Critical Challenges Facing New Zealand’s Chief Executives: Implications For Management Skills

Critical Arguments and Discussions

Discuss about the Critical Challenges Facing New Zealand’s Chief Executives.

The contemporary world is changing rapidly due to the dominance of business entities contributed by the dynamic evaluation of technology. Lampikoski and Möller (2013) have proposed that the organizations from different backgrounds should need to leverage heavily on the increasing set of knowledge and skills involving leadership and practical application of managerial capabilities for developing a competitive advantage. The particular scenario is provided the rising prominence by the managers from the global business environment due to fast-changing preference associated with the overall settings (Lampikoski and Möller 2013).

The essay is aimed to investigate the critical challenges experiencing by the key executives from the business world of New Zealand in the course of improving their managerial skills and capabilities. The fundamental improvement to their actions and approaches with the right mix of knowledge and understanding tends to bring positive implications to deal with the dynamically changing markets and technologies as part of the sophisticated atmosphere (Manville et al. 2012). In order to fulfil such aim, the intended approaches are based on considering and analysing one of the main thesis statements indicated by “The critical challenges facing New Zealand’s chief executives: implications for management skills”, a research article formed by Hutchiinson and Boxall (2014).

Hence, the major area of the paper will be comprised of critically argumentative discussions justifying the identified statement or question of the selected study. During the practice of such process, key journals and articles produced by the other scholars or professionals will be considered importantly for elaborating the agreements or disagreements through establishing the rationale behind the scenario.

The report created by Hutchinson and Boxall (2014) was published in 2014 comprising of the useful information reflected through the surveys and observations conducted in 2012. The overall investigation provides critical eminence to the chief executives from some of the largest organizations of New Zealand contributing a significant portion of growth to the overall economy of the nation. Based on the investigation drawn up through the overall paper, it is significantly identified that the individuals from the administrative level of the organization are always facing the escalating amount of burden to deal with the critical challenges coming from the modern environment. In addition, it is recognised that the apprehensions are explicitly caused by the rapidly changing needs and requirements of markets and technologic factors (Hutchinson and Boxall 2014). In the rise of a complex business scenario, the authors have indicated the need for embracing an evolving role by the human resource managers from various organizations in New Zealand for coping up with the changing set of skills and requirements. Out of the various indications made by Hutchinson and Boxall (2014) through their study, one noteworthy observation made by the duo is indicating the need for increasing capabilities for the managers of New Zealand to deal with the uncertainties of fast-changing and ambiguous environment while ensuring the organisational renewal. The subsequent paragraphs of this section will be augmenting the explanation from the critical and theoretical perspective for developing an agreement or disagreement to the noted observation.

Lack of a World-Class Player

From the context of New Zealand, the considerable expansion of different leadership programs for the managers and executives can be noticed with the aim of accentuating the growth of interactive knowledge and activities in the practical application of various organizational conditions (Crane 2013). Pentland, Singh, and Yakura (2012) have signified the essential involvement of the acceleration programs in the country for providing enhancing leadership knowledge and management skills driving the fortification of professional awareness regarding the efficiencies and capabilities for dealing with the changing situations. Decisively, the Ministry of Economic Development (MED) has conducted a unique research for projecting the useful benchmarks associated with the management practice followed by the various key organizations of New Zealand. The overall study was conducted by comparing the management actions and approaches practiced by the country with optimum requirements at the global level. The individual method denotes the need of organizational renewal to tackle the fast changing corporate requirements caused by the complicated business environment (Pentland, Singh, and Yakura 2012). Corporate renewal is a momentous component of change management referring to substantial inclusion of renewing the entire direction of the business by restructuring its core competencies and capabilities for catering the vibrant needs of external and internal customers (Cullen and Parboteeah 2013). According to Crane (2013), change is a dynamic feature associated with the life and expectancy of the firms facilitating the alterations from both operational and strategic level. As a result, the identified fact encourages the chief executives and human resource managers to come together with a new set of responsibilities and aptitudes for devising ways to manage the changes encountered by the companies. Consequently, it leads to a fact suggesting that the modification is an integral part of an organization, as the factor cannot be separated from its strategy or vice versa (Van Der Vegt et al. 2015).

Hutchiinson and Boxall (2014) through their study have outlined one of the solid facts associated with the overall economy of New Zealand. Being a small economy, New Zealand lacks the presence of a world-class player in its industrial platform, as most of the companies operate as a small or medium-sized enterprise failed to achieve a global reach. Although the economy of the country is comprised of the operations of various subsidiaries of numerous multinational corporations from different countries, a small number of population only participates in the employment with the firms having more than 100 employees (Glavas and Mathews 2014). This participation rate estimated at 44.8%, where in USA and UK, it is 64.8% and 60.2% respectively. Hence, the result of the critical evaluation suggests that the small number of larger firms in New Zealand, which is causing the managers to encounter a great deal of constraints for improving their capabilities and act according to the energetic requirements of the contemporary marketplace.

