Rjft Organizational Management Task 2

Organizational Management RJFT2 Task 2 A1. The Utah Symphony was recognized as a Group II orchestra. Group I and Group II are distinguished by the endowment amount and level of annual expenditures. For the year of 2001-2002, the average endowment for Group I orchestras was around $76 million and $8. 8 million for Group II orchestras. The Utah Symphony came in just shy of $12. 2 million in 2000-2001 and was projected to be upwards of $13. 7 million for 2001-2002. That being said, the Utah Symphony was considered to be at the top end of Group II symphony orchestras in the United States (Ager & Delong, 2005).However, even with these strengths within the symphony, prior to the proposed merger of the two organizations, the Utah Symphony’s financial state was declining. There were several factors due to the weak financial state. The musicians were part of a union, which negotiated a contract requiring high salaries, benefits and annual pay increases, which would cause the organizati ons expenses to increase. So, while revenue was projected to increase, this was offset by the increase in expenses. The cash balance was $116,308 in fiscal year 2000-2001 and projected at $2,042 for the following year, yet another financial weakness.In order to ensure a successful start of the merger, Anne would need to would need to come up with a plan. She could start by addressing the musician’s salaries. By referring to the board, as well as union leaders, Anne can learn about the requests specifications of the last negotiation. When presenting a new contract, she can influence the musicians to either take a lower wage or not to take a pay increase by showing them the income statement and explaining that the life of the organization is dependent on cutting costs and increasing revenue.Through this, she can show how the organization will not be able to operate at a surplus if expenses continue to increase, offsetting the revenue earned. Eliminating pay raises could be pres ented as a temporary fix, or worst case scenario (assuming the organization would survive on its own without the merger and the musicians would be able to keep their jobs), wages could be decreased. Through this approach, she can show them that the success of the symphony and them keeping their jobs are dependent upon each other, but changes need to be made. In response to the increasing expenses offsetting he revenues, Anne could research their fundraising opportunities to determine what it is they do well and what could be improved. She can use fundraising ideas that work for her current organization as well as from the past. As there are financial strengths and weaknesses of the Utah Symphony, that applies to leadership as well. The organizations greatest strength in leadership is with Lockhart. Lockhart is known as one of the top rated conductors and his relationship with the musicians is very healthy. They look to him to support the group when decisions are being made.While thi s is strong, the board also appreciates and respects the leader, not wanting to compromise the relationship they have with him. Strength about this group is that Scott Parker, chairman of the board, realizes the difficulties the group is facing and cares enough to do something about it. While the symphony has great leaders, there are also some weaknesses involved. It’s possible that Lockhart’s focus is geared too much on the musicians and not enough on the survival of the organization. Parker is scheduled to move to New York and will be replaced by Peterson mid-merger.This could cause some confusion or instability due to lack of initial involvement on Peterson’s part. Another weakness is that there is no CEO. This organization needs a well defined leader to succeed. Anne will obviously have some leadership obstacles to overcome to ensure the successful start of the merger. Anne will need to convince Lockhart that while it is important to have the relationships h e has with the musicians, it is important that this does not block his vision of the overall organization. He is a leader of the group and should focus on the well being of the organization.She can do this by showing Lockhart that the two (musicians and organization) are dependent upon each other, without musicians, there would be no symphony; likewise, without no symphony, there would be no jobs for the musicians. Also, with Parker moving to New York during the middle of the merger, Peterson will have some catching up to do. Anne should meet with Peterson periodically if possible before he joins the team full-time. She should also provide him updates as the process continues via face to face meetings, emails, phone calls, etc. Once he is full time, the merger should be his primary focus.Anne should also introduce him to Bill Bailey so that he can gather input from someone at the same level. In addition to that, Ewers should request ongoing open communication with Parker as a refere nce to help ensure the start of the merger is secure. A2. Unlike the financial and leadership status of the symphony, the opera appears to be in a much healthier state. Financially, the total revenue and contributions totaling approximately $5 million far outweighs expenses, leaving a surplus of $582,409 in fiscal year 2000-2001 and is projected to continue the same trend in the following year.Not only do they have a solid surplus, the opera is also financially stable in terms of assets. The large costume inventory and 2. 9 acres of land accumulate to roughly $4. 8 million in assets. Due to the strong financial state, no weaknesses were identified. In order to maintain the organization’s current financial state, Anne should be proactive and continue to coordinate fundraising, and seek funding through other areas. If the merger were to take place, the amount of performances would increase, boosting attendance and sales as well as overall revenue. Just as the financial state of the opera is healthy, the leadership is as well.Anne has brought with her many accomplishments throughout her past experiences. While holding the general director position of Boston Lyric Opera, she was able to retire a $450,000 debt that was passed on to her from her predecessor. While there, she also built an endowment fund as well as increasing the number of productions from one to three. Anne also held the role of assistant director of both the San Francisco Opera and Canadian Opera Company. Within the USA and internationally, she has had the opportunity to act as stage director for more than 60 opera productions.During her 11 year tenure at UOC, she grew the organization’s annual budget from $1. 5 million to $5 million. Anne has a record of being successful at fundraising and is admired by both the opera and symphony boards. With this strong leadership, Anne will have lots of insight on how to address situations that come her way, based on her previous experience. The o ne weakness that is displayed is the resignation of Leslie Peterson. Leslie is the daughter of Glade Peterson, founder of the opera and is director of operations.Due to her disagreeing on the direction that the management is taking and her concerns about the merger, she resigned. To ensure a successful start of the merger, Anne has a few options. If the organization values Leslie and doesn’t want to see her go, Anne could meet with her and explain the plans for the merger. She could reassure Peterson that what her father built would remain the foundation of the organization going forward as it is built upon. Another direction Ewers could take would be to promote someone from within or hire a new addition to the team to replace Peterson.By replacing her, someone with a positive, supportive attitude that is excited and eager about the new merger would be a good fit for the combined groups. Anne could even look at replacing her with someone from the symphony to gain further trus t and respect from that group. With very little leadership weakness, this is one less thing Anne has to worry about. A3. The Utah Symphony could be considered as having a combination of two different cultures, create- looking to grow and expand, and collaborative- having an extended family feel.However, the collaborative culture best fits this organization. In organizations like this, employees work closely with one another. Employees can look to their leaders as supportive figures and feel fulfilled and safe with the work they do (Kelly, 2010). An example of this is Keith Lockhart and his relationship between the musicians and the board. Keith’s primary concern is the musicians. The business review also stated that the board would ultimately not move forward with the merger if Keith did not approve (Ager & Delong, 2005).The analysis of the scorecard is as follows: 1. Financial: The goal is to be financially stable and profitable by maintaining the same ticket price but incre asing fundraising to be able to do so and measuring this by profitability. This addresses their financial weakness as listed above (by remaining profitable, the 83 symphony members will be able to keep their jobs). In regards to their organizational culture, this supports collaborative culture, securing and supporting musician positions. 2.Customer: The goal is to meet customer wants and demands of seeing world-class performers appear and the organization can make this happen by hiring the top notch talent. To measure if they are successful at this, they will gather reviews and feedback from customers to gauge how well they are meeting demands. Through constructive feedback, the symphony will know if they are reaching their goal and delivering what customers want. Positive feedback will assure the group that their goals are being reached. The Utah Symphony envisions being world class and this is compliant with the vision. . Internal Process: Through the renegotiation of contracts wi th the musicians, their goal is to have some flexibility in decreasing expenses. The organization can measure this through the improvement of profitability. This was addressed earlier as a financial weakness and noted that if Anne is able to renegotiate contracts the organization would benefit financially. 4. Learning and Growth: The goal here is to offer a wider variety of symphonies to appeal to different audiences. This can be done by marketing towards those targeted groups, advertising symphonies of interest.An increase in ticket sales and returning audience is how this will be measured. While this exact scenario wasn’t listed above, it does reflect on the overall financial weakness and addresses the reducing the weakness by increasing profitability. All areas of this scorecard help address the financial weakness of the symphony and how to help alleviate it. In regards to the leadership weaknesses, the scorecard does not directly address them, but in the event they move f orward with the merger, they (leadership weaknesses) will be addressed then.The Utah Opera’s vision is to become a nationally renowned opera house by improving the quality of performances and increasing endowment funds. A complete organizational culture would best describe this organization. Complete cultures bring a results-driven environment and focus on success and reputation (Kelly, 2010). The culture differs from that of the symphony because the performers are not employed full time here, therefore lacking the extended family aspect as seen with the musicians. The analysis of the scorecard is as follows: 1.Financial: Through raising additional funds and realizing endowments, the groups’ goal is to be financially stable and obtain an increasing reserve fund. This goal will be measured by improving the reserve fund amount. As stated earlier, the financial stability of the opera is healthy and this shows one of the strengths of the group. 2. Customer: By excelling in the quality of performances and increasing patron attendance to full capacity or nearly selling-out, the goal of having regionally and nationally acclaimed opera performances will be reached.This will increase ticket sales, resulting in an increase profit. Through this increased attraction, investments will increase, maintaining the organizations’ strength of being financially sound. 3. Internal Process: The goal to maintain financial stability and to attract top talent is dependent on successful negotiations with the top performers. Customer reviews and profitability are measurements of this process. Top talent performances will increase ticket sales and will also allow the organization to grow both nationally and internationally through these popular performers.The boards’ vision will come to fruition in the event that this goal is met. 4. Learning and Growth: Setting this goal of 5 high-quality performances per year relies on measuring the endowment fund growth and increasing ticket sales. This can be measured by covering capital need by revenue from the ticket sales. With the growing group, individuals will be more likely to invest, adding to the groups’ financial strength yet again. In terms of the Utah Opera, all four aspects of this scorecard focus on strengthening their existing financial stability. This will help achieve the goals and vision the group has set.While the financial strengths are established in the scorecard, the leadership weaknesses are not addressed. However, the leadership weakness did not exist in the individual organization until the merger was made public and Peterson resigned, and therefore does not require being addressed. B. Merged Company Balanced Scorecard: The vision of the new company is to attract top performers while providing quality performances, being noted as a successful merged opera/symphony combination following the merger and maintaining a profitable organization while doing so. 1. Financial: Strategic Goal- Secure financial stability throughout the entire organization * Critical Success Factor- Maintain funding through opera patrons and increase the symphony’s through endowments and fundraising * Measure- Recognizing an overall increase in Surplus of the combined groups from one fiscal year to the next 2. Customer: * Strategic Goal- Through combining the opera and symphony, become known nationally (and internationally if possible) as one of the first successful at accomplishing this merger, therefore bringing in top talent that draws a wider range of performance- goers * Critical Success Factor- Recruiting op rated performers that viewers would be interested in seeing and that would bring extra attention to the organization * Measure- The organization would see performance attendees and ticket sales both increase 3. Internal Process: * Strategic Goal- Having revenue far exceed expenses, leaving a much larger surplus * Critical Success Factor- Negotiating new cont racts with the union for the musicians to hold off on pay raises and/or reduce salaries.Also, increasing fundraising and endowments * Measure- Successful increase in funding (endowments and fund-raising) as well as successful contract negotiations, reflected by an increased surplus 4. Learning and Growth: * Strategic Goal- Diversifying performances to attract different genres * Critical Success Factor- Making each performance unique and different from the last to attract different performance- goers * Measure- Gauge first time audience attendee by survey upon exiting performance and gather feedback C.When reviewing the proposed merged company, there will be some strengths and weaknesses of the new organization pertaining to each aspect of the scorecard as follows: 1. Financial: Historically, Anne has been successful in maintaining a healthy financial state of the opera. She exceeds in fundraising and attracting new endowments and is reflected in the surplus shown in Exhibit 3 (Ager & Delong, 2005). However, the weakness of the proposed merged company is the lack of a healthy financial state for the symphony. While their revenue appears much larger than that of the opera, so are expenses.Through the addition of the symphony, the financial state will decrease the strength of the opera, in turn weakening the overall financial state. The contract negotiations and work to increase endowments and fundraising will help alleviate this weakness. 2. Customer: When combining the two groups, they will have a greater ability to bring in more well known special performers. This potentially will bring in new patrons. However, through this strength, also comes a weakness- they would need to figure out how to attract these new customers to get them to the performances.This could be resolved through advertisement and support of community involvement. From being involved with the community, they will have the opportunity to hear what patrons would like to see, and gauge performa nces based on interest. 3. Internal Process: The strength as the combined group is that they will be much more capable of offering a wider variety of arts. With the management team they have and past challenges they have accomplished, the two groups together will be able to succeed in things on a larger scale.The one weakness to having such a strong internal process is not having enough funding to support efforts. As mentioned above, funding issues can be resolved through contract negotiations, increased endowment contributions and fundraising. 4. Learning and Growth: Together, as one organization, they will be able to grow through recruiting top rated talent for performances and learn what it is that their customers want to see. While this is growing, the slight weakness they will encounter is the time it takes for the economy to rebound and for sales to start increasing.D. During the merger process, a few highly probable issues could arise in finance, human resources, and customer satisfaction. Financially, the opera is sound. However they will more than likely become reduced due to the fact that they will have to help make up for the lack of financial stability of the symphony. Eventually, this can be resolved through contract negotiations with the musicians, increased fundraising and endowments, and through the economic rebound, allowing more viewers to attend performances.In regards to human resources, an issue will probably arise when Ewers approaches the union to re-negotiate contracts. While both the organization and the musicians are dependent upon each other, some sort of agreement will have to be worked out and the human resources department will need to be involved. Finally, with all of the skepticism brewing in the community of combining the two groups, there will more than likely be some contributors that will be hesitant to continue donating their normal contributions.While it will be a difficult challenge to overcome, the new organization can r ectify the situation by bringing in top rated performers as soon as possible that support the growth and excitement of the newly combined group. References Ager, David L. & Delong, Thomas J. , â€Å"Utah Symphony and Utah Opera: A Merger Proposal† August 8, 2005, Harvard Business Review Kelly, The Types of Organizational Culture, May 4, 2010 retrieved March 10, 2013 from http://blorgtheory. com/2010/05/04/the-types-of-organizational-culture/