Kent Institute of Business and Technology
Bachelor of Business
Trimester 2 , 2014
Organisational Behaviour
Group Assignment – Long Report
Due: 7th. October 2014
The Scenario
Joe Jonson has just been appointed the General Manager of the Procurement Division of a large railway, Statewide Rail Corporation. The Procurement Division is responsible for procuring and warehousing of goods for all the other functional divisions of the railway. These divisions include the Operations Division (responsible for marketing and running the train services), the Engineering Division (responsible for maintenance of the railway track and buildings), the Electrical Division (responsible for the construction and maintenance of the overhead electricity supply to trains), Workshops Division (responsible for the maintenance of locomotives and rolling stock), Finance Division, and Human Resources Division.
The Procurement Division is presently organized on functional lines with different teams responsible for each of the three stages of procurement, viz., Tendering (sourcing, negotiating and contracting suppliers) , Purchasing (ordering cost effective quantities of goods if and when required) and Warehousing (managing the warehousing and supply of goods to client departments).
Each team has a manager and the team is made up of technical experts responsible for undertaking that procurement function for all the client divisions.

One reason that a new General Manager has been appointed to the Procurement Division is that there have been complaints from the General Managers of the client divisions about the level of service given by the Procurement Division.
Some of these complaints include the procurement of goods that do not meet the specifications required by the departments, the unreliability of supply of the goods, the unresponsive nature of the warehouses to their client divisions’ needs, and the emphasis on contracting the cheapest supplier.
Another reason is there have been a number of instances of staff of the Procurement Division becoming too close to some of the suppliers. There is a suspicion that there have been payments made to the Procurement Division staff by suppliers in return for favourable consideration of these suppliers when tender decisions are being made.
There was also a problem with succession planning for the division because there were no candidates with experience across all the procurement functions. The different functional teams do not communicate with each other and concentrate on achieving their own goals rather than contributing to the achievement of the goals of State-wide Rail. This leads to conflict between the functional teams.
Joe has approached you to look at what he can do to bring change to the Procurement Division.
What you are to do:
You are members of an external management consultancy team engaged by Joe Johnson to make recommendations to him on the following four aspects of the Procurement Division of State Wide:
1. Review the present organization and recommend any changes that may overcome the problems in the division at the moment.
2. The strengths and weaknesses of the organisation’s culture and what aspects of the culture need changing.
3. Sources of resistance to change and develop a plan to how to implement your recommended changes within the organization.
4. What leadership role should Joe adopt to facilitate these changes.
Prepare a “Long Report” to be presented to Joe addressing these issues and making your recommendations.
The structure of the report will be consistent with that detailed at Dwyer, Judith, Communication for Business and the Professions, Strategies and Skills, 5th ed., Pearson Education, Australia. Pp. 533-566