Recruitment and Retention Practices

The emergence of such scenario has caused commonly caused the managers of New Zealand to seek advancement to their career paths by emigrating to a larger economy or managing to get a transfer to an international firm from its country-based branch (). Lampikoski and Möller (2013) have argued that the absence of highly specialised roles from the managers and lack of progression to the individual mindset are found in almost every promising economy driving the emergence of a considerable sum of problems in managing recruitment and retention. Alternatively, agreeing with the fact outlined by Gilbert and Boxall (2009), the economy of New Zealand is less bureaucratic providing individuals with greater number of job autonomy and causing the development of an enviable lifestyles for the New Zealanders (Hubbard, Rice, and Galvin 2014). This particular scenario leads to the reformation of recruitment and retention of practices employed by the human resource managers of New Zealand. Over the last fifty years, the managers of different organizations of the country are following the same recruitment and retention exercises with the surfacing of the particular industry. However, for the last decade, a dramatic shift has been observed in mentioned process due to the merge of service providers causing them to divesting and reinventing their approaches (Stead 2015). Stead (2015) has explained through his investigation that the certain trend will continue to provide influence on the managerial activities in the future operations of the organizations to form increasing level of challenges and difficulties for the executives and managers. On the other hand, the involvement of a vast number of global players and little amount of niche players in New Zealand economy are resulting in the tighter situation for the managers from different organizations (Rohrbeck, Thom, and Arnold 2015).

Based on these certain understandings, it can be critically argued that a rapidly changing ambiguous environment is characterised by the multiple factors, such as constraints in funding, inefficiency of the current business model, lack of fundamental skills and resources for the managers, and failure to establish a renewal system for the entire organization.

Conclusion

From the overall discussion developed by including the key arguments and facts outlined by the external professionals, the paper extensively agrees to the thesis statement reflected by Hutchinson and Boxall (2014). The result of the investigation critically advocates the need of developing proper knowledge and skills of the managers of different companies of New Zealand for ensuring the profound progress of their political and interpersonal skills. It is analysed that the certain process helps them to develop suitable actions for handling complexities associated with the modern day business environment. The essay also agrees with the indication put forwarded by the selected study to bolster the stakeholder relationship in the organization to serve the diverse requirements of contemporary market. In conclusion, it must need to mention that the ever-present elements are always responsible for affecting the approaches and policies of all organization. Different scholars and professionals have clearly articulated the truth that the current pace of change has never been greater that all the previous examples in the context of business environment. Therefore, the managers and chief executives must need to devise an industrious change management theories and approaches to counter the experiencing challenges. 

References

Hutchison, A. and Boxall, P., 2014. The critical challenges facing New Zealand’s chief executives: implications for management skills. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 52(1), pp.23-41.

Manville, G., Greatbanks, R., Krishnasamy, R. and Parker, D.W., 2012. Critical success factors for Lean Six Sigma programmes: a view from middle management. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management,29(1), pp.7-20.

Crane, A., 2013. Modern slavery as a management practice: Exploring the conditions and capabilities for human exploitation. Academy of Management Review, 38(1), pp.49-69.

Pentland, B., Singh, H. and Yakura, E., 2012. Routinizing change: Does business process management technology have unintended firm-level consequences?.

Cullen, J.B. and Parboteeah, K.P., 2013. Multinational management. Cengage Learning.

Van Der Vegt, G.S., Essens, P., Wahlström, M. and George, G., 2015. Managing risk and resilience. Academy of Management Journal, 58(4), pp.971-980.

Glavas, C. and Mathews, S., 2014. How international entrepreneurship characteristics influence Internet capabilities for the international business processes of the firm. International Business Review, 23(1), pp.228-245.

Hubbard, G., Rice, J. and Galvin, P., 2014. Strategic management. Pearson Australia.

Stead, J.G., 2015. Management for a small planet. ME Sharpe.

Rohrbeck, R., Thom, N. and Arnold, H., 2015. IT tools for foresight: The integrated insight and response system of Deutsche Telekom Innovation Laboratories. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 97, pp.115-126.

Lampikoski, T. and Möller, K., 2013, January. Collaborative networks in green innovation: strategic games, value creation logics and managerial capabilities. In ISPIM Conference Proceedings (p. 1). The International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM).