BUSM2301 - Organizational Analysis
Assignment 2 - Group Report
Astral Consulting Mining Company Case Study

Tran Gia Bao - s3757331
Luu Trong Dung - s3863990
Nguyen Thu Ha - s3678713
Pham Quang Minh - s3864204
Vo Van Bon - s3857506

Jung Woo Han
SGS Campus

Word count: 3323


I.

Introduction
Currently, our company is working with an international mining industry
partner named Astral Consulting, the company’s headquarters is in Australia and also
have many branches across the world such as Latin America, Asia, Alaska and The
Congo. The company exploited different types of natural minerals such as Zinc,
Copper, Gold and trace materials, which generated its economic growth in the recent
years, with a substantial number of function and acquisition development. However,
these firms are yet to be programmed into the organization, which results in many
issues globally, especially its environmental protection issue and social pressure issue.
Thus, Astral Consulting group must address their problems to take better control of
their general management. The problems and solutions will be presented based on the
Functionalism and Social Relativism theories since these two business concepts are
most suitable with the mining industry (Burrell, G., & Morgan, G. 1979).

Furthermore, we also analyse some of the externalities of the company that may
happen with other concepts such as Neo Humanism or Radical Structuralism, this part
will be discussed further in the discussion paragraph.

II.

Problem Statement
According to the case study from Astral Consulting mining company, we have
found out that the client mining industry has struggled with various issues locally and
internationally while working with us. As a partner of Astral Consulting company, we
will state some of their serious problems that need to be addressed in order to improve
the relationship between two companies as well as Astral Consulting’s functions and
operations, based on the Functionalism and Social Relativism concepts. The first and
foremost problem of the mining company is that there are no common approaches
among various branches across the globe, this issue is considered as the
standardization problem while company sites may have no same achievable goals
over key performance indicators, company culture, employees engagement, et cetera.
The second problem of the company is that there is lack of knowledge in management
skills since Astral Consulting mining company have no ability in utilize the lessons
learned into real functioning, this maybe the problems of no proper training sessions


for workers or the leaders are lack of academic knowledge, this is also considered as
the human resource management problem. The third problem of the mining industry
is the economic issue, the companies are unable to accelerate the economic growth
based on each scale, each company site may not meet the required profits as given or
the ESGs standards (ESG is standing for environment, social and governance
indicators to see how productive, economically potential of a company) (Chen, J.,
2021). The majority of institutional investors lack the motivation, money investment
and time to control or discipline management. According to Harvard Business Review

analysis, since shareholders are less embedded in the underlying value of the
companies whose securities are traded, the more impact short-term traders have on
stock prices, the more volatile such prices would be (Fox, J. and Lorsch, J., 2012).
The company sites need capital investment for developing economic growth, so there
will be lack of money investment for each Astral’s shareholder while the stock market
of the company is insecure due to the increasing in shareholders. There are so many
branches in lots of countries while Astral Consulting company is unable to manage
their performance and have less academic requirements as well as economic
sustainability, therefore, this will result in increasing the shareholder’s pressure from
activism (Fox, J. and Lorsch, J., 2012). Last but not least, the company may increase
the community pressure due to its mining production, this will affect the
environmental aspect based on each scale of the mining process such as drilling,
grinding, burning and minerals exploitation in general. This will affect the
underground water and air quality for the nearby residents. As an environmental
organization, the company should focus on ecosystem sustainability, however, we
have not seen any environmental protection activities from Astral Consulting and this
is one of their biggest issues over the world. In our analysis, this issue is considered as
the social relativism issue or social issue.

III. Literature review

To solve a problem in a company, we must identify the root of the problem
and then propose solutions. To solve the problems of the mining company, the two
paradigms of the functionalist approach and the social relativism approach need to be
considered and discussed. First, functionalism is also called objective regulation. It is


to apply models and methods derived from natural sciences to study human problems
(Hirschheim, and Klein, 1989). In the case of this operator, the management of these
firms requires alignment and a functionalist approach will evaluate the functions

corresponding to the major public entity. Then propose a structural model to help
reshape the company's apparatuses after integration. However, it is worth noting that
functionalism focuses on individual roles to form an integrated unit (Hirschheim and
Klein, 1989). Therefore, the operator must evaluate and review the subsidiaries before
integrating. At the same time, the merger helps synchronize the company's operations
that will help drive growth in scale and generate profits.

Figure 1: Information Systems Development Paradigms by Burrel and Morgan 1979

To further unify the new corporate components, management should form a
sustainable structure, to better cope with the challenge of managing companies in different
cultures. In addition, in addition to adopting the functionalist's approach to take advantage of
information access, it makes it easier for the organization to manage. Such employees feel
comfortable and of greater importance, if they are informed or involved in the decisionmaking process. Fostering an innovative information environment can not only benefit
company productivity but also promote employee loyalty to the company (Plumer, 2011).
Thus, promoting diversity can transform cultural interconnections into a more energy activity
and thus stimulate demand for large-scale production.


In the 1989 study of Hirschheim and Klein, it is shown that the social relativist
paradigm seeks explanation in the realm of individual consciousness and subjectivity, in the
frame of reference of the social actor as opposed to the observer of the action. According to
this viewpoint, “social roles and institutions exist as an expression of the Greek that men
attach to their world.” To put it more easily, in this case, things like people, hardware,
software, rules such as physical or formal, objective entities are brought into the service of
the economic class. According to research by Burrell and Morgan in 1979 proposed "all the
theories of organization are based on scientific philosophy and theory of society". However,
new arrivals of companies will appear different in terms of national culture, people, beliefs,
etc., which may cause variables when placed in the case of the operator. This poses a number
of obstacles for us. One challenge posed is that, as the document review mentioned, should

we include the analyst in organizational analysis or should we take a client standpoint
important to evaluate this issue? When analytical and information development systems are
applied, how do we measure these variances in a reasonable and cost-effective budget for the
company?

Figure 2: Subjective approach and objective approach to social science

Social relativism will help organize activities in accordance with the country's culture
and help reduce pressure from the community. The first problem is that shareholders become
more and more active, either because the company is on the rise, the management is planning
a strategy or they are just trying to merge the institutions. It is impossible to know that, but
the actions of the shareholders further disturb the equilibrium of the company. The dynamics
of management and companies that have not been integrated into the organization sooner or
later have a direct impact on the operation. Relativism will propose directions for companies


in different countries and combine functionalism in integration to come up with unified
management linkages for companies. On the other hand, the mining industry affects the
surrounding environment. So, it is necessary to develop a model to respond to situations and
annual reports showing the world on the environment and people. If it is integrated, but the
company cannot operate, it makes no difference. The publication of the report should include
environmental and human impacts. People will feel more secure and the company will also
be less likely to get involved in troubles.

IV. Solution development and proposal

Solution proposal:
According to the issues that we have conducted earlier, the organization is facing
pressure from its shareholders for their activism in the organization. Besides, the connection
between the function and sub-function is not well-integrated resulted in the company having

difficulty delivering a common approach that helps the organisation apply learned lessons
into practices and grow on the economic scale. Amburgey et al. (1990) emphasise that
restructuring the organization could be hazardous, and overcome it will promote the
organisation’s health. Therefore, we create this structure model and the progress model to
deliver a solution increasing consistency among organization functions.


Figure 3: New hierarchical structure in Functionalism
The new structure was designed to help reconstruct the organization structure to
become more hierarchical to maximize the command and control of the authority, which
creates a precisely defined business structure between the departments that linked them
through a clear chain of command (RMIT 2021, Functionalism, slide 13). After the
reconfiguration, we have the vice manager who is accounted for delivering work to their
department and reporting the progress to the general manager for determining the final
decision and report them directly to the organization’s shareholders. In addition, the proposed


structure aims to create a common approach for the company to have a better connection
between the departments and increase the shareholder’s activism in the organization. In
contrast, eliminate the excess function to improve employee work effectiveness and reduce
the operation cost to grow on the economic scale. Moreover, this structure also helps the
client to be easier for applying experiences gained into practices.

Figure 4: Solution implementation.

The above diagram is our process model, which indicates the steps for implementing
the solution. However, it is quite common for firms to use organization restructuring as
means of experimenting with the structure to find more promising configurations( Capron,
Dussauge, & Mitchell, 1998; & Brown, 1999, Karim, 2006). In the beginning stage, we



recommended that our client arrange a meeting for announcing the reconfiguration of the
business structure. After the announcement, the firm will need to categorize the employees to
put them in their appropriate department. Taking inspiration from Idiographic -Nomothetic
methodology, this is a subjective approach methodology that required the client to collect
firsthand data to evaluate the efficiency of the solution because there is no information filter;
therefore, collecting the information directly would be the most effective way to measure.

V. Discussion and conclusion

One of the problems with Astral Consulting can be seen, which is its inability to drive
economies of scale. The company appears to have seen significant growth after acquiring
several other smaller firms. This seems to be a good direction for the long-term development
of Astral Consulting, but this rapid growth has in fact severely imbalanced and fragmented its
organizational structure. In the role of a manager, it is also difficult to control the overall
growth of the organization when there is an imbalance in the growth of small companies in
the same system. The solution to increase the interests of shareholders by making the most
accurate reports, forecasts and rewarding stock prices for companies with good growth is also
a safe solution to solve the problem of profitability. benefit shareholders and the stable
general development of the whole system. The above solution will first give shareholders
more excitement in the issue of equity investment in the organization. In addition,
shareholders will gain a better understanding and detail of activities and what is actually
happening within the organization through reports with concretized metrics. (Burrell &
Morgan, 1979) Thereby helping the system develop the best from within. However, the above
solution will also inadvertently create a conflict of interest between the head and the lower
department. The transparency of data reports will reduce the influence of managers because
shareholders then have the opportunity to provide criticism, suggestions and personal
opinions for the purpose of finding out. personal benefit and influence of the head ( Burrell &
Morgan, 1979).


The increased pressure on shareholders is also a problem for the organization. Astral
Consulting increasingly has more powerful shareholders, and of course they will also demand
high economic interests. This inadvertently creates barriers to the sustainable development of
the organization when the interests of shareholders and the requirements for social


responsibility will be strongly conflicted. Therefore, it is necessary to build a model to
respond to situations and annual reports showing the impacts on the environment and people.
Most solutions offered such as Investing in products and services people need, Innovation
impacting socio-economic goals, Lower-impact mining techniques, Friendly equipment To
the environment and to restore the mining sites, both are intended to protect the environment
and satisfy the society. The common benefits of the above solutions will help businesses go
further in sustainable development. Maybe at this time shareholders will not receive high
economic benefits, however, if building a development foundation from the benefits of
society and the environment is the core, in the future investors investment will have more
investment opportunities because it has created values for society and people, from which
economic benefits will develop more stably in the long run. (Social Relativism). However,
the biggest limitation for the above solutions will surely be that the economic efficiency will
not be maximized in a short period of time. In addition, focusing too much on balancing
shareholder interests and environmental and social responsibility creates more problems and
arising tasks to meet it, so it will be a challenge. When the organization has to meet too many
goals at the same time, the productivity will not be high. Furthermore, while performing the
above tasks, in the bad case, if good results are not achieved, it is possible that the
organizational structure will be disordered and greatly affected when it takes time and effort
and is not collected good results again.

On the other hand, the only application of Functionalism and Social Relativism to the
application of solutions for Astral Consulting is quite an important shortcoming. From our
personal point of view, Neo-Humanism will help to come up with better solutions in terms of
helping Employees to be truly engaged, not emotionally and socially burdened, able to

express ideas and fulfill their full potential so that the organization can more easily develop
more sustainably. Furthermore, Neo-Humanism will provide effective criticism of unethical
behaviors that affect people and the environment and make it easier for organizations to
properly define their goals (Aktouf, 1992 ). Meanwhile, Radical Structuralism will also assist
the organization in revealing the behaviors that cause inequality in the organization so that it
can provide the most accurate solutions for organizational restructuring (Hirschheim & Klein,
1989: 1207). In addition, Radical Structuralism considers resistance to be positive because
workers are then aware of their collective benefits, so if applied to Astral Consulting, this will
help organizations achieve social progress. . (Hirschheim & Klein, 1989: 1207).


VI. References
Amburgey, T., Kelly, D. and Barnett, W., 1990. RESETTING THE CLOCK: THE
DYNAMICS OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND FAILURE. Academy of
Management Proceedings, 1990.

2006. Modularity in organizational structure. Estados Unidos: John Wiley & Sons.

Hirschheim, Rudy and Klein, Heinz K. (1989 October). Four paradigms of information
systems development. Communications of the ACM. Vol. 32, NO. 10. pp: 1201.

/>Plumer, Brad. (2011, October 26). The upsides of overpopulation. The Washington Post
/>Burrell, G., & Morgan, G. (1979). Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis
( chapter 1-3
< />ational_analysis.pdf >
Heinz K. Klein, January 1993 . The Application of Neohumanist Principles in Information
Systems Development
< />inciples_in_Information_Systems_Development’ >

Aktouf, 1992 . Management and Theories of Organizations in 1990s : TOWARD A

CRITICAL RADICAL HUMANISM?
< />nizations_in_the_1990s_Toward_a_Critical_Radical_Humanism>


Chen, J., 2021. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Criteria. [online]
Investopedia. Available at: < [Accessed 6 May 2021].

Fox, J. and Lorsch, J., 2012. What Good Are Shareholders?. [online] Harvard Business
Review. Available at: < [Accessed 6
May 2021].

VII. Appendix: Group Reflection
In this course, we have a chance to meet a guest speaker from Deloitte South East
Asia who is Ms. Thoa. She is the manager of the Human Capital Consulting department in
Deloitte. The topic that she talks about is organization transformation and organization
design. The design of an organization structure determines the best solution that is most
effective for accomplishing its strategy through people. The process will follow the 3D
Method which is Decide, Design, and Deliver. Ms. Thoa also showed us a case study to give
us a brief example of how we should analyze and break down the business base on different
situations. The method starts with Decide which is understanding the business category and
how to deconstruct its system to know its efficiency, cost, or spend control. This phase makes
sure that we understand everything about the distribution of the business system and figure
out if there exist problems. With the information that we examine, we can start designing an
efficiency in all perspectives of the organization and help it be sustainable. The second phase
is a redesign, but we need to understand the internal factors and external factors that impact
the business strategy. We need to analyze the internal trends and external trends and how they
could be better by transformation. Internal factors can be reduced cost, technology
improvement, or culture and leadership development. External factors can be customer
service, impact on the environment or increase market growth. They come together to make
the business achieve its goal and there will be a most effective way of organizing the system

to make it more reliable, sustainable, and reduce cost. Lastly, after figuring out the solution
for a better organization setup, the design will be delivered and considered to apply in reality.
However, there will be many risks that will be impacted by the reconstruction of an
organization, and we need a transaction plan for it. The comedown will cause many
employees to lose their job or there will be 75 percent that the transformation will fail.


Therefore, we need to carefully plan to make it most effective and helpful for the business.
then make it change to become better and also make the relationship between supervisor and
worker can be more engaging. The plan will be successful if every step is on their track and
can be able to change the business organization system to make it better to develop. This
method is related to Functionalism because it puts employees to be effective and costs which
will bring it to be more sustainable. It also clearly shows that every employee needs to work
their job perfectly to match with the whole organization to make it sustainable. The lecture
from Ms. Thoa helps us understand how to analyze an organization deeply and clearly see
how an organization is built up. Therefore, it helps us apply the knowledge in the lecture to
work on this assignment. Every member in our group concludes with each other about the
perspective that we will follow in this assignment before we start writing. Moreover, we have
tight communication between each member and adduce details in our assignment paper. This
helps the paper quality higher and shows more detail that we analyze and solve the problem
by what we learn in class and guest speaker lecture. From the beginning, we have a meeting
together and together brainstorming our idea and solution to this assignment. We conclude
our idea into a plan and we will follow that to finish our assignment. There are not many
challenges in our way to write this assignment besides our deadline weeks and we have to do
multiple assignments in a short period of time. We give our thanks to our lecturer for giving
us more time to work on the paper and improve its quality. We make sure that our group is
working together, show our idea, and achieve our goal of submitting on due time. Every
member has done their job perfectly as divided and we are happy to make sure that the paper
is the best version and it is what we acknowledge when studying in class and the lecture from
the guest speaker. How our group organizes our part for this assignment is the same as the

idea of Social Relativism. We together set up the same goal and we can separate working our
part and do what we feel is the best detail for this assignment. Every member in our group
has understood their responsibility and done our part as best as we can. Moreover, we also
share our idea that we will fit the most while writing, that how we make our paper more
connected with each other and to be very easy to understand our idea of how we solve this
assignment requirement.


