Sample Essay On Managing A Dynamic Environment

Change is an inevitable process for any organization that is objected to succeed. More than often, organizations undergo constant changes and adapt to these novel initiatives in a bid to remain competitive and relevant in the market. Nevertheless, effective organizational change seems to be uncommon. The implementation of change within an organization comes forth as the most problematic challenge that organizations face. In fact, the trivial success rates of change programs are often ascribed to change by various agents across the organization, as well as the external agents alike to the resistance. However, through paying keen attention to the dynamics of the change process, it has positive implications for the organization, in that a well-grounded comprehension of resistance is coined, which is vital to the success of change programs in an organization (Pieterse, Caniëls and Homan, 2012). Saudi Aramco comes forth as one of the companies that have capitalized on the efficiency that come hand-in-hand with upholding effecting and continuous change within the company. Saudi Aramco has implemented changes in through integrating women to the leadership positions, employment of technology and partnerships to enhance its environmental conservation and corporate responsibility social objective, and engaging employees in the decision-making process. This discussion will delineate Saudi Aramco’s historical approach to implementing the change, the success rate of the change programs, as well as the barriers encountered while implementing change.
Saudi Aramco has been hailed for its unprecedented commitment to incorporating women in its workforce. The company has increasingly hired women; not only into its workforce, but also to the c-suite positions in the organization. Apart from taking the lead in hiring women in the Saudi Arabia region, it also emerges as one of the top companies across the world that pays significant attention to women when hiring and promoting employees. This crucial achievement is a product of gradual improvements undertaken by Saudi Aramco over the years.
Throughout the history of Saudi Aramco, relentless efforts have been set about to pool the unexploited talents of women in the company. The first woman was hired in 1964 into a workforce was entirely dominated by men. During this time, women were regarded to be “short-timers” over and above their limited literacy level, which was a result of the discriminatory societal norms towards women. In spite all these, Saudi Aramco went against the grain and commenced hiring women into its workforce. In fact, one of the major strategic goals of Saudi Aramco is to emerge as the world’s leading integrated chemical and Energy Company by the year 2020. In an effort to respond to the dearth of skilled professionals in the industry, Saudi Aramco resolved to exploit the talent of women in the region (Al-Ghoson, 2014). Saudi Aramco was determined to attain its integration objective by looking beyond the societal consideration of women.
Saudi Aramco has instituted various programs to enhance the perspective of women empowerment as an ideal approach to change throughout the organization. First, the company has a ‘Women in Business’ program, which is aimed at instilling the basic soft skills to young women whose careers are commencing. These women are taught ways of enabling them to be successful in the business that is dominated by men, and therefore, they are taught to be resilient, self-confident, assertive, overly aware and tolerant. Secondly, the ‘Women in Leadership’ program focus on senior women and aims to hone their leadership approaches and skills so that they can fit the c-suite positions in the organization. Through several interactive exercises, these senior women can compete fairly with their male counterparts in the organization for the top positions in Saudi Aramco. What is more is that Saudi Aramco is stretching its women's empowerment programs to even those who are still in colleges and universities by inviting them to inspirational talks that help them develop soft communication in critical areas, such as communication. The catch is that young women are offered sponsorship by the company to pursue their studies in the universities across the world (Al-Ghoson, 2014). The relentless efforts of the company to empower women cannot be overstressed as demonstrated.
The success rate of the women's empowerment programs by Saudi Aramco has been high. As early as 2010, the benefits of these programs were evident; however, not at the aforethought rate. Through the changes instituted over the years, the current success rate is in line with the projected pace. For instance, the current number of women leaders has reached 84, up from four in 2010 (Al-Ghoson, 2014). On the whole, this approach to change has experienced prominent success.
Nonetheless, there have been barriers in the course of the change process. More importantly, it has not hit everybody in Saudi Arabia that it is time to create opportunities for women. Rather, some consider this initiative as deleterious to the Islamic values. Besides the fact that some of the women being intergraded into the workforce, either have little or no prior experience of working with men, and this is detrimental such that they trip-up and feel inept. As such, the aims of the programs are not accomplished since these women fail to participate or make contributions in the course of their assigned roles. Also, the men counterparts complicate the ability of the women to take effectively up top positions insofar that some even threaten to resign for having a woman as a boss (Al-Ghoson, 2014). These drawbacks have been detrimental to the company’s ability to effectively implement change.
Human capital has been a major force behind the success of Saudi Aramco, and thence a significant change agent. The company’s leadership has traditionally capitalized on the richness of human capital when undertaking major changes in the organization. Effective communication between the managers and leaders, as well as between shareholders and managers, has been a powerful tool employed by Saudi Aramco while undergoing the hefty transformations in the recent years. For instance, in 2002, the company set up a corporate idea management system whereby employees are encouraged to present their ideas and innovations to enhance the operations of the company. Moreover, to enhance the knowledge and know-how of the employees, Saudi Aramco has employed stringent workforce planning techniques, which are aimed at nurturing talent and investing in training and education. Employees are allowed to undergo educational programs through e-learning modules, which are convenient for a great deal of the employees (Khursani, Bazuhair and Khan, 2011). This substantial approach to change will continue to add value to the company in the unforeseeable future.
The success of the taking advantage of human capital has been deficient as it is demonstrated by the degree of motivation of the Saudi Aramco’s employees. A recent study carried out by Al-Malallah and Regondola (2014) indicated that the communication system among the employees and managers of Saudi Aramco was still below par and, therefore, the grievances and suggestions of the employees are not tackled in a tactful manner. Additionally, the training and educational procedures and policies were demonstrated to be overly complex for the employees to comprehend. As a result, the slight motivation of the employees was not attributed to the training and development programs, but to other factors in the organization.
The unfavorable success rate of the human capital programs is attributed to the scores of barriers encountered in implementing change in Saudi Aramco. On the first note, the procedures and policies stipulated in the training and development programs are complex and unclear. Given this, managers have an incentive to deviate from the requirements. On the other hand, employees are effete in communicating their concerns and innovations to the management. Employees have also been a major setback in implementing change in the sense that they have developed negative attitudes towards the training and development programs and in this way, fail to realize their importance (Al-Malallah and Regondola, 2014). These barriers have hampered the effective implementation of change in Saudi Aramco.
Partnership and technological innovations have been an integral part of the change implementation process in Saudi Aramco. Corporate social responsibility and environment preservation are at the heart of the company. Intrinsically, Saudi Aramco established a donation fund in 1940 that has supported access to healthcare, local authorities, as well as research and development (Saudi Aramco, 2014). On the other hand, Saudi Aramco has increasingly employed technological solutions in reducing the emission of CO2 to the atmosphere through its Carbon Management Steering Committee. Furthermore, Saudi Aramco has taken on collaborations and partnerships with research organizations, companies, and leading universities throughout the world to support carbon management research programs (Al-Meshari, Muhaish and Aleidan, 2015). In so doing, Saudi Aramco has positioned itself at the forefront in improving the carbon management roadmap.
The corporate social responsibility and environment conservation programs have encountered nifty success. For instance, in 2013, Saudi Aramco successfully funded a program aimed at developing the skills of orphaned families by supporting and working closely with teachers as they provide training and rehabilitation to orphans (Saudi Aramco, 2014). Besides, the Saudi Aramco-Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology CO2 Management Center based in Daejeon, South Korea, emerges as one of the successful joint research projects aimed at addressing issues of CO2 emissions (Al-Meshari, Muhaish and Aleidan, 2015). The company has directed its focus on reducing the impact of its products and operations to the environment, as well as giving back to the society.
The challenges associated with the implementation of change with regards to corporate social responsibility and environment preservation have to do with the dropping prices of oil. Following the drop in demand for oil across the world due to frail economic activities, Saudi Aramco has experienced a precipitous drop in their profits (Blanchard, 2015). In essence, this has led to the cut down on charitable donations and support for environmental conservation initiatives. Otherwise, the grim determination of the company towards being socially responsible is eminent.
In conclusion, Saudi Aramco has historically approached change in a cagy manner. Women have been empowered through several successful programs, which are age specific. However, the Islamic values and male counterparts have worked for the downfall of these programs. The company has also advocated human capital through training and development programs for a long period. However, the complexity of these programs coupled with the unfavorable attitude of employees has translated into the somewhat success of the training and development programs. Finally, the corporate social responsibility and environmental programs of Saudi Aramco have relished success over the years, not until the recent fall in oil prices hampered the ability of the company to undertake such programs. Without doubt, effective organizational change is not a walk in the park, and it takes proficient management to overcome the barriers to change the implementation.

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