Introduction
Northern Transportation Company Limited is Northern Canada’s oldest and largest Arctic marine operative and Canada’s largest barging corporation. For more than 70 years it has provided trustworthy and necessary marine transportation services to consumers and resources examination projects along the Mackenzie River in the Northwest Territories and crossways the Western Arctic, from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska as far east as Taloyoak in Nunavut.
Structure and Design. NTCL is a 100% Inuit-owned corporation and is a participant of the NorTerra Inc. group of companies. NorTerra is possessed by the Inuvialuit of the Western Arctic and Nunasi Corporation, in aid of the Inuit of Nunavut.
NTCL has sought a destructive decentralization in the organization of its sections. Indeed, every section is complete runs individual affairs autonomous from the influence of superior management. Company sections undertake key conclusions, entailing hiring and purchase of apparatus. This tradition expands from the understanding that workers are hired grounded on their professionalism in the individual spheres; meaning that members of the labor force are competent in performing assigned responsibilities efficiently. Like this, senior management and subdivision heads do not have to keep subsequent up on workers’ progress.
Despite this violent decentralization, the NTCL Company structure is completely interwoven – workers can easily converse within and between departments. This has caused the appearance of a competent communication network, which is the basis of the organizational arrangement. Other than competence in organizational communication, devolution has caused a labor force with superior teamwork capabilities, as they are inspirited to jointly expand resolutions for departmental troubles.
Departmental leaders arrange weekly joint meetings to offer updates on arrangement matters. Each delegate shortly informs colleagues of ongoings in individual departments, which leads to the better realization of what is happening on various levels and in all the departments. Data collected is then shared within subdivisions so all members of Liberty Logistics’ labor force can be well aware. The ordinary meetings and sharing of departmental and organizational data have succeeded in building a sturdy bond in the company.
Motivation
The company has embarked on expanding innovative manners of keeping workers motivated. Among these ways entails rewarding workers whose personal or collective thoughts get put into practice at either departmental or managerial level. This agreement has resulted in workers becoming competing in looking for methods for improving effectiveness within the corporation. Recipients of the motivation plan have entailed workers whose work has become easier and recompensing. Moreover, an increase in NTCL effectiveness has been reproduced in a rise in company income, which is shared with workers as a bonus.
This also occurs at the team extent, where a group of workers can chart on manners of accomplishing assignments. Workers feel more welcomed and thus puts extra attempt into company actions. The open communication regulations within the organization have turned to be a vital medium of asking for help or explanations from senior organization and coworkers. Regular mingling with workers from other departments and even senior management has outlined in personal members of the labor force feeling like a part of a large company with universal aims. Simplified admission to senior management has further left workers feeling the significance of their services to the company and therefore put more attempt in attaining completing assignments.
Leadership Style
NTCL Company has a delegative leadership manner, which takes persons of the labor force as heads in their brightness. Senior organization and departmental leaders act an essential role in regulating matters within the Corporation but it is workers who deal with run matters. Leadership is a responsibility for every worker, not just the administration. This realization has been embed deep into NTCL’s arrangement structure. Workers realize that in case of difficulties in dealing with matters in lines of work, there would be no necessity to wait for some administrator to show management or make important conclusions; it is the workers who present that make such conclusions.
NTCL is not various. Said Mr. Hazel, senior organization and departmental leaders have been left to act with more pressing matters whereas workers resolve other concerns more proficiently. The results have entailed quick development of company output throughout the years it has been in action.
Power and Influence
Decentralized management and delegative leadership style have diminished the possibility of concentrating power and influence to just a few hands. Power and influence have also been decentralized within the organization, and especially downwards. Individual employees thus feel more confident as they have the power to control affairs in respective workstations. Workers’ hard work in the departments has a huge impact all over the Company.
Such impact means that activities are undertaken by the most qualified personalities and thus recover competence in the next level. For example, the information technology team has power and impact over informational matters. In this concept, they ensure followers have all the data needed to fetch, ferry and offer packages to appropriate purposes. Power and impact are therefore held by personality employees depends on the line of work and does not go beyond there.
Realizing that workers have an impact on their duties has slowly eradicated the probability of intrusion. Contrary, this agreement has resulted to augment in the respect to workers for using their impact to assist the organization to attain its long-term aims. The management has been in the front position of respecting self-government and employees’ power to control their own matters.
Conflicts and conflict resolution
Interpersonal and inter-group conflicts appear from time to time in the company. Most of the conflicts happen because of personal differences, and various regards on some particular issues. In this regard, the company lets workers resolve their conflicts as theirs are purely private issues – the company holds profound respect for personal solitude. Nevertheless, workers entailed in the conflicts are heartened to seek help from contracted corporation counselors, or departmental representatives.
The encouragement is done to guarantee that conflicts do not affect efficiency. Workers are made to realize the harsh consequences of private disagreements impacting organizational workflow. There also exist some inter-group conflicts arising from competition rivalry working on similar projects. As illustrated earlier, the company rewards good work from employees that perform beyond departmental projections. The rivalry between groups sometimes gets out of hand and therefore leads to conflicts. Such cases are solved through the collaborative efforts of the involved teams, department heads, and representatives from senior management.
The goal of involving various individuals is to understand the causes of the conflicts and therefore develop mechanisms of avoiding similar occurrences in the future. This approach has been successful in having various causes of organizational conflicts being eliminated.
Work Groups
NTCL treasures workgroups, as they have been confirmed more efficient in completing assignments. Departments are viewed as the largest workgroups in the corporation, whereas two cooperating personalities are the smallest workgroup. Department leaders are therefore forced in helping personal employees form teams to complete tasks. Some of the work teams are stated on permanent grounds, meaning that members are together on the long haul. This agreement is generally applied to activities that take place on a standard basis such as protection. Occasional teams are stated for projects that are in place for a shorter period.
For the short schemes, the partners are frequently rotated to guarantee that workers get used to working with each other This is also a manner of having workers get to know each other and thus reinforce organizational bonds. Sometimes workers expand the workgroups without having to inform department leaders. Such deliberately developed groups have offered significant improvement of efficiency in the company, which clarifies why management encourages corporations to form workgroups that would improve competence and output.
Equity
NTCL Company takes the labor force as a significant stakeholder that requires to share in company achievement. This is sometimes done by the means of sharing of the profits. As argued earlier, workers who have executed remarkably are offered bonuses. Depending on profits achieved, essential potions are earmarked for sharing with workers for their contribution to company actions. Nevertheless, NTCL Company does not have arrangements for offering company shares to its employees. The absence of such agreements generates from fact that the corporation is medium-sized. Hopefully, such agreements would be set in place as the corporation increases in size. The descent payment provided by the company has workers well satisfied and can therefore realize.
Job Design
There are numerous jobs in the company, each with a design developed by the management. There are three key job groups in the company: storage, transportation, and IT for tracking purposes. Jobs under these groups had been in business for many years and have therefore been reviewed on several occasions. This review is currently done in conjunction with departmental heads and the involved employees.
Having employees participate in review sessions is a deliberate move for them to express concerns regarding the job. Their participation also serves as motivation to put extra effort into their company activities after understanding their jobs completely. Members of the labor force are thus encouraged to express an opinion regarding the respective job designs before starting to work following the given guidelines.
Organizational Culture
NTCL has created a much organizational culture, which binds employees’ aims with those of the company. New workers are meant to realize organizational culture at the onset of their vocations with the company. Most significantly, the seasoned workers are tasked with the accountability of explaining and practicing company organizational culture for the new employees to reproduce. Owing to the widespread decentralization taken in the company, NTCL has historically relied on personal culture to expand performance.
The individual culture has been effective in helping employees become more accustomed to the best practices of accomplishing independent tasks. Workers thus develop the culture to accomplish tasks independently with minimal supervision. It is in this personal culture that senior management and department heads can concentrate on major issues as workers deal with day-to-day business operations. Moreover, company officials afford the time to draft long-term strategies that position the company in a gradually more competitive industry. In addition to individual culture, the company has depended on team culture, which helps to bind workers during joint projects.
Considering that individuals working in teams use individual culture, it turns to be easy for workgroups to achieve projects in efficient times. Indeed, each team member can easily develop mechanisms to allocate duties amongst themselves. These tasks are accomplished faster because employees have learned to work independently. The collaboration between employees ends up improving efficiency in the company.
Change and Challenges
Like other players in the transportation industry, NTCL should is faced with the challenge of remaining profitable in the wake of rising oil prices. This has resulted in a sharp increase in the cost of running company operations. Unfortunately, players in the industry can hardly increase the prices charged to customers. The demand for company services has also been suffering from increased competition from localized and international firms.
These challenges are forcing the company to devise ways of decreasing operation costs to remain competitive as well as retain profitability. NTCL is working on purchasing fuel-efficient vessels that would help in decreasing the cost of fuel. This will mean reducing expenses on other projects needed in running the company. Given that the company would be purchasing bigger vessels compared to the current ones, some members of staff could be laid off. There is therefore the challenge of helping the affected employees understand the importance of this decision. Senior management and employee representatives are, however, working on agreeable modalities to follow.
Works Cited
Hulbs, G. Company: structure and culture New York, 1998.
Lewin, Kehn. ‘Creating social climates’. Social Psychology Journal. 10 (1999): 171-181.
Wilson, Watson, R. Leadership and trouble resolution. Socio-cultural studies. 15 (2001): 12-31.
NTCL Company, 2008. Web.