always existed and dealt with similar issues, and finally understanding what brings the organization’s members together. In so doing, it will not be hard establishing an organization structure which favors the body both externally and internally while adhering to promoting the values and adhering to expect ethics. The second mitigation measure is putting into place an effective leader or leadership to head the organization. The leader or leadership is the central organ necessary for pursuing organizational tasks by creating independent and sequential measures to combine individual cycles thus gets a job done. In short, it is the mandate of leadership to supervise acts, innovate positive influence, and point at correction to strengthen the organization thus propel it towards achievement (Smith 2011, p.196-216). This is not what Sandro Rosell portrayed. If the accusations against him are true, then he was a direct retarding force to FC Barcelona since fraud is likely to disorient calculated measures to achievement, degrade the club’s dignity, and inflict, rather than discourage misconduct. To make matters worse, he jumped ship when things got too tough for the club. As a leader, one should exercise a wide mind-set when dealing with issues, and key amongst these is acknowledging that mistakes happen and transformational dynamics to reverse or prevent errors are critical. Upon his quitting, Sandro Rosell’s post was to be taken over by a different president. The new president [leader] requires to posses the knowledge to tell which change the club will require in order to get back to its feet. According to Ramanathan (2009, p.21), there are three main types of change, and it is up to the leadership (Human Resources included) to choose the best one to apply in their case. These types of leadership are transitional, developmental, and transformational. Transitional leadership reform overhauls the previous leadership and installs a totally new leadership structure, business processes, and overall “refurbishing”. Although it is a complex process, it is effective in that the new power opens channels of good management, engagement of stakeholders, improving organizational performance through positive internal motivation, and most importantly considers the ethics and the demands of the organization rather than selfish wants. In Jones & George (2008, p. 617-619), [developmental] leadership is much simpler as it works with the already-existing systems and only improves them to better serve the organization’s objectives. The potential improvements might affect business processes, decision-making, or communication. In the FC Barcelona case for instance, the new manager might decide to alter the process of acquiring players to block all channels of repeating the same mistake again. Finally on transformational change, this is the measure that requires a shift of deeply-rooted attributes of the organization such as systems and culture which makes it quite a complex task. In addition, this type of change requires much shifting of mind-sets to work, and can be better understood as “coming from outdated world views to embrace current ones”. Where successful in its application, the affected organization becomes new and takes a new turn which can be for the good if the right channels are followed. Applied to FC Barcelona, maybe changing some cultures within the club’s management might mean something, such as inventing better means of wooing star players to their clubs rather than bombarding them with exorbitant chunks of money. The final determinant factor in achieving change in an organization is the nature of the human resources department considering that it is faced with crucial roles such as administrative effectiveness and most importantly, the capacity for change. Owing to these critical assignments of roles, a human resources department must portray some important attributes to match the emerging changes and gain from them (Chen & Tsui 2006, p.84). The first attribute is to be strong in terms of leadership so that when changes come up, the leader keeps the organization motivated and focused on the initial visions they had. This is because the human resources has the access to everyone in the organization and can therefore succeed in restructuring their minds to align with changes and stick to their strategies. The other attribute is that the human resources should be flexible and creative enough in responding to change. This is necessary because the globalized business fraternity shifts regularly without offering much time for realignment. As such, it is necessary to have a human resources department, which is fast at absorbing changes and countering challenges, but not trying to evade them (Farr & Tran 2008, p.382-384). In imagination, what would happen if everyone at FC Barcelona quit when asked about the accusations? The obvious is that the club would die. However to evade such an occurrence, someone will at one point have to take up the responsibility. After that, it would be easier to calm the unrest and invent means of aligning the fraudulent accusations and inflict the necessary measures to bring things back to normal. Conclusion In summing up, the above study text has efficiently revealed the expectations or demands that the global business fraternity requires of organizations if they are to survive the unpredictable shifts involved in business. It has been revealed that changes are inevitable and sudden, and for that reason, the entire organization should have ready-set mind-sets to handle changes when they emerge; internally or externally. The FC Barcelona case has highlighted some shortfalls of having a defective leadership and change response mechanisms. This is evident in that its own leadership was responsible for orchestrating its own “suicide” by conducting opaque transactions of exorbitant values. Using this case example, the text has provided mitigation measures such as putting into place new changes, restructuring the overall leadership of the organization, and finally inventing an effective human resources department capable of steering the organization during tough moments by motivating and keeping all stakeholders together. Bibliography Chen, X, & Tsui, A 2006. “An organizational perspective on multi-level cultural integration: human resource management practices in cross-cultural contexts.” Research in Multi Level Issues,(5), 81-96. Farr, J & Tran, V 2008. “Linking innovation and creativity with human resources strategies and practices: A matter of fit or flexibility?” Multi-Level Issues in Creativity and Innovation, (7), 377-392. Hitt, M, Ireland, R, & Hoskisson, R 2009. Strategic management: competitiveness and globalization : concepts & cases. Mason, OH, South-Western. Jones, G, & George, J 2008. Contemporary management. Boston, McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Minder, R 2014. “Barcelona Pays $19 Million Tax Related to Neymar Acquisition.” The New York Times. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/sports/soccer/barcelona-makes-tax-payment-in-neymar-case.html?_r=0 [10 April, 2014]. Ramanathan, TR 2009. The role of organizational change management in offshore outsourcing of information technology services: qualitative case studies from a multinational pharmaceutical company. Boca Raton, Fla. Smith, M 2011. Fundamentals of management. New York, McGraw-Hill Higher Education. The Economist 2012. “When the jobs Inspector Calls.” Economist.com. Available at http://www.economist.com/node/21551498 [10 April, 2014]. Read More