THE AGREEMENT OF TASK ALLOCATION:
Date of agreement: 9/5/2021

Signed by (all workgroup members to sign)

Student's name

ID

Task

Contribution

Tran Gia Bao

s3757331

100%

Nguyen Thu Ha

s3678713


100%

Luu Trong Dung

s3863990

100%

Signature

Dung
Luu Trong Dung

Pham Quang Minh

s3864204

100%

Vo Van Bon

s3857506

100%


Equity of Contribution
POLICY OBJECTIVE
The objective of this policy is to be explicit about expectations and obligations of student

contribution to group assessment tasks. All members of the workgroup should adhere to the
policies outlined in the signed policy document.

In the case where a few members undertake work on behalf of the workgroup above and
beyond the contribution required of the rest of the workgroup members, this policy should
allow for their contribution to be recognised and this may be in the form of receiving
additional marks.

In the case where members of the group rely on others in their group to complete work on
their behalf, marks should be deducted from that individual student in the group. To this end
it is set out that each member of the workgroup must contribute to the class in the following
areas:
• Attendance
• Oral participation (if required)
• Written work
• Contribution to the workgroup commitments as outlined in the ‘Team Charter’.
Each student group is to prepare their own Code Of Conduct that indicates the rules of
engagement that they will adhere to to ensure an equitable contribution to group work by all
members.
2. Oral Participation
2.1. Oral participation of all members is expected in the following:
2.1.1. Managing and leading
2.1.2. Staff development
2.1.3. Group reflection
2.1.4. Workgroup discussion during meeting times and in workgroup meetings.


2.2. As well as speaking it is expected that all workgroup members will practice active
listening.
2.3. The workgroup should make every effort to encourage non-participating members to

make a greater
oral contribution to the workgroup.
3. Written Work
3.1. Each workgroup member must complete the ‘Homework’ prior to the week’s class.
3.2. Failure to complete the ‘Homework’ prior to the week’s class may result in each member
of the responsible workgroup being penalised 5% of the possible mark for the portfolio (that
is 1.5 marks).
4. Individual Appeal Against a Lower Grade
4.1. Before a lower grade can be applied to an individual student , the group must discuss the
situation
with;
(i) the individual student
(ii) the class seminar leader

4.2. If the student agrees that they have not contributed equitably, he /she will agree to a
lower mark than other group members.
4.3. If, after all discussions, it is agreed that the individual student is to be penalised, all
members of the group must prepare a written statement (this includes the student/s to be
penalised). All group members, including the student/s to be penalised, sign the statement.
4.4. The original copy of the statement, with signatures, must be given to the seminar leader.
4.5. A copy of the statement must then be provided to each student in the group
5. Seminar Leader’s Role
5.1. The seminar leader has no power to impose any penalty for contribution or performance
unless it has been applied by the workgroup under this policy and notified in writing.
5.2. If requested to do so the seminar leader may agree to attend meetings and act in a
mediator role. However, if the seminar leader believes the issue to be sufficiently serious they
may refer the issue to the BUSM1094 course coordinator for further action.
5.3. If it is deemed that the group has discriminated against the student in any way, those
students who have partaken in the discrimination will be referred to the BUSM1094 Course
Coordinator.



6. Amendment to this Policy
6.1. This policy may only be amended with the agreement of all members of the workgroup.
6.2. Any amendment must be created into a new policy and circulated for the signature of all
workgroup members.
6.3. The seminar leader has the right to veto any amendment that appears to him/her to be
unfair or targeted at a specific individual or individuals.
7. Contribution to the workgroup as an organisation
7.1. It is expected that all group members are to attend the weekly group meetings which
have been scheduled for every Wednesday from 12:30pm to 1:30pm.
7.2. On an ad-hoc basis, the group will decide a date and time for the group to meet and
compile the portfolio contents.
7.3. It is expected that on a rotational basis the group will nominate a chair person to coordinate the weekly activities.